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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 03/02/01 -- Vol. 19, No. 35
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@avaya.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@avaya.com
HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@avaya.com
HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@lucent.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
201-447-3652 for details. The Denver Area Science Fiction
Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of every month at
Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.
===================================================================
1. I was reading an article about Lewis Wolpert and some of the
challenging ideas he as about one of my favorite topics. That
topic is the existence of God. While the film CONTACT exaggerated
the numbers to say that 95% of humanity believes in a Supreme
Being, I could easily believe that it is a majority of those living
today. This has to be the most popularly believed fantastical
idea. I say that the idea is fantastical rather than fantasy
because I do not have any good evidence to say it is fantasy. I
know people who are devout atheists as well as people who are
devout believers. Both types of people are people who jumped to a
conclusion based on what I consider to be insufficient evidence.
In fact jumping to believing in God based on insufficient evidence
is usually considered to be a religious virtue called Faith. The
atheists I know do not actually say that their disbelief is a
virtue beyond saying that it demonstrates that they have the
courage of their convictions. Frankly, I do not want to jump to
any more conclusions than I have to based on insufficient evidence.
That makes me an agnostic. I cannot say I am a proud agnostic, but
I am a fervent one. But it is not fervent in the sense of
religious fervency. I do not believe that I am in the right camp
and everybody else is in the wrong camp. The fact is that I really
deep-down think that everybody is an agnostic and some people just
do not realize that is what they are. Agnostic means one who does
not know and it is a proposition that nobody has knowledge about.
The question however arises if nobody knows whether God exists or
not, why do so many people believe in God. (For simplicity sake I
will refer to God in the singular, though I am not intentionally
leaving out polytheistic religions. I really mean God or gods.)
Where does this belief come from and why is the belief so
pervasive. In a sense a religion is a lot like a computer virus.
Both a religion and a computer virus are self-replicating patterns
of ideas. Just as it is the function of a computer virus to
replicate itself and spread to other processors, it is the function
of a religion to replicate itself and spread to other minds.
Different computer viruses carry different payloads. In addition
to just spreading themselves, they change the processing of the
computers to which they spread. Some computer viruses just spread
greetings or a message to other computers, some work more deeply.
Some religions carry a positive payload of moral rules with them,
some do not. I get rather impatient with religions that do not try
to impart some sort of morality similar to my sort of morality. If
a religion teaches only that one should believe in God or Jesus or
whatever and come together socially for singing once a week, that
religion is a parasite on the human intellect. It uses up mental
resources and it does not give anything back. If a religion is
going to waste all this mental power, it at least should do
something more socially useful than to just perpetuate itself.
By far the most popular theory of the origin of a belief in God is
the combination of revelation and word-of-mouth. That is that
there was a point in ancient times when God revealed Himself to
humans. Anybody could look at Him and say, "Oh, of course. That's
God." But not everybody could be there at that place and time so
the word spread by people telling other people. Some add to the
story that God wanted people to get the story right so He inspired
people not just to write it down, but personally made sure they got
every word right. This was how most religions have got got their
own sacred texts. A lot of them add that those sacred texts in
other religions are the product of delusion.
My own theory of the origin of religious belief is embodied in the
phrase "Our Father who art in Heaven." God really is a parent
figure. In the first days of your existence you are learning about
the world as fast as you are ever going to be learning. One of the
things you probably learn is that there is something big out there
that takes care of you. It feeds you when you call to it. It
comforts you. It takes care of you. Still later it punishes you
when you do wrong and it rewards you when you do what it wants.
Later you come to understand what parents are and what your
relationship to them is and you dissociate them this concept of the
big thing that cares for you. But those first impressions stay
with you and you just create for yourself a giant invisible parent
in heaven.
All of this brings me to Lewis Wolpert. Lewis Wolpert is Professor
of Biology as Applied to Medicine in the Department of Anatomy and
Developmental Biology of University College, London. He writes a
column on science and philosophy for The Independent and his
writings have been the basis for a series of programs on the BBC.
In an article at the daunting URL http://www.telegraph.co.uk/\
et?ac=000166941319210&rtmo=VDwS8qkK&atmo=99999999&pg=/\
et/01/1/25/ecfbelif25.html
Wolpert talks about his beliefs. What Wolpert believes is that
humans are a species that believes in causality. There is a
genetic basis for this belief, Wolpert believes, but that is not
important for this discussion. That is just about how the belief
gets there. We believe that things that happen have causes that
keeps us alive. And we formulate theories for what the causes are.
And this theorizing is actually a survival trait. It is not just
that we frequently come up with the right causes, but even that we
frequently come up with the wrong causes. It is frequently better
to have a bad theory than no theory at all. Suppose you are a
primitive man. One day as you are crossing a field, a storm comes
up and you are nearly hit by lightning. In fact the guy who was
walking next to you is now lying dead and smoking on the ground.
Pretty scary stuff. How do you react? Well if to you it is just a
chance happening, this is a really frightening world. No matter
what you do lightning can reach out and kill you. How do you live
like that knowing that death can come at any moment and turn you
into a fritter. There is a good chance you crawl into you cave and
never come out. But the guy in the next cave thinks he knows. He
prays to Bajawa, the rock in the middle of the field. He lays some
fruit at the foot of Bajawa every day. And he is still around and
happy. Suddenly Bajawa has two worshipers not just one. It may be
wacky to think that the rock protects people, but it is better it
get on with your life with false protection than to give up on
living because you have no protection at all.
Wolpert thinks that we dispell deeply held beliefs, even very
strange ones, only at our own peril. People with strong beliefs
are more healthy and do better under adverse conditions. And with
mystical beliefs the less one understands them, the more powerful
they are and the more one can explain with them. So there is real
survival value in believing in a mystical and unfathomable god. A
wrong model of the universe is no worse than having no model at
all. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@avaya.com
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
-- Anonymous
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