Apparently there won't be much of a vacation anyway. An idle project popped up again, and at the same time, some issues with the project on the other job as well. In addition to the occasional supervision and mentoring on the "third" job, of course :).
On Saturday I went to Tallinn for a family event in Tudulinna. Decided to go (have done so for several years already) because I saw it as another opportunity to practice patience. It's typically somewhat boring, but have to keep smiling and look happy regardless.
An unusual encounter on the bus to Tallinn, though. Occupied my seat with unholy violence (sat on it). Then a Jehova witness sat next to me. She was different from the other witnesses that I've encountered thus far. At first I couldn't even tell she was a Jehova witness because she started chatting about energy, auras and herbs. To be honest, she did look more like an 80 years old witch. The happy kind, you know, dressed in white robes and all. Anyway, she made my day. Obtained a sincere smirk for 15 minutes.
On a more serious note, it was almost possible to discuss things with her. She did not become angry, and it at least seemed as if she listened and thought with me as I asked her about several inconsistencies that I've found in religions. She had actually realized how religions are all about kneeling to false gods (golden cross, a painting of Saint Mary, a church, etc.). However, she missed the fact that her holy bible was just as false a god.
She told me a lot of things which based on her religion come from Satan. She believed that Satan had invented all the theories (basically anything that her holy book did not claim to be true) such as reincarnation, clairvoyance, ghosts, aliens, etc. I asked for clarification about the classification and here's how I came to understand her point of view: everything that is used for selfish purposes, stems from Satan. Since she was of age, I asked her if she had had any grandchildren telling the stories of their past lives. Apparently she had not had such experiences yet. She also had not had out of body experiences nor bilocation experiences. Instead of a rational rationale for her disbelief in reincarnation she leaned on faith.
I told her how science is basically a religion much like hers. People trust and believe well-known scientists (::cough:: gods) without repeating the experiments by themselves. I told her that in my opinion, a real scientist maintains an open mind and keeps challenging the old models that science has developed thus far, for all of them are merely simplified mimicry of natural phenomena that might not even be possible to convert into equations. In my current opinion it is even better this way, it's better that science doesn't attempt to converge with psionics and spirituality. If that were to happen, there would be rather serious consequences, I guess.
Also, people tend to misunderstand the goal of science. Science is not there to prove or disprove anything. Science is there to categorize phenomena and model them so that we could then predict and copy nature based on this knowledge. Although science can attempt to prove that a phenomenon exists, it is unscientific to preach like that. A single distinguishable case is enough to enable categorization (labeling), which is enough to say that this newly labeled event can occur (and has occurred at least once). However, in order to prove that an event is not possible or that it cannot occur, one would have to review all the claims and references throughout human history (and beyond) and prove that all of them were fraud. But even that wouldn't do much more than satisfy one's ego. That is because who is to say that no mistakes were made in the review process, or that the event will never manifest in the future. A single case is enough to prove that something is possible, whereas an infinite number of cases are necessary to prove that something is not possible / cannot happen. Since all the models of science are just simplifications of reality, it would be absurd to claim that such a model proves or disproves anything. We design the models based on reality but the universe couldn't care less about our equations regardless of how powerful and elegant we may imagine our equations to be.
She got the idea but didn't connect the dots. I said that for me the only proof is witnessing something first hand. For her it's enough if pieces of paper claim that something is true. Even though she agreed that the bible was not written by Jesus himself.
She also mentioned that for her a true moment of faith was a precognition event. I asked whether that was from the will of the God or the will of Satan because precognition is barely any different from those other theories that she mentioned. She confirmed that it was the will of the God because only good came out of it. Her precognition helped her to express caring and loving kindness to her mother. In my opinion this could also be the case with any of the theories that she enlisted.
I asked her why her God was so violent. There are good people out in this world. People who are kind and caring towards everyone and everything but perhaps don't put their faith in her holy book. Why would such a god (deliberately lowercased, sorry) select a few chosen ones and try to kill off the rest with a catastrophe? And then do that again several times over. Also, why would god ever battle satan if he created satan in the first place?
When she described the apple tree in the garden of Eden, I asked her what she thought of Adam and Eve tasting the apple. She said that satan (deliberately lowercased, sorry too) had installed it there and it would've been only a matter of time until the curiosity of man got the best of him. We reached an interesting point on this. If Adam and Eve would have been truly as wise and ideal as claimed, then they would not have taken the apple because they would have already known the consequences. Or perhaps the biblical definition of wisdom did not include experience. Adam and Eve probably lacked the experience, and they had to take the apple to experience what satan had to offer, too. Only by having tried both is one able to choose. It seemed that she followed the reasoning here.
In general, she seemed pessimistic. But then again she wasn't. She was happy that things in this world are changing for the better, just perhaps afraid that they would not. She was proud of people doing more good, and she was proud of youngsters being more open and knowledgeable than in the old days. Politics and corporate corruption, however, were the main reasons for her pessimism. The reason why she preached apocalypse. By the way, she had realized that hell is not an actual place but more like the suffering in one's life (state of mind, rather). That I found interesting, too.
Apologized for challenging her beliefs. Everyone's beliefs are a personal matter and are holy regardless of their religion. Enabled adblock and turned down her ads, tho.
Holy crow, unintentional book.
