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If ants could reason, would they be religious?
Benjamin Cain, one of the more popular Medium philosophical writers with over 10k followers, posed an intriguing question recently: If there was some super intelligence involving itself in our universe and lives, would we recognize it any more than an ant would recognize if we intervened in its effort to bring home food?
The question was stimulated by Cain watching an ant struggle with a piece of worm in the crevice of his patio. The ant was trying to haul the monstrous morsel, in the ant’s scale of life, out of the canyon of the crevice. Cain took a small twig and gently pulled the piece of worm out of the crack and onto the smooth floor of the patio. The ant responded by carrying it off with much greater ease.
Putting himself in the ant’s position, Cain mused if the ant might consider that some intelligence was behind this “miracle” of the extraction of the worm:
“For all the ant could tell, the twig might as well have been blown by the wind as held by a person.”
And then he wondered, are we like the ant? We see things happening in our lives that we naturally attribute to deterministic natural causes, but could as easily or perhaps more easily be understood as purposeful, and intended for our benefit. Cain writes:
“The eerie suspicion arises, then, as to whether…
