Absolutely Not!

Perhaps it hasn’t escaped your attention that those demanding respect for their beliefs invariably hold dear the most ignorant, infantile, dubious, repulsive, fundamentalist, misogynistic, odious and  homophobic ideologies.

So who’s to say which beliefs are good and which bad? Haha! You got me there! I really don’t know for certain, until I have subjected your belief to critical examination. What I do know, is that if you demand that I accept and respect your belief, then it’s a sure sign that it is dodgy at the very least.

This where I see your demand and raise you another: I demand that every belief (be it religious, political, social, cultural or whatever) be subject to skeptical scrutiny.

So there!

Iconoclasm – The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Bamyan – Statue of Buddah *Author: Marco Bonavoglia

Iconoclasm (noun)

(1) a challenge to or overturning of traditional beliefs, customs, and values

(2) the destruction of religious images used in worship, or opposition to their use in worship. [Encarta]

There are two sides to iconoclasm – the good and the bad, but I’m going to suggest a third characteristic – ugly, which is also bad, and should be viewed as such by all sane people.

Good Iconoclasm

Challenging established beliefs, customs, traditions and values is good. It is the act of embracing new knowledge. Scientific discovery is dependent upon confronting old ideas and beliefs and leads to technological innovation, which overall is good for the progress and advancement of the human race. Skepticism and critical thinking are the natural by-products of good iconoclasm, or is it the other way around?

The reason why we don’t have people suspected of witchcraft being regularly burned at the stake is because of good iconoclasm. But isolated incidences still occur in some parts of the world; the parts that resist change to new ideas. However things are significantly better in the modern era.

Bad Iconoclasm

The wanton destruction of religious artefacts, including those of archeological significance is barbaric, backward and symptomatic of a retarded mindset. In recent years there have been several incidences of the senseless destruction of these objects. The bombing of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan by the Taliban and the desecration of tombs in the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu by Islamists, come to mind. However, history is littered with the malicious destruction of places of worship and religious artefacts, by various proponents of the world’s religions.

Off course it is not only religious fundamentalists who carry out these senseless acts of devastation. Other bizarre ideological beliefs whether political or social, have also been the prime motivator for the same inane act of destruction.

Ugly Iconoclasm

I don’t suppose this category actually exists, but I’m going to stick my neck out and propose it by providing an example.

Nohmul is a Mayan archeological site in the Yucatan Peninsula near Belize. Recently a pyramid dating to around 250 BCE was found to have been almost completely destroyed by building contractors, who were using the gravel and limestone content for constructing a nearby road. The owner of the excavation equipment was revealed to be a local politician, although it has not been proved that he ordered the destruction of the pyramid.

A Boston University Professor who had worked on many archeological sites in the area commented that “bulldozing Maya mounds for road fill is an endemic problem in Belize.”

This type of iconoclasm is rooted in greed. Defacing priceless treasures of our human heritage to make a quick buck.

So there you have it; my word of the week…

Does Science Contribute to Sound Moral Judgement and Behaviour?

On this blog I am frequently confronted by people who post comments that seem to indicate that science has no contributing effect on good moral judgement and behaviour. Indeed science is portrayed as an enemy of religion by most fundamentalists, while religion is claimed as the sole harbinger of morality.

In the religious world it is generally taken for granted that morality would be totally absent were it not for the foundations laid by theology. Subsequently science and religion has been pitted against each other in nearly all social debate as competing forces, which they are not.

Science was never meant to replace religion and I think just about all scientists will agree. It’s unfortunate that religious folk continue to foster the belief that science is “out to get religion.”

I was therefore intrigued when I came across this scientific study published by Christine Ma-Kellams and Jim Blascovich in Plos One, which demonstrates a correlation between the exposure to science and sound morality. Here is an introduction, but the methods, procedure and conclusions are available through the link above:

Science has stood as a powerful force in shaping human civilization and behavior. As both an ideological system and a method for acquiring information about the world, it offers explanations for the origins of the physical universe and answers to a variety of other fundamental questions and concerns. Past research has noted that personal values influence both the questions that are asked and the methods used in arriving at the answers; as such, scientists have often been concerned with the moral and social ramifications of their scientific endeavors. Not surprisingly, the general consensus is that science is value-laden. However, no studies to date have directly investigated the link between exposure to science and moral or prosocial behaviors. Here, we empirically examined the effects of thinking about science on moral judgments and behavior.

It is important to note that “science” is multi-faceted construct that takes on distinct forms. On the one hand, the scientific style of thinking employed by scientists is unusual, difficult, and uncommon. Although science can serve as a belief system, it is distinct from other belief systems (e.g., religion) insofar as its counterintuitive nature and the degree to which it does not rely on universal, automatic, unconscious cognitive systems; as a consequence, relative to other belief systems like religion, science has few explicit “followers”. On the other hand, apart from the model of the scientific method of acquiring information about the world, we contend that there is a lay image or notion of “science” that is associated with concepts of rationality, impartiality, fairness, technological progress, and ultimately, the idea that we are to use these rational tools for the mutual benefit of all people in society. Philosophers and historians have noted that scientific inquiry began to flourish when Western society moved from one centered on religious notions of God’s will to one in which the rational mind served as the primary means to understand and improve our existence. As such, the notion of science contains in it the broader moral vision of a society in which rationality is used for the mutual benefit of all.

We predict that this notion of science as part of a broader moral vision of society facilitates moral and prosocial judgments and behaviors. Consistent with the notion that science plays a key role in the moral vision of a society of mutual benefit, scholars have long argued that science’s systematic approach to studying causes and consequences allows for more informed opinions about questions of good and evil, and many have argued that the classic scientific ethos stands as an ethically neutral, but morally normative, set of principles that guides scientific inquiry. We contend that the same scientific ethos that serves to guide empirical inquiries also facilitates the enforcement of moral norms more broadly.

Notwithstanding the adage that correlation does not prove causation, this work is invaluable as it was the first time that an empirical attempt was made to find a link between science and morality.

It would be interesting to see if further studies are done and if the results remain consistent with the initial findings.

God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens

Although God Is Not Great was first published in 2007, I was put off reading it by my atheist acquaintances who advised that it constituted nothing more than a rabid fundamentalist rant; a characteristic more commonly associated with the conservative religious fraternity.

Having taken their advice based on demonstrable wisdom in these matters, I did not bother to purchase a copy, until recently while browsing through a bookstore and coming across it again. For some reason I decided to just see what all the fuss was about and bought a copy. I was pleasantly surprised after finally completing it, because unlike most of my other reading material, I was captivated into reading it, in its entirety, before moving onto something else in between. And, I haven’t been enticed into going out on a murderous rampage, targeting clergymen.

Needless to say, in future when advised not to read something, or when forbidden to read something (or view for that matter), just go ahead and do it anyway. Knowledge, whether good or bad is disseminated so that people can make informed decisions. By restricting yourself, or prohibiting others to only one point of view, defeats the objective of learning. Off course the opposite is also true, but one has to be a little more circumspect when advised or pushed to read (or view) any material.

Anyway, back to the book. Christopher Hitchens has many detractors, most of whom find his anti-theistic stance (some say he’s a god-hater) more infuriating than that of ordinary atheists. As I mentioned earlier, his detractors are not confined to the religious, but even atheists find his approach disquieting. Although the book presents a no-holds-barred attack on religion, his literary style and witty approach (believers would say mocking) makes the book highly readable and thoroughly enjoyable.

The title might not make any sense to believers because it seems to be a contradiction in (atheist) terms: how can something that is not supposed to exist, be great? I have it on good authority that it is actually a witty reversal of the Islamic proclamation Allahuh Akhbar, which translates roughly as God is great. The title has also been called arrogant, but it confirms Hitchens’ anti-theistic stance; it’s as if he’s throwing down a challenge to the object of his revulsion to account for the crass behaviour so vividly described in the book.

The historical approach not only lends weight to his arguments against religious belief, but are extremely informative, especially to the layman who does not have the time or craving for the monumental amounts of research involved. How many believers have sat down to read through the religious texts of competing religions, or even bothered with cursory examinations of these texts? Not too many, I would advance. Yet, many believers hold dogmatic opinions, not only about their own religion, but others as well.

The book is littered with memorable one-liners. A favorite of mine is: in reference to religion (or more specifically Christianity, I think) he calls it ‘a plagiarism of a plagiarism, of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion.’ There are far too many to mention, but I don’t want you reading any of them.

Notable quote:

Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to be able, by its total command of a world-view, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard – or try to turn back – the measurable advances that we have made. Sometimes, true, it will artfully concede them. But this is to offer itself the choice between irrelevance and obstruction, impotence or outright reaction, and , given this choice, it is programmed to select the worse of the two. Meanwhile, confronted with undreamed-of vistas inside our own evolving cortex, in the farthest reaches of the known universe, and in the proteins and acids which constitute our nature, religion offers either annihilation in the name of god, or else the false promise that if we take a knife to our foreskins, or pray in the right direction, or ingest pieces of wafer, we shall be “saved.” It is as if someone, offered a delicious and fragrant out-of-season fruit, matured in a painstakingly and lovingly designed hothouse, should throw away the flesh and the pulp and gnaw moodily on the pit.

The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

The Greatest Show on Earth

There’s been a lot of interruptions and too little time available over the last half-year or so, but I’ve finally completed reading Dawkins’ latest masterpiece, The Greatest Show on Earth. It’s subtitled The Evidence for Evolution, and boy is there a lot of it in the book.

It’s a strange title for a book on the evidence for evolution, but apparently Dawkins got the idea from a T-shirt given to him bearing the words “Evolution: The Greatest Show on Earth; the Only Game in Town”

Prior to reading this book, I needed no convincing that evolution was a fact, but Dawkins provides plenty of new information that I had not known before. Although it makes for heavy reading in some parts due to the complexity of the sciences involved, the book is geared towards the layman, and is relatively easy to understand.

 

As usual, Dawkins writes in that characteristically eloquent and witty style he’s famous for in his other works, often castigating the creationist lobby, who are referred to as “history deniers.” He’s often been criticised for his approach, but I can find little fault with his stance considering the undeniable ignorance that is prevalent in the religious world; a lot of it wilful in nature.

 

Creationists often point to the so-called missing links in the fossil record, as evidence that evolution is wrong. Dawkins makes a telling point that even if the entire fossil record were not available to scientists, the incontrovertible evidence from molecular biology and genetics is more than enough to prove the veracity of evolution and natural selection.

 

Off course, the book won’t appeal to the fundamentalist religious community; nor will it convince them to change their beliefs about creationism. Wilful ignorance is a pillar of religious strength. However, for those who are interested in actually learning something meaningful about life and the way nature really works, even those who are marginally religious, this book will challenge any preconceived ideas you held, if not convince you that evolution is in fact, a FACT.

 

Notable Quote:

Once again, humans are not descended from monkeys. We share a common ancestor with monkeys. As it happens, the common ancestor would have looked a lot more like a monkey than a man, and we should indeed probably have called it a monkey if we had met it, some 25 million years ago. But even though humans evolved from an ancestor that we could sensibly call a monkey, no animal gives birth to an instant new species, or at least not one as different from itself as a man is from a monkey, or even from a chimpanzee. That isn’t what evolution is about. Evolution not only is a gradual process as a matter of fact; it has to be gradual if it is to do any explanatory work. Huge leaps in a single generation – which is what a monkey giving birth to a human would be – are almost as unlikely as divine creation, and are ruled out for the same reason: too statistically improbable. It would be so nice if those who oppose evolution would take a tiny bit of trouble to learn the merest rudiments of what it is that they are opposing.