If you are fortunate and resolve these crises without exaggerated deconstruction (backing up to point zero), or support network trauma, your inner world becomes far more universal and real than the external material world, though it remains subject to empirical validations in some respects.  And even though your inner world has no parts that transcend or do not otherwise derive from physical reality, it nevertheless has fewer self-contradictions and hypocrisies, if you are more committed to honest methods of finding truth and admitting errors, than to saving face and blindly defending a position.  Although you cautiously avoid exaggerated claims of certainty, you are not too cowardly to admit your own potential for bias and mistakes.  A healthy and active imagination excitedly probes many possible theories and while sadly it may sadly admit those things less probable it never stops dreaming for what is still possible.  But not everyone is so fortunate to bravely exist in a world so uncertain.  For some of us, we are still tightly clinging to the supportive web of self-identification with the external.  Rather than honor our heritage from a respectful distance, we find that we have no distinct sense of self beyond it.

For these unfortunate souls the magic of Peter Pan is very different indeed from the supernatural power of the hallowed spiritual realm.  Reverence for tradition demands that questions be silenced whenever the sacred stories are told.  And all that we are is still but a mere series of group affiliations, peer reference group associations, and temporal conflations of situational coincidences.  It’s poor form to stand beyond the first two mundane deviations and certainly poor sportsmanship to break protocol with ones ancestral customs.  But what if those customs no longer serve the “public good” so well, such as when the public is no longer as homogenized and uni-vocal.  And what if literacy enables more individually tailored practices which suite personal preferences for understanding and even self-expression?  What you more often then encounter are intellectual grave-sites where battles fizzle fast between officially sanctioned public values and victimless behavioral practices.  May the strongest emotion win, and reason be silent.

Thus compunctions to defend our inner world (the self) may at times be a result of internalizing principles that conflict one with another.  But that is not freedom.  That is self-enslavement and that is why the delusion of freedom is a delusion instead of an emergent property resulting from a strong sense of one’s own internal moral and rational compass.  It’s a fear of failure in the face of certainty when answering questions that demand answers but have no more universal applicability than that we all eventually ask them.  The delusion of freedom is a tragic paradox for usually those most likely to claim science less useful in service to one’s acquisition of knowledge (relative to supernatural sources), are also those most likely to have surrendered their ability to reason about freedom itself by virtue of blindly accepting explanations based on magic.

Geneticists (in the last 2 years) have discovered several genes and cofactors which are believed to strongly correlate to intelligence.  Instantly, all the “educated racists” rejoiced, because they felt they would finally be vindicated.  They love to make claims about the validity (now in doubt), about intelligence measures between the races.  They are prone to make claims about how African American slaves were bread to be not-too-smart (politically and philosophically at least), strong, and obedient.

However, no person not mentally ill would believe that children (or persons with mental disability) are morally inferior simply because they are less intelligent.  Even if there are differences in certain types of intelligence between certain races, this is not an argument in favor of moral racism.  Although some atheistic (or even some ignorant religious racists) believe that intellectual differences between races, constitutes a significant case for whole race inferiority, most philosophers (and scientists for that matter) would not accept such a value statement.  Although in practice, natural (or material) value is placed on such shallow and temporary variations, the very definition of value throughout history has been a matter of determination of what is most important, and that has always been the moral good.

In fact, many atheists do believe in a system of ethics which is pro-social and altruistic in nature.  All such mature people would naturally (if they are enlightened even slightly) have a tendency to judge others based on the quality of their character and whatever virtues they live by, rather than on superficial (and largely accidental) characteristics such as skin tone, body shape, financial net worth, intelligence.  Thus, it is of no consequence if the new intelligence genes and cofactors are being found to exist unequally in persons of different ethnic (actually geographic) descent.  As we all know, smart people are just as likely to be morally repugnant and evil as stupid people.  Intelligence (just like body shape, hair color, etc.) has very little to do with morality, I personally think.

But what if scientists are able to locate genes and cofactors related to altruism?  I think the average scientist will agree that aggression can be expressed in positive or negative ways — such as high contact sports, or in certain professions meant to protect others, etc..  We have known for decades now (for instance, by extrapolating from large subject samples of identical twins raised apart) that many of the aspects of a human personality (the big 5) are genetically determined to some degree.  But again, those personality factors (like intelligence) have been assumed to have little to do with moral character, and this is especially true if you have reserved some hope or faith in a “free will”.  However, if there is a gene for altruism (or some related construct) would that somehow confer moral superiority?  Isn’t that racist?  For that matter, what need have we anymore for a belief in “free will” if our moral inclinations are largely determined by genetics?

Let me preface this post by warning that I have very little understanding of this stuff.  If I’m dropping some major BS here which is very wrong-headed in some way, then by all means, please let me know.  I’m rather curious lately about these things, and don’t want to get too far out on a branch, up the wrong tree.

Dark matter is postulated to explain the flat rotation curves of spiral galaxies and other evidence of “missing mass” in the universe — is there any more reason to postulate the existence of ‘dark matter’ than to suspect large scale entanglement, for which we not only have evidence, but current commercial applications (such as quantum cryptography)?

Am I not the only person to immediately think “action at a distance!” How else could something carry information (and force) faster than the speed of light (instantaneously)? Even gravitational fields supposedly are limited to the speed of light. Duh! Entanglement. Imagine that all past moments in time, this present moment, and all future moments in time, are all related. Not exactly a quantum leap, right? What about a string theory (pun intended, ha ha), and you flick one end, like a guitar which then travels down the string, into the past. What if all the moments in time, really DO exist? None of them were mere imagination or pretense. They all really do have existence, and are causally entangled.

Some measure of the sticking points here are the implications (consequences) of retro-causality. For instance (reference: Newcomb’s Paradox), if God knows the future (see all moments in time, simultaneously), and you aren’t an asshole (e.g. you don’t think 2/3rds of the world are predestined to damnation, because they ‘happened’ to choose the traditional faith of their culture and family), then how would you yet postulate a free will? If the causes of physical phenomena, are (and can ONLY be) physical, but not also informational, then how would a free will operate? That is to say, what sort of interaction (if any) could be possible between a meta-physical consciousness (say, the soul), and a physical brain? Hurry up Superstring Theory!

Now, here’s a rather curious claim I recently came across, but have yet to find a good explanation for (if you know what this means and why, please let me know):  “Entanglement means that the electrons in a superconductor should be extremely sensitive to a gravitational wave.”  I posted that on my facebook page, but didn’t get any takers (understandably so).