ACT I
Scene 1
We got Christians in the house?
We got Muslims in the house?
We got Agnostics in the house?
We got Atheists in the house?
We got everybody in the house?
Religion comes between a lot of people, so let’s talk about that now and get on the same page with each other. Disagreements about religion and science split people apart too, so let’s talk about that. It’s pretty easy to do all this, if we talk about how religion and science are both philosophies.
Scene 2
I’m going to call this life philosophy. It means the feeling of connections among ideas everywhere in life. As opposed to a political philosophy or a business philosophy or anything like that.
If you take a philosophy class in college, you’ll learn about philosophy as an intentional structured approach to searching for connections among ideas. That’s close to what I’m talking about, but I need to add to it. People connect ideas subconsciously too. There’s a structure to that, because subconsciousness has a structure.
Psychologists have words for talking about these things, but most people have never heard those words before. The story of Being Human on Planet Earth is a story for everyone. As much as possible, we need to tell the story using words people already know.
Every time you try to get people to learn a new word for an idea they already have a word for, you make it harder for people to understand what the story is about. The goal is to include people, not exclude people.
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Whether you connect ideas intentionally or subconsciously, there are two fundamental components to that process.
First is metaphysics. People have used that word to mean a lot of different things. Meta means above, so metaphysics means above physics. These are the founding concepts of a philosophy.
These are the starting points for all the other ideas in the philosophy. When people do the intentional kind of philosophy, these are the ideas they consider to be above the physical world, meaning, things that are true all the time and that aren’t affected by anything else.
When people do the subconscious kind of philosophy, these are the ideas they assume don’t have any other interpretation besides the one they believe in. That’s what assuming an idea is true all the time means.
The superiority of White people or the superiority of men or the superiority of heterosexuals are metaphysical beliefs to some people. Because they believe they’re true all the time and they aren’t willing to seriously consider any other point of view.
When you talk to people about complicated parts of life, it’s pretty easy to figure out what their metaphysical beliefs are. Because they’re the ones they aren’t willing to debate. Some people’s brains just seem to turn off when you try to talk about different interpretations of their ideas.
Scene 4
The other part of philosophy is called epistemology. That means the method or process of developing new ideas. You use the metaphysics as the starting point for developing new ideas, you use the epistemology as the process for developing ideas, and that leads you to new ideas you feel are right.
When people use intentional forms of philosophy they define how their epistemology works. How do people develop ideas subconsciously?
When something happens to you that you feel is important, you remember it later. That’s memory.
When something happens to you that you feel is important, it can also make you think of other things. That’s imagination.
You can hear ideas from someone else that you feel are important. That’s communication.
Even when you hear about ideas, or think about ideas consciously, often you make connections to other ideas without realizing it. That’s why seeing stereotypes of groups of people in movies and TV shows affects how people think of those groups in real life. That’s how nationalism works, or having a good or bad self image works, or anything else where people hearing more about one point of view than any other makes them feel that the one they hear about most is more true than the ones they don’t hear about as much.
Each of us has a subconscious philosophy, and no two people’s subconscious philosophies are exactly the same, because no two people have lived identical lives.
This happens even with simple ideas. You and I both know the word mother. We’ve learned about mothers as a general concept. We know that everyone has a mother. But the word doesn’t mean exactly the same thing to both of us.
When someone says the word mother, a lot of what you think of is your mother, and a lot of what I think of is my mother. Maybe what we think is a lot the same because your mother is a lot like my mother. Or maybe not, because they’re very different.
ACT II
Scene 1
Science is a philosophy because it’s an intentional structured approach to developing ideas. The metaphysics is math. The epistemology is the search for evidence.
Usually people talk about science and philosophy as two different things, because that combination of metaphysics and epistemology has led off in a different direction from any other kind of philosophy. Scientists are discovering new galaxies and sequencing the human genome, while the other kind of philosophers are thinking about abstract things like love and courage and responsibility.
What do you do when you feel like there’s a connection between two ideas but you just can’t define it clearly?
You could say, “I don’t know what happens here,” and admit you can’t answer the question.
You could say, “Maybe what happens is…” and say that the best answer you can think of only seems like a possibility.
That’s how science philosophy works.
Scene 2
Religions have a different answer. This will probably sound strange to some people.
Usually people think of religions as being different from each other. But we can talk about all religions at the same time as long as we talk about things all religions have in common.
Let’s say you believe in a religion where a god created the world. Or maybe it’s more than one god, it doesn’t really matter. The point is, you can visualize how the world began.
Where does your god reside? Is it on a separate plane of reality? Or is it on this plane of reality, but in a form we can’t see? Either way, you have a way of visualizing where your god is.
Now let’s say you test positive for a dangerous disease. You do everything the doctors tell you, but that doesn’t cure you right away. It could still kill you. What should you do? Should you pray to your god to save you?
That’s a very sensible idea. If you can visualize a god that’s powerful enough to create the world, and you can visualize that god being somewhere, then it’s easy to visualize your god being powerful enough to cure your illness, and it’s easy to visualize sending a message to your god that you need help.
Or maybe you believe that an undefined power created the world and if you do certain things you can access that power and use it to cure yourself.
Or maybe you believe the world was created by an incomprehensible force, and if you open your mind to it it won’t cure you but it will make you understand why you being sick is part of something more important than you being cured right away.
Those are all just different words for the idea that learning to connect with the power that created the world helps make things turn out well for you.
Scene 3
So how can we define religions as life philosophies?
A religion is a life philosophy where people believe the metaphysics actively participate in the world. It’s the belief that something that’s above physics makes things happen.
So if you belong to one religion and you want to learn about someone else’s religion, talk to them about that, because that’s something you both believe in. Every religion is a story about how a powerful thing makes important things happen.
Scene 4
So what does this tell us about how science and religion are different from each other?
Science uses a very different concept of metaphysics. Math is the metaphysics of science.
Just because math is above physics doesn’t mean math created the world. And just because math is vital to what happens in the world doesn’t mean it participates in the world. Nor does it mean that math exists in any place we can compare to our world. Math is a pattern that plays out in the world all around us, but that we can also talk about all by itself, with no reference to the world.
Where is the number 4? What does the number 4 do? What’s the best way to communicate with the number 4? What do those questions even mean? The number 4 isn’t a place. It doesn’t have an address. It can’t think, it can’t talk, and it can’t make decisions.
It’s just a pattern. It’s the pattern of one more than 3 and one less than 5.
The epistemology of science is the search for evidence. It’s a process of discovering information whose meaning doesn’t depend on anyone’s interpretation. That kind of information is more commonly known as facts.
The universe is a giant pattern that’s made up of energy and matter, and it corresponds to the non-physical patterns of math. That’s why we can use math to count and measure things in the universe. People using math to study physics is what led to the discovery of the Big Bang.
ACT III
Scene 1
Everyone believes in a story of the world, and we all have our reasons for believing our stories. There are differences among our stories, but there are similarities also. So how do we use the similarities among our stories to fit them together to tell a much bigger story of who we are? Many people have been trying to do that for a long time.
What are the most important parts of whatever you believe? Whatever story you believe in has a part about how the universe began.
That might seem like the most important part of the story, since it’s the beginning of everything else. But is that really the most important part of the story to you?
Some people see it that way. According to that idea, if someone disagrees with you on Step 1 of how the universe works, that makes them untrustworthy, because it’s only a matter of time before that disagreement leads to more disagreements.
If the beginning of the universe isn’t the most important idea we believe in, what is? That’s easy. It’s how we live our lives now and how we treat each other.
Scene 2
Religions have different names like Christianity and Islam. But those don’t really tell us anything about the people who believe in them, or how those people interpret them. So let’s try looking at religions and life philosophies differently here.
Think back over the course of your life. What are you proud of yourself for having done?
When you’ve had to decide what to do, and you depended on your version of Christianity or Judaism or Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or Paganism or Agnosticism or whatever it is to figure out the answer, what have you done that you felt was right, and what do you feel you should keep doing?
Do you believe in the religion of Feeling Like You’re Better than Everyone Else?
Do you believe in the religion of Getting Along With Other People?
Do you believe in the religion of Feeling Like You Deserve to Get Whatever You Want?
Do you believe in the religion of Working Hard and Not Giving Up?
Every religion has a story of Being Human on Planet Earth. So what happens in your version of the story?
Is it a story about why you and the people you like are the most important people?
Or the best people?
Or the only good people?
Or the only people who know the truth?
Or is your idea of Being Human on Planet Earth a story that everyone can use to tell their own stories…
Including all the people you don’t like?
