Science, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy and engineering were first explored at least 4000 years ago. In the last few centuries the natural sciences, among them physics, chemistry, biology, and geology, astrophysics, and the medical sciences have increasingly led to the understanding of our surroundings and ourselves. All the sciences have taken great strides in the last 100 years along with the rise of secular rationalism. And even more recently the new sciences, political science, psychology, sociology, bio-sciences and genetics, modern medicine and psychiatry and hundreds more have added to our knowledge and understanding of ourselves as individuals and society. But this exponential growth of knowledge has not been easy to assimilate. There is only so much time in a human life span and so much to do with it. The question of how to apply all this knowledge has outstripped our capabilities, and whereas it should have resulted in vast improvements in all fields of human life and activity, for many it has merely brought confusion and an overwhelming sense of inferiority. Along with this explosion of knowledge and experience has come the difficulty of finding ways of passing on or sharing information, within professions, between disciplines, between theory and practice, and out into the public domain. No one, with the best will in the world, can now hope to assimilate more than a fragment of the available information on any single subject, let alone across subjects, as I will try in a small way to do here. Groundbreaking insights can go unnoticed in the melee of ideas. Today there is so much scientific research that is allied to commercial and political interests that it is sometimes difficult to identify its funding or motivation, which may lead to corruption and subversion of science as an objective pursuit. It can be difficult to evaluate research findings and recognise their possible distortion or misrepresentation for political or commercial purposes. The result, in a media-led culture, is confusion and distrust, which may be accidental or deliberate. How much easier to rely on one’s omnipotent god, scriptures and clerics to make life simple! Centuries of suppression of free thought and of rational, analytical scientific thinking; the reliance on narrow texts and scriptures; and forced obedience to doctrinal instruction, have stunted the development of a critical faculty. Because there has been no tradition of open assessment of empirical and scientific evidence, people have been trained to accept dogma and rely on second-hand views presented as ‘knowledge’. In today’s scientific world it is a serious problem that is neither recognised nor addressed. The Church is trying to counter the science-versus-religion debate by promoting the idea that they actually advanced learning and science. And they did accept some science in the past, but only to the extent that it was useful for their own limited purposes. If science or astronomy could be used to support vague scriptural assertions or make their calendars and concoct dates for their saints’ days and celebrations it would be used. If it challenged their beliefs, they would suppress it. Today, more frighteningly, many are contriving new pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo such as linguistics-linguistics and mind control programmes to help them to maintain a hold on their believers. Knowledge Is Power and in today’s increasingly scientific world the Churches are trying to subvert science to their own ends. At the base of the conflict between science and religion is the fear that if it can be proved that events or phenomena have natural physical causes, what need is there to believe in god and religion? If one’s belief is that God is the cause and planner of all things, what need is there to search for a physical cause that might challenge that belief? Further, if having explained the real causes of problems, the solution is also found, and the problem solved, where does this leave one’s God? Could he not have known the cause, or solution, or was he just playing games? If so how would you explain the unnecessary human suffering while waiting for humans to solve the puzzle he presumably set? If god and religion are the cause of all things, what need is there to search for a physical cause that might challenge that and reverse the consequences? Science is thought of as a relatively recent human activity, but it is in fact very old. Its impact has only become a major preoccupation for us as its potential as a practical tool for good or ill, rather than just a philosophical discipline, is becoming clearer year-by-year. Scientific inquiry and discovery might well have started much earlier and progressed much faster if the clever and creative people of each era had not been restrained, and women excluded, by religious doctrine and practice. At every step from the first breaks with superstition, the early scientific ‘Naturalist’ explanations had to be argued against a tide of traditional mythology and mysticism. They had to waste precious time and brainpower countering these unproductive arguments about the mythical causes of natural phenomena and events. At every stage they were held back by religion, which saw science as a challenge to their Almighty and his planned perfection, an activity that continues today whenever scientific advance conflicts with or undermines religion’s god-given laws. From the first flowering of human intellectualism and scientific thinking in ancient Greece, great philosophers such as Protagoras, Democritus and the greatest, Aristotle, rethought the predominant pantheism and personification of the gods of ancient civilisations. They challenged the mythological nature of religion, with its notions that natural events and phenomena were caused directly by ‘the gods’. These early philosophers, scientists, mathematicians and astronomers saw human behaviour and events as having natural explainable causes, that they were part of nature, of the earth or people, the explanations being considered naturalistic, and were informed by a dawning of scientific understanding. They were hindered at every stage by the old superstition, and beliefs in myth and legend. From the early 6th century BC when philosophers of the Milesian school asked ‘what is the world made of?’ ‘Matter’ and ‘form’ became the proper objects of study. Pythagoras added a rational Greek principle to studies of the cosmos, and Pythagoreans were criticised for their ‘search for facts’. Parmenides knew that ‘only the mind can reach the truth’ and Anaxagoras, returning to Ionian tradition, said that philosophy should be a scientific activity. Democritus emphasised deductive reasoning and hit upon atomic theory, that elements were composed of tiny ‘unsplittable’ bodies (‘atomoi’ or atoms) invisible to the naked eye, and that differences in matter were accounted for by the size and shape of these ‘atoms’ and whether they were closely or loosely packed. As astonishing as it may seem now, Anaximander in the fifth century BC proposed that life arose in the warm mud, the first animals being fish-like, then evolving into all animals including humans. Aristotle recognised the emerging differences between those who described the world in terms of myth and legend and the multiple gods of the old religions, and those who were beginning to see the world in terms of natural forces, which could not only be explained in scientific terms but could even be predicted by recognising the natural signs. This notion they learnt from the astrological studies and predictions of the Egyptians. These were among the first documented inklings that the world was ordered by natural law and not divine plan. He is credited with advancing rational philosophy opposed to Christianity and Islamic theology. * His ideas were an inspiration to later thinkers of the middle Ages, and later in Britain. From the second century, this long sophisticated tradition of empiricism and rational thought in Ancient Greece was attacked and eventually overcome and suppressed by Christianity. For most of its centuries of European domination the teaching of the multitudes to "believe without thinking out their reasons" prevailed. St Paul’s ‘higher way of knowing’ was preferred to what he derided as ‘the empty logic of philosophers’, rather than rational thought. Yet one still hears the supporters of religion claiming that the advance of science compared with the Muslim world was due to the Christian Religion! In his book "The Closing of the Western Mind, the rise of faith and the fall of reason," Charles Freeman points out how Christianity embraced and eventually smothered the tradition of philosophical and scientific thought. Aristotle, Copernicus, Galen, the 17th-century physicists and the work of the Enlightenment thinkers were, he says, ‘frozen’ and interpreted as supporting religion. When forced to embrace ideas that challenged their ideas of god and creation, the religions absorbed them, used what was useful to them and ‘spat out the rest’, destroying or retarding them in the process, for any purposes other than their own. They did this in the same way that they tried to stamp out stories from previous belief systems, but when this failed turned them to their own advantage, using and renaming Christmas and Easter for instance, originating as they did from pagan ideas. Advances in knowledge of astronomy and mathematics they used to date their religious festivals and compile their calendars, building observatories into their cathedrals in such a way as to enable them to track the position of the sun across the floors. They were eventually forced to interpret scientific knowledge, not as a challenge to religious belief, but as an explanation of it, and a confirmation of their god’s existence, and his divine process — a tactic that has persisted in all such considerations throughout history. Even today religionists will fall back on this rationalisation whenever their doctrines (beliefs) cannot be sustained against rational argument. In the current debate on evolution vs. creationism for instance, it is already being claimed now by many believers, that these are not ideas that contradict biblical theory or demolish their basic beliefs, but are ‘complementary’. In incorporating evolution, they now say that God created the earth, by creating evolution! An argument that is difficult to counter with rationality. No amount of rationalism will convince the confirmed religious believer. Just as the believers in the ‘old’ religions punished those with new ideas that challenged their supremacy in ancient Greece, throughout Europe the Catholic Church did the same. The followers of Pythagoras were persecuted, and Anaxagoras was banished for ‘impiety to the gods’, while in the 600 years between 1232 and 1835 anyone who promoted views contrary to the religious teaching of the Church would be seized and tortured, brought before the Tribunal of the Inquisition for heresy. Writers, thinkers, scientists and any individual who fell foul of the Catholic religion were sacrificed, imprisoned or killed. Most famously Galileo Galilei in 1632, at the age of 70, was put under house arrest for the ‘astronomical heresy’ of proving the truth of the Copernican doctrine that the planets moved round the sun. An action that damaged the Catholic Church for centuries, and which Pope John Paul II eventually admitted was ‘an error’. Religion has slowed scientific progress both for philosophical reasons and as a result of its influence in relegating women to an inferior and subordinate role in society and excluded them from education and science; it has also exerted social pressure to prevent the spread of scientific knowledge. Charles Darwin, who arguably made one of the most important scientific contributions of the 19th century, was severely constrained by the need not to offend the social and scientific establishment of his day, his own professional peers, and his own wife and family. His concern for the feeling of all these devout Christian people prevented him from any public challenge to their superstitious beliefs. It was only in personal correspondence that he made his view known. He did in fact join with the Lubbock family who lived locally, to establish Downe Primary School on the condition that it would be a secular school. Had he been able or willing to assert the implications of his theory of evolution by natural selection, the serious and widespread consideration of atheism might have been established more than a hundred years ago. Science in its true sense is the rational ideal, intellectually rigorous, objective and critical, as described by the philosophers of ancient Greece. This ideal can be reduced by religion, to what should more properly be called technology, the production of objects and gadgetry. The Victorian age is hailed as the era of science, empire and colonialism, and prudery. It ended with an underclass still in deep poverty, poor health, ill educated and exploited. This may be explained by the extent to which the flowering of science was used for its technical innovation and engineering, rather than the open-minded search for science as a tool of human emancipation and progress. The Christian Church and its religious ethos were still strong enough to prevent the use of science to alleviate human suffering. Now in the hands of religious, military, and right wing regimes this gadgetry is used for the production of weapons of mass destruction rather than for civil, humanitarian, peaceful purposes. Dr Anis Alam, Professor of Physics at the University of Punjab, Lahore, describes the Pakistan Scientific Community as "the most irrational, conservative and least objective professional body anywhere". In a country of 134 million people, three quarters of whom are illiterate, a country in which there is widespread poverty, in which boy children spend their time learning the Koran by heart, vast sums are spent on a nuclear capability, not for humanitarian infrastructure, education, and health facilities, but for nuclear bombs. In an assessment of science in Pakistan from 1977, Dr Alam describes how Islam manages to cobble together "a confusing mixture of science and religion". He also describes how scarce resources were "wasted on activities that only promoted an anti-scientific attitude and values". It is difficult to know how the absence of women, in the halls and laboratories of learning and scientific endeavour, has affected science in the past, its progress and direction, or how their presence in ever-greater numbers will change its ethos and application in the future. One can speculate that they will bring to it a balance that does not exist in the almost all-male environment of some institutions, and possibly make them more orientated towards humanitarian causes, and less to violence and macho applications. The number of women in science is increasing year on year, and since the middle of the 20th century their numbers and influence are already being felt in many fields. As more women enter fields traditionally reserved to men, this female influence will increase to the advantage of science and its enhancement of human life and society. If the Victorians with their strong religious ethos used science for invention and making money, keeping the ‘rich man in his castle and the poor man at the gate’, the increasing secularisation of the 20th century has led to science being used increasingly for humanitarian purposes. The application of science as a tool to improve people’s lives owes a lot to the many scientists, who have dared to challenge the innate conservatism of religion. Science is at the forefront of a battle between its use for consumption, commercialisation and global capitalism on the one hand, and science to minimise and solve problems that are beginning to be evident from the lack of or misuse of science, and in progressive reforms that will improve all our lives. In every area of life there is a need for careful, ethical, evidence-based research. What is also needed is for the public to be able to understand and assess the information that research presents. Philosophical resistance to the critical objectivity of science is still a problem. For the religions, any issue on which their concepts of divine supremacy are under challenge causes them difficulty, and there is still a covert anti-science attitude, evident in resistance to new discoveries. The religiously motivated objections to much scientific research are not always obvious. The Churches are becoming more wary of opposing science when this can be identified with their religious beliefs or agenda, at least at the present time in the UK. Whether this will continue if the influence of Islam, the Evangelicals, or Roman Catholics increases remains to be seen. Current examples of persistent opposition to scientific advance are in the fields of birth control and human reproduction where they see their religious doctrine and belief in god under threat. In the preface to his book ‘Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs’ Michael Persinger, professor of Neuropsychology at Lurentian University, Canada, wrote: "An objective explanation for why people believe in god is not very popular" . . . "Scientists may encounter resistance, ranging from quiet but cordial avoidance to outright physical violence. During the development of the explanation in this text, I have experienced both." And lest we get smug at this situation under Islam, we must consider the even more astonishing success of 'creationism' a reactonary affirmation of the biblical notion of the world having been literally created by god as per genesis some 10 thousand yers ago, or 'design theory' of the design of the universe by god. This has been brought about, not in medaeval societies, but in the US and Britain. In the US massive pressure is being exerted by the evangelical churches to replace Charles Darwin's scientific, evidence based 'Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection' in the classroom. In Britain wealthy evangelical individuals have been allowed to sponsor secondary schools for a 10% payment towards the capital costs secondary schools that will be paid for by the British government but controlled by these evangelical Christians. Another area is in the use of recreational drugs. It has always been the stock-in-trade of the religions that the only true happiness is to be gained through their particular religion. All forms of physical, bodily activity that bring pleasure are frowned on by the religions, especially the many forms of sex for pleasure. Recreational drugs that create heightened states of pleasure are particularly undermining to their ideas of divine ecstasy. The use of hallucinogenic drugs is a window onto the ability of the brain to produce experiences that may, and certainly have in the past, and in other circumstances, been considered supernatural; a reminder perhaps of the persecution of witches and ideas of demonic possession that are still a feature of some religious ideas. Even the Church of England still has ministers who perform exorcisms. One serious aspect of this attitude to drugs is that the Churches implacable opposition has prevented adequate management of drug problems. Illegality brings with it not only crime, but also non-existence of any control of substances, strength and adulteration, which has cause many deaths. It also creates an atmosphere in which ignorance and paternalism hamper serious responsible attitudes especially among the young. Yet another effect is the spill over of these attitudes to mind-altering, or mood-enhancing medications. People who suffer mental illness are increasingly able to gain some alleviation from these distressing and disruptive conditions by the use of prescription drugs, and although there are problems as with any new treatments, they hold great promise of relief for many. Unfortunately for some the stigma of the illness itself and the lack of understanding, often made worse by superstitious notions as to cause, also affect people’s attitude to the need for drugs. These relics from the past and the punitive attitudes to those with mental illness contribute to feelings of guilt surrounding the need to take drugs to make them feel better. So while no one would look down upon someone who has to take medication for some chronic illness, or for a deficiency of some naturally produced chemical or hormone, those who need regular medication for mental illness may feel that they should not accept long-term medication. Centuries of religious thinking and the reliance on doctrine have retarded the development of independent thought, and disabled millions of people’s ability and willingness to think things out for themselves. This leaves them vulnerable to the many hidden persuaders in the world today, any charlatan or trickster, be it commercial, clerical, or political. People seem unable to see through the snowstorm of information to consider the agenda being presented. Not seeing the wood for the trees was easy in comparison with the difficulty of assessing the mass of information and data now available on practically any subject. Far from making decision-making easier, it has made it more difficult for people to process the information, or to consider research and its methodology, or to assess conclusions and the uses made of information. We live in a scientific age, in which every aspect of life is studied — human and animal, physical and psychological, society itself, as well as human behaviour, from the ‘micro’ to the ‘macro’. Facts and figures are compiled and updated at an ever-faster rate. Data on every subject is fed into computers and there is more factual evidence on most subjects than human beings can easily comprehend. Discuss any subject and there will be evidence to support or refute the case being made, but depending upon the retrieval, assessment, and interpretation of the information or data, people will come to very different conclusions. Comparisons, international or personal, can be meaningful and enlightening or hide the real picture depending upon many factors, not least the ability of people to engage their critical faculty. Deliberate or sloppy interpretation can lead the gullible to entirely wrong conclusions even from the most rigorous research, as can be seen on a daily basis in today’s news and current affairs coverage. Facts are omitted, overridden by unsubstantiated opinion, and accidentally or deliberately misrepresented or misconstrued if they do not fit in with traditional beliefs. The promise of science is great, but it depends upon three things: — 1) Its rigour and integrity, how it is financed, its motives, its methodology. 2) Who controls it, how it is presented or censored, assessed and applied, and in whose interest. 3) The ability of people to ensure that they get all the facts, not just an edited selection, to consider them in a clear and objective way, and be confident enough to make decisions based on known facts. The effect of this confusion is to lead many people to disregard facts in favour of opinion, to take the easy way out and go back to superstition and religious certainty. The result is to bring science and scientific research into disrepute, and along with it rational scientific, unbiased, independent thinking. This is a very dangerous state of affairs, and the religions must take much of the blame. The New Millennium saw an upsurge in anti-scientific populism, fed by the media, in its insatiable need to manipulate public opinion, and we all know that superstition and mystery sell papers and goods more effectively than boring old reason. (3676) http://islamexposed.com/Essays/falsifiable_god.htm http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/religious_controversy/chapter_28.html Darwin, Rocks of Ages. Stephen J Gould NH (Aut 2001)
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