Laser's edge

The more you think through an idea, the closer it comes to a peak where it seems many answers are equally likely. I guess we can only think through an idea until we run out of information, so the process feels like we've reached a summit, but we've actually just arrived at the limit of our knowledge (or our ability to think).

This morning I was thinking:

(1) how convenient it is to be religious (believe in 'god'), because this helps people fail to recognise that their fate is in their hands, or instead for the religious people, its in the hands of the people that control them, (or brain-washed them in their youth). of course their is no such thing as a god helping us out, we shape our own lives, or it is shaped for us by our environment (including more rational people).

but this afternoon, this thought turned to:

(2) how necessary it is to believe in god, since we cannot know everything, and can never be in complete charge of our destiny, and if we try we'll become too tight in our thinking, so unhappy and unproductive.

these observations in themselves are moot, what is interesting is that a single belief (in god) can be arrived at for entirely different reasons. the ignorant and the learned will end up requiring faith, hope and all other human frailties to maintain their sanity.

of course there is a big difference between 1 and 2 in practical terms, 1 will not strive to understand why they need faith, they just do what they are told. 2 will walk a more painful and elegant path, but they will know why they ended up where they did.

i guess it all goes back to our animal ancestry, where we are constantly striving to spread our genes through shaping social structures around our own phenotypic needs. science is the new religious order, and tries to introduce a more egalitarian process to creating and analysing knowledge. before it was all about forcing people to memorise words, and live by them, now its about appreciating process and engaging in it.

there is one common theme, we create games (religions) to battle our egos from self-certainty and megalomania. its never healthy for self to become to sure. like mr Sidhartta and Pirsig said, zen and quality are only experienced when part of the flux (well they didn't use these words, but this is a brainsplurge). to look after our brains, so think, and be part of the global brain, this is how we have to live. and to complete an almost circular argument; it seems that we have to slow our brains down with illogical concepts to be part of the flow. we have to believe in faith and even god, even though we know this is nonsense, just to cope, because we are frail human beings.

but robots and genetic engineering are coming, maybe we can create a self that doesn't suffer so. but maybe there is no limit, and tomorrow's fundamentalists will be the people that say, even if you enhance you'll end up with the same issues: be back at point 1.

what will be next? is there any way to jump to another more satisfying train of though, an entirely different hillock?