Rationality is relative

We make choices all the time. A choice is when we pick among a set of options available to us. We choose to breathe versus not, since we can, in theory, choose to hold our breath. We do not choose to control our body temperature, since we do not (in most cases) have direct control over that. We choose to walk over a hard surface, but not on water. We believe that the strength of a hard floor can hold our weight, whereas water cannot. This belief is based, ultimately on belief in some fundamental laws of physics, such as gravitation and Newton’s first law of motion. How does this belief differ from the belief, say, that there is a greater power that lays out justice depending on our actions (a common belief in many world religions)? Both beliefs are purely faith, and do not have an absolute rationality in them. However, such laws (of physics) have been consistently found to hold within the parameters that they are considered to be valid, over thousands of experiments over the years. The laws of pure faith, on the other hand, do not offer themselves to such rigorous validation. For instance, we can verify the law of gravitation by measuring the time taken for a ball to drop to the floor from a height of one meter, repeatedly, at different places, at different times, etc. and we find consistent behavior. Any variants are further explained by further analysis and experiment. For instance, the acceleration due to gravity is found to be lesser at higher altitudes, hence, the altitude factors into the formula for gravity to make it accurate across multiple altitudes on earth. The acceleration due to gravity is found to be a function of the mass of the attracting body, as we compare the gravity on the earth and the moon. Hence, the mass of the body exerting the attraction comes into the formula to make it more general. The mass itself is found to vary as we approach higher speeds – this relates to the relativistic corrections, and now we have a more general law applicable to all observed speeds of different masses, and at different distances from the attracting body. At this level, physical experiments repeated numerous times yield consistent results.

A similar attempt is made to refine the laws of faith in a superhuman being – we start with the postulate that if we do good, good will happen to us, and if we do bad, bad will happen to us. This by itself is not verifiable at various levels – at the most primitive level, the definition of good and bad (and other such things that faith based rules concern themselves with) are not universal – what is good for one, may be bad for another. What is good in one situation for me, may be bad in another scenario. If we gloss over this level, then, we have numerous instances of people who have done good all their lives, and yet, have their fair degree of suffering. And there are instances of the opposite – people who have done bad things, even by their own standards, and yet, been showered with every form of prosperity they desire. Attempts are made to rationalize these “anomalies” by rational explanations. One approach is to prescribe penances that can counter the evil befalling you – a common prescription in most religions. Another approach is to subscribe to the multiple incarnation theory, which states that the suffering you undergo is a consequence of all your past incarnations – again, a conveniently unverifiable postulate. Yet another approach is to redefine happiness – for instance, desire is blamed as the root of all evil – if you do not desire anything, then nothing bad can happen to you. I would rephrase that : if you do not desire anything, then anything that happens to you cannot be perceived as bad. Abstinence, asceticism and austerity are prescribed to bring your tolerance to such high levels that you will be able to ignore all pain, and consider yourself happy. You can always be happy if you define happiness as independent of anything happening to you, around you, or to your loved ones – or even better, detach yourself from others, from material goods, etc. to the point that there is no way to distinguish one state from another. This is in many ways similar to the definition of energy, as described in an early chapter of Feynman’s lectures of physics, where you start with the definition of energy as being conserved, and then extend the definition of energy to include other forms that were previously not known, retaining the conservation of energy as an unquestionable belief. While such definition of energy is a good practical convenience, it does not relate to a concrete physical experience such as motion, and hence, suffers from a higher degree of mutability than, say, the law of gravitation.