A Quiet Watercourse

One of the themes I’ve picked up from re-reading Cosmos is a small feeling for the gradual growth and refinement of our knowledge.  We’ve slowly grown in our knowledge and, while quite often what we’ve thought initially is wrong, science is a self correcting process and we’ve slowly gotten nearer to the truth.

The planets are a prime example, originally we were unable to make out any details and had some very odd ideas due to this lack of hard data.  People imagined cities and civilisations on both Venus and Mars, later observations even showed what seemed to be a network of canals on Mars.  Of course, once we were actually able to visit the planets we found that this wasn’t the case and our knowledge grew massively.  Venus is utterly inhospitable, and the Martian canal network was nowhere is sight.

Our methods are not always direct and once it’s explained how we know the things about planets we haven’t even visited, it makes more sense.  For example, we know about the composition of an object by the radio frequencies it reflects when examing with a Radio Telescope, as different elements absorb different frequencies.

This, for me, underlines the reason I walked away from religious explanations of the world; Science can not only explain that it knows, but can explain in detail how it knows.  Whereas the religious explanation is generally either an argument from authority or circular reasoning.  Furthermore, when they are wrong (and they are wrong more often than they will care to admit), they often are incapable of self correcting.  One exception to this (and there may well be others especially Taoism) is Buddhism, to quote the Dalai Lama:

“If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.”

Of course, given the Buddha’s teaching on change, it really shouldn’t be a surprising thing that Buddhism can do this.

I found quite an interesting read this morning.  An article that shows scientific research that makes the point that the facts we accept are the ones that conform to our cultural conditioning, our view of the world, rather than the facts as they are.

You can find it here.

Now, this kind of thing is exactly what the Buddha was talking about.  He pointed out that the reasons we suffer are that we are unwilling to accept the world as it is and prefer our illusions about it.  Note that I don’t say “unable to accept the world as it is”, to say that would be to admit defeat before we start.

I’ve seen a few versions of climate change arguments, it’s becoming more apparent to me that this is the 21st century religious war, with vested interests on both sides and too much shouting.  I find myself agreeing with the implication that this has become more about peoples cherished worldviews and egos and less about the science.  The Buddha tells us that clinging very strongly to our views can cause trouble,  it seems that we need to be reminded of this wise advice with regard to the subject of Climate Change.

For my part, it’s my understanding that the weather is very complex feedback system which we still don’t fully understand.  We’re introducing changes into this sytem and doing the equivalent of throwing mud in the works, and have been for years.  Let’s stop there; we’re taking a very large powerful and complex system; which we don’t fully understand and messing with it in an unco-ordinated manner.

The changes that we have started in the past will have their effect, some already have (anyone remember acid rain?), some no doubt have yet to become apparent.  This comes close to my understanding of Karma; it’s all about knock on effects in a complex system, sometimes unpredictable ones, coming back to bite you.  Remember the “Butterfly Effect”, the principle that small changes could get magnified quite a lot, this could get quite eventful.

When it’s put like this, does any of this strike you as a particularly wise thing to be doing?

I’ve been getting a little further into Cosmos, and I’m reading about Johannes Kepler and his theories of the solar system.  It’s interesting to read, as we hear of these things, but never really put them in historical context.

Once again I’m left with the strong impression that the Catholic Church seems to have been responsible for the suppression of a lot of knowledge and scientific progress.  I think this is one of the things that should worry us all about the rise of so-called “Creation Science” and the resistance to the teaching of Evolution in the classroom.  Do we really want another lost millennium?  Do we really want the scientific investigation of the universe to be modulated and limited by the unverified and adulterated writings of a bunch of near stone age priests?

When Galileo said that the Earth moved around the sun, Martin Luther said:

“An upstart astrologer …. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of Astronomy.  But Sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth” [1][2]

Some years ago, someone tried to tell me that it was the other way around, that the Catholic church had said the Earth orbited the Sun and Galileo that it did not.  To this day, I still shake my head now as I think of that incident.  My response to anyone who thinks that is to read the words of the Pope John Paul II on the issue:

“Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world’s structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture….”

Remember this was followed by a formal apology in 2000 for a lot of things in the Catholic Church’s history, including what happened to Galileo.
—
[1] Cosmos, Carl Sagan, page 69. ISBN 0-349-10703-3
[2] Refer to New International Version Bible.  Joshua 10: 12:13.

This has no doubt been mentioned elsewhere, but I just thought this was something I had to share.

A team of Scientists from 8 countries have sequenced the genome of a 4000 year old Eskimo, who they’re decided to call “Inuk”. They’ve learned a lot and this opens a fascinating window, allowing us to peek into the past.  Opportunities like this don’t come by every day, and I think this work does us a great service by revealing another precious fragment of our evolution as one people of the Earth.

I recently started re-reading Carl Sagan’s book “Cosmos”, I’m starting to regain the feeling I used to have of how awesome the universe is and how the story of the universe from Big Bang to the present day really is the greatest story ever told.  Years ago, Carl’s books inspired me to look deeper and begin to really question things and start to appreciate the beauty of the universe.  I’m planning to broaden my remit here at Quiet Watercourse, I plan to have some fun along the way as well.

I was reading a thread on a forum the other day, a guy had commented on the new “Ardipithecus ramidus” fossil find and said “so much for creationism” or words to that effect. The results were quite predictable, and as boring as usual, everyone jumped in and a blazing great argument started.

I have to admit to being something of an agnostic on all of this, I take the view that there is much we don’t know and will possibly never know.  As much as many would like to cling to a holy book and proclaim that this is certainty, it isn’t and I’ll refer the reader to my essays for more on that.  In many ways I can make a similar observation of the scientific orthodoxy, science seems to get a revolution every so often and is quite defined by the unknown.  I’m also not the first to observe that science seems to be gaining it’s share of fundamentalists, and I feel that a fundamentalist attitude does science no justice at all.

I’ll also step aside from the row surrounding the much misunderstood and misrepresented theory of Evolution, other than to observe that it seems to be producing the goods in a very practical sense across a number of fields and that its opponents have produced no science of their own that I’ve seen and seem to do nothing but throw mud.

So I’ll move towards the whole question of a creator prior to the beginning of the universe.  Now this, of course, assumes that there was a discrete beginning and that the whole thing doesn’t move in some kind of cyclical way that would make for a very interesting line of investigation.

Now, for what I can see of it everything we have regarding events prior to the big bang is pure conjecture, nobody really knows. It seems to me that every debate I’ve seen boils down to a “yes it was / no it wasn’t” with nobody willing to budge an inch. Now, this sort of thing is one of the questions that the Buddha described as being a net, I can see why, all it does it cause upset and you can never really settle the argument no matter which side you’re on.

But it makes me realise, that many people are shouting certainty from a position of not really knowing.  My sense of things is that true liberation and real courage is to openly admit that you don’t know and possibly never will.  Then get on with something more relevant.

I got involved in a debate with a work colleague a week or so ago about the death penalty, he was for it and I was against.  It was interesting to notice the faith in Science to give the right answers in such a case, almost unquestioning, though I’ll ponder the question of Science as a religion at a later date.

What was interesting, was that his position seemed to be emotionally chosen, and this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this.  I’m very sure everyone reading this has come across people making decisions emotionally or holding positions on issues emotionally.  For example, the debate on climate change seems to be such an issue, with much shrillness and name calling, and that does the subject no justice given the massive importance of what they’re discussing.  I also recall Richard Dawkins telling us in his book “The God Delusion”, of some very senior scientists who, while holding no religious faith themselves, go to church or synagogue out of a feeling of “supporting the team”[1].

So why do we have emotions?  The study of the evolution of emotions began with Charles Darwin in his book “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals”, which was published in 1872.  Darwin noticed that even in people who are born blind, many facial emotional expressions remain the same as in sighted people, research since has shown that many emotional expressions (joy, anger, etc) are common across even isolated cultures.

So why use them in decision making?  The answer, in my opinion, lies in the value of fast decision making.  Dr Dawkins covers this in great detail in the God Delusion, and I highly recommend that book to everyone.  In short, we often need to make quick fairly reliable decisions, if we take time to consider our actions thoroughly, then the odds are we’d be dead long before we made a decision.  Sometimes, you need to act very quickly indeed, and our emotions cut in before our thoughts [2], how often have you acted first and then stopped to think?  This is the nub of it, emotions hit first and then we override our emotions with complex thought.

So coming back to where I started, is it so surprising that we take emotional stances?  How often do we hear the question “How do you feel about that?” not “What do you think of that?”, so I did an informal experiment.  I put the phrase “How do you feel about that issue?” into our Google overlord.  Interesting results, both with and without the quotes, showing a range of subjects in both searches that should not be left to feelings to decide.  I’m not saying we should abandon empathy and emotion, far from it, but my searches turned up health care reform, abortion, stem cell research, choosing the gender of children, these things need more careful consideration.

I think we as a species need to engage in a little consciousness raising here, stop letting our emotions control us and start thinking with our heads.  Not only the use of Science, but the Buddhist emphasis on mindfulness and the Taoist emphasis on awareness all serve to lead us in this direction, I suppose that there’s hope for us yet, eh?

[1] The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.  2007 Black Swan edition. ISBN 978-0-552-77331-7.

[2] Ethics as Emotions – An Evolutionary Approach.  Chris Lucas (date unknown)

I saw the film “Angels and Demons” last night, it’s a good film and I recommend it.  I’ll not spoil the plot, I hate it when people do that, but something in there got me thinking this morning.  I’ve come to believe that we have a tendency to defend fixed ideas rather then living truths.

In Buddhism we know that the cause of our suffering is that we tend to form crystallised ideas of the world and pretend they’re the reality, then get all hurt and confused when the ever changing world has moved on.

For example, we have people defending the idea that climate change is a fraud based, one look at the seasons and the state of the arctic ice is enough to make you say “hang on a minute…”.  But we tend to take our concepts, our ideas and try to make the world fit them.

In IT circles, we have various Operating System technologies which are considered by some proponents to be superior in all aspects to the others.  They’ll insist blindly that they are right, come what may.  The truth is that the choice of technologies adopted should be driven by the needs in reality, not the ideology in your head.

In religion, we have conflicts between doctrines and never mind the friction between science and religion.  Many people on all sides of the divide are busily defending their doctrine, not looking into what is real.

I was going to query the reasons we defend the ideas, are they the right ones?  Are we defending out of belief in their rightness or terror of the consequences if they’re wrong?

I question whether we should be defending them at all.

I’ve always been a skeptic at heart, this is the reason I moved to a very secular worldview and the reason I settled into Buddhism, it requires you to investigate.  I think this an enormously important thing to have in our personal belief systems, that willingness to investigate our beliefs honestly and if we find it to be in error then to re-evaluate it.

So, after a heads up to a marvelous video from Peter over at The Buddha Diaries, being the nosy such and such that I am, I went hunting round.

I liked this video as well, it’s Michael Shermer from the Skeptical society, talking about them and a bit about what they do.

Enjoy!

Now here’s an interesting piece. “The Neural Buddhists” is an opinion piece in the New York Times, which caught my attention and I have to say I find myself in agreement with the author.

I’ve long felt that hardcore materialism doesn’t have all the answers, but at the same time neither does hardcore bible thumping theism. My focus has always been in the direction of a flexible positive spirituality, not restrictive guilt mongering or the complete denial of our spiritual side, neither fear nor denial seem particularly useful to me.

We have had scientific evidence backing the positive effect of meditation, and after reading the NYT piece above, I’ve got a definite feeling that this is going to get very interesting!

I’ve been very interested by a story on the BBC which details the findings of scientists who are studying meditation. You can find the article here. It seems that the days of waiting for hard scientific evidence for the positive effects of meditation may well be over!

As a person who considers meditation to be an absolutely valuable practice this is music to my ears, I notice that they suggest it may help people struggling with substance abuse, and promotes happiness and enthusiasm.

I can certainly relate to that, I know how I feel when I miss my practice for a few days, I feel that my creativity and ability to engage properly with the world declines without meditation.

How do you feel your meditation practice benefits you? Drop me a comment.