Metropolis Organism

  Metropolis Organism blog post #24,  The Smarter bet - Atheists or Believers? Rethinking Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, and the quiet faith behind scientific certainty I recently remembered a writer who once felt like an intellectual companion to me: Richard Dawkins. His brilliant book The Selfish Gene profoundly shaped my thinking. Dawkins is a rigorous scientist, an elegant writer—and an unapologetic atheist. His atheism reached its full volume in The God Delusion , where he argues, with great precision and even greater confidence, that belief in God is irrational. Now, I’m in no position to challenge Dawkins’ intelligence. But I will anyway. Because here’s the strange thing: Dawkins and I agree that there is no scientific or logical evidence that a God exists. That much is obvious—to him and to me. So why does he (and why do we atheists generally) perform intellectual backflips to prove an already obvious point? Why do we treat our conclusion—“there is no evidence for...

 Metropolis Organism, blog post #23, The Faith of the Rational mind The Faith of the Rational Mind Even science requires belief — just of a different kind. Opening We moderns like to think of ourselves as enlightened. We put our trust in science, not scripture. We believe in facts, not faith. Yet that very confidence in science may itself be a kind of faith — one that hides behind reason, dressed in the language of logic and evidence. 1. The Comfortable Divide It’s comforting to draw a clean line between religion and science. Religion, we say, is about belief in things unseen — heaven, souls, miracles. Science, in contrast, is about things that can be tested, measured, and proven. But the truth is messier. Science is not a fixed set of facts; it’s a process — a way of asking questions, forming models, and updating our understanding based on evidence. That process is reliable, yes, but it is also trusted . And trust, even in its most rational form, is another word for faith. 2....

  What it’s like to see something nobody else sees On discovering physics, losing my carelessness, and living with ideas that feel obvious to me and invisible to everyone else. When I was in twelfth grade I discovered physics. I wasn’t supposed to do well at it — I was the uncouth kid, the one who rattled the desks and laughed at the teacher’s jokes. But physics hooked me with a ferocity I hadn’t known I was capable of. I understood it easily, almost instinctively. Mathematics became a kind of language I could use to open the machinery of the world. I was overjoyed. For a while I felt as if I ruled the world: what I saw, literally, no one else saw. To everyone else it was another subject to struggle with. To me it was the key. Then I discovered the other side of physics — the deterministic side. The joy evaporated. If the universe obeyed universal laws, then where was my will? Had I been in control, or had I merely been carried along like a leaf in a current I could now describe? T...

 

  Metropolis Organism: blog post #20,  Sweet Caress AsS short film about the unseen support of civilization We move through our days unaware of the invisible body that sustains us. Like air — always present, always necessary — civilization surrounds us, carries us, and makes life possible. Yet we rarely notice it. Sweet Caress is a four-minute film that invites you to pause and see what usually goes unseen. ▶ Watch Sweet Caress on Vimeo The film carries a subtle reminder: we are not as independent as we imagine. Our lives are woven into a larger organism. Just as our cells live and work within the body, so we live and work within civilization. We give, we receive, and we depend on one another in ways we seldom acknowledge. Perhaps the next time you step outside, you’ll notice the quiet embrace of all that supports you. This article resonates with themes explored in   The Metropolis Organism   — a video series examining cities as literal biological systems, where h...

Do the Houses Speak? A four-minute film that lets a town whisper its truth Do you ever wonder what the houses in your town say at night when you are asleep? Do you ever wonder if they talk about you—what they whisper about the lives lived inside them? For a moment, imagine it. The porches, the windows, the painted trim. Grateful for the attention, the care, the love. And yet—aware that sooner or later, you will be gone. Another family will move in. Life will continue, but without you. This is the conceit of Nyack , a four-minute short film that is as beautiful as it is unsettling. It looks like a sentimental portrait of a town. But listen closely: the voice you hear is not a narrator’s. It belongs to the houses themselves. They thank us. They remember us. And they remind us of something we try not to face: that we are temporary, and they endure. Watch the Film Nyack (short documentary) Watch on Vimeo A Quiet Reminder Nyack is not a film about architecture, or even about a town. It’s a...