| The 1996 Humanist of the Year asked this question in a speech
accepting the honor from the American Humanist Association.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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?"
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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?
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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).
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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?
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| 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?
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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."
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| 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.
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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.
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