Alex’s Heresies – embracing a physical reality

Our belief in magic continues to haunt humanity – religions, churches, sacred texts, and – now – crazy interpretations of scientific research. Recently the New York Times, copied and extended by the Sunday Age, produced fanciful religious-style speculations of serious empirical research – Large Hadron Collider project near Geneva. The Age article, in particular, makes a seemless transition from some science reporting, well requoting of the NYT article, to a mixing poetical story telling; crazy faith claims of near-death experiences; and stories of saints.

As soon as we find something unexplained in science, out come the gurus, gullibly quoted by unqualified feature writers, to spruke simplistic mixtures of new-age mysticism with traditional religious beliefs, ‘explaining’ the unknowns in such strange worlds as sub-atomic particles. Worst still, even renowned scientists leave their areas of expertise (while still being quoted with those same scientific qualifications) to declare evidences for god, free-will, consciousness or any other mystery, without the slightest shred of empirical evidence. This is speculation at its worst and most dangerous. One such scientist even won the lucrative Templeton Prize for his god-like imaginations, good for his bank balance and great PR for the religious Templeton organisation.

Do not believe that quotations from scientists actually support these ideas. We must remember that scientists often use god-type language to explain wonderous mysteries. But they do not mean anything like the Christian, Islamic or Jewish God. Even Einstein did this while strongly disbelieving in any sort of god. Scientists are excited and often mystified by findings at the frontiers of knowledge and then will use poetic language to describe those mysteries. Most are not seriously seeking answers from 2000-3000 year old writings of Middle Eastern desert tribesmen.

Alex McCullie