Natalie Angier is the Pulitzer-Prize-winning science writer for the New York Times, author of Woman: An Intimate Geography and most recently The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. In a new piece at Edge, she points a finger at the hypocrisy of many scientists who wail and gnash their teeth at superstitious craziness like creationism or astrology, but invent elaborate rationalizations about non-overlapping magisteria when it comes to things like the virgin birth or life after death. A somewhat lengthy excerpt, as I can’t help myself:
In the course of reporting a book on the scientific canon and pestering hundreds of researchers at the nation’s great universities about what they see as the essential vitamins and minerals of literacy in their particular disciplines, I have been hammered into a kind of twinkle-eyed cartoon coma by one recurring message. Whether they are biologists, geologists, physicists, chemists, astronomers, or engineers, virtually all my sources topped their list of what they wish people understood about science with a plug for Darwin’s dandy idea. Would you please tell the public, they implored, that evolution is for real? Would you please explain that the evidence for it is overwhelming and that an appreciation of evolution serves as the bedrock of our understanding of all life on this planet? …
Scientists think this is terrible—the public’s bizarre underappreciation of one of science’s great and unshakable discoveries, how we and all we see came to be—and they’re right. Yet I can’t help feeling tetchy about the limits most of them put on their complaints. You see, they want to augment this particular figure—the number of people who believe in evolution—without bothering to confront a few other salient statistics that pollsters have revealed about America’s religious cosmogony. Few scientists, for example, worry about the 77 percent of Americans who insist that Jesus was born to a virgin, an act of parthenogenesis that defies everything we know about mammalian genetics and reproduction. Nor do the researchers wring their hands over the 80 percent who believe in the resurrection of Jesus, the laws of thermodynamics be damned. …
So, on the issue of mainstream monotheistic religions and the irrationality behind many of religion’s core tenets, scientists often set aside their skewers, their snark, and their impatient demand for proof, and instead don the calming cardigan of a a kiddie-show host on public television. They reassure the public that religion and science are not at odds with one another, but rather that they represent separate “magisteria,” in the words of the formerly alive and even more formerly scrappy Stephen Jay Gould. Nobody is going to ask people to give up their faith, their belief in an everlasting soul accompanied by an immortal memory of every soccer game their kids won, every moment they spent playing fetch with the dog. Nobody is going to mock you for your religious beliefs. Well, we might if you base your life decisions on the advice of a Ouija board; but if you want to believe that someday you’ll be seated at a celestial banquet with your long-dead father to your right and Jane Austen to your left-and that she’ll want to talk to you for another hundred million years or more—that’s your private reliquary, and we’re not here to jimmy the lock.
Consider the very different treatments accorded two questions presented to Cornell University’s “Ask an Astronomer” Web site. To the query, “Do most astronomers believe in God, based on the available evidence?” the astronomer Dave Rothstein replies that, in his opinion, “modern science leaves plenty of room for the existence of God . . . places where people who do believe in God can fit their beliefs in the scientific framework without creating any contradictions.” He cites the Big Bang as offering solace to those who want to believe in a Genesis equivalent and the probabilistic realms of quantum mechanics as raising the possibility of “God intervening every time a measurement occurs” [arrrgh! — ed.] before concluding that, ultimately, science can never prove or disprove the existence of a god, and religious belief doesn’t—and shouldn’t—”have anything to do with scientific reasoning.”
How much less velveteen is the response to the reader asking whether astronomers believe in astrology. “No, astronomers do not believe in astrology,” snarls Dave Kornreich. “It is considered to be a ludicrous scam. There is no evidence that it works, and plenty of evidence to the contrary.” Dr. Kornreich ends his dismissal with the assertion that in science “one does not need a reason not to believe in something.” Skepticism is “the default position” and “one requires proof if one is to be convinced of something’s existence.”
Read the whole thing. Scientists who do try to point out that walking on water isn’t consistent with the laws of physics, and that there’s no reason to believe in an afterlife, etc., are often told that this is a bad strategic move — we’ll never win over the average person on the street to the cause of science and rationality if we tell them that it conflicts with their religion. Which is a legitimate way to think, if you’re a politician or a marketing firm. But as scientists, our first duty should be to tell the truth. The laws of physics and biology tell us something about how the world works, and there is no room in there for raising the dead and turning water into wine. In the long run, being honest with ourselves and with the public is always the best strategy.
Update: In the Science Times, George Johnson reports on a conference in which scientists debated how to interact with religion. This was a non-Templeton affair, and most of the participants seemed to be somewhat anti-religion. Videos of the talks should soon be available at The Science Network.
In #75, just wanted to be clear that I didn’t want to single out Christianity; I am know recruitment efforts in other religions are very similar.
There are no atheists in wormholes.
Alan B.,
* As long as religion makes claims about the material world, it will necessarily conflict with the educational mission of science. So some stepping of toes is unavoidable, I fear. To the extent it doesn’t, religion can make for poetic wisdom; perhaps militant atheism dimisses this too readily.
* Claiming that people won’t be able to get out of bed in the morning without religion, you are making the Grand Inquisitor‘s argument …
Sourav,
I never said that religion was necessary in order to cope with the world. I personally use denial and alcohol as my primary means of dealing with reality. Other people, however, prefer different strategies.
Sourav or anyone,
I just got done reading a book called “Equality by Default” which extends one of the themes suggested by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic work “Democracy in America.” The theme is the idea that no society can exist unless there is some higher good that they believe in in some dogmatic way.
Tocqueville does not assert this is religion’s job. His book, being on democracy, points to the fact that one reason America is successful is they miraculously drafted a constitution and other documents based on dogmatic principles which they all look to as a higher good. Things like the idea that that man has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Things like man should have a freedom to speak his mind or recently, that man should not be discriminated by the color of their skin.
The reason I claim these are dogmatic beliefs is, as far as I know, there is no way to test whether man has the right to pursue happiness empirically. Or to test whether racism is bad or good or whether even things like murder are right or wrong.
This is why the book is called “Equality by Default.” If you believe dogmatic beliefs are a waist of time then you by default must say a racist is no better or worse than a non-racist or people who enjoy being flat out mean to people are no better or worse than people who try to be nice, etc… You must make them all equal by default.
I do not claim this is religion’s place either. I would however like to know anyone’s thoughts on the matter. How do we as a society choose what of the above types of things are good and bad? What higher good should we as a society look to to hold the society together in the way Tocqueville claims it does. How do we come to the conclusion what is good or what is not good? If good and evil don’t exist, what to we do about that? Do we just guess when we vote on laws that concern ethics like civil rights bills, or what scientific or other way do we arrive at the correct answer? Like I said, I would like to know anyone’s thoughts on the matter.
In this country of ours we have looked to many dogmatic “higher good” beliefs that do hold society together. They were not directly derived from religion. How in the future should we formulate which things our country should dogmatically believe in?
Re – Equality by Default – science is not the only means of knowledge, it is a specific mode of knowledge. If you think empirical testing is required for knowledge, then please discard all of history. E.g., the idea of freedom of religion and the First Amendment came out of the historical experience that the lack of these lead to strife, and the idea that perhaps these would mitigate strife, and not out of testing in controlled set-ups. Certainly the quality of knowledge is different, and there is a higher probability of error.
We derive our knowledge of good and bad with reason, tradition (which includes history), and the practices of those whom we consider good. As our knowledge grows, we need to keep re-evaluating good and bad. New knowledge often makes certain customs obsolete, but we might stick to that anyway in defiance of reason. Do that too often and our society becomes stagnant and sick. But if one discards tradition altogether, it leads to questions like “why is racism bad?”, which one cannot answer.
Joseph writes “How in the future should we formulate which things our country should dogmatically believe in?”
I think one can formulate all sorts of nice things; “all men are created equal” was formulated a long time before it became applied. My guess is what the country will believe in at anytime will depend on how hard people who believe in whatever it is they believe in fight, economy, and technology.
Arun writes “If you think empirical testing is required for knowledge, then please discard all of history. E.g., the idea of freedom of religion and the First Amendment came out of the historical experience that the lack of these lead to strife,…”
But, “historical experience” is a sort of empirical knowledge; its not the sort of empirical knowledge that comes from experiments as in physics because its circumstantial but its the best we can go on.
#82 line 6 should read “whatever it is they already believe in”
“God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist.” – Mahatma Gandhi
(source of quote available on
http://www.mkgandhi.org/epigrams/a.htm )
” The laws of physics and biology tell us something about how the world works, and there is no room in there for raising the dead and turning water into wine.”
It seems to me that there is a significant difference between things like walking on water or turning water into wine, and things like creationism and astrology.
Walking on water and similar miracles are one-time, atomic, unique events, with no long-term effects. There are no predictions you can make from them, no objective artifacts we would see before or afterward which would act as evidence for or against such events having actually taken place. There is nothing we can point to and say “if water was turned to wine two thousand years ago, then we would expect to see a thin layer of grape flavonoids in sediments around the world, which we could call the BC/AD boundary”. There really are no predictions that can be made from such ephemeral events.
If one takes the existence of an involved omnipotent deity as a given, one can’t really say that the various physical laws known to science were not violated in those specific instances. After all, such events by definition violate the normal workings of the universe: that’s why they’re called miracles.
Simply put, physics alone is insufficient to deny anomalous unique events of the distant past if they are supposedly the work of an entity that is by definition not constrained by physics.
Scientists, of course, could take a position on the non-existence of that physics-flouting deity, in which case the miracles would not have been able to take place. Many may not wish to do that, either because of their personal religious beliefs, or because they have not seen evidence for or against the existence of God.
Anyway, as I said, things like Creationism and Astrology are very different.
Creationism is not such a tidy package, an ephemeral atomic event with no knock-on effects. It has to be reconciled with the evidence we see in the world and universe around us, and thus is subject to being disproven by science.
One-off miracles don’t bear this burden, thus are far easier to at least tolerate in a hazy “maybe it happened, if God exists, etc” fashion.
Astrology is another long-term, widely influential alleged phenomenon which is subject to scientific evaluation and debunking. In addition to the lack of scientific explanation, Astrology does make predictions, which can be tested.
Sean wrote: “For scientists who think we should stay away from commenting on astrology or creationism or psychic communication with the dead for fear of offending people’s comforting-but-harmless beliefs, taking a similar attitude toward religion would be perfectly consistent. It’s the different standards that seem puzzling.”
But creationism *is* religion. While some creationism activists may have cynical profit-driven motives, or may be mostly motivated by loathing of “LIBERAL SCIENTISTS WHO THINK THEY’RE SMARTER THAN ME”, many no doubt believe in creationism because it is the only scenario that is compatible with their deeply held certainty that the Bible is literally true in its entirety. Debunking creationism, for these people, has to be resisted because they’ve been taught that it all has to be true, or it is all false.*
Yet scientists certainly *do* address creationism, so they *are* addressing religion.
It just doesn’t buy them anything to get combative about things which science can’t address, such as the (non)existence of God, given the lack of blatant evidence in the modern day. And if science can’t prove if there is or isn’t a God, then if there *is* a God, science can’t prove whether or not he was engaged in Earthly affairs in the past, unless, again, he left persistent evidence of clear miracle working. (ie, if he’d created a perfectly straight, foot-wide, twenty-mile high Doric column of ice on the banks of the Jordan which didn’t melt for two thousand years. That’d be pretty good evidence.)
Thus, given the state of the evidence – either there is no God, or there is and he has been quite discreet during recorded history. If there is a discreet God, then there is no good scientific argument against the proposition that he might have violated normal physical laws in a number of ephemeral ways a couple thousand years ago.
Scientists have been on much firmer ground arguing against miracles which are contemporary, or which happened long ago but left alleged artifacts.
I would suggest that scientists would be better off batting down reported “miracles” when they come up, to prevent “miracle creep” and keep miraculous explanations from becoming acceptable in science.
For one thing, this will probably be much less work than batting down creationism and ID, for which well-funded activists are agitating. There really isn’t a well-funded lobby working to fight debunkers of “Virgin Mary” sightings.
Second, some portion of claimed miracles will be by frauds, and debunking such frauds will be seen by many as a social good. Even the religious may appreciate a good logical debunking, for instance if scientists for some reason are asked for an opinion on the many bogus religious artifacts (bones of saints, etc) on EBay.
Finally, in the battle against “miraculous attribution,” you will have great friends among the lawyers and judges, who are no more likely to accept “God did it”.
*(For some reason they treat the Bible like a Jenga tower with Genesis at the bottom and Jesus at the top, and if any part is not 100% true then it takes down everything above it. If Genesis goes, Moses and Jesus come down as well. It’d be much easier if they took the relatively recent and relatively historical Jesus parts as the foundation that gives credibility to the whole, but allowed bits of the Bible to be interpreted more or less literally depending on how old they are and how directly they are connected to the Jesus parts. Then Genesis could be allowed to be metaphorical. But what do I know, I’m a slacker Buddhist.)
It is interesting how for most people here physics and science are synonyms. Physics is *not* science. Physicists are the good old Scholastic Doctors of Philosophy who pretend to read the mind of God and raise the dead from dead since what is time travel but the old religious miracle of raising the dead from the dead. True, Doctors of Philosophy use nowadays their mystical hidden philosophy they call mathematics as the authority to justify their cosmogonic theories but that does not change anything. Cosmogony is still cosmogony whether Doctors use a two thousand year old book or three hundred years old book. PHYSICS = RELIGION.
Alan B.,
Is denial the best strategy, even if life is tough?
And it’s good to examine what about it is tough — whether it’s really survival, or society’s expectations you’re reacting to, or society’s expectations you internalized a long time ago.
***
Joseph,
I’d be careful about attributing any moral nobility to the making of the Constitution, or even the Bill of Rights. In many ways, it was a happy accident based on the collective experience, education, wisdom and circumstances of the delegates. They were tired of getting screwed on taxes by the Crown, they themselves or their recent ancestors were muzzled or persecuted for religious and policy beliefs, and they were afraid of concentration of power (whether in a sovereign, high population density areas, or the masses at large).
That said, the Constitution in a significant way allowed the US to become an economic and cultural powerhouse; but, not everyone thinks that’s a good thing. It’s definitely brought a material prosperity and religious freedom to US citizens, which were the Framers’ stated goals.
***
GP1 wrote:
LOL — and data.
I wonder if CV needs a moderation system, a victim of its own popularity.
Sourav wrote
Sourav,
I don’t understand what your post means. Can you explain? Thanks.
I don’t understand
I’m sure this has been said in one of the 83 comments above (I think it was the point of comment number 2), but it is the sincere belief of religous people that walking on water and turning water to wine is against the laws of physics. It was supernatural, and was done for the very purpose of proving to the whitnessess that Jesus was God himself. They didn’t see him walking on water and say, “well I didn’t think that was possible, but I have studied enough physics yet”. They saw him walking on water and said “that’s impossible, who is this man?”.
There is a difference between argueing over the age of the earth and the virgin birth. There is evidence for the age of the earth that can be seen today. There is evidence for evolution that can be intrepreted today. There is no evidence over whether Mary had sex or not. As far as I can tell, no one has yet built a time machine and snapped a slide show on their camera phone. The only evidence we have is that it is agaist the laws of physics, and then must make the assumption that no event outside the laws of physics (as we understand them) has ever taken place.
To the religous person, that is the point. If it was natural and commen place for virgins to get pregnent, then Jesus birth would have no signifigance.
p.s. Allyson is right, the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea are pretty cool. If you’re going to have some myths, have some myths, man.
Interesting, Sean (and btw mega congrats on your engagement). I feel exactly the opposite. The Cecil B. DeMille miracles leave me cold. It’s the almost mundane sight of Jesus stooping to the dust, spitting in it and applying the mud to the blind man’s eyes that I find compelling. Or turning on his doubters with the words, “Which of these is easier, to say your sins are forgiven…or rise up and walk,” before he grasps the cripple by the hand and pulls him up.
Parting the Red Sea does seem like a huge violation of the laws of nature. Curing a man whose eyes are defective … already in a sense not operating according the laws of nature …seems much more striking.
For what it’s worth.
🙂
The Universe images the trinity. One Universe- three dimensions
Elements- three natural states. solid liquid, gas
Elements break down to protons, neutrons, electrons
Protons and neutrons break down to three sets of quarks
Water on earth naturally occurs as solid, liquid, gas.
To live we need solid (food), liquid (water), and air (gas).
To naturally reproduce we need Mother, father, child.
To solve gravity we misunderstand the fundemental law.
Three actions of one process- Mass decays into the gravitational wave creating the resulting actions of time, space and gravitational wave synchronization.
There is no dark energy or mult. dimensions just a wrinkle in our understanding of the way God wrote the laws starting with “Let there be light”
What law of physics forbids turning water into wine? On the contrary, modern academic physics as taught by Doctors of Philosophy allows turning of water into wine. After all we observe that water turns into wine when mixed with grape juice. What is miraculous is not turning water into wine but turning water into wine instantaneously. Instantaneous action at a distance has been a law of physics for more than three centuries.
Furthermore, turning water into wine can also be achieved by sending the bottle of grape juice into a roundtrip time travel through a standard wormhole in a standard spacetime. When the bottle is back to your overcrowded wedding party you can serve it as wine to the delight of the guests. This is a law of physics. No miracle here. Thousands of Doctors of Philosophy have been publishing physics papers on time travel and wormholes in Peer Reviewed journals for a long time now. You just need to be careful because the time traveling bottle of wine may have been contaminated with a little too much Hawking radiation.
Also, if you are concerned about radiation and other adverse effects of blackhole crossing which may reduce the quality of your grape juice you may try one of the most proved and true theories in physics ever: General Relativity. Just invoke the twin paradox and send two identical bottles bottled at the same time to do the twin paradox thing. While the bottle on earth will remain as grape juice, the other one traveling with the speed of light would become a good aged wine. You can even publish a paper on your twin paradox vintage as yet another proof of General Relativity.
So, no, however you slice it, modern academic physics has no laws forbidding making wine from water instantaneously. On the contrary, if you want to make wine instantaneously you have no choice but use the laws of physics.
What is forbidden, though, is an illiterate peasant who is not a Doctor of Philosophy impinging on the scientific territory of Doctors of Philosophy and claiming to perform miracles that only Doctors of Philosophy are allowed to perform in theory. Jesus has never gotten around to getting his Doctor of Philosophy degree so he has no right to conduct such miracles, ehem, scientific experiments. Jesus actually hated professional Doctors and Priests. This is why he stormed the temple.
You now see why physics is the modern religion. The same cosmic priests who call themselves nowadays Doctors of Philosophy just changed the name of the standard religious miracles and sell them to us as science.
I hope that you would think about the above facts before insulting modern Doctors of Philosophy again by saying that Doctors cannot turn water into wine by some simple time travel.
Don’t get me wrong, Jesus’ miracle is still a religious miracle and Doctors’ miracle is a scientific fact. The reason is simple: Jesus could not prove his miracles mathematically. Doctors of Philosophy will prove to you their miracles with immaculate mathematics. As immaculate as you know who.
The way i see it if you dont believe that Jesus was born by a virgin or that he walked on water or that he rose from the dead you dont have to and i think that Scientists could do a lot more for the world if they would stay off Jesus and the bible believe what ever you want just let others believe what they want !
It’s worth reminding everybody from time to time that philology has had a far more corrosive effect on religious belief than any natural science. It doesn’t matter whether or not physics refutes or supports the ability of Jesus to change water into wine if an analysis of John’s gospel and its history has already convinced you of the fictiousness of the tale.
Gary Carroll said:
I agree. But scientists actually stay off Jesus and the bible. It is Doctors of Philosophy who are out there preaching and trying to convert the souls of unconverted to their side of the religious fence. The esteemed owner of this blog is on the trenches coast to coast and he is preaching “…not only to the converted, but also to the skeptical.” This is not surprising because Doctor means teacher. To teach and to proselitize is in the job description of Doctors of Philosophy.
Hi. I’m a PhD student in Physics and a Bible-believing Christian. There are many people out there like myself who do not see any conflict between science and God. Science is knowledge by measurement, by experiment, using our senses, but admitting from the start that said senses are limited. God, as He speaks in the Bible, gives knowledge by revelation: things we cannot figure out on our own.
Sure, walking on water cannot be done…by us. It can be done by some insects 🙂 Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is a God and that He created the universe. Would it not be so much easier for Him to walk on the water He made?
We have to remember that the Big Bang Theory is just a *theory* and that no one of us was actually here when it happened; we have to allow for the possibility of other theories like Intelligent Design (for those who cannot say G-o-d). In the same way, evolution is a theory as well; if we are the objective scientists we say we are we have to look at *all* possible explanations.
Maybe the aspect that disturbs some scientists so much is that God — and Jesus, when He walked the earth — violates many if not all physical laws and principles we know. But does He really? I really like this illustration: if an apple is supposed to fall to the ground and I catch it in midair, did I violate the laws of physics? Not really. I just intervened, in a manner that is ordered and scientifically sound as well.
Born to a virgin? It hasn’t happened before..again, to humans. (Parthenogenesis occurs in some animals.) But just before it never happened to anyone else before or after Jesus *does not* mean it cannot happen. For one, He’s God and we’re not. (Okay, so this might seem like circular reasoning, but please stay with me. 🙂 ) Secondly, as scientists we know that just one counterexample disproves the entire theory or law, just like that. Our moms definitely weren’t virgins when we were born, so let’s look at another instance.
Jesus claimed that our bodies will be resurrected to eternal life if we follow Him and let Him save us. Suppose now that He did rise from the dead. Then by golly, it’s possible for us as well. Sure, nobody else we personally know rose from the dead before. But regardless of the billions of people who have died and decomposed on this planet, ONE counterexample (remember our scientific training) is enough. Yes, it is possible.
Obviously another thing that irks many scientists is when people say that “science can never prove or disprove the existence of a god”. This looks like a convenient way to stop all arguments eh? 🙂 But again being a scientist I respectfully disagree. I have seen and heard many stories of people being encountered by God on their *own personal* level: whether one’s needs are emotional, psychological, physical, and so on. He meets you where you are. The fact that all-powerful God let Himself be born to mere mortals, work, sweat, defecate and die would show us that He adjusts to us so we could grasp Him.
For scientists, especially astronomists and cosmologers: “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4) He meets you where you are, including scientists like us 🙂
Okay, so we cannot see God. I cannot see energy and electrons either. Jesus obviously meant the same thing when He says “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8)
Wouldn’t it be scary to entrust your entire life to someone I cannot even see? But how different is it from a marriage vow, where I believe and hope that my spouse really will love me till death? How different is it from a child or a friend, who I hope will always be there for me? The relationship is still based on trust (which is another word for faith).
Just because it did not happen before, and just because we cannot perceive it, does not mean it’s not true.
In anything else, science holds that statement without question, but when it comes to the issue of God suddenly the barriers are up. Shouldn’t we be more objective? Maybe, just maybe, God is true.
We can even make our own experiments if we want…just to test the God hypothesis. Besides, if there really is no God, what have we got to lose? Blaise Pascal himself said this: “Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”
“Come near to God and He will come near to you.” (James 4:8)
I do hope that you do 🙂 I’ll be praying for you guys. 🙂
With all the love from a fellow scientist (who you cannot see and whose words you have to decide to believe),
Teci
by the way, i hope you can get a copy of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for a Creator” (http://www.amazon.com/Case-Creator-Journalist-Investigates-Scientific/dp/0310241448). Strobel is a former atheist who has a background in law and investigative journalism. Though not a scientist, he was planted firmly on the road to atheism when his science teacher taught evolution. The book would help trace the road “back” to faith 🙂 It’s very objective and scientific, critically acclaimed and highly recommended 🙂
once again, i pray that you will realize that He exists; that you will let Him save you because we cannot do it ourselves; that you will follow Him for His plans are the best. 🙂
Much of what I would probably like to contribute has already been mentioned in various posts above.
So i’ll merely point towards a few works which some (more so than others) may find interesting:
Nietzsche’s words and comments would be appropriate throughout this thread. See his “Beyond Good and Evil” for comments on morality, good/evil, whether to murder etc.
Nietzsche of course also had much to say on God’s Death (please let me indulge in this rather lengthy quotation):
“Where has God gone?” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him – you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now?
Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? ”
– Section 125, The Gay Science
Another relevant text would be The Last Temptation of Christ, a Martin Scorsese film from 1988. His rather interesting interpretation/retelling of the story of Jesus (played by William Dafoe with a thick NYC accent) strikes at the heart of how important myth and the power of story is at work in religion…
m
Arun on Nov 19th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
b. government money – a.k.a. tax payer money – should not be used to
attack belief.
If scientists do not want to follow these rules, then they are free to do so, but they should not then accept federal money.
Er I believe in demons. At the moment I believe that Arun is possesed by the devil and the only solution is to deprive the devil the body that it is inhabiting, ie burn Arun at the stake.
Let no scientist or government stop me from doing this. Atleast I should have the freedom to propogate this truth. This is the truth that my religion taught me.
(Salem witch trials anybody)
Sorry for that outburst. But the point is that while religious freedom is good, so too is intellectual freedom, the freedom to criticise religions/theologies/religious practices. This intellectual freedom is probably the most needed for a civilised society
Infinitely more serious problems than whether God exists or not?
Thats debatable. I can see a whole lot of problems that have a root in irrational belief.