What should we really believe?
© Robert Anderson PhD
This Christmas I was delighted to receive professor Dawkins latest book, The God Delusion. As a fellow scientist, I looked forward to reading his views. I was to discover only later the furore this book was causing in all kinds of circles including the blogs and discussions currently rampant to the Internet. Radio New Zealand did two in-depth interviews: Kim Hill interviewing Richard Dawkins and, later the Reverend Richard Randerson.
Faith
This furore should not be unexpected. Unlike a person’s knowledge of chemistry or physics, criticising a person’s faith is taboo in every respect for any culture. Criticising a person’s ideas about God and the afterlife is simply not done. Or, as the well-known saying goes, it is akin to discussing sex in the Victorian living room.
A perfect example of this was the worldwide furore in February 2006 when a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. A conflagration of hate quickly spread through the Islamic world. In Pakistan and Indonesia, demonstrators burned Danish flags and made hysterical demands to the Danish government to apologise. As Dr Dawkins said: “Apologise for what? They didn’t draw the cartoons, or publish them. Danes live in a country with a free press, something that people in many Islamic countries might have a hard time understanding.” The crowning glory of such absurd over-the-top behaviour was one placard carried in Britain (apparently without irony) “Behead those who say Islam is a violent religion.”
I find this exaggerated respect for religion absurd in today’s world. Why is the same respect not shown as to a man’s belief in physics or mathematics? Religious tolerance has taken on a whole new meaning.
Surprising as it may seem, especially for a Member of the Society of Friends (Quakers), I both enjoyed and agreed with at least 70 percent of what Dawkins was saying. Our beliefs define our vision of the world. They will mould our behaviour and determine our response to other human beings.
Religion, according to Dawkins, lies behind virtually all of the violence to which our world has been subjected for millennia - and continues to be. Further, the idea of religious acceptance is just as dangerous as it supports and promotes the continuation of blind faith and intolerance of other religious beliefs that cannot possibly be in accord with our own – true - system.
When a Muslim bomber blows him- or herself to pieces, along with other innocent folk, the role that faith played in these actions is invariably discounted. Instead, we adopt a worldwide war on “terrorism.” This is akin to saying we will declare war on murder; it is an error of category that obscures the true cause. Terrorism is not a source of violence. It is merely one of its human manifestations. We need to ask ourselves why Muslim or other religiously motivated terrorists are doing what they are doing. The belief that killing infidels is looked upon by your God as worthy of a seat in heaven will drive Islamic faithful to commit terrorism.
Lest we think otherwise, this has nothing to due with education, status or money. Osama Bin Laden is neither poor nor uneducated. Samuel Huntington[i] and others have made the point that religious fundamentalism in the developing world is not simply a movement of the poor and uneducated. Such a faith and belief system controls all of the everyday thoughts and actions of those who accept them. We have witnessed exactly similar violence in the West in the sectarian violence that divided Ireland: Catholics against Protestant.
Doctrine or indoctrination?
It is an absurd belief system that we can follow a book - the Koran, the Bible or the Bhagavad-Gita, whatever, which we believe without any shred of reasonable proof is written by the Creator of the Universe - that exonerates us from such brutality. It enables an excuse for committing the most terrible acts of violence against other human beings whose belief system is different to our own. As Sam Harris[ii] put it: “People of faith tend to argue that it is not faith itself, but man’s baser nature that inspires such violence. But I take it to be self-evident that ordinary people cannot be moved to burn genial old scholars alive[iii] for blaspheming the Koran.”
One of the more insidious trends is to ensure that children are thoroughly imbued with the religious belief system of the parent. I’m sure, we are all familiar with the old adage that “give me a child to age five and I'll give you back a Catholic for life.” Is this really fair? We should be teaching our children not what to think, but how to think.
I will never forget a story my mother-in-law told me of a small child crying bitterly as she walked by our home. On enquiring as to her troubles, it eventually became obvious that the child had been sent on her way to confession and was terrified because she had nothing to confess.
Nor does this type of fear diminish with age? A Catholic woman in her forties had to seek counselling for a fear that had haunted her for years. Her best friend, an Anglican, had died several years previously. The distress came from her own priest claiming that her friend would have “to spend eternity in hell for not being Catholic.” This man obviously has a mindset stuck in the 16th Century.
The recent furore over Muslim women wearing the burka is a further instance of religious ideas clouding commonsense and being used to force women into submission. As Dawkins said: “One of the unhappiest spectacles to be seen on our streets today is the image of a woman swathed in shapeless black from head to toe, peering out at the world through a tiny slit. The burka is not just an instrument of oppression of women and cloistral repression of their liberty and their beauty; not just a token of egregious male cruelty and tragically cowed female submission...” it is also an anachronism. How are women students able to work safely in a chemistry laboratory or do physical education or swim in this contraption?
If we come from a country such as Afghanistan, previously ruled by the Taliban, the case does not arise as they expect their women to remain ignorant, barefoot and childbearing, creatures to be seen – in a burka that is – and not heard. Imagine, in an age when we walk on the moon, use computers and carry out intricate heart surgery, many countries still believe in honour killings. If a daughter is raped, she must be stabbed to death or burnt alive with kerosene to protect the family honour.
Horrific? If you hold with such religious beliefs and the tenants that they support, then obviously not.
Manifestly, it is high time that our belief systems were subject to the same, or at least equivalent, careful scrutiny that our scientific and other world knowledge structures are.
As a scientist, I was never happy with the fairy stories of heaven and hell. Nor was I content to accept the bible or any other book as the indisputable word of God. A book of doubtful authorship, filled with contradictions, vengeance, and possessing the simplistic explanations of the world in which I live, has little appeal.
So what recourse have we to the questions that have concerned humanity for millennia? Where did we come from? Where are we going? What happens to us when we die?
The first question that sent me on my personal search was the answer I received from an Anglican priest. Although then a teenager, his answer has stayed with me over the years as a perfect example of an innocent ignorance born of this thing they call “faith.” My question was simple, what becomes of all the millions of souls who are not Christians when they die, the millions of Buddhists and Hindus? His answer - Well, I’m sure God has somewhere suitable for them - dumbfounded me. I could see that I had to find the answer to this and other vital questions for myself.
Survival of the human personality after death? True or false?
There is now a wealth of excellent scientific studies concerning survival of the human personality together with a multitude of near-death experiences (NDE’s) that form a tapestry of proof to those open to reasonable evidence. The work of Professor Ian Stevenson on reincarnation is also a buttress to those disbelieving that we ‘only have one shot’ at the coconut. One of the most moving and convincing programmes on reincarnation was broadcast by the BBC in the 1960’s, the Bloxham Tapes. It would be difficult to offer alternative explanations for the subjects examined.
Further, the early work carried out by the Cambridge group of scientist and such men as Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge and many others, testifies to the veracity of personal survival. For me, the ancient Indian teachings of the Vedantic school are as applicable now as they were thousands of years ago.
An unknown monk, Swami Vivekananda left India in 1893 on an historic journey to America. Neither the West nor the East was conscious of the new chapter that this unidentified prophet was going to open in the history of mankind. Swami Vivekananda insisted that Vedantic teaching was not inconsistent with science and the two should go hand in hand.
Since then, science and scientific thoughts have progressed enormously. The discovery of quantum mechanics and relativity has shaken the very foundations of epistemology. In spite of these violent changes, it is only Vedanta that seems to be in a position to absorb the tremendous impact of the new science. Indeed, Vivekananda prophesied that in the coming years the science of Vedanta would be the only acceptable solution for Western man.
Physicists are heading towards a unity not under the influence of any philosophy or religion, ancient or modern, but by the impact of the results obtained in their experiments. Increasing knowledge of both the microcosmic world of atoms and molecules and the macrocosmic world of black holes have made physicists aware that they have to move deeper into the origins of the universe and still deeper into the way of how consciousness is related to this universe. It would appear more and more that we are living in David Bohm’s ‘dynamic holographic universe.’ The concept of the universe being a giant hologram containing both matter and consciousness as a single field will should excite anyone who has asked the question, what is reality? One of the most exciting books on this topic is The Holographic Universe.[iv]
As Dr Larry Dossey[v] said in his introduction to the book, “nearly everyone is familiar with holograms, three-dimensional images projected into space with the aid of a laser. Now, two of the world's most eminent thinkers - physicist David Bohm, a former protégé of Einstein and one of the world's most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, one of the architects of our modern understanding of the brain - believe that the universe itself may be a giant hologram. Quite literally a kind of image or construct created, at least in part, by the human mind.
This remarkable new way of looking at the universe explains not only many of the unsolved puzzles of physics, but also such mysterious occurrences as telepathy, and out-of-body and near-death experiences, ‘lucid’ dreams, and even religious and mystical experiences such as feelings of cosmic unity and miraculous healings.”
And, it is this that we should be pursuing rather than absurd, blind, 14th Century belief-systems, the like of which lie behind 80 percent of the world’s problems today.
New models
We urgently need new models of reality to develop our ability to imagine what is possible and to give us new visions of our place in the cosmos. Michael Talbot's, The Holographic Universe, does this and I recommend that you read it.
To continue to slavishly follow anachronistic religious texts by blind faith is at the least destructive and at most downright dangerous to a world in crisis. A faith that is blind, deaf, dumb and unreasoned threatens our very existence.
From the religious fanaticism of suicide bombers, to the cruelty of the Taliban against women, to the genital circumcision of African women, and more, requires urgent attention from us all.
If you are a seeker of truth, and every Theosophist should be, then it’s a wake-up call to wonder, an adventure in ideas. However, should you need to maintain your faith that the bible ‘proves’ God made Earth in seven days, or that your daughter can be stoned to death, or that science has shown ‘it's all mechanical,’ and that there is no room in the universe for consciousness, soul, and spirit, don't read these books.
Robert Anderson BSc (Hons), PhD
(4 February 1942 to 5 December 2008)
Robert Anderson was a Quaker, teacher, writer, Theosophist, and supporter of peace movements and disarmament. He believed in the right of everyone to have freedom of speech and religion. He was a Trustee of Physicians and Scientists for Global Responsibility (formerly Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics) www.psgr.org.nz and spoke to many public meetings throughout New Zealand over more than a decade on genetic engineering and many other subjects. He was passionate about leaving this world a better place for the generations to come.
Bob authored 11 titles. Enquiries should be addressed to naturesstar@xtra.co.nz
View his illustrated lectures on this site.
References:
[i] Huntington P.S., The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order. NY Simon & Schuster 1996
[ii] Harris S., The End of Faith ISBN 0-393-03515-8
[iii] In 1994, at a village south of Islamabad, police charged a doctor with setting fire to the sacred Koran, a blasphemous crime punishable by death. Before he could be tried, an enraged mob dragged him from the police station, doused him with kerosene, and burned him alive.” J.A. Haught, Holy Hatred: Religious Conflicts of the ‘90s (Amherst, Mass.: Prometheus Books, 1995), 179.
[iv] Talbot M., The Holographic Universe. ISBN 0-06-092258-3
[v] Dossey L., Space, Time & Medicine.
