Alex’s Heresies – embracing a physical reality

Video from the Center of Inquiry promotes the use of science and reason to better humankind rather than traditional religious beliefs and dogma. (YouTube video)

Alex McCullie

The Christian religious explanations for the creation of the universe, Earth and, more particularly, humans have always seemed incredible to me.

Let us take the approach of the traditional Christian who is on the softer end of bible interpretation. I am using Marcus Borg‘s description of a traditional Christian from his book The Heart of Christianity. Essentially the traditional Christian believer sees the Holy Bible as the true Word of God and Jesus as the son of God and part of the Trinity. Being on the softer end, though, some of the Bible may be interpreted metaphorically such as the story of Genesis to incorporate the developments of science.

So here’s my guess of the modernised Christian story.

15 billion years ago (that’s 15,000,000,000 years) God created the universe – all known time and space – in the same way as hypothesised by scientists as the “Big Bang” theory. However the scientific explanations do not involve God. Now, you should remember at this point that God’s overall objective is to create us some 15 billion years as the only living creatures with both physical and non-physical (“soul”) forms. As you know souls can join Him upon death for people obeying God’s laws. Back to the story. Then about 10.5 billion years later God created Earth (consistent with the latest scientific theories) and some 500,000 years later created simple life forms. It’s important to remember that God created the rules of the universe that gives us the apparent order we find and, as part of that, evolution. But God intervenes, presumably,  to ensure that He gets the outcome He wants. So even though Evolutionary theory suggests that all living things, including humans, got here by a combination of chance and selection, the chance may be illusionary as God needs to manipulate the processes to achieve His outcomes – human beings. So through a relatively meandering process of evolution and appearing as if driven by purely selection and chance, humans appear some 150 000 years ago – 15 billions after the start of the universe – according to God’s design.

Let’s fast forward to some 2 500 years ago when God decided the time was right to directly influence humans by appearing. He chose a small wandering tribe in the Middle East to start His work. It was a good start but more was needed so some 500 years later God placed his embodiment into this Middle Eastern tribe in the form of Jesus. For over 30 years Jesus preached around the Middle East, gathered followers and performed miracles for before dying, resurrecting and returning to God (even though in some sense he is God). This cleansed our original sin as described in the metaphorical story of Adam and Eve though it isn’t clear how we have the same original sin in the more scientifically-aware version of Christian creation. From that point his teachings spread throughout the Roman Empire and beyond through disciples like Paul (Saul of Tarsus).

So we have a couple of major choices. We can believe the scientific explanations as they stand without God. Or, we can except those explanations but believe God developed the rules and intervened selectively to produce us. Surprisingly there appears to be no verifiable physical evidence of God intervening contrary to the scientific explanations. I should mention that our lack of knowledge about beginning of life and universe should be no justification for hypothesising a god. In fairness though adding a god does make many people feel special and have something better to look forward upon death so perhaps that isn’t a completely unhealthy delusion. I guess Richard Dawkins would disagree.

Alex McCullie

An amusing article appeared in the on-line news website, The Onion, : Evolutionists Flock to Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain (5-Sep-2008). Now religious apologists will be saying that secularists do believe in a god after all – just the wrong one.

Alex McCullie

Discover magazine article How To Teach Science to the Pope 18-Aug-2008 describes the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the testy (at times) relationship between the Academy’s independence and church doctrine. One example was over the need for population control promoted by the Academy that was contrary to the church’s opposition to birth control and contraception. (See article 16-Jun-1994) From the 1994 article Cardinal Clancy makes a particularly instructive remark showing how religious leaders react to being challenged.

Edward Cardinal Clancy of Sydney, Australia, said that in cases of perceived conflict between the church and scientists, “the question mark must rather be raised over what’s being said in the name of science.”

The Discover article highlights some interesting aspects of science and religion.

First, I think science is often misrepresented as conducted by robot-like white coated scientists who are devoid of feelings and concerns about people. Nothing could be further from the truth. Often they are very passsionate about their work and the potential benefits for humanity. However the important aspect, though, is that they work in accordance with accepted methods that have proved very successful at generating reliable information. Speculation – reasoned and superstitious – can be very much part of religion and philosophy. On the other hand science attempts to minimised speculation and human wishful thinking by making hypotheses, conclusions and research data in some way empirically-based.

Second, “scientism” is an easy catch-call when scientific research and discoveries threaten firmly-held religious beliefs and dogmas. Heliocentic view of Earth, Theory of Evolution and Neuroscience are providing convincing support for a physicalist view of humans and our world. Religious leaders often react in two different ways. Some deny all scientific achievements that contradict their sacred texts. The Earth was created 6000 years ago and evolution is the work of Satan. While others dramatically re-interpret scriptures to be more science-friendly and evolution-friendly. However “scientism” still comes out of the cupboard whenever the religious feel threatened. Our society has an almost automatic assumption that religious people, who are often just purveyors of their particular religious beliefs and dogma, are somehow more qualified to talk about human well-being than anyone else. Thoughtful scientists, philosophers, religious leaders, politicians and others should all be assessed on the merits of their comments and expertise regardless of whether they are the Dali Lama or the Pope or the local priest or a Nobel prize winning biologist.

Third, a common retort to critics of religious belief is that they attacked an old-fashion version of God. Typically these religious thinkers present a very attenuated version of God that seems devoid of the classic theist properties – all powerful, ever present, all loving, interested in humans and interventionist. That is until we talk specifics. Most religious leaders still believe miracles happen – temporary suspension of all natural laws by a divine being to use Hume’s definition. Some though place an upper limit of numbers otherwise our lives would be unpredictable. Thank you for small mercies.

The Discover article quotes Father Rafael Martínez, the STOQ program director at Holy Cross.

Martínez explains that while rare, miracles are still plausible. “Our world is a very complex world in which chaos and uncertainty have a big part… but the odds are one in many terabillions,” he says. “That would be not a problem in my point of view because this event would be guided in a way without contradicting natural laws.”

It doesn’t get fluffier than that – if not contradicting natural laws so why is it a miracle? It is hard to know what to make of miracles from scientifically aware believers. They need miracles to demonstrate the validity of their religion. But claiming too many exposes them to being shown to have natural causes or worse not even happening at all. To a critic it is also interesting that most “real” miracles seem to have occurred in more primitive times prior to the advent of modern science. A cynic might suppose that God is shier today than 2000 years ago or, perhaps, He does not exist at all.

Finally, religious thinkers on one hand use a very nebulous, non-invasive, loving version of God to defend His existence and to criticise atheists as attacking a “straw man”. Then in the next breath many firm up supporting very restrictive religious rules on human behaviour such as a prohibition of contraception even if demonstrated to help reduce HIV infection.

Alex McCullie

Evolution (DVD) is an excellent introduction to Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution (in 7 parts for 8 hours). The topics include Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, The Evolutionary Arms Race, Why Sex?, The Mind’s Big Bang and What About God?

Mostly the DVD is classic documentary style even though the first part includes a drama recreating Darwin’s life.

I found the last episode about the conflict between beliefs in God and theory of evolution the most interesting episode. The documentary follows US teenage students from strong Christian backgrounds attempting to reconcile first introductions to biological science including evolution. Most of these young people had been told since birth the Genesis explanation from the people that mattered – parents, immediate and extended families, faith school teachers and church elders. Not surprisingly they accepted without questions, especially as their parents and friends described evolution as the work of Satan.

The DVD is available in Australia encoded as region 4. It’s also available from Amazon (region 1).

Corresponding website with video extracts: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/

Alex McCullie

The short answer is no, just an uneasy truce. Scientists agree to not declare the “resurrection” and other miracles as highly improbable, unsupported by evidence and contradictory to all other known physical principles. Similarly many religionists accept scientific theories (partially) and not engage in war against science, while still maintaining traditional creeds of god created all things and gave human beings everlasting souls. This is my very sceptical view of the broad “understanding”.

Science and religion seek to explain our existence and the world about us. Science uses empirically-based evidence to provide physical explanations for our world. Religions use ancient texts and interpretations by religious leaders and intellectuals to impart their vision of god’s will for us and our world. Given changes in scientific knowledge, religions may re-interpret their sacred texts to be more acceptable or simply deny science and retain their ancient explanations.

Science assumes a strictly physical reality that displays a non-designed regularity that can be understood. Science investigates the world with a bottom-up approach so it examines the parts to understand the whole – so-called reductionism. Moreover science encourages skeptical thinking by seeing all knowledge as provisional. Over the last 500 years science has proved amazingly successful at explaining our world by using this empirically-based research, disciplined testing and regular peer reviews. Many superstitions have been replaced by scientific explanations.

Religions assume that all existence has a purpose and that we, as humans, have special significance. Typically an all powerful entity exists in the non-physical reality but created all things in our physical one. Humans, unlike all other living things, exist in both worlds with non-physical souls and a physical body. Most religions use ancient texts and later interpretations to describe the world, its origins and as well as human purposes. Believers are expected to have faith – belief without evidence – that these words were written by people and inspired by god. Even though many people see some of the religious stories as metaphorical or naive inventions of earlier civilisations, conservative believers still take these stories as literal truth.

When religions talk about god and even souls there is probably no clashing with science. However when religions make pronouncements about the physical world – as they must to have any relevance – then they are on science’s patch. Scientific methods can be used to check the likelihood of religious physical claims. Not surprisingly this creates flash-points of dispute. Some obvious examples come to mind. Firstly, there is no independent physical evidence that any miracles – violations of natural laws – have occurred. Also, secondly, Evolution presents enormous metaphysical problems for most religions. All life evolved naturally; our existence came by chance; and humans are like other living things and therefore unlikely to have non-physical aspects such as souls are some of the obvious implications. Everyday, finally, neuroscience is chipping away at the sanctity of a separate mind with physical descriptions of our mental processes.

Technically religions and science could exist in parallel if religions never talked about the physical world and science continues to ignore any non-physical existence. Unfortunately, as even the religious leaders know, the physical reality affects our everyday concerns. Talking about gods, ghosts and spirits without mentioning our actual physical world is of little practical interest to anyone.

Alex McCullie

pdf: Science and Our Fall From Grace (right-click to save)

500 years ago most people believed that god created the universe with Earth at its centre and created all living things. Man and woman were made in god’s image and endowed with non-physical souls that continued after death. This was the teaching of the Christian church. Using the bible, Archbishop Usher (Ireland) in 1654 calculated the age of Earth as 6,000 years old and even named the date and time of its creation.

Today science tells us that humans evolved through physical processes like all other living things over millions of years. Our planet is 4.6 billion years old and revolves around a sun that is situated in a remote part of a very large universe. Science explains our perceptions, thinking and emotions in physical terms without needing souls, separate ‘minds’ and after lives.

So what happened?

Three scientific developments have severely shaken beliefs in our special role in nature; in fact have lead to our “fall from grace”. The Copernican revolution showed that the Earth is not the centre of the universe. Theory of Evolution proposed a strictly natural explanation for the development of all living things including humans. And, over the last 30 years, Neuroscience is providing physical explanations for our perceptions, feelings and thoughts – traditionally seen as part of a non-physical mind.

What is science?

There are many definitions of science.

“Science is the concerted human effort to understand or to understand better, the history of the natural world and how the natural world works, with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding” (Bruce Railsback, Professor, Department of Geology, University, of Georgia)

“The scientific method seeks to explain the events of nature in a reproducible way, and to use these reproductions to make useful predictions. It is done through observation of natural phenomena, and/or through experimentation that tries to simulate natural events under controlled conditions. It provides an objective process to find solutions to problems in a number of scientific and technological fields.” (Rutherford & Ahlgren, Science for all Americans 1990)

These definitions and others show that science is empirically-based. Ultimately its knowledge is based on observations of the physical world from a third-person perspective. Scientific work – observations, experiments, hypotheses and theories – is conducted rigorously to reduce the effects of human wishful thinking and biases. Conclusions are open to criticism through peer review before being published in journals. The scientific community attempts to minimise deference to authority and not to rely on unchallenged texts and claims. Many writers refer to the methods of science as methodical materialism or methodical naturalism. Even scientists with strong religious beliefs conduct scientific research on this basis.

By using empirical methods, modern science has successfully replaced superstitions with reliable physical explanations in our world. Science generally takes a bottom-up approach when researching and explaining the world by examining the parts to understand the whole. Religions, on the other hand, usually provide edicts, rules and explanations from broad articles of faith and apply them to specific situations in a top-down fashion.

Science works with a number of widely-acknowledged assumptions, namely:

1. Nature is orderly, i.e., regularity, pattern, and structure. Laws of nature describe order.
2. We can know nature. Individuals are part of nature. Individuals and social exhibit order; may be studied same as nature.
3. All phenomena have natural causes. Scientific explanation of human behaviour opposes religious, spiritualistic, and magical explanations.
4. Nothing is self evident. Truth claims must be demonstrated objectively.
5. Knowledge is derived from acquisition of experience – empirically – through senses directly or indirectly.
6. Knowledge is superior to ignorance.

Assumptions are adapted from Chava Frankfort-Nachmias and David Nachmias, Research Methods in the Social Sciences. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1996

Finally we should say what science is not. Firstly science is not art with individual artistic expression. Nor is it technology, such as nuclear power plants, even though technology utilises scientific knowledge. And, finally, science isn’t philosophy or religion. Science does not attempt to talk about human purpose or happiness even though scientific research may contribute to understanding our place in the world.

Copernican revolution

Between 1543 and 1633 Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo published theories and research that overturned people’s traditional view of Earth at the centre of the universe. Their work replaced the traditional Ptolemaic Earth-centred view with a new heliocentric model. Not only did they challenge people’s natural intuitions about Earth but also the church teachings about god and man’s special place. Despite powerful church opposition like Galileo’s conviction of “grave suspicion of heresy”, the heliocentric model became the accepted view of Earth and the solar system.

So we were not at the geographical centre of god’s creation after all.

Theory of Evolution

In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of the Species overturning the universal belief that we were the special product of creation. The theory of evolution saw humans as having evolved naturally like all other living things. Adaptation of organisms to local environments was proposed as the primary process driving the evolutionary development of living things.

Evolution directly contradicted the creation stories of most religious texts including the Genesis story of the Christian bible. In particular, evolution questioned notions of implicit human progress towards perfectibility as well as our natural superiority and dominion over other living things. The view that the world was populated with a hierarchy of fixed species became obsolete. Worse still, human beings were now seen as having evolved from the same ancestors as “Iesser” animals and, under different circumstances, may not have evolved at all.

Evolution is almost universally accepted by the scientific community with overwhelming evidence from a variety of disciplines. However, not surprisingly, evolution continues to be seen as threat for many religious people and is regularly challenged by well-funded groups. Creationism and Intelligent Design movements are recent examples.

So humans have evolved through natural and blind processes of chance and adaptation.

Neuroscience

Over the last 30 years the neurosciences have researched mental processing as physical brain activity. Specifically, neuroscience is effectively exorcising the “ghost in the machine” – the soul.

There are three areas of study. Firstly, cognitive neuroscience directly relates thoughts, perceptions and emotions to the functioning of the brain using advanced imaging techniques. Behavioural genetics links genetic information with behaviour through research programs such as with separated twins. And, finally, evolutionary psychology examines the mental capabilities as an evolved brain with a series of sub-systems that resulted from environmental adaptations.

Neuroscience research is new and ever-changing. However some conclusions seem clear. Firstly, our brain and its processing are more like a chaotic Chinese restaurant than a well-designed computer. Secondly, most of our mental processing is subconscious with very little reaching a conscious level. Thirdly, our brains are very creative at filling information gaps with explanations that may or may not be true. In most situations our folk theories and rule-of-thumb processing work satisfactorily as we evolved that way for survival. However our thoughts, feelings, attitudes and beliefs can also be very unreliable and self-deceiving. A final conclusion suggests that we need to rethink our understanding of free-will. Neuroscience suggests much less freedom than we intuitively believe.

Neuroscience tells us that our mental processing operates in a very approximate, self-fulfilling way and suggests the need to maintain a healthy scepticism regarding information and situations we come across. Finally don’t forget that most cognitive processing is handled subconsciously by our brains.

Final Comments

Today’s science provides better grounded and less mysterious explanations for the physical world than religions did some 500 years ago or even today. The results of scientific research with the reasoning of philosophy offer wonderful opportunities to explore the human condition and to lead to more fulfilling lives less reliant on wishful thinking, revelations, faith and superstition.

References

Kitcher, P 2007, Living with Darwin, Oxford University Press
Hauser, M 2006, Moral Minds, HarperCollins
Pfaff, D 2007, The Neuroscience of Fair Play, Dana Press
Mayr, E 2001, What Evolution Is, Basic Books
Lakoff G & Johnson, M 1999, Philosophy in the Flesh, Basic Books

Good reading

© 2008 Alex McCullie

Here is a link to an article debunking the myth that the Qur’an is scientifically accurate: The myth of Science in the Quran

Alex McCullie

link to Complete Works of Charles Darwin

To quote:

“Only this site contains Darwin’s complete publications, 20,000 private papers, the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue and hundreds of supplementary works: specimens, biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and much more.”

Alex McCullie

These are not true…

• A nasty, vicious lion stalks, attacks and murders a poor defenceless antelope on an ‘Animal Planet’ documentary.

• My cat loves me. He knows when I’m upset and will deliberately comfort me.

• Selfish genes behave immorally.

• The Earth is a living thing just like us.

Empathy is one of the great strengths to have evolved in humans. Our ability to see from someone else’s point of view forms the basis of social and moral behaviour. Wonderfully, this is all done subconsciously. Subsequent moral discussions are mostly rationalisations justifying these intuitive responses. (Steven Pinker http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html)

But here’s the rub. We apply this empathy to other things – living and non-living – in unhelpful ways. People believe they can see the world as a non-human would. Recently, a friend told me that he could genuinely imagine the world as seen by a bat. This belief has benefits, of course. We are more likely to respect other living and non-living things (Gaia, for example), if we see them as “like us”. Unfortunately, however, we also can moralise about animal behaviour, seeking to punish as if animals are free moral agents with responsibility. Again, all is done subconsciously. So, lions are not nasty; cute looking dears are not innocent; cats don’t love; genes are not morally selfish and Earth is not alive like us. As an aside, biologists, like Richard Dawkins, often refer to observed behaviour metaphorically. So behaviour can be described a selfish or altruistic without any moral implications.

The bottom line is we should be aware that living things (and non-living for that matter) have no natural or moral purposes. They just evolved to what they are today and will continue to do so. Evolutionary processes are blind and uncaring and putting chance aside, they reward (non-morally) characteristics leading to successful reproduction and punish (again, non-morally) those that don’t. As suggested in Pinker’s article, even our moral attitudes can be seen to have developed in a similar way.

Don’t get me wrong. We shouldn’t use this awareness as an excuse to ignore the problems we create for all livings things and for the planet. Our capacity to see and remedy problems beyond conflicting immediate needs may be our true greatness.

© 2008 Alex McCullie