Sam Harris?
Yeah . . . you too?
You bet. Sam . . . and Jordan, of course. Actually I’m more into Jordan.
Mmm.
Don’t you think it’s kinda crazy that Harris does all this mindfulness, zenfullnes, meditation stuff and still gets so venomous with the people he thinks have wronged him? Sam can get really vicious, you know.
If you don’t mind, I am just going to finish listening to this episode and then try to get some sleep.
Sure. No problem. It’s a long flight. I just couldnt help notice what pod you were listening to. I apologize.
It’s quite alright.
Your final destination LA?
No, I have a connection.
. . .
Sorry to wake you, but they’ve turned on the seatbelt sign.
Oh?
Yeah, they say it’s gonna get pretty choppy.
Okay. Thanks.
I’ve been wanting to ask if you — you know, you being a Sam Harris fan and all — if you believe in God?
That’s your idea of casual airplane chit-chat?
Ha ha. Why not? What d’ya say?
It depends upon how you define God.
That’s the easy-way-out response.
Maybe.
And, so, your definition is?
I define God as undefinable.
That’s loopy enough.
Perhaps, but you asked. I believe in the God that can’t be defined.
Uh-huh. But when the time comes . . . when we, or, more probably, our artificial intelligence, can define anything and everything, will that then render your God non-existent?
That’s never going to happen, but if it did I would believe in the God rendered non-existent by our knowing anything and everything.
You’d believe in the God that doesn’t exist? You’re big on paradoxes, aren’t you?
Sorry, but you asked.
Can your non-existent God be an all-seeing God? An interventionist God? Should we pray to him?
Him?
C’mon, it’s just a convention of language. Obviously God could be a she, or an it . . . more probably an it. So — Does it intervene?
If God ever intervened it was only once, and that was the Big Poop thirteen and a half billion years ago. As for all-seeing? Nope. God’s as blind as a bat.
Ha ha.
Prayer, on the other hand, is advisable.
How could that be?
Well God wouldn’t pray to God, would he?
Obviously not.
And God wouldn’t pray to you and me?
Equally obviously not.
And you and me — we wouldn’t pray to the flight magazines in these pouches in front of us. So you can see there is a hierarchy in this, and praying to God helps us remember that, despite all, we’re not top shit in the universe, which we are readily inclined to think. So prayer is helpful.
But praying for your competitor to go bankrupt, your girlfriend not to get pregnant, your ball to land in the hole — is this helpful?
Yeah, it reminds us that we’re not Gods.
But what if God was to answer those prayers?
Then we’re definitely fucked and always have been.
Plumplucker 