Happy Maybe Day, probably

Happy "Maybe Day" -- a day in honour of the writer Robert Anton Wilson . "My goal," said Wilson, "is to try to get people into a state of generalised agnosticism, not about God alone but agnosticism about everything." So Maybe Day is a day to consider anything and everything with a certain degree of uncertainty.  (For some reason I'm happy that it is celebrated on the 23rd, as 23 is probably a prime number. I'm reasonably sure I like primes.)

In the interest of slewing sacred cows (moo!), here's some things I'm not so sure about:

The Buddha Gautama Siddharta was probably not a real person; his teachings could be an amalgam of previous philosophies and ideas.

Not that it matters; if a philosophy rings true, is it better that it's come from a single source, or accreted from years of thinking and experimental philosophy? I'd argue that for Buddhism at least, the existence of a Buddha as a real person in this world/aeon/Universe is probably not a necessity. The same might not hold for other religions: I can remember a Christian priest once telling me that if the resurrection of Iesus Christ didn't actually happen, then whole thing was a sham (I'm paraphrasing) -- and this was his argument for Christianity.

(Thinking about that now, it was probably just an expression of "survive-and-thrive" in the Christianity-meme -- to reject any one part of it, it says, means rejecting everything: a false "all or nothing" dichotomy. Screw that -- we can likely make up our own religion and probably won't go to hell. Since there probably isn't a God, or a Devil, or a Hell. And Islamic Heaven sounds lame, so even if it does exist, it's unlikely I'd want to spend eternity there.)

I've probably had around 30 turns around an enormous atomic fusion reaction we call Sol, riding in relative safety inside the thing biosphere that makes up the living quarters of Starship Earth.

Or maybe I was born yesterday and given false memories. Or one second ago. Or I'm a brain in a vat. Or a simulation on a computer. There might not be any way I can tell, so I should probably treat all as possible. Seriously -- how would you know if you were the only "real" person in the world? Perhaps your mistaken ego is spinning the illusion of samsara around you like a dream. Perhaps your ego is an illusion too!

Again, does it matter? If I'm in a simulation or illusion, cool, but I haven't yet found a way to switch it off, so I may as well play along until I do.

Someone may have walked on the moon (no, probably not Michael Jackson).

This one is to celebrate the 40-year anniversary of the Apollo-11 mission, when Neil Armstrong (if that IS his real name!) may or may not have stepped onto the moon's surface. If you're near Manchester, check out the Museum Of Science And Industry this week, and say "hi" to Dayna, my big sister (probably) and ever-inspiring fearless warrior-woman.

That's the big stuff, at least. But hey, what do I know -- maybe it's not Maybe Day at all! Look it up yourself, skeptics!

What are you uncertain about today?