> On Aug 6, 10:07 pm, turtoni fastmail.net> wrote:
>

>>http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/articles/dawkins.html

>

>> It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity
>> posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I
>> think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
>> comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
>> Faith, being belief that isn't based on evidence, is the principal
>> vice of any religion. And who, looking at Northern Ireland or the
>> Middle East, can be confident that the brain virus of faith is not
>> exceedingly dangerous? One of the stories told to the young Muslim
>> suicide bombers is that martyrdom is the quickest way to heaven - and
>> not just heaven but a special part of heaven where they will receive
>> their special reward of 72 virgin brides. It occurs to me that our
>> best hope may be to provide a kind of "spiritual arms control": send
>> in specially trained theologians to deescalate the going rate in
>> virgins.
>> Given the dangers of faith - and considering the accomplishments of
>> reason and observation in the activity called science - I find it
>> ironic that, whenever I lecture publicly, there always seems to be
>> someone who comes forward and says, "Of course, your science is just a
>> religion like ours. Fundamentally, science just comes down to faith,
>> doesn't it?"
>> Well, science is not religion and it doesn't just come down to faith.
>> Although it has many of religion's virtues, it has none of its vices.
>> Science is based upon verifiable evidence. Religious faith not only
>> lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy,
>> shouted from the rooftops. Why else would Christians wax critical of
>> doubting Thomas? The other apostles are held up to us as exemplars of
>> virtue because faith was enough for them. Doubting Thomas, on the
>> other hand, required evidence. Perhaps he should be the patron saint
>> of scientists.
>> One reason I receive the comment about science being a religion is
>> because I believe in the fact of evolution. I even believe in it with
>> passionate conviction. To some, this may superficially look like
>> faith. But the evidence that makes me believe in evolution is not only
>> overwhelmingly strong; it is freely available to anyone who takes the
>> trouble to read up on it. Anyone can study the same evidence that I
>> have and presumably come to the same conclusion. But if you have a
>> belief that is based solely on faith, I can't examine your reasons.
>> You can retreat behind the private wall of faith where I can't reach
>> you.
>> Now in practice, of course, individual scientists do sometimes slip
>> back into the vice of faith, and a few may believe so single-mindedly
>> in a favorite theory that they occasionally falsify evidence. However,
>> the fact that this sometimes happens doesn't alter the principle that,
>> when they do so, they do it with shame and not with pride. The method
>> of science is so designed that it usually finds them out in the end.
>> Science is actually one of the most moral, one of the most honest
>> disciplines around - because science would completely collapse if it
>> weren't for a scrupulous adherence to honesty in the reporting of
>> evidence. (As James Randi has pointed out, this is one reason why
>> scientists are so often fooled by paranormal tricksters and why the
>> debunking role is better played by professional conjurors; scientists
>> just don't anticipate deliberate dishonesty as well.) There are other
>> professions (no need to mention lawyers specifically) in which
>> falsifying evidence or at least twisting it is precisely what people
>> are paid for and get brownie points for doing.
>> Science, then, is free of the main vice of religion, which is faith.
>> But, as I pointed out, science does have some of religion's virtues.
>> Religion may aspire to provide its followers with various benefits -
>> among them explanation, consolation, and uplift. Science, too, has
>> something to offer in these areas.
>> Humans have a great hunger for explanation. It may be one of the main
>> reasons why humanity so universally has religion, since religions do
>> aspire to provide explanations. We come to our individual
>> consciousness in a mysterious universe and long to understand it. Most
>> religions offer a cosmology and a biology, a theory of life, a theory
>> of origins, and reasons for existence. In doing so, they demonstrate
>> that religion is, in a sense, science; it's just bad science. Don't
>> fall for the argument that religion and science operate on separate
>> dimensions and are concerned with quite separate sorts of questions.
>> Religions have historically always attempted to answer the questions
>> that properly belong to science. Thus religions should not be allowed
>> now to retreat away from the ground upon which they have traditionally
>> attempted to fight. They do offer both a cosmology and a biology;
>> however, in both cases it is false.
>> Consolation is harder for science to provide. Unlike religion, science
>> cannot offer the bereaved a glorious reunion with their loved ones in
>> the hereafter. Those wronged on this earth cannot, on a scientific
>> view, anticipate a sweet comeuppance for their tormentors in a life to
>> come. It could be argued that, if the idea of an afterlife is an
>> illusion (as I believe it is), the consolation it offers is hollow.
>> But that's not necessarily so; a false belief can be just as
>> comforting as a true one, provided the believer never discovers its
>> falsity. But if consolation comes that cheap, science can weigh in
>> with other cheap palliatives, such as pain-killing drugs, whose
>> comfort may or may not be illusory, but they do work.
>> Uplift, however, is where science really comes into its own. All the
>> great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the
>> wonder and beauty of creation. And it's exactly this feeling of spine-
>> shivering, breath-catching awe - almost worship - this flooding of the
>> chest with ecstatic wonder, that modern science can provide. And it
>> does so beyond the wildest dreams of saints and mystics. The fact that
>> the supernatural has no place in our explanations, in our
>> understanding of so much about the universe and life, doesn't diminish
>> the awe. Quite the contrary. The merest glance through a microscope at
>> the brain of an ant or through a telescope at a long-ago galaxy of a
>> billion worlds is enough to render poky and parochial the very psalms
>> of praise.
>> Now, as I say, when it is put to me that science or some particular
>> part of science, like evolutionary theory, is just a religion like any
>> other, I usually deny it with indignation. But I've begun to wonder
>> whether perhaps that's the wrong tactic. Perhaps the right tactic is
>> to accept the charge gratefully and demand equal time for science in
>> religious education classes. And the more I think about it, the more I
>> realize that an excellent case could be made for this. So I want to
>> talk a little bit about religious education and the place that science
>> might play in it.
>> I do feel very strongly about the way children are brought up. I'm not
>> entirely familiar with the way things are in the United States, and
>> what I say may have more relevance to the United Kingdom, where there
>> is state-obliged, legally-enforced religious instruction for all
>> children. That's unconstitutional in the United States, but I presume
>> that children are nevertheless given religious instruction in whatever
>> particular religion their parents deem suitable.
>> Which brings me to my point about mental child abuse. In a 1995 issue
>> of the Independent, one of London's leading newspapers, there was a
>> photograph of a rather sweet and touching scene. It was Christmas
>> time, and the picture showed three children dressed up as the three
>> wise men for a nativity play. The accompanying story described one
>> child as a Muslim, one as a Hindu, and one as a Christian. The
>> supposedly sweet and touching point of the story was that they were
>> all taking part in this Nativity play.
>> What is not sweet and touching is that these children were all four
>> years old. How can you possibly describe a child of four as a Muslim
>> or a Christian or a Hindu or a Jew? Would you talk about a four-year-
>> old economic monetarist? Would you talk about a four-year-old neo-
>> isolationist or a four-year-old liberal Republican? There are opinions
>> about the cosmos and the world that children, once grown, will
>> presumably be in a position to evaluate for themselves. Religion is
>> the one field in our culture about which it is absolutely accepted,
>> without question - without even noticing how bizarre it is - that
>> parents have a total and absolute say in what their children are going
>> to be, how their children are going to be raised, what opinions their
>> children are going to have about the cosmos, about life, about
>> existence. Do you see what I mean about mental child abuse?
>> Looking now at the various things that religious education might be
>> expected to accomplish, one of its aims could be to encourage children
>> to reflect upon the deep questions of existence, to invite them to
>> rise above the humdrum preoccupations of ordinary life and think sub
>> specie aeternitatis.
>> Science can offer a vision of life and the universe which, as I've
>> already remarked, for humbling poetic inspiration far outclasses any
>> of the mutually contradictory faiths and disappointingly recent
>> traditions of the world's religions.
>> For example, how could children in religious education classes fail to
>> be inspired if we could get across to them some inkling of the age of
>> the universe? Suppose that, at the moment of Christ's death, the news
>> of it had started traveling at the maximum possible speed around the
>> universe outwards from the earth. How far would the terrible tidings
>> have traveled by now? Following the theory of special relativity, the
>> answer is that the news could not, under any circumstances whatever,
>> have reached more that one-fiftieth of the way across one galaxy - not
>> one- thousandth of the way to our nearest neighboring galaxy in the
>> 100-million-galaxy-strong universe. The universe at large couldn't
>> possibly be anything other than indifferent to Christ, his birth, his
>> passion, and his death. Even such momentous news as the origin of life
>> on Earth could have traveled only across our little local cluster of
>> galaxies. Yet so ancient was that event on our earthly time-scale
>> that, if you span its age with your open arms, the whole of human
>> history, the whole of human culture, would fall in the dust from your
>> fingertip at a single stroke of a nail file.
>> The argument from design, an important part of the history of
>> religion, wouldn't be ignored in my religious education classes,
>> needless to say. The children would look at the spellbinding wonders
>> of the living kingdoms and would consider Darwinism alongside the
>> creationist alternatives and make up their own minds. I think the
>> children would have no difficulty in making up their minds the right
>> way if presented with the evidence. What worries me is not the
>> question of equal time but that, as far as I can see, children in the
>> United Kingdom and the United States are essentially given no time
>> with evolution yet are taught creationism (whether at school, in
>> church, or at home).
>> It would also be interesting to teach more than one theory of
>> creation. The dominant one in this culture happens to be the Jewish
>> creation myth, which is taken over from the Babylonian creation myth.
>> There are, of course, lots and lots of others, and perhaps they should
>> all be given equal time (except that wouldn't leave much time for
>> studying anything else). I understand that there are Hindus who
>> believe that the world was created in a cosmic butter churn and
>> Nigerian peoples who believe that the world was created by God from
>> the excrement of ants. Surely these stories have as much right to
>> equal time as the Judeo-Christian myth of Adam and Eve.
>> So much for Genesis; now let's move on to the prophets. Halley's Comet
>> will return without fail in the year 2062. Biblical or Delphic
>> prophecies don't begin to aspire to such accuracy; astrologers and
>> Nostradamians dare not commit themselves to factual prognostications
>> but, rather, disguise their charlatanry in a smokescreen of vagueness.
>> When comets have appeared in the past, they've often been taken as
>> portents of disaster. Astrology has played an important part in
>> various religious traditions, including Hinduism. The three wise men I
>> mentioned earlier were said to have been led to the cradle of Jesus by
>> a star. We might ask the children by what physical route do they
>> imagine the alleged stellar influence on human affairs could travel.
>> Incidentally, there was a shocking program on the BBC radio around
>> Christmas 1995 featuring an astronomer, a bishop, and a journalist who
>> were sent off on an assignment to retrace the steps of the three wise
>> men. Well, you could understand the participation of the bishop and
>> the journalist (who happened to be a religious writer), but the
>> astronomer was a supposedly respectable astronomy writer, and yet she
>> went along with this! All along the route, she talked about the
>> portents of when Saturn and Jupiter were in the ascendant up Uranus or
>> whatever it was. She doesn't actually believe in astrology, but one of
>> the problems is that our culture has been taught to become tolerant of
>> it, vaguely amused by it - so much so that even scientific people who
>> don't believe in astrology sort of think it's a bit of harmless fun. I
>> take astrology very seriously indeed: I think it's deeply pernicious
>> because it undermines rationality, and I should like to see campaigns
>> against it.
>> When the religious education class turns to ethics, I don't think
>> science actually has a lot to say, and I would replace it with
>> rational moral philosophy. Do the children think there are absolute
>> standards of right and wrong? And if so, where do they come from? Can
>> you make up good working principles of right and wrong, like "do as
>> you would be done by" and "the greatest good for the greatest
>> number" (whatever that is supposed to mean)? It's a rewarding
>> question, whatever your personal morality, to ask as an evolutionist
>> where morals come from; by what route has the human brain gained its
>> tendency to have ethics and morals, a feeling of right and wrong?
>> Should we value human life above all other life? Is there a rigid wall
>> to be built around the species Homo sapiens, or should we talk about
>> whether there are other species which are entitled to our humanistic
>> sympathies? Should we, for example, follow the right-to-life lobby,
>> which is wholly preoccupied with human life, and value the life of a
>> human fetus with the faculties of a worm over the life of a thinking
>> and feeling chimpanzee? What is the basis of this fence that we erect
>> around Homo sapiens - even around a small piece of fetal tissue? (Not
>> a very sound evolutionary idea when you think about it.) When, in our
>> evolutionary descent from our common ancestor with chimpanzees, did
>> the fence suddenly rear itself up?
>> Well, moving on, then, from morals to last things, to eschatology, we
>> know from the second law of thermodynamics that all complexity, all
>> life, all laughter, all sorrow, is hell bent on leveling itself out
>> into cold nothingness in the end. They - and we - can never be more
>> then temporary, local buckings of the great universal slide into the
>> abyss of uniformity.
>> We know that the universe is expanding and will probably expand
>> forever, although it's possible it may contract again. We know that,
>> whatever happens to the universe, the sun will engulf the earth in
>> about 60 million centuries from now.
>> Time itself began at a certain moment, and time may end at a certain
>> moment - or it may not. Time may come locally to an end in miniature
>> crunches called black holes. The laws of the universe seem to be true
>> all over the universe. Why is this? Might the laws change in these
>> crunches? To be really speculative, time could begin again with new
>> laws of physics, new physical constants. And it has even been
>> suggested that there could be many universes, each one isolated so
>> completely that, for it, the others don't exist. Then again, there
>> might be a Darwinian selection among universes.
>> So science could give a good account of itself in religious education.
>> But it wouldn't be enough. I believe that some familiarity with the
>> King James version of the Bible is important for anyone wanting to
>> understand the allusions that appear in English literature. Together
>> with the Book of Common Prayer, the Bible gets 58 pages in the Oxford
>> Dictionary of Quotations. Only Shakespeare has more. I do think that
>> not having any kind of biblical education is unfortunate if children
>> want to read English literature and understand the provenance of
>> phrases like "through a glass darkly," "all flesh is as grass," "the
>> race is not to the swift," "crying in the wilderness," "reaping the
>> whirlwind," "amid the alien corn," "Eyeless in Gaza," "Job's
>> comforters," and "the widow's mite."
>> I want to return now to the charge that science is just a faith. The
>> more extreme version of that charge - and one that I often encounter
>> as both a scientist and a rationalist - is an accusation of zealotry
>> and bigotry in scientists themselves as great as that found in
>> religious people. Sometimes there may be a little bit of justice in
>> this accusation; but as zealous bigots, we scientists are mere
>> amateurs at the game. We're content to argue with those who disagree
>> with us. We don't kill them.
>> But I would want to deny even the lesser charge of purely verbal
>> zealotry. There is a very, very important difference between feeling
>> strongly, even passionately, about something because we have thought
>> about and examined the evidence for it on the one hand, and feeling
>> strongly about something because it has been internally revealed to
>> us, or internally revealed to somebody else in history and
>> subsequently hallowed by tradition. There's all the difference in the
>> world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting
>> evidence and logic and a belief that is supported by nothing more than
>> tradition, authority, or revelation.

>
> In respect to astrology, i've imagined there might be some basis to
> the idea that the gravity may have some ("significant") influence on
> the *budding* brain channels/persona.