The zealously religious often express mistrust and disdain for academia. They direct ire toward scientists. Why? Because these people are too head-oriented. They are removed from the truth of a god “in their hearts.” Or wherever else that truth may reside. Maybe the spleen.
Me, I certainly heed the hunches of my feelings and allow them to guide my behavior, like a personal advisor might suggest a course of action. But when it comes to making decisions in which I have the time and information to do so consciously and deliberately, I rely on my head.
For example, as a rule I don’t gamble. When I break that rule I do it fully knowing I am paying to entertain myself. If I am willing to shell out a few bucks to generate some excitement, fine. The reasoning section of my brain understands, fortunately, that gambling is a losing proposition. Feeling lucky? Take a cold shower.
I also choose not to gamble with what I believe about the universe. The cold showers to which I subject my craving for knowledge consist of books, websites, magazines, courses, presentations, and discussions with knowledgeable others.
On the subject of gods, the human experts of the known — scientists — have found no evidence of The Big Guy. None. Zero. Those who claim they have evidence mean to say they have inferences, and there is a difference.
Are scientists biased, not looking hard enough? Are they fudging the numbers so Satan has a comfy home in the university lab? I don’t think so. Finding credible evidence of a god, in data that could be verified and validated by other experts, would be bigger than big. The scientist or group of scientists who did would be awarded the Nobel Prize and more. Scientists are human. In other words, they are motivated by recognition and reward.
Why are no teams of serious experimenters working on a god-detector? Why aren’t engineers planning and building a device for tracking down the tracks of The Almighty? Certainly human ingenuity and technology are up to the task. Heck, physicists have positively confirmed the existence of particles called “neutrinos.” These subatomic particles can pass through walls of material thousands of miles of thick without so much as causing a squeak. Nonetheless, cunning engineers have found a way to pry their existence out of background noise and a previous void in the data. Not even the Crossing Over guy can detect neutrinos. But scientists have.
Why do the vast majority of scientists leave gods out of their research? Because they full well know that all previous gaps in our knowledge have been filled with naturalistic mechanisms. All. And they see no reason why that won’t be the case in the future.
When a god’s batting average is a perfect zero, it’s time to pull him from the field of play.
Every Sunday over the coming months I will engage in irrational behavior. I will jump up and yell when a man I’ve never met carries a stitched-together, inflated, oblong pigskin ball over a line drawn in the artificial turf. Yes, I am an NFL fan. And although I have never met any of the current members of the New England Patriots, whenever something good or bad happens to them, I will feel it. (In my defense, I grew up in a town outside Boston. I guess old allegiances die hard.)
It’s crazy, I know. Maybe my behavior should be criticized. Maybe psychologists should study why I do it. Here’s a hunch: Perhaps it has something to do with the misplaced tendencies of my “tribal mind.” On some level it’s possible that I believe the men on the team I have adopted as my virtual coalition are going to bring home some of the spoils of their victory. Among these is status. (The cheerleaders I could do without. But I guess the winning team doesn’t get to keep them as the pom-pommed booty from battles won.) Is that what is really going on with me and millions of others? I’d like to know. And once I did know, I just might persist in loving pro football.
Because I am well aware I engage in what can only be described as irrational behavior, I try to be tolerant of other types of activities that make absolutely no sense to me yet other people nonetheless get passionate about. Such as NASCAR and television soap operas.
I also try to view religious behavior the same way, with one significant exception: that practitioners of religion understand what they perceive as important and are passionate about is a personal matter. Sure, go ahead and believe Jesus once walked on water and will one day return to Earth. In my semi-facetious analogy, so, in my own way do I believe that Tom Brady performed a number of miraculous feats. But not in recent seasons. For he fell and has yet to rise again. Maybe this season he will prevail over the forces of evil — such as the New York Jets.
I have no qualms with personal irrationality provided believers don’t claim that what they are irrationally exuberant about is a truth that all others need to recognize and respect if not likewise participate in.
Unfortunately, many, many believers do make those claims. They force what should be a personal matter into town square. And that is why others, like me, deem it necessary to speak up in opposition.
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It has occurred to me that the Bible god could not have dictated His book to the Eskimos*, for it says nothing of seal and caribou. Rather than the Canaanites and Hittites, the extreme-northern Americans of the time battled bitter cold and the occasional polar bear. While heat appears in the King James Version of the Bible 241 times; there are only 17 uses of cold; A search for lion yields 141 hits, polar bear, not one.
Speaking of bears, the Bible god grants humankind dominion over all the animals. In the case of the grizzly, it’s a good thing humans invented weaponry, because without spears at minimum, the grizzly would have dominion over us relatively puny, sometimes knee-knocking Homo sapiens. Quoting Genesis to lions and tigers and bears doesn’t seem to impress them. Oh my.
Many characters in the Bible owned slaves. As far as I know, that’s not part of Eskimo culture. In the ancient Middle East one class of men had dominion over another. And they were not condemned for it. Perform a bit of a white-wash and call them servants if that makes you feel better. It was the way of their world. Men of the Bible god owned and sold other men, women, and children.
Didn’t the god of these people, this entity from a higher world, hold a higher standard? Did the Bible, in fact, get it wrong, and those who no longer hold one race above another now have it right? Throughout the ages the Bible has been used to commend and later condemn a whole platoon of motley behaviors.
Fortunately, human social conscience has evolved and is evolving. In some cases the pulpit may have helped to spread the word. But as frequently, and maybe more frequently, preachers have been behind the curve of recognizing an expanding circle of rights.
Forget about gay marriage — some churches still do not grant full respect and rights to women. Many religious authorities continue to assert, in words often left unsaid, that women deserve the status of “household assistants” and not that of complete equals to men. Aren’t women as worthy of standing behind an altar as they are kneeling before it? If not, why not?
Outdated reasoning. Although size and might may have “made right” in the human animal’s distant past — in times of the origination of religious sentiments that persist today — this is far from an essential truth. Power, however, is all today’s men have over women. That and undeservedly revered documents such as the Bible.
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*The indigenous peoples of near-polar regions, including the Yupik, Inuit, and Aleut. [Wiki info]
As an altar boy decades ago I was informed that when I rang the bells after the priest had raised the chalices toward heaven, transubstantiation occurred. Right there and then the wine became the blood of Jesus, the bread his body. Yuck! I must have written it off as adult make-believe, for as I helped with communion, holding the shiny golden plate beneath the chins of my neighbors, I could plainly see that the round, white wafers hadn’t changed one whit. And the wine still had the same grape juice color and was giving off its unmistakable alcohol vapors.
Sure, the every-Sunday, supernatural feat of transubstantiation is Catholic doctrine, but do any modern folk believe it actually occurs and is not just religious poetry? To enlighten myself on the matter, I consulted the almighty Google, and found this very helpful quote at www.rosary-center.org:
We are dealing here with something that cannot be verified or even examined by natural science. The nature of the change brought about in the Eucharist as taught by the Church, lies beyond what chemistry, physics or biology are able to establish. We have it on the clear words of Our Lord, and we can only assent to it through the supernatural light of faith.
I see. But this raises a number of questions. We need not heed the data of the real world; we must accept that something really does happen on the clear words of Our Lord. Hmm. Are the words truly that clear and not subject to different interpretations? Are they in fact the words of a lord? How do we know? Is one person’s hunch, I mean faith, as good a guide to truth as another person’s?
And what about that bit about supernatural light? Does this supernatural light have similar qualities to electromagnetic radiation in the visible spectrum — pleasantly colorful and potentially warming? Or is supernatural light more like light of the x-ray frequency? Or is it so super that it has a frequency and thus energy beyond that of gamma radiation? What does it all mean?
In a liberal (meaning free and progressive), educated, democratic society, the gods of religion rule in the ever smaller niches not occupied by reason, vote, and scientific methodology and knowledge. Modern medicine, law enforcement, and technological advancement make the domains of the gods ever smaller. To insure bountiful crops we spread fertilizer. To reform a person who has behaved badly, previously referred to as a sinner but now more often called a criminal, we send him to prison or to counseling or make him do community service. To ensure a safe passage home for the holidays we check the Weather Channel and have the guys at the local Spiffy Lube give the car a 32-point inspection.
The domain of gods is indeed getting chiseled down. Me, I’d like to get it done with once-and-for-all. How? Perhaps by grabbing “God” by the scruff of his neck and drop-kicking him into oblivion. And I could do it too, with my holy kicking power. Oh no, you can’t see or verify this power. You have to accept it on the supernatural light of gullibility.
[cartoon thanks to jesusandmo.net]
My book is now available in Kindle format. I don’t own a Kindle, but am certainly not opposed to the technology. And seeing that so many people read digital books . . . the writing is on the wall.
Well, the writing is actually now on a portable LCD screen.
Not thirty feet from my head a shark sliced along the clear wall of a building wave. Its dorsal fin briefly split the surface before it descended and was gone. I had just surfed into an area of mush — topside evidence of an underwater breach in the sand bar. As I turned and paddled back out I spotted the five-foot shark. I pushed past the break and sat up, my toes dangling in the home of the toothed torpedo. Moments later everyone was called out of the water. When a nineteen year-old with white goop on her nose, designer sunglasses, and red flag blows her whistle, I guess it’s serious. I paddled in.
I live in the shark-attack center of the world. Around the globe there are roughly 70 reported “shark incidences” each year. Florida’s eastern shore accounts for nearly 30 of them. Fortunately, no Great Whites inhabit our waters. The shark attacks at the beaches I surf are of the you’ll-need-a-few-quick-stitches-in-the-emergency-room variety. Hands and feet get bloodied, not outright stolen. Still, no one wants to get bitten by a shark. But there’s no way to surf without running the risk.
While surfing gives me a physical thrill, science mentally excites me. Both are risky pursuits in their own ways. With science you put your beliefs to a test; you conduct research to see if they withstand challenge.
The risk is that when it comes to the actual data, your belief/hypothesis may take a wipe-out. Then what?
Then you jettison your bruised ego and head back into the action.
Consider this scenario: A surfing friend tells you that when you were out of state, for 7 days and 7 nights there was an endless procession of perfectly glassy waves tubing their way to shore. He had the waves all to himself and he surfed until his arms quit. Would you believe him? I might say, Dude, your beautiful story is making me cry. But until I see the photos, I ain’t buying it.
Tales are like the wake of a surfboard. The scratch a surfer leaves in the face of a wave quickly disappears after the fact; the storyteller is then free to say anything he or she wants about it. Without somehow catching the bubbling slice, there is no hard evidence to prove a tale right or wrong.
It is not, however, up to the listener to prove the tale-teller wrong; it is the tale-teller’s responsibility to provide something more substantial than yet more words to establish the veracity of his or her claim.
Of course, if a claim can’t be verified there is no risk involved. Is it any wonder that the bulk of religious tales and claims can’t be tested? And so they are safe.
Accepting dogma and having faith is easy. Just listen and let be. “Doing science,” however — formally or informally — takes time, effort and exposure to potentially embarrassing, bruising correction.
Not many people surf. There is less danger and more comfort on shore.
