Richard Dawkins wants to sell you a religion.

He won’t call it that; instead say he’s only promoting rationality and science over dreams and fairy tales.

But what Dawkins doesn’t realize is the concept of pure rationality and truth he’s selling is little more than a fairy tale itself.

The scientific method has been around for centuries, slowly chipping away at man’s ignorance, until he’s come to the sophisticated worldview he has today. Now, we have the gifts of modern medicine and instant communication thanks to science. Professor Dawkins believes it’s time for science to determine our belief systems about the world.

Unfortunately, Dawkins ignores the problems that leave science not much better at explaining the universe than even the worst fairy tale. Most importantly, that science’s very idea of the universe up until a few decades ago had been completely and utterly wrong.

Einstein blew away all scientific ideas about the structure of the universe. He made a huge breakthrough with his theory of relativity. Our understanding of the universe grew immensely with this understanding, but this immense growth in understanding only gave us more questions.

Science has yet to establish any absolute truths about the universe. Instead, it has possibly approached what it guesses may be close to an absolute truth.

In other words, to believe that science will redeem us all and give us ultimate meaning to life is no more rational than saying a Chihuahua will give redeem us and give us ultimate meaning. They’re both postulates, and they’re both impossible to prove.

One of the greatest human desires is to understand the world and how it really works. But a huge problem with science is that the more it understands, the less we personally understand about the way the world works. Because the world grows exponentially in complexity as we grow linearly in what we know personally. (If that!)

So the huge growth in knowledge about how we think the world may work really only leads to more misunderstanding about the way the world actually works. As everybody specializes further and further, we lose the ability to understand completely even one discipline of science, let alone two. Let alone what all of our facts are getting at.

So science has created order and chaos, in surprisingly equal amounts. There are millions of scientists solving millions of questions, but nobody will ever be able to take them all in and guess at what they mean or where they are going. Maybe the pursuit of knowledge leads to real knowledge and real misunderstanding in equal amounts. It’s quite possible.

But what’s impossible is to pretend a mountain of facts will lead to deeper understanding. Just because humanity has done a million experiments does not mean it will derive a great truth from underneath all of it it. But that’s what science does, is build mountains of facts. It’s up to the gatekeepers of knowledge (the Professors and scientists) to let us know what all those important facts really mean.

And from that perspective, professors have become no more than priests, interpreting extremely obscure facts into meaning that us lesser people (non-experts) can understand. Nobody really understands what’s going on, but the experts pretend they have an idea. Science really wants to be the final, great religion.

That wouldn’t be a problem either, if it weren’t for Richard Dawkins views on other religions. According to him, believing in God is “intellectual and moral cowardice”. The last thing we need now is more religious intolerance and more blind followers. Please think before you hate. Your rough religion needs tolerance, at the very least. It doesn’t have much else going for it yet.

Underneath all of this though, is a much deeper desire for humans, to have an up and to have a down. Scientists believe that science provides an up and a down, that the quest for Truth and Understanding is why humans are here. To be alive and to provide a huge insight before you die, that is something real. Life is just a chance to further humanity’s progress into a better world.

That’s just a dream, not real, but if you believe in it you will never be convinced it’s just a dream. Because Truth is Relative. We all have our own individual truths.

Mr. Dawkins, it’s time to stop pretending someone’s beliefs are right and another is wrong. We are all human, and we all lie to ourselves to an extent. Don’t put down another’s beliefs for its shortcomings while ignoring your own. The world is a whole lot more complex than you or I understand, and spreading hate and intolerance helps nobody. Hate may sell books Mr. Dawkins, but it has the opposite effect you expected. It makes you no different from the other religious fundamentalists creating discord. Now go do some experiments to prove you aren’t one of them.

Share This

There is this belief that’s spreading, that human beings will be able to outsmart their way out of any problem. The energy crises will be solved with clean nuclear fusion and hydrogen, water cleanliness will be solved with bottled water, and overpopulation will be solved with increasing agricultural efficiencies. And oh yeah, that “educating” the world will create a million jobs and give us everlasting world peace. Given enough time, science and intelligence will liberate us from all that we don’t like about the world.

This is all a bunch of crap.

We live in a world of biological processes. No matter how much our brains don’t want to admit it, we are biological creatures. We derive nourishment and happiness from biological sources. We live in a world designed to provide us with everything we need. It is only when we think we can do better, that things fall apart.

We are transforming the world from a biological process to a rational process. Replacing the magic and power of irrational biological processes with clean, scientific, understandable solutions. Eliminating the soil’s natural ecology, and replacing it with specific nutrients engineered for perfection. Getting rid of face to face learning for the more efficient computer learning. Along the way, we are losing the most important part, the biological processes that make us human.

Nature understands this, but human beings do not.

We want to completely redesign the world for efficiency. Pills for brains to work the way we think they should, genetically engineered food to grow the way we think they should, and mass communication so people think the way they should. Slowly eroding diversity to create a very simplified world. One that will never work.

The problem with science is it looks at everything as though it’s happening within a vacuum. Each discipline only happens within its own little world. Physicists don’t know much about sociologists who don’t know much about biologists. Least of all who understand every discipline. Everybody’s asking “How do I do this?”, and very few are asking asking, “Why? Why should we do this?”

Why do we want to redesign the world so bad? Why do we want science to rule over every area of our life? Why do we want a veneer of reason over every aspect of our life?

Science won’t save us, we need a biological, irrational world. Despite our best intentions, our brains are still driven by feelings. People are not rational beings just because they have rational thoughts. Watch what they do, and you will see the irrationality. Creating a world of rationality with science will only destroy our spirits. Force us all to pretend to be something we are not, and leave nobody happy. Then make billionaires of the people who sell us synthetic happiness.

I challenge you to an experiment. Sit in front of a television for three hours and then write down how you feel afterwards. Then go into wilderness for three hours and write down how you feel.

Next, chat with someone online for half an hour, and then talk with someone in person for half an hour, one on one with no distractions. Write down how you feel after each.

Which feels more real, which feels better? We are feeling creatures, and everything we do is to feel a certain way. Why are we sacrificing the immediate closeness for the detachment of technology? Why do we give our cell phones and computers so much time, but ourselves and each other so little?

Science won’t save us. It will only disconnect us further and further, into little efficient machines that are all miserable. Fifty years ago I don’t think anyone knew what social anxiety was. Now it seems like everyone’s got it. We’re uncomfortable and we don’t know how to act. We’re losing our ability to relate to each other in exchange for the ability to relate to machines.

So what am I advocating? The elimination of science and technology? The destruction of reason for a world of complete irrationality and feelings? That we do away with modern medicine in exchange for magic potions?

None of the above. I’m just pointing out the necessity for restraint in how much we seek to change the world for the “better”. Very often, the largest pushes forward are really bigger steps back. The green revolution made global food production dependent on fertilizers and pesticides derived from oil. Now the production of food depends completely on massive oil inputs. What happens when we can’t create an easy fix to replace these non-renewable inputs?

I’m advocating appropriate technology and voluntary simplicity. Intelligence tempered with wisdom. Our massive technological advances have come exponentially quicker and quicker, but our collective wisdom has not grown as quickly. There is a push to know more and more, and information gets larger and larger. But nobody knows what information matters and what doesn’t. Computers can organize it all for us, but they can’t tell us if it matters or what it means.

Our intelligence has outpaced our understanding. We need to be very careful with things we don’t completely understand. Releasing genetically modified corn into the food supply with only a few years of testing. Dropping an atomic bomb to end a war.

So let’s start with implementing solutions we understand. We know a living soil is better for the plant and for the person who ends up eating it. Why are we solving the problem with the most complicated, technologically advanced solution we can find?

Share This