Religion

From the better late than never department…

I have finally gotten around to creating a blog. Where to begin? I bounce back and forth between feeling like I have so much to say, and feeling like everything worth saying has been said a million times already.

The central tenet of science in which I choose to place my faith is that experiment is the ultimate arbiter of truth. Any idea that is not consistent with experimental evidence must be wrong.

There are two important limitations to science: it doesn’t tell us which ideas are right, only which ones are wrong. Therefore all knowledge is tentative, all ideas subject to being overturned at any time by new experimental evidence. And it is limited in scope. It applies only to ideas that are testable by experiment. So it can provide no guidance on the question of, say, whether modern art is or isn’t art..

There is a third problem, which is that many different ideas are consistent with our current suite of experimental data. To choose among them I choose to believe in Occam’s razor: all else being equal, a simple idea is more likely to be true than a complicated one. This principle is strictly subservient to the first principle. If experiment rules out all the simple ideas, then the remaining complicated idea must be true. But if experiment is silent, then simpler ideas are preferable to complicated ones.

It is actually very easy to “do experiments” that validate the scientific worldview because we are absolutely surrounded by technology. In fact, it is barely possible to exist in this world without doing so dozens of times a day. Every time we turn on a light switch or start a car or use a computer we personally experience the validity of a huge number of scientific claims. No technology has ever been created by prayer.

Very few people really take seriously the idea that morals come from God. Many people think they take it seriously, but I think they are lying to themselves. To see this, ask yourself: if God said that raping children was OK, would that make it OK? Only the most radical fundamentalist would answer yes. Most people get quite upset if you actually ask them this question because it forces to confront the cognitive dissonance between what they think they believe—that morals come from God—and what they actually believe—that they “just know” what is right and wrong, like that raping children is wrong, even if God says otherwise.

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognise no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.

If I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary, their indications and even their directions, it is because their authority is imposed on me by no one, neither by men nor by God. Otherwise I would repel them with horror, and bid the devil take their counsels, their directions, and their services, certain that they would make me pay, by the loss of my liberty and self-respect, for such scraps of truth, wrapped in a multitude of lies, as they might give me.

I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed on me by my own reason. I am conscious of my own inability to grasp, in all its detail, and positive development, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labour. I receive and I give—such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.

This same reason forbids me, then, to recognise a fixed, constant and universal authority, because there is no universal man, no man capable of grasping in all that wealth of detail, without which the application of science to life is impossible, all the sciences, all the branches of social life. And if such universality could ever be realised in a single man, and if he wished to take advantage thereof to impose his authority upon us, it would be necessary to drive this man out of society, because his authority would inevitably reduce all the others to slavery and imbecility. I do not think that society ought to maltreat men of genius as it has done hitherto: but neither do I think it should indulge them too far, still less accord them any privileges or exclusive rights whatsoever; and that for three reasons: first, because it would often mistake a charlatan for a man of genius; second, because, through such a system of privileges, it might transform into a charlatan even a real man of genius, demoralise him, and degrade him; and, finally, because it would establish a master over itself.

La teoría dualista fue la primera religión galáctica. Desde su concepción en el mundo central de Rolf, se erguía ante los hombres con la altivez de un monte, tan distanciada de las cosas mundanas como un cerro de Plutón. Reconocía la vida y el final de la vida; reconocía el frío de la noche y la longitud de su resistencia; reconocía la brevedad del día y su belleza. Sabía que más allá de toda alegría se extendía un telón de algo demasiado cruel para llamarlo pena, demasiado noble para llamarlo desdicha; que la carne era una exhalación que duraba un minuto, pero que en ese minuto, ese tiempo para la acción, radicaba toda la verdad existente. Era una religión galáctica, difícil de comprender y desalentadora cuando se comprendía, y por esa razón fue adoptada por los auténticos adultos de esos tiempos. No les ofrecía ningún fulgor más allá de la tumba, ni hablaba de las áureas voces de otras esferas; no otorgaba recompensas por la virtud ni castigos por la debilidad. No tenía tabernáculos. Nadie decoraba sus altares con flores, nadie recitaba sus fundamentos con música altisonante. Pero su austera verdad infundía hondura y fortaleza en el corazón.

“Once long ago, when Japan was still struggling to enter the modern age, we let ourselves be ruled by our military. Soldiers were our masters, and they led us into an evil war, to conquer nations that had done us no wrong.”

“We paid for our crimes when atomic bombs fell on our islands.”

“Paid?” cried Aimaina. “What is to pay or not to pay? Are we suddenly Christians, who pay for sins? No. The Yamato way is not to pay for error, but to learn from it.”

In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.