Bacon and Bananas

Welcome to Bacon of Sanity, a blog of random thoughts about our interesting times. Why Bacon of Sanity? I was thumbing through a magazine recently when I came across the phrase "a beacon of sanity."

My mind was wandering and I thought it read "bacon of sanity." At first I thought, "That sounds odd." After reading the words again, I realized:

1. The article was not about bacon.
2. "Bacon of Sanity" would make a nice name for a blog.
3. I had a sudden craving for bacon.

The mind is like that. It wanders a lot. We spend a lot of time dreaming about stuff we don't have. We sweat the small stuff that doesn't matter. We sweat the big stuff we can't change. We regret yesterday. We worry about tomorrow. And we usually do it all at the same time.

Buddhists call this our "monkey mind." It's like our brains are rooms full of monkeys. All day long, the monkeys swing around, eat bananas, pick fleas, fling poo, and type the complete works of Shakespeare, which they never seem to finish.



We can't get rid of the monkeys. But we can keep the fleas and poo at manageable levels. Or at least let the monkeys out to play sometimes.

Which leads me to Charles Darwin. This year is the bicentenary of his birth, as well as the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species, which set out his theory of natural selection.

Darwin definitely had a monkey mind. He spent years obsessing about voyaging vegetables, floating pigeon corpses, ostrich dominance, and ash-eating earthworms. He also worried about what other people would think of his ideas--so much that he waited decades to publish.

He was right to worry. Darwin's ideas are still debated and not just the man-from-monkey thing. One example is the so-called "mind-brain" problem. Let's put the problem in bacon terms. When "I have a sudden craving for bacon" crossed my mind, where did the idea come from?

Some people believe the mind is merely a side-effect of brain chemistry. So, the brain knows that fat is important. Its needed for vitamin digestion, insulation, body temperature, cell function, and disease resistance. "Since Bacon is fat, I better eat some," the brain says.

Other people believe the mind is separate and distinct from the brain. So, while the brain knows that bacon is unhealthy, the mind loves it. "Since everything is better with bacon, I better eat some," the mind says.

So what does this have to do with Darwin? Jon Hamilton recently reported on the interesting debate over the mind-brain problem between creationists and scientists. According to Michael Egnor, a neurosurgeon who writes for the Evolution News & Views blog:

"There is nothing about neurons that scientifically would lead you to infer consciousness from them. They're masses of gelatinous carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen and oxygen, just like other kinds of flesh. And why would flesh have first-person experience?...My personal view is that we have souls and that they're created by God..."

Steven Novella, a neurologist who writes for the Neurologica blog, disagrees:

"If you change the brain, you change the mind. If you damage the brain, you damage the mind. If you turn off the brain, you turn off the mind...[The brain] can do things that can plausibly cause consciousness and self-awareness..."

Who's right? The argument for "intelligent design" can be boiled down to this:

1. The world is magical.
2. Magic isn't an accident.
3. Ergo, God exists.
4. Ergo, Darwin was wrong.

I agree that the world is awesome. Personally, I can't imagine there not being a God. But why does that make Darwin wrong? What if God got the ball rolling and natural selection is a part of his plan? Why can't the brain, as a creation of God, love, learn, and dream of bacon? God, life, the universe, and everything are perfectly natural--there's nothing "supernatural" about them.

What about scientists? Their argument can be boiled down too:

1. I've never seen God.
2. Ergo, God doesn't exist.
3. Ergo, Darwin was right.

I've never seen God, but I've never seen an atom either. Can't they both exist? Science is only really concerned about what we can observe. It doesn't care about what it can't observe. Science can't observe art or love or truth. It can't ask whether there is a God or a soul. It doesn't even know the question.

There's a funny bit in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where a group of aliens build a computer to discover the answer to life, the universe, and everything. After 7 million years, the computer says the answer is "42," but its forgotten the question.



Nhat Hanh, a monk who doesn't have a blog, suggests the question may not matter:

"The Buddha always told his disciples not to waste their time and energy in metaphysical speculation. Whenever he was asked a metaphysical question, he remained silent. Instead, he directed his disciples toward practical efforts."

His disciples kept bugging him, so the Buddha answered:

"Whether the world is finite or infinite, limited or unlimited, the problem of your liberation remains the same."

They still weren't satisfied, so the Buddha finally answered:

"Suppose a man is struck by a poisoned arrow and the doctor wishes to take out the arrow immediately. Suppose the man does not want the arrow removed until he knows who shot it, his age, his parents, and why he shot it. What would happen? If he were to wait until all these questions have been answered, the man might die first."

In other words, what if humans have no soul or God doesn't exist? What if everything does have a divine spark? It shouldn't change how we live.

"Life is so short," says Nhat Hanh, "It must not be spent in endless metaphysical speculation that does not bring us any closer to the truth." Big ideas are fun to debate, but we shouldn't get stressed about. As Monty Python says (increase your volume):



It's all just bacon and bananas in the end. Why spend so much time worrying about the monkeys?