Category Archives: Science

The Riches of Agnosticism

Posted by on January 11, 2012 2 comments

I was considering this after writing my recent post on my views about God. I remember that in his book “The God Delusion”, Richard Dawkins has a chapter on “The Poverty of Agnosticism”. He takes aim at Agnosticism and tries to demolish it as a valid position, I think he goes too far and that we need to look again.

Agnosticism is more than a simple “I don’t know”, when come at from the point of Buddhism that “I don’t know” gains a vitality and an urgency that is easy to miss. It’s not a wishy washy form of indecision, but a potent statement of humility acknowledging honestly our uncertainty in a world of constantly changing phenomena and events. When everything we try to grasp is constantly shifting and changing, how can we stand on a firm bed of knowledge? When we draw on the Dharma, we rediscover our Agnosticism from the knowledge that all the things we know are just mental constructs of a changing reality, not reality itself. They’re imperfect maps to a shifting and impermanent territory.

It’s easy to say that things are proven and settled, but consider the discovery of Continental Drift. The discoverer, Alfred Wegener, had to overcome the disbelief of his peers; in part due to the fact that some of their supporting theories were plain wrong and also because he wasn’t a Geologist. In fact, even though it was discovered in 1912, it wasn’t accepted until the 1960s. [1] They thought they knew, they were unable to see that they might be wrong, that’s part of my point

In the realm of belief and faith, things are always being interpreted differently by different people and groups. This isn’t limited to one faith, it has caused some fairly awful rows in the past and has even caused sub-sects and new faiths to bud off from existing religions. The differences can extend to every area of doctrine, from the nature of the divine through to . Now, this stuff was being argued over when the Buddha walked the Earth 2600 years ago. It’s not been resolved since then, to be honest, my feeling is that it’s not going to be. This looks like another area where people are refusing to admit that they just don’t know.

The solutions, I feel, is based on an honest acknowledgement of our limitations. The idea that some things may be beyond the ability of the Human mind to grasp is anathema to many, but it may well be more truthful than we’d like to admit. As the Masai wisdom says “One head cannot contain all knowledge”. In the light of all of this, how can our position be anything other then to step away from this constant bickering and engage with the mysteries of the world with an honest “I don’t know”?

[1] The Science of Discworld, page 128-129.

A Moment of Pause

Posted by on April 27, 2011 No comments

I was in Second Life the other evening when I came across an entry in the destination guide;  a small memorial to those who died, falsely accused of withcraft, in the town of Salem.   I must admit to having found the time to pause there and reflect as I read the names on the stone plaques around the central square.  This small area is part of a much larger pagan themed sim, click on any of the thumbnails here to get a screenshot of the memorial area itself.  If you have a Second Life client installed, you can click the following link to teleport directly there: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Primrose/170/218/88

salem-01For those who don’t know, Salem is a town in the US state of Massachusetts, whose name was given to an infamous series of Witchcraft trials in 1692 and 1693.  The trials didn’t just take place in Salem, but the two best known trials did.

26 people were tried for witchcraft and executed in these two trials alone and considering some of the “proofs” of being a witch, they really didn’t stand a chance.  Consider that simply expressing doubts about the trials was enough to put you in danger!

Salem is infamous, but it’s by no means the only place that witch trial happened.  Europe had it’s own infamy and here in the UK,salem-02 we didn’t escape.  Many people died at the hands of Witch Hunters and the Pendle Witch Trials[1] in 1612 are part of English history.  In truth nobody knows the exact death toll, but it is certainly horrific.

As I intimated above, the witch craze was international and in Europe the Catholic Church produced the “Malleus Maleficarum” or “The Hammer of Witches”, which basically said that if you were accused then you were a witch and detailed many torture methods. There was no right of the defendant, no opportunity to confront accusers and torture was considered an “infallible method” of determining guilt. [2]  The whole thing was a scam and innocent people were framed left right and centre, often people would name others just to get the torturers to stop.  When being hanged, one English witch hunter salem-03confessed to having sent over 220 women to their deaths![3]  In one small town in Germany there were 24 public burnings with an average of 4-6 victims each in one year. [4]

For me, seeing a place such as this was a stark reminder of why we must rally to fight superstition and ignorance, it was these things that were the breeding grounds that this horror arose from.   This is why scientific education and the promotion of critical thought and the teaching of the scientific method itself are so important.

—

References

1 – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendle_witches

Source – “The Demon Haunted World” – Carl Sagan – ISBN 0-7472-5156-8

2 – page 113.

3 – page 114.

4 – page 116.

The World in Our Heads: The Counter Punch.

Posted by on April 7, 2011 4 comments

Yesterday I wrote about my take on Religion and our illusions.  I took what might have seemed an anti religious stance, but there has to be balance, tonight I will throw my counter punch.  Let’s see if I can land it.

One of the things about illusions, is our confidence in them.  We believe that they are the truth, the whole truth and we don’t realise otherwise.  Often, we don’t want to.  You may think I am aiming at the religious, but not so, I am aiming this one towards dogmatic Atheism and something called “Scientism”.

Dogmatic Atheism, I define this as the belief that no worldview other than the strictly secular could have any validity.  I have seen this with the New Atheists, some of whom really seem to be off on an intellectual power trip; they reminded me of people kicking apart a dolls house.

Scientism is, at least in my view, closely related to this but not quite the same thing.  Scientific fundamentalists will try to tell you that everything is explained, bar a little filling in of the edges.  You don’t need to look any further than this, we’re right, trust us.  Hmm, sorry that sounds little like “don’t think, believe the dogma”.

As an aside, I used the word “belief”, how shocking.  The interesting part of this is that aversion.  Hey, not all of our illusion are nice, we can recoil away from them as well grasp towards them!  Let me clarify my use of the term “belief”, dictionary.com give this definition, and I use the first one:

1. Something believed; an opinion or conviction: a belief that the earth is flat.
2. Confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.
3. Confidence; faith; trust: a child’s belief in his parents.
4. A religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith: the Christian belief.

“But.. But I don’t believe, I’m an Atheist!”  Well, a belief is an opinion or a conviction, this is regardless of the source be it science or religion.  A conviction that the Earth is round, based on empirical evidence is still a belief, the belief is not the source.  But enough of that, back on topic.
The concern I have about Scientism and dogmatic Atheism is that they seem to refuse to acknowledge our fallibility, our limits.  Science is a great method for discovering the truth, but we can only be so certain.  Each generation of Scientists seeks to increase that certainty, but this is within the limitations of our minds and available technology.  We must not be overconfident, Human brain is a great thing, but it has upper limits; we must bear that in mind lest we get cocky.
Let me try to illuminate what I mean.  We remember Einstein, because he proved Newton wrong.  Newton’s laws were thought to be the last word, and they are indeed very accurate, in fact we can still calculate the orbits of satellites using them.  Einstein showed that once you get up near lightspeed they break down.  Einstein came up with a better description of how things work, we remember him for superceding Newton.  If I were a scientific fundamentalist, I’d be a bit worried by that because it means that I might one day have to explain why I wasn’t quite as right as I thought I was.  Very embarassing.
I think it’s very important to remember that Science is a humble interrogation of the universe.  Let me end with a fitional quote I have used before, but that I have always found apt:

 

“I heard once of an American who so defined faith, “that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.” For one, I follow that man. He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of the big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him, but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe.”
- Professor Abraham Van Helsing (taken from the novel Dracula, by Bram Stoker)