I'm Opus!

It is a good sermon, and one that I wish more people would hear and take to heart. It seems that purposelessness is one of the main fears of many people, and they cling to concepts of God to give them purpose, and they don't need to.

And don't worry, I don't think you're a penguin either (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Excellent, excellent, thank you.

Wow, it's been a long time since I read any of that artist's cartoons with Opus (I mean like fifteen years, really). Is it my imagination, or does Opus look older? If he does... that's cool.

Great comic. I thought Opus was cancelled years ago.

This is just my opinion, but if we required a deity to give our lives purpose, then our supposed freedom to choose would be illusion imposed from the 'top down.' But meaning, like everything else distinctively human, appears to be something that emerges from 'bottom up' via natural processes. Or to put it another way, the meaning of life is to *live*! Peace....Scott

I thought of you when I read that cartoon today. Opus is not one of my favorite comic strips, but this one is good.

This is a treat--and it's exactly how I think about the purpose of life. I do still prefer the 'cat sweat hair-tonic' series that satirized the 'war on drugs'. What is it with the US and all these ridiculous wars on things you can't fight wars against?

Suggested reading: Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. Forged in the crucible of the concentration camps. Believing in something "larger" than onesself can encompass much, including the completely rational and observable. I "believe in" the essential wonder of the universe and the quest to understand it. Knowing the reason for any number of natural phenomena does not lessen my sense of delight and amazement at them in the least.

Right on the mark.

Now how do we get everyone who believes that godless means purposeless, depressed and immoral to read and comprehend this?

Maybe we could ask BB for the right to print it up in small booklets and...

I'm thrilled to see that opus is available online. When it first returned, Breathed said it would not be, so I've only rarely read it. Now just to add it to my comic grabber script so I'll see it every Sunday.

One of the best Opuses (Opii?) I've seen in awhile. Stole the central premise in an argument with my Bible-thumping father-in-law this evening... he left not long thereafter, probably mentally enumerating the tortures I'll face in hell. *sigh* Worth a try, though.

Though it mostly just shows that god talk is infinitely elastic, I've always been fond of Pliny the Elder's remark, "God is man helping man."

Steve Sutton --

"Opus" was never cancelled, nor were any of Berke Breathed's previous comic strips, all of which included Opus as a character. He stopped doing "Bloom County" voluntarily in 1989, and a few months later started doing the Sunday-only "Outland". He did that until 1995, when he voluntarily stopped doing it while it was still "fresh". The current strip, "Opus", is another Sunday-only strip that he started doing in 2003. Opus and Steve Dallas from "Bloom County" are still characters, but Steve Dallas is now noticeably middle-aged, and has an illegitimate son, which is who Opus is talking to in this particular strip.

The Chicago Tribune, which I read every day, carries "Opus" and carried "Outland", which is how I've kept up with them. I guess those strips are in significantly fewer newspapers than "Bloom County" was, which is probably why a lot of people are unaware that Breathed is still doing a strip.

Opus does look somewhat like you, PZ ... in that last frame ... where he is being rained on.

But But PZ? If there is no score keeper how does one get into heaven?

I'm not religious but...using one bunch of atoms to divert another bunch of atoms away from a third bunch of atoms? That's the meaning of life? Somewhat less convincing than Jesus, I'd say.

I've always felt the tragectory of various atoms to be vitally important.

I'm not religious but...

That's reminiscent of all those arguments that start "I'm not racist, but..."

using one bunch of atoms to divert another bunch of atoms away from a third bunch of atoms? That's the meaning of life?

No.

Somewhat less convincing than Jesus, I'd say.

To put it another way: the Flying Spaghetti Monster is slightly less convincing than the Invisible Pink Unicorn

Or, a strawman argument is slightly less convincing than a myth.

Right on, Opus. And Scott Hatfield hits the nail on the head, pointing out that "meaning", like life, emerges not from the top down, but from the bottom up. I suspect that religions were invented largely because "meaning" and "purpose" were presumed to be qualities of the whole world, and thus required a Supreme Meaner. Realizing that meaning, and design, are also evolved entities, takes them out of the hands of gods and puts them into our own trembling hands, or flippers.

I'm not religious

Yeah, right. You're certainly as stupid as someone infected by religion.

I suspect that religions were invented largely because "meaning" and "purpose" were presumed to be qualities of the whole world, and thus required a Supreme Meaner.

Religions were invented by way of analogizing causal agents -- people and animals make things happen, so it was easy to imagine people- and animal- like things creating mountains, moving big lights in the sky, causing diseases and accidents, and so on. The BS about "meaning" is a very recent development, a consequence of modern neuroses.

"The BS about "meaning" is a very recent development, a consequence of modern neuroses."

There's no conflict here, truth machine. Being a causal agent means having purpose, or meaning, at least the way I conceive these words. A waterfall, or an earthquake, does stuff too, but has no purpose, no meaning behind what it does. People and other animals do things because they have purposes, whether these are articulated or not. Thus gods were invented, who were not seen as waterfalls or earthquakes, but as quasi-people who made waterfalls and earthquakes, for their own purposes.

At least that's my (highly speculative) theory. Other models for god-fantasies are not far to seek: super-parents with super-carrots and sticks, for instance. Of course the gods we have are not merely invented, but also evolved.

Anon:

Although you claim otherwise, in our experience comments such as yours turn out to be incorrect, even outright lies, far too often to merit acceptance. As mentioned above, "I'm not a racist, but..." tends to at best signal a racist who doesn't want to accept the label's negative baggage. In the case of religion, it often signals a deliberate lie (the speaker is quite religious.) In cases of anonymous speakers, the speaker is also often someone known to the forum.

Also as others have observed, I have found the relative motions of various groups of molecules exquisitely important, or just plain exquisite. What is a Porsche, after all, but molecules in motion and reaction? And yet I "borrow" my father's retirement toy every chance I get.

Lovely cartoon, but I wonder if the wrong lesson isn't being drawn from it.

Would Auggie have been kept any less warm and dry if Opus believed in a loving, caring deity? Isn't the good act from a kind heart the essential thing, and belief or lack of it much less relevant than either pro-religious or anti-religious people might wish?

Isn't "religious belief is a handicap to doing good science" (someone may have forgotten to tell Newton) just the flip side of "science removes God and therefore any ethical grounding from the world"? ISTM the invalidity of both viewpoints can be demonstrated by simple observation: I know kind, ethical atheists and believers, as well as good, smart religious and non-religious scientists.

If you want to know whether people are capable of ethical behavior, watch how they behave. If you want to know whether people are capable of doing good science, look at the science they do. Arguments that religion/atheism/gender/race/etc. disqualify people from behaving ethically or thinking logically are old, and in the main tiresome and wrong.

Yes, there are some beliefs that make it virtually impossible to act ethically - racism, for example - as well as beliefs that make it virtually impossible to reason scientifically, such as a belief in Intelligent Design or creationism. But this goes back to my previous point: if you see people doing good works or good science, what then is the relevance of questioning whether they are, in the case of good works, unbelievers (horrors!), or in the case of good science, believers (horrors!)?

I think it is rather obvious that the cartoon is not arguing that if Opus were a Baptist, he'd let the kid get wet. It's making the positive point that the godless are moral beings, too.

Not knowing about the penguin, when I saw the headline, I thought the post was about the Opus best known in Catholic countries (and now elsewhere thanks to the Da Vinci Code). And it could have made sense: after all, there is also the Octopus Dei.

The simple man comes home and wonders what's for dinner.

The complex man comes home and wonders what the meaning of life is, what his place in the universe is, whether there is a Prime Mover...

The enlightened man comes home and wonders what's for dinner.

The enlightened man comes home and wonders what's for dinner.

The truly enlightened man makes dinner himself.

The simple man comes home and wonders what's for dinner.

The complex man comes home and wonders what the meaning of life is, what his place in the universe is, whether there is a Prime Mover...

The enlightened man comes home and wonders what's for dinner.

are you referring to the "What, why and where" phases of increasing sophistication? As epitomised by the three questions:

What shall we eat?

Why do we eat?

Where shall we go for lunch?

A brief correction here-I believe if you do a history of Opus, you'll find he's not so much a penguin as a flightless auk.

The Truth is that Opus looks more like a puffin than a penguin. ("AAAIIIGGGH!")

Contemporary materialists have noticed that many idealists (including, of course, many religious believers) think that matter is inert and passive, when since Newton (if not Galileo) we have known that self-activity and all that is part of the nature of matter. This is one case of the denial of emergence necessary to hold onto one supposed support for idealism, after all. An ontologically distinct part of reality is apparently necessary if all the world is just a cloud of atoms with no structure. But we also know now that the world is not so loosely coupled (nor so strongly coupled that structure disappears again).

The Truth is that Opus looks more like a puffin than a penguin. ("AAAIIIGGGH!")

Well, except in the sequence where he got liposuction on the snozz.

It is, however, a lovely sentiment, and the nicest of the Opus series that I've yet seen. Ethics are inner, not imposed from outside.

"There's no conflict here, truth machine."

Yes, there is. I don't accept your unfalsifiable ad hocery, whereby any cockamamie "theory" can be supported.

Lovely cartoon, but I wonder if the wrong lesson isn't being drawn from it.

Yeah, right, the lesson to be drawn isn't the one that the cartoon obviously presents, its the one you want to push despite it having nothing to do with what the cartoon says.

truth machine says, in response to me:

"Yeah, right, the lesson to be drawn isn't the one that the cartoon obviously presents, its the one you want to push despite it having nothing to do with what the cartoon says."

Errmm - I think I agree with you (I know I agree with PZ) about the meaning of the cartoon: "It's making the positive point that the godless are moral beings, too."

There ya go assuming again, TM.

Being a causal agent means having purpose, or meaning

Purpose and meaning are not at all the same thing. I said "BS about 'meaning'", not "BS about 'purpose'". "purpose" and "meaning" become intertwined when people start neurotically worrying about what they, or life, or the world, is "for", but that goes way beyond applying the purpose-driven/goal-directed behavior of causal agents to explain how and why things happen. Meaning is an attribute of signs, and it's quite neurotic to take one's own existence as a sign.

I know I agree with PZ

I think he had a bad moment there; Scott Hatfield got it right, that it's about purpose being bottom up rather than top down. A corollary is that the ability to act morally isn't dependent on belief in god, but we don't know that Opus is godless (as he doesn't know), so while the cartoon supports PZ's point, it's not the point.

In any case, the cartoon has nothing to say about whether religion is a handicap for doing science, and it's pretty obvious that PZ's response to you was implicit disagreement with your claims in that regard (since he has explicitly stated his disagreement on numerous occasions).

may have an interest in that point, it's not the point want to infer that poin

Contemporary materialists have noticed that many idealists (including, of course, many religious believers) think that matter is inert and passive, when since Newton (if not Galileo) we have known that self-activity and all that is part of the nature of matter.

And even more so since the advent of the computer age. I think it's better to think of the world in terms of processes and relationships rather than "matter", as the latter leaves out all the causal stuff and really falls apart when we bore down and find matter/energy conversion, wave/particle dualities, uncertainty of position and momentum, "foamy" topology at the Planck level, etc. The world isn't really made of "matter" as we conceive of it. Thinking in terms of relationships and processes also helps understand the confusion about "qualia"; redness and blueness are not "stuff" that could be inverted in one's mind without behavioral consequences, they are points in the hue space and are fully determined by their relationships to each other. Inverting a complete set of relationships is nonsensical, since the exact same relationships hold in the inversion. Thought experiments like spectrum inversion and Ned Block's "Chinese Nation" (in which the people of China play the role of neurons, and the question is whether this results in China having a conscious mind) are intended to be challenges to functionalism, but they don't succeed if one really takes functionalism seriously.

A brief correction here-I believe if you do a history of Opus, you'll find he's not so much a penguin as a flightless auk.

I believe that if you do a visual scan of the cartoon, you'll find that he says "I'm a penguin".

Duh.

BTW, rather than babbling about what you believe, you might actually do an inquiry -- it's so easy these days:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_the_Penguin

Opus was originally introduced as a one-time gag about hapless Mike Binkley bringing home what he thought was a German Shepherd, which turned out to be a penguin, much to the disappointment of his father. However, Opus' popularity quickly grew until he became the signature character of Breathed's comic strips.

Opus' appearance has changed dramatically since his inception - he originally looked like a common penguin, but between 1982 and 1986 his nose grew dramatically (developing its signature bump in the middle, of which Opus is very self-conscious). Mike Binkley, during one Sunday strip, points out the fact that Opus more closely resembles a puffin. (In the final panel of the same strip, Opus responds by telling Binkley that he looks like a carrot.)

Opuses? Opii?

Any second-year high school Latin student (and some classical music fans) could tell you that the plural of "Opus" is "Opera."

PZ, one thing you and Opus don't have in common is a love of cold weather. He escaped from the South Pole early in the comic. His favorite fantasy is being on a tropical beach with a beautiful young (human) woman.

Mind you, that may be mostly because a beautiful young woman on an arctic beach isn't going to be wearing a bikini...

I like the dialogue of the cartoon, but I'm not sure why Opus gives ALL of his rain gear to his friend. Isn't altruism in secular ethics just left-over baggage from Christianity? Is there really a rational basis for altruism as a virtue? If so, what is it? I realize many people find ethics based on selfishness to be cold and stark, despite the role of self interest in genes, memes, and personal happiness. Fortunately, I think pure selfishness vs. pure altruism constitute a bit of a false dichotomy. Most actions of people that most of us would consider to be virtuous are, to varying degrees, mutualistic. I suppose Opus' gesture could be interpreted as mutualism, given his oiled feathers, thick blubber, and obvious enjoyment of his friend's company.

truth machine said:

"In any case, the cartoon has nothing to say about whether religion is a handicap for doing science, and it's pretty obvious that PZ's response to you was implicit disagreement with your claims in that regard (since he has explicitly stated his disagreement on numerous occasions)."

Yes, I think you're correct that I disagree with the notion that an individual's religious belief or lack of same is a relevant inquiry when the subject is whether he or she can do good science. It just seems to me that inquiries into personal beliefs make things more complex than they need to be: If one wants to evaluate whether someone does good or bad science, why not just look at the science they do?

Just out of curiosity, PZ, are you fond of herring, too?

Yes, I am. In high school, I was one of those weird kids who'd show up at lunch with smoked smelt, for instance, that would freak out the other kids at the table.

Heterocronie:

On the matter of altruism in secular philosophy, I can't offer much informed comment, but my feeling on it has been partly "Golden Rule," and partly a sense that altruism is a general benefit to human societies.

But I CAN state that altruism does not owe its roots to Christianity or any religious tradition. It appears frequently in the animal world, especially amongst social animals, as an evolutionary adaptation. Although I think I've read that there is some new debate over the mechanisms and definitions of "altruism," I haven't heard anything challenging its existence, and it seems pretty obvious.

rrt: The roots of altruism are not only not Christian, they aren't even human, as you point out.

It is interesting to note, however, that we can evaluate Christian tradition and note an emerging strand of thought where the circle of altruism is widened. The Hebrews who invaded Canaan explicitly commit something like genocide to the Canaanites in the Book of Judges, but by the Book of Ruth are welcoming a non-Jew (Ruth) into the Hebrew culture. By tradition, Ruth's descendants include King David, and Jesus himself!

Later, there are several moments in the Gospels that hint of widening the old covenant, extending (you might say) an inclusive circle of altruism/acceptance/forgiveness. Some examples: the dialogue with the woman at the well, the story of the Good Samaritan (a despised minority group among Jesus's contemporaries) and, perhaps most strikingly, Jesus's pregnant question "who are my brothers, and my sisters?"

So, while this particular Eastern mystery religion need not be the basis of morality, parts of it seem to promote the enlargement of altruism. It would be interesting to see if a similar pattern could be detected in other faiths....Scott

It's not so obvious to me. Mutualism is certainly common, but true altruism is not. For example, a wolf sharing meat with the pack presumably gets enough food to sustain its own metabolism, while the sharing of food offers the potential for reciprocity during bad times. It also adds to the pack's potential fitness and hence the individual's long-term survival potential as part of that pack. Kin selection presumably is still quite selfish from the genes point of view, but true altruism isn't. Can you think of examples of a species whose members regularly take a true long-term/terminal fitness loss for the benefit of other individuals that aren't their immediate relatives?

I think an important step here would be to define "true" altruism. I think many, perhaps most, human applications of altruism have more "selfish" components than most of us would realize. Now would be a good time to admit I haven't read Dawkins' "Selfish Gene" and I wonder if he doesn't discuss this.

Anyway, consider this nice little quote from Babylon 5 (forgive me if you're not a fan): "No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his friend. Not for millions, not for glory, not for fame... for one person. In the dark. Where no one will ever know or see." That might be an example of "true" altruism. But I would suggest that in reality such unqualified altruism in humans is rare.

I'm not sure how one would perform a statistical analysis of altruistic acts, but I suspect that most have at least some distant "selfish" element. If altruism does indeed contributed to healthy human societies, then it may be that any altruism could be considered at least a little "selfish." Most altruistic acts benefit at least distant relatives. Going further out, most soldiers don't throw themselves on grenades lobbed at the enemy.

Even if we assume that "true" altruism is indeed hard-wired in at least a significant number of humans, look at a typical human's life, especially in a historical context: How often would a "true" altruist commit an extreme altruistic act, far from home, well away from the local population sharing resources, social structures and genes? This also touches on the point that an adaptation rarely is "perfect" and might remain active in situations that genuinely offer very little or no benefit.

You've piqued my curiosity regarding other social animals' more extreme altruistic behaviors. If I can motivate my lazy tail enough, I'll do some digging. :)

Huh. This might be just what we're looking for:

http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/8239.html

"No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his friend."

As an atheist, I don't really understand how death can be virtuous. I just can't comprehend how a rational organism can value its own annihilation or anything that would lead to its non-existence. Love, friendship, happiness, these are all qualities of a living being, not a corpse, right? If we are the source of meaning and purpose in our own lives, rather than some higher being, don't we have to exist to create and fulfil that meaning?

heterocronie:

I don't know if I can show how death can be virtuous, but one well-placed loss of personal fitness can clearly impart increased fitness to a population, and, after Dawkins, we can at least consider extending the logic of fitness to ideas ("memes") that confer survival value on the population.

From that point of view, the embrace of risk (and eventual death) of an icon like Martin Luther King makes 'sense' because his sacrifice led to better opportunities (and thus increased fitness) for a certain population of which he was a member. Others outside that particular group might well admiringly conclude that Dr. King's message of 'non-violent resistance' was worth taking risks for as well, even worth dying for, and that could also tend to increase the overall fitness of many groups.

Scott