Work In Progress

If my memory serves, that happens to be the name of a TV show which is currently running, but that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is the concept of the "bored housewife".

Perhaps the funniest thing about modern life is its speed; everything keeps changing faster than people can really adapt their opinions of life (people adapt quickly enough, but opinion always lag reality). Sometimes this manifests itself as a hearkening back to a time which never existed; people get partially caught up in the present but haven't come to like it yet, so they imagine that the past was different from the parts of the present that they haven't figured out, and want that. There is, of course, the obvious manifestation of simply not noticing that the world has changed. It's not just generals who are always fighting the last battle, not the current one.

And then there's a special way in which it manifests itself related to another odd human tendency. Specifically, many very bad ideas which have come along were really just ideas in advance of their time, which is to say, ideas which weren't workable when they were introduced but for whatever reason (probably technological), they are workable now. And as is not uncommon, people eventually found out that the ideas were bad ones, and now don't notice that the ideas aren't so bad any more.

In particular, throughout most of human life, not counting certain very rich people, most human beings were either a husband or a wife, and as either was very dependent on the other. There is an awful lot of work involved in keeping up human beings, especially when it comes to growing/getting food ingredients, cooking food, making clothing, etc. Less if you're a hunter/gatherer, more if you're a farmer, but there was still an awful lot to do and men and women tended to become partners (to say nothing of families sticking together to help each other out too). Then some time around the 1930s/1940s the lot traditionally falling to women dropped off drastically, and women (being human) began looking for other things to do. That there no longer were traditional gender roles wasn't much noticed, and so this revolution spawned a counter-revolution, which was the house-wife of the 1950s. That in turn spawned another revolution, which was called the "women's lib movement". This revolution was people finally noticing the present, though largely at the expense of the past — far too many feminists acted as if gender roles never had any sense behind them.

Now, one of the biggest issues that feminists had was one of the biggest problems with the 1950s idealized gender roles — there was nothing to do. Trying to be a traditional wife with new technology resulted in a lot of depressed women. It wasn't just that they had nothing to do, it was that they also were extremely isolated from other adults (in large part due to housing situations making socializing difficult). (It should probably be noted, at this point, that these problems were by no means universal, as people who couldn't afford the new technology didn't face them, and plenty of women also adapted to being quite social during the time technology freed them from the drudgery of work.)

Anyhow, it's recently occurred to me that The Internet will probably spawn another such revolution, as spending all day at home can actually be quite stimulating and enjoyable. The Internet puts a wealth of people, information, and activities at one's fingertips. Not to be overly blog-centric, but blogs are perhaps the best expression yet of what IRC and usenet started. People can be producers and consumers all day long without spending money in activities which can be time-shifted (with scheduled posting and reading at your own convenience) and interrupted at will. With child-raising being a time intensive task, it would not surprise me much if some reasonable number of men and women chose to stay at home and do it while their partner goes off to work. Providing that people will be able to con their partners into it, of course. I suspect that many will, though. Raising children is rather difficult and time-consuming work, at least for the first few years.

I was thinking about irreducible complexity and the mouse trap recently, and I realized how you can reduce the complexity of the system. The key to this (as it is to a lot of biology) is that there are going to be a LOT of intermediate stages; you've really got to imagine the previous stage and work forwards, not try to work backwards.

In particular, make the hammer heavier and heaver. Then also keep the set position higher and higher. Eventually, have the hammer very slightly forward of vertical, and pretty heavy. Now the spring only functions to make the hammer, which otherwise would fall on its own, go faster. Now keep making the spring lighter until it ceases to exist. Now you've removed the spring keeping plausible intermediate stages. You can't do it in 1 step, but you can do it in 1000 steps. (Going in the correct order, the spring would first serve as an augmentation, then when it was powerful enough bringing the hammer backwords would serve as an augmentation, then eventually the weight isn't needed so the hammer and spring get lighter.)

This is the rough idea of how biological systems evolve, as well. Lots of little changes that don't look like they're actually accomplishing anything, but eventually do.

Now, I don't think that this means anything; it doesn't signify to Christianity one way or the other how everything was made. As Chesterton once observed, A God might as well choose to make things slowly as to make them quickly, especially if is, like the Christian God, outside of time. The main proof of Christianity is not science, but Christ. I think that we need to go into a little background:

Originally, no one thought that the world was made in steps*; atheists in particular figured that it always existed just like it was now, and theists generally seemed to think that it was made (in steps) just like it is now. Eventually came along the big bang, which sounded ridiculous, but eventually was accepted, which more or less held that whatever of the living stuff, the inanimate stuff was made a long time ago, and pretty slowly. Then Darwin postulated his famous idea that the living stuff came about slowly, too, by gradual changes directed by the environment.

Now, what's so radical about this notion is that all of the things which looked awfully like they had been custom built from scratch weren't — they were assembled very slowly not by tools but by pressures. While tools can only be applied by an intelligence, pressures can be applied by anything, and often are. It became possible that there was no intelligence behind the origin of species. That's not to say that it was any less likely, only less necessary; those not inclined to believe in God finally found a way not to, but that's not the same as saying that they finally found a reason not to. It should be remembered that human tools are just things which apply specific pressures quickly; tools in general are just things which apply pressures. That is, evolutionary pressure can be just as much a tool as a scalpel can be a tool. Braces on teeth do nothing but apply pressure slowly, but they're always applied by an intelligence.

Anyhow, the point is that a belief in God was no longer (essentially) required, and so some people stopped. It became a heated topic of debate whether God really existed, and so the topic of proving his existence arose.

Now, human beings really hate doubt. Some might tell you that they embrace doubt, but 99 times out of 100 they just mean that they embrace doubts of the things which they don't believe. Anyhow, one of the ways that this manifests itself is that people rarely accuse each other of being mistaken. No, everyone who disagrees is not just wrong about the facts. They're illogical. Their argument is full of fallacies. It's simply not even possible to believe it. And of course, conversely, it's impossible to believe anyone else's argument.

In discussions of the existence of God, this generally means one of

1. the universe inherently proves the existence of God

2. human intuition proves the existence of God (and the only reason that people doubt it is lust, greed, or pride)

3. the universe inherently disproves the existence of God

4. the non-existence of God is the default position, and it will take some really extraordinary evidence to prove otherwise, where extraordinary mostly means "impossible"

Now, the problem with all of these is that they're wrong. The universe neither proves nor disproves the existence of an intelligent creator; it neither makes it likely nor unlikely. We can only determine what's likely or unlikely from our experience and reason, and none of us knows the first thing about how to create universes.

What we do have, however, is records of the Creator of Everything actually telling us about it. I don't believe for a moment that the bible is literally true because it (1) never claims to be and (2) obviously isn't meant to be. However, there are parts in it that just as obvious are meant to be real records. The parts where God talks out of burning bushes, and the part where God became man and dwelt among people, come to mind. The Jesus parts especially.

Now, if you're a creature, it's very hard to know anything about your creator. Certainly your creator is no less than you are (unless you believe that nothing can create something), but that's about it. The only way to find out more about your creator than you can tell from knowing his creations is for him to tell you. And that's one of the aspects of Christianity. Now, the whole sin and redemption and living a perfect life aspects of Christianity are far more important than the parts which satisfy intellectual curiosity, but I've always been struck by this line (John 15:15):

I shall not call you servants any more, because a servant does not know his master's business; I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father.

Now, people can still disbelieve the records we have of God coming and telling us that he created the world, but the main reason to believe that God created the world is not the particulars of a few objects in it, but that he told us so himself.

*Yeah, yeah, except for all of the people with creation myths. Atheists generally didn't have creation myths.