I started up again with "How the Mind Works" after a few months of hiatus to read less brain-intensive stuff (i.e. Stephen King). I had some long layovers on my way too and from Houston and LA so I figured that was as good a time as any to pick up the book again with my red pen and start trying to comprehend.

The reason I stopped reading for so long was because after the absolutely fascinating chapter about Evolution (which both expressed concepts I'd never thought of and put concepts I HAD thought of into words and theories), the next chapter was by comparison quite dull. I read through the evolution chapter as though I was reading something by Stephen King. It was a real page-turner. At the end of the chapter, Pinker set up what I assumed was to be the next several chapters: the reasons we developed intelligence through natural selection. The four factors were 1) sight, specifically color vision, 2) the hand 3) group living and 4) hunting.

But after the engrossing chapter on evolution, he starts in talking about sight and how vision works and how the mind interprets what it sees and how it differentiates between a chair and a DRAWING of a chair. Honestly, that's why I stopped reading. The chapter was much more what I perceived to be jargon-filled then the evolution chapter. There were many more intangible concepts or just plain boring illustrations. The evolution chapter if nothing else appealed to my imagination because Pinker mentions theories on how life COULD have developed if some other factor had come into play. It was good for igniting pointless fun discussions. The chapter on vision didn't have much of that. It was a lot like the earlier chapters about the "computational theory of mind" which I had a hell of a time just staying awake reading.

But I finally got through the vision chapter, and have started on the chapter that deals with human reasoning and logic and probability and all that. It basically deals with how we get the ideas we get and how we make the assumptions we make about the world… More or less.

One of the first points he brings up is about this guy named Wallace who was a contemporary of Darwin. The two were both proponents of evolution, but then at some point their views diverged. Darwin was a believer that intelligence was just another result of natural selection, and that it ultimately came about randomly. Wallace on the other hand actually ended up becoming a creationist of sorts, ultimately believing that humans, or at least the human mind had to have been put in place by some power higher than mere chance.

The reason Wallace had his conversion (so to speak) was because of looking at groups of humans that developed in different parts of the world. Specifically what he referred to as "primitive humans." Basically humans who at a time when elsewhere people were using electricity and studying quantum physics and stuff, other people were still hunting with wooden spears and living in grass huts with primitive states of intelligence. Yet when you took somebody from that environment, you could teach them all the things that more "advance-minded" people were learning. Within a generation, a person who was hunting pigs and had no idea what plumbing was, could in theory be a stock broker or a college graduate. How was this possible, Wallace argued that humans with no exposure to intelligence growing facilities could have the brain capacity to learn the things that more "advance humans" knew. What benefit did natural selection have in developing the same high intelligence if they weren't using it?

It was as though the humans in these primitive areas had brains that were "overdesigned" for the environment they had been evolving in. It seemed to him as though an intelligent creator had designed all humans' brains the same way, as though It was steering their development in a "specific direction for a special purpose," knowing that eventually they'd all have to use their brains for more "advanced" thinking.

I'll admit, that made sense to me too. If evolution was real then how are we all hardwired with the same capacity for thought? Pinker easily dismisses Wallace by saying that "prospering as a forager is a more difficult problem than learning Calculus or playing chess." Which I guess makes sense. "Primitive" people are merely using their intelligence to solve real life or death issues. That requires a lot of brain power, trying to figure out when a deer is going to run, where you think you might find a field mice, when to dig up the vegetables that you've been growing. More "advanced" societies merely had the benefit of combining talents and knowhow to eventually work together and make imminent survival not an issue. We don't have to worry about day to day survival so our brain is free to think about other things. If anything OUR brains are now "overdesigned" because we don't NEED to use them for the most part. We can live out a monotonony of brain buzz just going through automaton motions at a job and then buying our food easily at a supermarket without anything more difficult than remembering where the store is.

Later on, Pinker goes on to talk about mathematics and how it's ingrained in our wiring. And this is where my mind really started racing, as I started pondering things and had other thoughts reawakened in me that had been dormant for awhile. He says that even before we started developing a spoken language, and in cultures where they still don't really have much of a spoken language, even in animals who have no ability to speak at all, we are all conscious of numbers. Even if we don't have a word assigned for "one" or "a thousand" all animals can grasp concepts like "one… a few… a lot…" In fact, most animals can differentiate between lower numbers like 3 and 4. A lion knows that if there are 4 gazelles standing in a field, that's more than 2. Animals without language obviously start getting confused when the numbers get much higher. They don't differentiate between 25 and 50. Though they would differentiate between 10 and 500. "A lot" and "a lot more" are concepts they can all understand.

This is a concept that has passed through my brain more than once over the last couple years - for no reason whatsoever except that… you know, you gotta think of something. But I find it interesting that in our language, there is a manor of talking when you're talking about a singular object and then a manor of talking when you're talking about any other number of objects. In our language it's demonstrated with an "S" and and "A" If there is only one, you use an "A" and don't need an "S." "A jet." If there is any amount more or less, even fractions more or less, you need an S and another number-clarifying word. "Some jets." Obviously some words, like "mouse" and "mice" don't follow the "S" rule precisely, but the concept is still the same. We treat a single object as a different concept from any other number of that same object. Even ZERO. I always thought it was weird that we had a specific way of speaking for ONE thing, but not a specific way of speaking when there is NONE of that thing. Why throughout the course of our mental evolution wasn't ZERO treated with a separate deference? Having one spear is different than having two spears. But having two spears is also different from having NO spears. The difference between two spears and three spears isn't quite as much of a leap, so I understand there not being a different concept for that. You can't have a different concept for each and every number. But why is it that everything breaks down into SINGULAR and PLURAL? At what point did we decide that ONE had its own way of thinking? Why didn't we decide that there was going to be a global concept for "a few" and "a lot"? Why is "none" essentially lumped into the same category with concepts like "several"? Why is "one" so special that it has it's own manor of speech? And why is that concept so universal in every separate society and tribe on the earth? Why didn't some primitive people who evolved away from European, African and Eastern influence develop their own way of thinking about amounts?

Another thought that resurfaced in my head is the whole idea of base-ten. For the longest time, like anybody else who lives on this earth, I always took for granted the fact that our number system is based on units of ten. When you reach nine, the next number goes back to zero and you add a higher number to the front. So the symbol 23 means you have two sets of ten and three sets of one. The symbol 437 means you have 4 sets of ten times ten, three sets of ten and 7 sets of one. The metric system is all based on this concept of ten. People in the world think we're nuts for using a measurement system that is based on numbers like 12, 16 and 5280. Those numbers aren't as easy to divide because they don't use that simple base-ten way of thinking. Okay, cool, like any American, I got the concept but still didn't want to abandon the system I knew.

I'm going to tell the next part of this story a little bit out of order, because as I think back on it in retrospect, the logic flows backwards. At one point, I wondered why we decided on base ten. Does ten just naturally divide and multiply better than other numbers or is it just the way we think? If we met an intelligent alien species, would their number system be based on ten? I think I thought about this when I watched the movie "Contact." The aliens sent down schematics to build a machine. And those schematics obviously involved measurements and calculations. But I wondered, how would calculations work if you weren't using base-ten. What if they used base 8. What if their system counted up to EIGHT and then recycled? Provided obviously they organized numbers that way and used the same symbols as us, then the symbol for the amount 26 would actually be 32. Three sets of 8 and 2 sets of 1. I wonder how easily we'd be able to do calculations. I guess it'd just be a matter of reprogramming our calculators to know when to start recycling.

But still, I wondered, why did WE choose ten? Seriously, was ten a fundamentally, universally easier number to multiply and divide? The reason became painfully obvious when I took a couple seconds to really think logically. Duh, we have ten FINGERS. Obviously, when people first started counting, they would count on their fingers and when they had a number higher than ten, they needed to have their friend start counting on THEIR fingers. By the time they finished counting sheep, 5 guys had all ten fingers up and one guy had 7. So they had 5 sets of hands and 7 fingers.

So this is where I work backwards. That explanation like I said seems painfully obvious to me now. It would make sense that every human civilization on earth would be operating on base-ten simply because of their genetic makeup. But I remember back in highschool during a geometry class my teacher mentioning an ancient culture whose number system was based on 6. Not 10. I can't remember what the name of the society was, but they are the reason a circle has 360 degrees rather than say 1000. They were using 6 as their base and so the degrees in a circle was a number divisible by six. Of course, they must have taken note of their fingers at some point because obviously the number is also divisible by ten, but still, at the time I found it strange. Back then, I just found it strange because it was different. I was only a sophomore, hadn't done much outside the box thinking, I just figured everybody used ten as their basis of multiplication. Why would anybody ever use six. Some pretentious smartass in the class came out with, "Well it was just another society. Not everybody thinks the same way YOU do." And yes, even though I was put in my place, I had to admit, sure that made sense. Cultures developing in different areas of the world must develop methods of thinking and arithmetic differently and that must include what they used as their base.

But now in retrospect, it once again makes no sense. Why 6? Of all numbers, why would they choose six? I could understand 5. They could have developed numbers based on individual hands, not on SETS of hands. But 6? Where did six come from? Didn't that make it hard on them? How did they pantomime the number for 12? Hold up one hand and one finger and do it twice? If we need to pantomime 20, we flash our hands twice. How did THEY do it? It must have been a conscious decision by the educated mathematicians of the time. Certainly no lay person would have naturally just decided on 6. But again, what was the benefit? Did it make it easier to figure out a circle somehow? I just don't get it.

Another concept that Pinker brought up is one that I've heard before, actually on a Christian bulletin board site. Those boards tend to get a lot of traffic from atheists and scientists who go to great lengths to show people that the idea of God and especially the Christian god are just shams. Some of these people sound intelligent and make well thought out arguments, others do not. The ones that DO make good arguments really bring out the worst in the Christians on the board. Not so much in the sense that they make the Christians turn mean - thought that does sometimes happen - but more the Christians reveal themselves as truly ignorant, non-thinking people whose faith is so weak and shallow that when it is challenged, they only respond with catch phrases and Bible verses rather than really thinking about the questions posed.

One popular response Christians give that just makes me roll my eyes for the entire faith is when somebody says, "Where is your proof that God exists?" First of all to indulge a question like that is just ludicrous because there IS no way to prove OR disprove, but I digress. Too often, the Christians respond, "The proof walked on this earth 2000 years ago and died for your sins." Now, even as somebody who believes the bulk of that statement, I just shake my head and say, "Do you even know what you're talking about?" The story of Jesus does not PROOVE God's existence. Anymore than the BIBLE proves God's existence. That bothers me too when people try to convert atheists by saying, "The Bible says it's true so you should believe it." That's like somebody saying to the citizens of America, "I am now the king of America and this is my declaration of kingship proving that I am king." Well if I don't believe you're king, why would I believe the document you wrote proclaiming yourself as king?

It just frustrates me that so many Christians can claim to have such strong faith yet when it is challenged, have such shallow responses. And I'm not saying that they need to have an answer for everything. In fact, I think we'd all be better of if everybody, Christians and atheists alike, could all just admit that we DON'T have all the answers. In fact it'd be even better if we could all admit that we don't even have MANY of the answers. If you believe something because of a feeling you have that has been confirmed by something bigger than yourself, just say that and leave it at that. Don't spout jargon that is going to be meaningless to the person you are spouting it at.

Okay, that's the end of my rant on that. My point was to introduce the concept of the difference between scientific thinking and faith-based thinking, something that Pinker mentions in regards to human logic and deduction. The concept that I've heard before that a scientist posted on the Christian site, was that a good scientist doesn't do what a lay person would expect. They don't try to prove theories. Instead, a good scientist tries to DISPROVE a theory. To do it any other way would be fruitless. If you're claiming that your theory is true, then it has to be true ALL THE TIME under the circumstances you outline. If you keep trying to prove that it works every time, you'll be there forever, because you can't test ALWAYS. Perhaps, one day your theory won't work, but how would you know that? The only way to test a theory is to do everything in your power to prove that it's not true. Because if you can find even ONE instance where the theory falls short, then your work is done. The theory is false. You can move on now. And the more tests that fail to disprove your theory makes your theory STRONGER.

So, that is the scientist way of trying to figure out the world. Constantly challenging what they think is true. It is not the way our mind has been designed to work though, according to Pinker. People's natural desire is to try and affirm what they already assume to be true. If you watch the bonus round of Wheel of Fortune, if somebody is pretty sure they know the answer after the initial letters are put up on the board, their strategy is to pick the letters they think will fill in the blanks. But really the smarter thing to do would be to pick letters that they DON'T think are up there. Mind you, this is during the bonus round where they don't lose a turn if they guess a wrong letter. By using this second method, if none of the letters they chose come up, then they can just assume that the letters they orginally thought WOULD be included in the answer are in fact in the answer. But suppose, their initial assumptions were wrong, and none of the letters they guessed were in the puzzle. Not only are they wrong, but now they have no help to solve the problem, whereas if they had picked different letters from their assumptions, it's possible that at least one of them would have showed up and would help them to figure out what the right answer truly is.

Pinker illustrates this in other ways, but his studies basically show something about human character and how people, when it comes to their world and how they view it, would rather just go with assumptions they've developed and as long as nothing challenges it, they feel just fine. If they are presented with an instance that challenges what they believe to be true, they will give it due consideration, but they won't go out and seek out something that might challenge their way of thinking the way a scientist would. Instead, they seek merely to CONFIRM what they already believe to be true.

Animals all over the world are apparently the same way. They are not wired to be scientists. If a bear knows that one section of the lake always provides a lot of fish, he won't venture away from that spot. He'll keep fishing there until the fish stop coming and his theory is proved wrong. But as long as the fish are jumping, he won't ponder another part of the lake possibly find more fish elsewhere.

I'm using really poor illustrations here, but I'm using it to segue into the way it applies to people of faith.

If you take the Bible as the literal word of God then judging by the genealogies and the number of years each person lived, then the earth is only 6000 years old. That's it. Not billions. Not even hundreds of thousands. Or more accurately, Adam was put on the earth 6000 years ago. 6000 years. And Adam was supposedly the first human being on earth. Even though our fossil records show humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, according the word of God, humans have only been around for 6000 years. Now, if you ascribe to the literal "seven days of creation" theory, then that means that the entire earth is also only 6000 years old.

Personally, if I'm going to believe in an all-powerfull God, I'm inclined to believe in a literal 7-day creation. Anybody who is all-powerful could certainly pop a universe into existence in that short a time. I think He was even taking His time doing it. He could have popped it all into existence in a flash. He didn't need seven days. But that's beside the point.

When I first discovered this conundrum of 6000 years versus billions of years, I was blown away. What did this mean? I had just believed that God set the universe in motion and then a few billion years later he set up the earth and then a few billion years later put Adam there and then it was hundreds of thousands of years later that Jesus came along. Well that's not how it was according to the Bible. They trace Jesus all the way back to Adam by genealogy. I read that right in front of me in black and white one day and my stomach just dropped. I could see that this was going to be the stumbling block for me. I had come a long way to finally accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior even though it didn't completely make sense to me, and now here was this gross scientific contradiction that could blow my faith completely wide open.

I mentioned this discrepancy to other Christians and their answers at best left more questions. Some people think there was a gap between verse one and two of Genesis of a billion years and in that gap Satan was cast out and the dinosaurs lived and all the other humans before Adam lived and then God started with Adam in the Garden. Sorry, not buying that one. If evolution isn't true then where did the people before Adam come from whose fossils are now in the ground? Other people think that science just has it completely wrong, that the earth really is just 6000 years old, and that the fossils in the ground are either younger than science has projected or even could have been put there by the devil to trick us. They believe that man walked the earth with dinosaurs and that one called "Leviathan" is even mentioned in the Bible.

But the most unhelpful answer anybody has given me was, "It really doesn't matter, because it's not necessary for salvation."

What a dodge that is. How can it NOT matter. If ONE part of the Bible is wrong, then how can you trust ANY of it? This is supposed to be the infallible word of God, so how could ANY of it be fallible?

And this brings me back to the point Pinker made about how people tend to just try and validate their own beliefs and suspicions rather than trying to disprove them. Evolutionarily speaking, like I said, I suppose it was always just easier to go with what an instinct tells you is right. And as a result nowadays, now that we don't actually have to use our mind for day to day survival, it makes our lives easier to just live in a reality we've created in our mind rather than throw our created mental world into upheaval by discovering that what we've thought all along is a sham. (Catch all that?) That was the whole premise behind the first "Matrix." There were some people that weren't ready to be unplugged from the Matrix because they had become dependant on the world that had been created for them. It was much easier to stay in the dreamworld than wake up and deal with the truth.

And that is the category where a lot of people of faith fall into. They have gotten themselves so convinced of their idea of who God is, that they refuse to entertain any notion or philosophy or scientific finding that contradicts what they think about God. And so as a result, they try to stop the teaching of evolution in schools, they put up blinders when somebody points out contradictions in their scriptures, they make up or recite catch phrases and Bible verses when somebody shows them that a particular tenet of their faith is impossible or ludicrous. What's more, they certainly don't go out of their way to try and disprove their faith.

I don't know of any devout Christians who try to prove that even the historical accounts of Jesus are fake. I don't know any Christians who try to prove that the story of Christ's virgin birth and death and resurrection was actually a regurgitated version of the story of an Egyptian demi-god named Horus. I don't know any Christians who try to prove that the canonized Bible wasn't actually the word of God but just miscellaneous letters and writings that corrupt priests decided on their own what to include and what to cut.

Instead, Christians and other people of faith look only for things that affirm their faith. They point to miracles as proof of God's divine intervention. They point to archeological relics that mention Biblical characters by name. They point to errors in the fossil records that could prove that the earth is only 6000 years old - ignoring all the points that disprove that theory. They tell countless stories of people overcome by the Holy Spirit and healed by the power of prayer.

If you ask these people if they're sure God exists, they'll say "Yes." They'll tell you they don't have a doubt in their mind. Really? Why then are they so afraid of learning about evolution? Why then are they so afraid to allow stem cell research? Why do some Christians ignore the legions and legions of science that proves the earth's age is several billions years old? Why do they ignore the claims that Judaism and Christianity are relatively young religions in the grand history of the world and in fact seem to borrow bits and pieces from older religions. And why are they so afraid to learn about OTHER religions. If they truly had strong faith, what are they afraid of?

I sometimes wonder just how strong some people's faith is. Some people get so up in arms about teachings that seem to contradict what is expressly stated in the Bible. They claim that they don't want the worldly people corrupting others into trusting science over God, but it seems to me that the motivating factor is based more on fear for THEMSELVES. If science was able to have its unopposed way, the "faithful" are worried that the scientists' findings could prove enough of the Bible "wrong" that it would shatter their paradigm.

Is that true faith? Is that the faith that can move mountains that Jesus spoke of? If the faithful were truly faithful, you'd think they'd let science have their fun and discover all the things they wanted. Let them look and look and look and ultimately prove that God DOES in fact exist. Because if God truly exists the way you think he does and you're absolutely positive of that, then there should be no fear. Certainly, the real truth will ultimately be revealed. In fact you should help try and disprove God yourself. That's what a good theorist does after all.

But a person of faith is supposed to rely on… well, faith. Not proof. Not signs. Not concrete evidence. They are supposed to trust in the promises of things not yet revealed. So, can a person do both? Can they believe in God and trust in God, all the while trying to disprove his existence? Many Christians use a different reasoning when it comes to stopping teachings and studies they deem anti-God. And that is the order of God to turn back evil where you see it. As His holy people, it is their duty to keep evil men with their evil ideas from infiltrating and corrupting the world and the minds of people who are too ignorant to know better. So refusing to indulge studies of evolution and old-earth and Biblical contradictions and other such things aren't matters of a lack of faith, but an EXERCISE of that faith… according to them.

So where does that leave me? I have just as many questions about my faith as a scientific atheist would. And just because I have accepted the belief in my God and the doctrine and scripture surrounding Him doesn't mean the questions have gone away. And I don't have the luxury that some Christians seem to have to simply ignore the life and mind I had before my "conversion." I still don't understand how Adam could only have been created 6000 years ago. I still don't understand how there can be all these fossils older than that if that's true. I don't understand how evolution could be such an obvious answer to so many scientists if creationism is the truth. I certainly don't get the apparent contradictions I read in the Bible (both contradictions with science and contradictions with ITSELF).

I continue to have faith and trust that it will all make sense someday. I trust that one of two things will happen. Either a) science is going to realize that they played right into a game God was playing with them after the Truth is revealed by God Himself or b) the faithful are going to realize that THEY misinterpreted a LOT of passages in the Bible. I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, but I also believe that there's no way every scientist on earth could be so collectively wrong. So somewhere in between our interpretations of scripture and the scientists' interpretation of the world is where the real paths of truth intersect. I have to believe there's either something we as the faithful are missing or that God has chosen not to reveal that somehow will lend itself to what all the scientists are figuring out in their research.

Like I've said before, I think God is all powerful and infinitely big and majestic. And the Bible is only two inches thick. How could you possibly contain something so big in something so small? Obviously, God only included what he felt we needed to know. The rest he left out as a test of how faithful we'd be in the face of discoveries of things he hadn't explained.

Several hundred years ago, people's interpretation of the Bible placed the earth at the center of the universe. Now we know that's not true, but that doesn't hurt our understanding of God as told in the Bible. It doesn't negate the stories contained in it. I wonder if a thousand years from now there'll be absolutely undeniably irrefutable proof that evolution is real and religious folks won't even bat an eye. It'll be tantamount to our knowing that Earth isn't the center of the universe. It won't negate God in anybody's eyes. They'll simply incorporate that piece into their new interpretation of the account of Creation.

As for myself, as for now, I admit I'm still doing what I'm (evolutionarily) predisposed to doing… reaffirming what I believe to be true. I'll read things like "How the Mind Works" just to expand my horizons and such and to consider other sides. But I'm not going out of my way to read every scientific article that comes out that proves another way evolution takes place. I find myself turning off my brain when I read articles talking about people who were alive more than 6000 years ago. I take everything in and I absorb it all and I give due attention to what's being presented to me, but in the end, I fall back on, "Just trust in God." Maybe this stuff is true, maybe it isn't. Maybe science contradicts the Bible. Maybe it affirms it. Maybe our interpretations of scripture are way off. I don't know. All I have is a feeling and a few experiences that have confirmed that feeling. I have faith, but I haven't moved any mountains lately… nor has anybody else I know of. So obviously none of us has complete and total faith, not even the faith of a mustard seed.

And yes, I'm constantly scared to death that if I look too deeply and take the scientific approach, I'm not going to like what I find. I worry that I don't have the intelligence to see the holes in a scientific theory that "proves" the absence of God or the invalidity of the Bible. And mostly I worry that my faith isn't strong enough to handle a truth that could ultimately prove my faith a sham. Where would that leave me if that happened? How would I continue to have hope? How would I approach death if that was taken away? I can temper the vague scientific theories I hear with the mantra that somewhere between my interpretation of the Bible and science's interpretation of the world, the truth lies. I don't know if I would have it in me to do the same thing if I discovered something more concrete. Something that could barrel a hole through my admittedly weak faith.