The View from Number 80

Of God and Mammon In 80's view there is little chance of reconciling religion and science, at least not without unacceptable compromises. The former requires faith in things that are just not verifiable and that in many cases contradict the way in which science has shown the Universe to function. Religion relies not only upon faith but also upon argument from authority which is a dead end with regard to learning anything about our cosmos - God said so, or Moses said so, is not good enough. Science is universally applicable and a properly conducted experiment in say, London will produce the same results as the identical experiment in Riyadh. In religion, despite what ecumenists fondly hope, there is little agreement amongst the world's many faiths, and this is true even within denominations - Roman Catholicism and the Evangelicals for instance - or Sunni and Shiite. Yet there are many who would like to reconcile religion and science - and one person in particular is prepared to back it with big money. Sir John Templeton,"arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century" has established an annual prize, of about a million dollars, in order to " ...encourage the concepts that resources and manpower are needed to accelerate progress in spiritual discoveries, which can help humans to learn over 100 fold more about divinity. We hope that by learning about the lives of the awardees, millions of people will be uplifted and inspired toward research and more discoveries about aspects of divinity. The Prize is intended to help people see the infinity of the Universal Spirit still creating the galaxies and all living things and the variety of ways in which the Creator is revealing himself to different people. We hope all religions may become more dynamic and inspirational."

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 Noble Prizes?  The list of past prize recipients makes for interesting reading. Freeman Dyson, Paul Davies, Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke are all scientists as was the most recent winner John Polkinghorne - and all have very different opinions and beliefs about faith, religion and science. Just to take a couple, Davies, physicist and well-known author of several popular books on physics and cosmology, seems to espouse a very philosophical "god", akin to Einstein's, more of a shorthand for the rules by which the universe operates. (In fact it has been a recent and regrettable trend for popular physics and cosmology books to contain the G word in the title - Davies being a major perpetrator - perhaps it helps boost sales in the Mind, Body and Spirit section of the bookstore.) To many members of the public, however, this is seen as an endorsement of the Judaeo-Christian mythology of a personal God, with all the trappings of miracles, resurrections and the rest, which is far from Davies' intention as he is on record as detesting miracles. (BBC Radio 4, Devout Skeptics, Sept. 17th). The most recent recipient, Polkinghorne, was also a physicist, but is now an Anglican priest, a calling which certainly does embrace "the Judaeo-Christian mythology of a personal God, with all the trappings of miracles, resurrections and the rest". How he manages to reconcile his religious faith with his scientific knowledge is perhaps something of a miracle in itself. Which goes to show that the Templeton definition of God and spiritual realities must be very wide indeed to include Davies and Polkinghorne, and certainly far too wide for these folk.

 Sanity Clause  A far more interesting and rational voice commenting on religion and its often disastrous effect on the world is Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and the Charles Simonyi Professor For The Understanding Of Science at Oxford University. There are a number of essays by, and interviews with, Dawkins on the web of which the following are a few. This first is from Free Inquiry magazine and is entitled The Improbability of God. More impassioned and certainly more relevant to current events are two essays written in the aftermath of the September 11th atrocities, which, readers may recall, were carried out by devout believers. (See Past View - Baneful Biblical Basis?) One is from the UK Guardian newspaper, Religion's Misguided Missiles and the other Time To Stand Up (which memorably contains quotations from Douglas Adams, Gore Vidal and Billy Graham - strange bedfellows indeed!) is published courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. One sentence in particular from the latter essay stands out "....respect people for what they individually think, rather than respect groups for what they were collectively brought up to believe." Somehow 80 doubts that the Templeton Prize Office will receive many nominations for Dawkins......................

 Fallacious Factoids  We have all heard them - little nuggets of information or factoids dropped into a conversation - that upon examination are untrue but are often unexamined purely because they are trotted out so often and are accepted by dint of sheer repetition. Example " Aerodynamic studies show that a bee's wings cannot sustain it in flight and yet the bee, blissfully ignorant of this, flies anyway".  UNTRUE Then there is this old chestnut " Human beings only use 10% of their brain" again UNTRUE. Or this "The Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from the moon." UNTRUE.  80 is confident that you can think of more examples. A more recent false factoid is "Half the world has never made a phone call" usually made to point out the (very real) divide in access to technology between the "developed nations" and the Third World. Recent users have been Thabo Mbeki (South African President) Al Gore (internet pioneer) and Kofi Annan (Secretary General of the UN). Now, Clay Shirky, puts that little statistic to the test and finds it greatly wanting. Describing that particular factoid as something journalists categorize as "too good to check" (apparently a principle behind many Fox TV documentaries) Shirky does do some checking and finds no current basis for the statement. How many other false factoids are regularly used by journalists and happily repeated by us all as though true? A trawl through the Urban Legends Reference pages at Snopes.com can supply a good selection and give you the information to rebut such unthinking repetition - and provide much harmless amusement along the way.

 Psychic Soap  Psychic as defined by the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary "A person who is regarded as peculiarly susceptible to supernatural or paranormal influence; a medium...."  Medium as defined by the NSOED " A person thought to be in contact with the spirits of the dead......." Given this, when 80 came across a website entitled Psychic Mediums it was obvious these people really wanted to make a point. The site's creators, Craig and Jane Hamilton-Parker, promote themselves as the "psychic family" and are pictured with a child and their apparently psychic dog. (A word of warning - you may want to turn your speakers off - unless dirges are your thing) What follows when you click on the link "to read about the Psychic Family and the spiritual advisors" is a long page of what appears to be a psychic soap opera full of anecdotal incident and gullibility. One example - Jane's sixth sense can tell her when Craig is in danger -
 "Once, I was sitting at home relaxing when a mental image flashed before me of Craig and a red car, and then I saw a stag. A bright red aura filled the room and I sensed danger. Half an hour later, Craig came home and said: 'You'll never believe it- I've just hit a stag. I could have been killed.' He was very shaken"
 This sounds very spooky but we only have their word for it - and more importantly what actual use was Jane's sixth sense? Did it enable her to warn Craig (or more importantly the stag) of the impending danger? No. Hence even if her psychic flash was true it appears to be pretty useless. More worrying, and this is a point 80 has made before (see Past Views - Unicorn Kids Rump - Loco Parentis) is that these people are encouraging their children to believe in this claptrap - what sort of training are they getting in understanding the real world?

Psychic Sell  A couple of further clicks will bring you to the Psychics and Mediums network - which is where the children will at least learn how to make money out of the gullible, the uncritical and the plain daft. This page has many elements - the first and most noticable is a floating ad for telephone readings at £1.50 a minute. Down the left hand margin is a list of links with all the usual suspects, from Angels and Astral Travel through Clairvoyance, Coincidences and Earth Energy to Numerology, Psychic Pets (of course),and Spiritualism. Few items of bunkum are left unmentioned in this fairly comprehensive list. You can also buy any of Craig's 12 books on mediumship, dreams and psychic development. Also for £25 you can join the Elysium community and enjoy special events and psychic training with Craig and his team - and you don't have to be psychic to join (surely that would be a slight handicap?). Best of all, on the right hand side is a list of endorsements of Craig and Jane's powers. In keeping with the intellectual rigor shown elsewhere on this site these endorsements do not appear to stem from any form of serious testing by the likes of say, the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit, or far more financially rewarding, ASKE or the James Randi Research Foundation. No, to help us believe in the Hamilton-Parker family's powers (not forgetting the dog) we have statements from a couple of DJs, a couple of TV celebs and David (Beware the Lizard Dynasty) Icke, and they can't even spell Icke's name correctly. (Past View of Icke - Reptile Spooks Belief -Soccer Saint)

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Farewell  80 was saddened to learn of the death of Robert L Forward, scientist and author, whose ideas were in many ways "far out" but founded always in real science and the laws of physics. He exemplified the ability to dream great dreams and enthuse others with the excitement of science - his first novel "Dragon's Egg" he himself described as "A textbook on neutron star physics disguised as a novel." A true original and a sad loss - many of his papers can be downloaded from his website .

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 Quotes

"Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment." Will Rogers

 

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." Mark Twain 

 

"There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on."  Rod Serling

 

 "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals." Winston Churchill

 

"True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance." Akhenaten

    

                                                                                               

 

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