Hawaii - Part 6.1
We arrived in Volcano National Park. Our hiking would finally begin here. Sadly, Jenn and I were so burnt out from the vacation so far, our first day in the park was mostly spent sleeping. After an expensive dinner and about 16 hours of sleep we felt good enough to tackle the park's harsh trails.
Kilauea was still pouring out tons (literally tons) of gas into the air on our arrival. It's been at it for months now. Most of it is water vapor, but the sulfur dioxide and ash particles can be harmful to breath. We avoided the clouds.
Chain of Craters road was marked by a continual line of craters that had formed between the 1960's and 1970's. This was but one of many of these massive craters.
The land had been devastated by lava flows in the mid 70's, but life was returning to it.
Evidence of the lava flows yet to be hidden by erosion and vegetation. I took great joy in finding these preserved formations of lava rock.
Miles of barren road ran through these recent lava flows. As the road stretched on, they became more recent. The southern most flows formed between January 3rd, 1983 and today. Kilauea has been active continuously during this time.
We spent a lot of our first day here in this cabin. A combination of exhaustion and altitude led to us feeling extremely tired. We did recover and set back out, though.
I took advantage of our first trail to think. Because the trail pictures sort of speak for themselves, I'll instead talk a little about what I was thinking about while walking on them. What I thought about was mostly about the disconnect between atheism and religion. I tackled this from looking at the interplay between the various systems that exist at many levels from basic geometry to the system of reality itself and beyond.
Everything exists within a system. We exist within a system we call "reality". That system is all that we know and can experience. Within this system there are subsystems (or systems that can only exist within a parent system). Logic and the scientific method is a subsystem that exists within its parent, reality. A virtual world, like World of Warcraft, is a literal environment that is also a subsystem of its parent, reality. Neither system exist when taken out of the context of reality. What I wanted to explore is how belief comes about from the relationships of these systems and subsystems.
Science and logic both have in common that they are subsystems that attempt to explain its parent system. But, being only a subsystem, they themselves do not have all the components of its parent system (reality). How then, could science (or the scientific method specifically) produce an explanation for the system that parents it?
Religion is an interesting subsystem because it does not attempt to explain its parent system. In fact, religion (as with all mysticism) often clashes with its parent system, reality. This is because religion attempts to explains the parent system of reality, which is that great unknown. Religion, unlike metaphysics which is bound by the subsystem of logic, is the only subsystem I could think of that doesn't attempt to explain its parent, but rather, its grandparent.
I began to wonder what the disconnect was between the religious and the secular. As an atheist, I turn to science for an explanation of the system of reality that it studies. Instead, a religious individual seeks to explain the mysterious origin of reality. The disconnect, it appears, would be in where humans would fall into the system. The atheist would put man as part of the system with the same origin as the rest of the system. That would mean that man is merely made of matter and energy as all life, rocks, and chemicals are. The religious person would seek an origin farther up and claim that man is not a product of this system, but its parent system. Because we are a part of the parent system (the supernatural), we would have a component that isn't capable of being understood using methods that can be used to study this system. In this belief system, logic and science give an incomplete understanding of life.
I started to wonder about the validity of a system studying a grandparent system. I couldn't think of additional examples of subsystems that attempt to explain the parent of its parent system. Logic attempts to explain reality, its parent, and has been the staple system for all human understanding. Psychologists have a similar system to explain the human mind, its parent. Economists use a system to explain the marketplace, its parent. All systems seem to originate simply to explain its parent system. Only religion seemed to turn to its grandparent.
I started to wonder if this disconnect was the reason I rejected religion, even though I did not reject the idea of the supernatural. Could there be a system above reality that is the origin of reality, and if there was, wouldn't it first require you to understand its subsystem before you could study it? I had to settle with the idea that logic, as a subsystem of reality, was a poor tool for analyzing this problem. If there was a system for studying the supernatural, it clearly wasn't logic, as logic is best applied to study reality. I was at an impasse, but I did feel as though I was closer to understanding the disconnect between the atheist (or materialist) and theist (or spiritual).
Our trek through the crater ended on that note, but we weren't done for the day. Exhausted from the long journey physically and mentally, we took a brief break back at the cabin before exploring the rest of the park. On our return to the park, the winds had covered much of the land in Kilauea's smoke. We would have to be careful not to get stuck in it outside of our car.
Kilauea was still pouring out tons (literally tons) of gas into the air on our arrival. It's been at it for months now. Most of it is water vapor, but the sulfur dioxide and ash particles can be harmful to breath. We avoided the clouds.
Chain of Craters road was marked by a continual line of craters that had formed between the 1960's and 1970's. This was but one of many of these massive craters.
The land had been devastated by lava flows in the mid 70's, but life was returning to it.
Evidence of the lava flows yet to be hidden by erosion and vegetation. I took great joy in finding these preserved formations of lava rock.
Miles of barren road ran through these recent lava flows. As the road stretched on, they became more recent. The southern most flows formed between January 3rd, 1983 and today. Kilauea has been active continuously during this time.
We spent a lot of our first day here in this cabin. A combination of exhaustion and altitude led to us feeling extremely tired. We did recover and set back out, though.
I took advantage of our first trail to think. Because the trail pictures sort of speak for themselves, I'll instead talk a little about what I was thinking about while walking on them. What I thought about was mostly about the disconnect between atheism and religion. I tackled this from looking at the interplay between the various systems that exist at many levels from basic geometry to the system of reality itself and beyond.
Everything exists within a system. We exist within a system we call "reality". That system is all that we know and can experience. Within this system there are subsystems (or systems that can only exist within a parent system). Logic and the scientific method is a subsystem that exists within its parent, reality. A virtual world, like World of Warcraft, is a literal environment that is also a subsystem of its parent, reality. Neither system exist when taken out of the context of reality. What I wanted to explore is how belief comes about from the relationships of these systems and subsystems.
Science and logic both have in common that they are subsystems that attempt to explain its parent system. But, being only a subsystem, they themselves do not have all the components of its parent system (reality). How then, could science (or the scientific method specifically) produce an explanation for the system that parents it?
Religion is an interesting subsystem because it does not attempt to explain its parent system. In fact, religion (as with all mysticism) often clashes with its parent system, reality. This is because religion attempts to explains the parent system of reality, which is that great unknown. Religion, unlike metaphysics which is bound by the subsystem of logic, is the only subsystem I could think of that doesn't attempt to explain its parent, but rather, its grandparent.
I began to wonder what the disconnect was between the religious and the secular. As an atheist, I turn to science for an explanation of the system of reality that it studies. Instead, a religious individual seeks to explain the mysterious origin of reality. The disconnect, it appears, would be in where humans would fall into the system. The atheist would put man as part of the system with the same origin as the rest of the system. That would mean that man is merely made of matter and energy as all life, rocks, and chemicals are. The religious person would seek an origin farther up and claim that man is not a product of this system, but its parent system. Because we are a part of the parent system (the supernatural), we would have a component that isn't capable of being understood using methods that can be used to study this system. In this belief system, logic and science give an incomplete understanding of life.
I started to wonder about the validity of a system studying a grandparent system. I couldn't think of additional examples of subsystems that attempt to explain the parent of its parent system. Logic attempts to explain reality, its parent, and has been the staple system for all human understanding. Psychologists have a similar system to explain the human mind, its parent. Economists use a system to explain the marketplace, its parent. All systems seem to originate simply to explain its parent system. Only religion seemed to turn to its grandparent.
I started to wonder if this disconnect was the reason I rejected religion, even though I did not reject the idea of the supernatural. Could there be a system above reality that is the origin of reality, and if there was, wouldn't it first require you to understand its subsystem before you could study it? I had to settle with the idea that logic, as a subsystem of reality, was a poor tool for analyzing this problem. If there was a system for studying the supernatural, it clearly wasn't logic, as logic is best applied to study reality. I was at an impasse, but I did feel as though I was closer to understanding the disconnect between the atheist (or materialist) and theist (or spiritual).
Our trek through the crater ended on that note, but we weren't done for the day. Exhausted from the long journey physically and mentally, we took a brief break back at the cabin before exploring the rest of the park. On our return to the park, the winds had covered much of the land in Kilauea's smoke. We would have to be careful not to get stuck in it outside of our car.