I became aware of living as a young child, as I’m sure most people do. I found myself surrounded by many amazing things. There were so many things around me that I wanted to make some sense of some of those things: Mum, Dad, mother, father, parents, brothers, a sister, “family”, “friends”, other people, strangers, people my parents know, houses, rooms, beds, chairs, high chairs, tables, rugs, floor boards, tiles, rugs, knives, forks, spoons, cakes, bread, apples, bananas, butter, cars, trucks, buses, trains, aeroplanes, helicopters, kites, trees, ants, butterflies, birds, dogs, cats, rats, mice, shops, flowers, wind, rain, clouds, shade, sunshine, night-time, day-time, sunrise, sunset, dawn, dusk, time, television, radio, government, books, magazines, stories, wheel barrows, screw drivers, hammers, saws, wood, steel, aluminium, shopping, money, hospitals, schools, department stores, forests, beaches, the sea, air, rivers, pools, mountains, gorges, valleys, etc.

What an amazingly complex and interesting world we find ourselves living in! How are we to make sense of it all?

And very importantly, I found that I had a body of very particular features, such as having two arms, two legs, a tummy, a bottom, a head, two hands with five fingers on each (but arranged as mirror images of each other), two eyes, a nose, a mouth, long hair on my head, fingernails, etc. Really though, I had very little say on the body I had. I just needed to accept the body I had, and respond to it as best I could. Why was my body the way it was? I was taught to walk on two legs. As I got older, I found that I could run, and jump, and swim (in the sea, in rivers, in pools, etc.). I also found that my body got slowly bigger. I would get comments from my parents, other family members, and friends about how tall I was getting.

We live within our bodies for the whole of our lives. Our bodies are amazing machines, capable of thinking, and seeing, and hearing, and smelling, and touching, and feeling warmth, and walking, and running, and writing, and talking to others, and lots of amazing things. We find that we are either male or female, and this has a huge influence on how we live throughout our lives. It has a huge influence on how we are treated by other people in our society. Males are usually given preferential treatment over females, for some reason. I started to see differences between my body and the bodies of others. That person has fingernails that have a different shape to mine. That person has longer hair. Her eyes are a different colour to mine. We find that we have to drink and eat things regularly, and that we need to regularly expel wee and poo. And we find that some things that we do are considered good, and others are considered offensive to others, and best not done when we are amongst others. It is a very complex situation we find ourselves living in.

Looking at the body I had, and all the things around me, I had to try to try to make sense of it all. Basically, I needed to learn what each of those things in my surroundings was. How does every human baby learn about the world in which it finds itself?

From what I learnt in my Bachelor of Education degree about human development, after about 18 months of living after birth, most human babies start to walk and shortly after that, also start to develop their talking. Obviously, most human babies have already learnt to crawl, and they have been responding to many things around them, including their parents, their food, and their homes. But for every human baby, it has to learn what each of the things around it are, it has to learn how to communicate with the other important humans in its life (usually by mainly developing its verbal language skills, but learning non-verbal language skills are also very important), and it has to learn about its social/cultural situation. Language is very important, because you can ask about things that you are curious about, and you can get highly detailed explanations about some things, including concepts that are are quite abstract, such as “time”. Some researchers found that humans have brains that seem to be pre-programmed for language learning, even though there are many different languages used by groups of humans around the world. When you look at children from a range of cultures, such as from an Aboriginal culture, or from a Chinese culture, or from an Indian culture, or from a western scientifically-advanced culture, you realise that the culture that the human baby is born into determines much of what a human baby will learn as it develops. As each child is born and starts developing, each much make its own sense of the world in which it lives. Babies are born into a wide variety of situations. Some are born to privileged parents, some are born to impoverished parents, some are born to Aboriginal parents, some are born to Chinese parents, some are born to French parents, and some are born in a wide range of situations.

Much of the learning that any human needs takes many years, and the learning required was driven very much by the social situation that the human finds itself in.

I also seem to remember from the learning I did in my Bachelor of Education degree about human development (from the recognised research done up to that point), that most children learn their most in the first four years of their lives. That may be so, but having known someone such as Marianne, and having seen the amount of learning that she was constantly doing all throughout her life, including many things that build on previously learnt knowledge, I think that constant learning and questioning is something that is very important to a well-lived life. It is very sad to think of the amount of learnt knowledge, along with its perceived context, and gender understanding, that is largely lost to the living world when someone such as Marianne dies.

Fortunately for me, I trusted that I could find out about most of the initial things I needed to learn about over time from my parents or family, or learning at school, or by playing, or reading, etc. We trust, as young children, that our parents know what’s happening all around us, and know how to help us flourish. My parents were the most important sources of information and influences I had when I was a young child. I trusted my parents, as each child needs to, to survive. I always felt that my parents knew how to look after our whole family. I now know that I was very lucky, because I had parents who did care very much for their children, and that I lived in a situation that was privileged. I now also know that not all parents do a good job of caring for their children, or live in privileged situations.

I remember that when I was young (about 10-14), I wanted to know what was truth and what wasn’t, so that I could have a reasonable foundation on which to build my life. We start with just a growing awareness of what we might be. Really, there are very few fixed facts that we can use to get an objective understanding of our lives, or of living. If that were the case, then there would be consistencies between people living in very different cultures. Actually, there are some consistencies between people living in very different cultures: The usual ‘family unit’ of mother, father and children is one such consistency (though there are growing numbers of differences to that usual “family unit’, where one or more of the parents may have died or left the unit, or where the “family unit” is made up of same-sex parents and their children, etc.). The sun is another consistency, although there may be differences in amounts of sunshine, etc. The awareness of “days” is another consistency between people living in very different cultures, plus the breaking up of days into “day” time and “night” time. Another fixed fact of living is that all living things will eventually die.

As I got older, I would sometimes consider my future, and wonder how things might turn out in my life. As I got older, I also became more aware that some things told to me from adults or my parents weren't necessarily true. Stories like “Santa Claus” and the “Tooth Fairy” seem like wonderful things to a young child. When you hear the same stories from lots of different people, it makes you think that those stories must be true, because they are a consistent story coming from many different sources. But as you get older, and find out that some things are just made up, it starts to make you wonder just what other things are actually true and what are not? It is often hard to discern what is truth from what isn't.

As I got older, I heard lots of different things from a range of sources, with some things being quite contradictory. How does one know what is the truth? I felt as if I needed to have a foundation of truth to build my life on, rather than a false foundation that could dissolve at any moment. I didn’t want to live most of my life and then discover deep down that I hadn’t grasped the truth about my life. What constituted a foundation of truth? Well my parents had very strong views about what was right and what was wrong. They seemed to have worked out a good foundation for living. I could easily follow their lead, and build up my own understanding of the world.

As I built up information about the world around me, I wanted to know if there was a god, and whether I should be trying to live for an after-life in heaven? That was one of the big messages that I had consistently heard. I wanted to know the truth about the world around me. Is the world around me a stage that is for the benefit of one or more overlooking gods? Am I here just to be an entertainment for a god or several gods?

I started my search with several metaphysical starting points: 1) I always felt that the ‘truth’ about the world we live in is going to be everywhere, not just in some special places. 2) Every person ultimately has a similar value, or rather, that nobody is more important than somebody else. In fact, I believe that ultimately, every living thing has a similar value. I also started with an understanding of the Christian religion. I had gone to ‘Sunday School’ as a youngster of 4 or 5, and had attended church services on many occasions. I knew that the story of Jesus and God was the story that most adults that I knew believed was the truth behind our existence. Several concepts sounded special to me – concepts such as some of the ‘10 commandments’: That one shouldn’t steal from others; That one shouldn’t kill others. That one shouldn’t bear false witness against other people. These concepts felt part of a system for living harmoniously amongst other people. They suggest that every person is important, and that we need to be tolerant of others who may have different views or pursuits. There were many other things that suggested other important or interesting messages.

But how does one know what is truly important or real? How can one be sure of anything? How does one make sense of being alive? I felt that I needed to keep some questions open, and build up more genuine experience of the world around me. I know that as I went through school, I enjoyed the understanding I got from mathematics and science. With mathematics and science were concepts that could be shown to be reproducible by just about anybody and most concepts were based on rigorous forms of “logic”, or “reasoning”.

I increasingly found that I could understand very complex phenomena occurring in the world around me from an understanding of science. And I found that I could use my understanding of the way the world works in making things for myself, such as electrical circuits, in building and ‘flying’ model aircraft, and in building lots of things. I did Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics in my senior school years, and enjoyed the concepts and stories of science and technology from those subjects. I eventually became somewhat sceptical of the Christian religion, and of all other religions that I knew about.

I know that at that time, I was observing the events around me (happening within my family life, and in the greater world of society, reported by the media). I asked questions to myself about why the things happened as they did. I remember asking from the point of view of the Christian religion, and also from an understanding of science. I found myself rejecting the Christian religion. It just didn’t seem to fit my observations of the way the world worked. The understanding I had gained through science did fit my observations, and gave me a greater appreciation of the world.

I have observed that throughout much of my society, there is a lot of deception projected by a lot of people. Many people are trying to get an advantage over others by saying things that are exaggerated, twisted, or just lies. They seem to think that if you say something is good, and say it often enough, that other people will accept that statement as a fact. Much advertising is based on such an approach. However, things look very different if you don’t just accept what other people say but take note of what they actually do. I have come to realise that someone’s true beliefs will underpin everything that they do.

If someone truly believes in an omnipresent god that knows everything about their actions, why would they even think of stealing something and think they could get away with it (because no one was watching?)? Yet, I’ve seen many people operate in these deceptive ways. What they say and how they actually behave are very different. Have many people truly thought about the consequences of living in a world under the fatherly gaze of a Human-like god with the power to change anything they feel like doing, or feel necessary (answering the prayers of their devoted)? If you want to entertain such a view of the world, have you thought that such a view of the world means that your life is only an entertainment for some god. Your personal desires should only be subservient to the desires of your god. Your personal views really don’t have meaning. Such a view removes any real responsibility for people managing their lives, or managing the things they find around them. There is no real need to consider the wider understanding of life on this planet. It is an immature view of the world. It is a view that just doesn’t stand up to even the most basic observations. As an example, why have there been so many infant deaths? How can some people think that God will stop the clouds from raining when they are out riding on their bike without their wet-weather gear, when thousands of children starve to death in Africa? These people think their inconvenience is vastly more important to God than the life and death concerns of thousands of other people. This is amazingly blind egoism!

Through science, I have gained a good understanding of the world we live in, based on testable evidence. With science, I wasn’t told that I was to just believe its concepts and understanding, without being sceptical. Science encourages people to be sceptical, to challenge the ideas being proposed, so that theories can be refined and move towards the truth about ourselves, and the truth behind the true workings of the world in which we live. All religions say that they are the truth, and that to follow that religion properly, you have to believe that religion is the truth. That is just a ‘circular argument’. With genuine science, I can test the proposed theories and the evidence behind the theories.

Through science, I can understand that we (humans) are an advanced type of animal, but part of the animal kingdom. I have come across many people who believe that humans are not animals. Such a view was interesting, because I could see that we/humans clearly moved and ate and reproduced in very similar ways to other animals. I could see a resemblance in our body structures (skeleton, internal organs, muscles, circulation system, respiratory system, etc.) to those of other animals, such as monkeys, dogs, frogs, etc. I understood those things because of the information and concepts provided by science that I could understand. I also understood that my body was made up from billions of cells, and that each cell was a complex biological structure. I understood that my body was an extremely complex and amazing structure.

I also understood, through science, that animals needed to live alongside plants; that plants use sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to synthesize most of their food (photosynthesis), with oxygen being given off as a waste product; and many animals such as ourselves needed oxygen, and ate plants and other animals for nourishment. It turns out to be an amazingly symbiotic relationship, with little waste, and all powered by the sun.

I also understood through science that we live on a [slightly-squashed] spherical planet that goes around a star (that we call “the sun”), which is just one star from a huge universe of billions and billions of stars.

And I understood from science that we and everything else that is ‘material’ are made up of atoms, and that atoms are made up from 3 types of ‘sub-particles’ (electrons, protons and neutrons). There are many types of atoms, but they are all made up of the three types of sub-particles mentioned earlier.

These understandings alone give a good sense of what we are and the nature of the universe in which we live. In fact, science has provided an excellent understanding of the world and ourselves. It is amazing to consider the amount of knowledge that we have gained about so many things (large and small). From our restricted vantage point of seeing the world from standing on the ground, we have been able to work out that we live on a ‘spherical’ planet that is spinning on a titled axis (in relation to our orbit plane around the sun), giving us night and day, as well as changing seasons. We have seen that we are made up of cells, and that we are part of the animal kingdom. Through science, we can see that life developed on our planet over a time-span of about 4 billion years, from ‘simple’ life structures through to extremely complex structures as a result of reproduction and evolution.

All of these understandings haven’t come easily or cheaply. Most of these understandings were originally strongly opposed (by religions), and usually involved remarkable stories of courage and endeavour. We have the collective benefit of all of the work of the people who felt moved to try to discover some of the true facts about the world we live in.

Some of these stories, and I think mostly the important stories, can be read about in the excellent book, “Cosmos”, by Carl Sagan (originally published in 1980). Having been written in 1979, I was curious to read the book from the point of view of seeing how outdated some of the information may be. I found the book to be very well written, careful in its presentation of known facts as opposed to presenting theories or possibilities, and extremely powerful. I found the book to be entirely relevant, and up-to-date in the important ideas presented. The collections of stories about discovering the big pictures about our world were inspiring and thoughtfully written.

I now know that it is very hard to go against learning that you valued highly as a child, such as religion and its importance to one’s understanding of one’s life. I remember though, that once I did put religion to one side, and considered life’s important questions without religion, that things looked so much clearer and simpler. And I liked the feeling that I had taken control of my life, and that other people or ‘supernatural beings’ did not have more control of my life than I had.

We live at a time which has gained enough solid knowledge, through scientific investigation about the world in which we live, to be certain about the nature of the world we live in. The question now is ‘are you willing to accept some basic truths about life and the world we live in, or do you choose to live in a fantasy world’?

I choose the truths that have been discovered through rigorous scientific investigations.

There have been many adults who have told me, or supported, a consistent story that the truth behind all life and the world is in the form of an omnipresent ‘father-figure’ type god that is capable of anything, and that watches over everything. I do not believe such stories. Such stories are not consistent with what I have seen about life. Such stories seem to be there to allow some privileged people to feel privileged. Such stories don’t take in the lives of all people, or all living things.

Really, the only true god that may be considered, is the “laws of the universe”. The “laws of the universe” determine how everything that exists (including all matter) reacts throughout the whole universe, in terms of gravity, collisions, movement through space, time, etc. However, the “laws of the universe” do not need you to pray to them, or worship them. Your prayers can’t change them. The “laws of the universe” are just there, everywhere, acting on everything in the universe in every instant of time without favour, without feeling. Life needs to survive within “the laws of the universe”, and it does!

View of the Mainland from Kangaroo Island. 21 cm x 29.5 cm, black biro on cartridge paper.
Main theme: Interesting arrangements of form in the landscape.
Date produced: March 1999.