Category Archives: Science

MPs and The Power Of Prayer

Posted by on March 27, 2012 No comments

This came through my Twitter feed yesterday and I couldn’t resist opening it, like a moth to a flame.  It seems that a group of British Christian MPs are going to try to overturn a ban on adverts promoting the healing power of prayer.

The football player Fabrice Muamba has begun to make a recovery after his collapse last week and these MPs have decided that as he was the recipient of many prayers and good wishes, this means that prayer works.  Oh, really?  So in their opinions, does this have nothing to do with the prompt actions of the medical staff from both team and the expensive professional medical care he received afterwards?

They then challenge the UK Advertising Standards Authority as follows:

We write to express our concern at this decision and to enquire about the basis on which it has been made. It appears to cut across two thousand years of Christian tradition and the very clear teaching in the Bible. Many of us have seen and experienced physical healing ourselves in our own families and churches and wonder why you have decided that this is not possible.

On what scientific research or empirical evidence have you based this decision?

Let me be clear, having looked at the ASA judgement itself, their position seems to be that there is no evidence in support of the claims of healing. These MPs have got the cart firmly before the horse here.  As the ones making the claims of divine healing, the responsibility is with the advertiser and themselves to provide the empirical evidence of such healing, it does not lie with the ASA.

There have been studies conducted into the healing power of prayer, some even funded by religious groups.  These studies drew a blank, no scientific evidence has yet been found to conclude that prayer has any healing power whatever.  Oddly, some patients got worse, which was put down to a form of performance anxiety on their part.  I think that in light of this, the most reasonable conclusion at this time is that the healing power of prayer has no supporting evidence and is unproven.

Buddhism in the West

Posted by on March 16, 2012 No comments

My previous two posts have continued a short theme I wished to explore.  They’ve hopefully explained why I consider Buddhism to be Secular and provided a very quick overview of how Buddhism came to the West.  So here we are, Buddhism is in the western world and according to some sources is the fastest growing religion (I use the term as a shorthand) in many countries, maybe even the whole western world. [1] [2] [3] [4]

I think Buddhism has come to fit the western world very well.  Buddhism is finding that in many places it fits very well with modern science.  Indeed the attitude of questioning and verifying things for yourself that the Buddha speaks of to the people of Kesaputta in the Kalama Sutra is not at all antagonistic to the scientific endeavour.  I’ve posted verses 4 and 10 from the above link in order to bring them directly to your attention.

4. “It is proper for you, Kalamas, to doubt, to be uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about what is doubtful. Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, ‘The monk is our teacher.’ Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are bad; these things are blameable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,’ abandon them.

10. “Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumour; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, ‘The monk is our teacher.’ Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are good; these things are not blameable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,’ enter on and abide in them.

The above isn’t the only thing Buddhism has to offer that fits it with an increasingly secular west, you will find Buddhist meditation centres in many western cities.  Theravada centres, Zen centres and New Kadampa centres among just a few.  The teachings of Buddhism offer a powerful potential antidote to the stresses, strains and challenges of modern life.  They allow a person to find a sense of peace in our high-tech materialist society without making you feel inherently sinful or unworthy.  For me, as for many others here in the west, this is a huge part of the appeal.

References

[1] – Buddhism fastest growing religion in west.
[2] – Buddhism is fastest growing religion in English jails over past decade.
[3] – Buddhism: Ancient faith experiences and explosion of growth in US.
[4] – Why is Buddhism the fastest growing religion in Australia?

 

Secular Buddhism

Posted by on March 13, 2012 5 comments

Buddhism is something with a long history.  As far as I’m aware, it started about 2600 years ago and has migrated through a new of countries.  Along the way, it picked up various traditions, practices and other paraphernalia.  It also picked up a lot of religious baggage, including gods, spirits and demons, though this can vary a lot in quantity and lineup depending on where exactly you happen to stand.

Of course, as we know Buddhism eventually came to the west.  This is an interesting story in itself and when I can actually finish looking into it I’ll write up my understanding of it.  On coming west, Buddhism met western secularism and I think something very special happened.  The important thing to remember is that Buddhism was originally a quite secular thing, but during its travels that seems to have gotten lost, at least to my eyes.  Upon coming west, the path was set that would start to dust away the accumulated layers of it’s travels and leave an entirely secular system of ethics.

In Buddhism we have perhaps the only system of ethics and self development that has stood the test of time and does not draw on the authority of a hazily defined and unproven supernatural system for its basis.  The importance of this cannot be overstated, in my opinion.  This is also the beginning of subject that I’d like to delve deeper into in future posts.

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)

The Worlds in Our Heads

Posted by on April 6, 2011 1 comment

This is where I realise, with some shamefaced embarassment, how long it’s been since my last post.

I have spent some time over the last few weeks, discussing things with fellow secularists and some Jehovah’s Witnesses we have the acquaintance of.  The discussions are relating to God, Creationism and Evolution; the usual, in other words.  I do try to keep things as polite and civil as I can, I try to make my points gently and without causing offence.  But I do begin to understand why many secular people get frustrated when dealing with true believers, so I’d like to open the can of worms here; at least part of the way.

I write from the perspective of a Secular Buddhist, and my understanding is this.  Our problems stem from the fact we do not see clearly. We clutch after things we believe are solid and permanent without realising that they are changing and impermanent, our illusions blind us to the basic impermanence of the world and also of ourselves.  This is why you’ll sometimes hear Buddhists referred to as believing the world is an illusion, that’s because the world most of us inhabit is; it’s an illusion that exists only in our minds.  The trouble starts when we respond to this illusion as if it were concrete reality, then we start storing up trouble for the future (think Karma).  There’s a lot more I could say, but I’ll save it for another time.  Believe it or not, I’ve expressed the above to an Anglican and a Jehovah’s Witness and both have agreed with the sentiment that responding to our illusions as if they were real is nothing but trouble.  I can’t imagine that either would agree with what I have to say next.

When expressing ideas to believers, I’ve found that no matter how well you put things or how you back things up with proof, there is a wall.  You can get so far, then you’re up against faith and you can get no further.  From what I can see, the whole position of ‘supernatural’ religions would seem to be exactly the problem I describe in my last paragraph; they have their beliefs from their book and regardless of the evidence will stick to those beliefs with varying degrees of rigidity.

The level of intellectual evasion can be quite breathtaking at times.  I’ve seen false dichotomies and strawman arguments presented confidently as fact in articles sourced from around the Internet and thought “Why?”, “Why distort things like this, when it undermines everything you’re trying to do?”  I can understand defending a cherished belief, I can genuinely empathise, but if you can’t defend it honestly then why is it worth defending at all?

But it’s when I see believers taking these things and accepting them as accurate logic without a peep, not even a murmur; when I start to realise how many people are doing this, and not bringing even a shred of critical thought to bear on these things, it’s then that I start to get a glimpse of the sheer enormity of what the Buddha meant.