I’m in Rochester, MN with one of my children. Said child has spina bifida and is facing tethered cord surgery. As a bonus our precious one also gets to face brain surgery. Some folks have all the luck. An annual MRI revealed a mass in the thalamus, probably unrelated to the spina bifida. It may be nothing, in which case the medical slang for it is incidentaloma, a piece of sardonic humor that means “we don’t know what it is but let’s leave well enough alone.” Or it may be something, something that needs life-threatening surgery to investigate. We are here to evaluate the options.
I believe in some sort of higher power. Sadly I came to this conclusion through… software development. Information theory tells us that good programs don’t arise effortlessly out of bad ones. If you think about how robust DNA is and conversely how easily programs break when just a single bit is thrown wrong, you begin to realize there are some big unanswered questions about how things evolved from low to high information density. A single cell has within it components that are infinitely more complicated than the biggest software project. To think that such structure arose out of innumerable random events is to stretch my credulity well past its breaking point.
There are also some questions I have never seen answered well, nor even asked well. For example, all animals come from a single ferilized cell. How then do instinctual or swarming behaviors get transmitted through that tiny data pipe? In fact, the term “instinctive behavior” is nothing more than a way of passing the buck, if you think about it. Where does such behavior come from? If you raise a puppy without its mother it will still exhibit most of the behavior you expect a puppy to have. Where did that get “learned” or “passed on” when there’s no role model? Who or what wrote that program?
I do not bring these issues up to try to convince you that there is some sort of cosmic intelligent designer. Far, far from it. It is intuitively clear to me that there is some kind of designer. But then what? Because of the path I took to this modest article of faith, because of my Yankee “show me” personality, my belief does not really extend to any kind of anthropomorphic personage with any personal interest in me or, more to the point, to my loved ones.
At times like this, I wish it did.
I’m a customer and also an educational neuropsychologist. In that capacity, given what you are dealing with, I’d like to recommend a book. It’s not about religion but the mind/body relationship and how the two interact (as well as nature and nurture). You sound like someone able to make the requisite connections between these issues and the more metaphical implication. I think it will be of great help to you: “Genie in Your Genes” by Dr. Dawson Church. My very best to you and your family.
@Sachet, thank you for your good wishes and for the book recommendation. I’ve ordered “Genie” and it’s winging its way to my Kindle even as we speak. It looks fascinating and I hadn’t heard of it before.
Cheers,
Tom Campbell
Two bits of reading you might possibly find interesting in your situation:
One is Heinlein’s _Job:_A_Comedy_of_Justice_, which is possibly the best treatment of comparative religion I’ve ever come across, disguised as a pretty decent SF novel.
The other is Scott Adams … well, one of the three books in his _Slapped_Together:_The Dilbert_Business_Anthology_, but I don’t have my copy with me at work, so I can’t tell you which one.
Oh: Spider Robinson has been trying to answer the question “In lieu of God, why should you be a good person anyway” for several novels, as well; his Deathkiller trilogy covers the ground fairly well.
This may be somewhat tangential to your problem, but if nothing else, perhaps it will give you something to read in waiting rooms.
Long time customer, love the service… did *you* buy the service using itself, too?
@Baylink, what a reading list! I need to revisit Heinlein. I did not connect with him when I was younger. Of course Scott Adams seriously rocks. And it’s also time to read Spider Robinson, who has been on my list for ages. Thank you for the recommendations.
Yes, I did indeed buy eSnipe using eSnipe. There’s a twist to that story and I’ll blog it when I get a chance.