[PLUG-TALK] why religion is the root of all evil

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 06:04:40PM -0800, Russell Senior wrote:
> 
> He steals my line about the American Taliban, but I guess I should
> feel flattered.
> 
> http://smashingtelly.com/2007/01/19/richard-dawkins-the-root-of-all-evil/

Interesting - a recruiting talk for divisiveness.  I especially
noted his attack on the moderate Anglican bishop.  I have read
almost everything Dawkins has written, have met him once, and there
is quite a bit of bully in him.  I don't see him changing very many
minds.  I expect the result of these videos will be to divert some
teenagers to his way of thinking - for a while, and then some will
mature into more effective and moderate advocates.   Well and good.

However, others will confuse the abrasiveness of the messenger and
the twisted presentation style  with the validity of the underlying
scientific message.  Those may well reactively fall into religion in
one of its more dangerous forms.  So on the balance, I'm sure Dawkins
feels good about what he says, but from a social engineering standpoint
I wonder whether the final result will be counter to his intent.

On September 11 2001,  1,399,999,981 Muslims did not hijack US airplanes.
If they were all as evil as the 19, there would not be a plane in the 
sky.  On July 29 1994, 2,099,999,999 Christians did not shoot doctors
in Florida.  If they were all as evil as that one, there would not be
a doctor on the planet.  Yes, the 20 evildoers have a many supporters
among their co-religionists, but they also have supporters who have
different religions or no religion at all, while the vast majority of
their co-religionists reviled both actions.  Dawkins would pin all the
blame on religion.  I would pin it on warped indoctrination, and hatred,
and a feeling of powerlessness that finds its outlet in simple but
deadly actions *any* individual, religious or not, is capable of.

If science really wants to understand faith, it should study it like
any other phenomena - dispassionately, non-perjoratively, and with
the understanding that religion serves certain human needs that
science never will.  Scientists may, if they try really hard, find
ways of scratching the itch that religion does in a more effective way. 
But some scientists, like Dawkins, reflexively use the same rhetorical
tools as the most fervent theologian,  without attending to the needs
of 99%+ of the population.  I fear that as a result, religionists
won't become scientists, but instead science may travel the same
path as the products of mystics has travelled to become religion.   

For example, we ran into an experimental dead end after the Standard
Model of particle physics - it explains things very well, up to 
energies that are well beyond our experimental reach.  Since 1975,
theoretical physicists have been arguing between a myriad of untestable
Theories of Everything, mostly settling on string theory, which is far
more complex and explains far less than any physical theory in the
past.  Theoretical physics may be becoming a highly mathematical cult. 
If we really are at an experimental wall, and the next $500B spent on
particle accelerators reveals nothing beyond the Standard Model, we
will probably stop doing experimental particle physics, and there
will no longer be experimentalists to keep the theorists tethered
to reality.  

The barriers for computation, or molecular biology, are further out,
but we will reach them, too.  It is possible that the advance of
science will become very slow, and very expensive, and the esoteric
results of increasingly baroque theorizing will be inaccessable to
the vast majority of the public.  The language used with the public
will become dogma, and Revealed Truth.  As the language drifts and
mutates, the dogma will become more important than the phenomena that
it claims to describe, and so-called "science" will become a religion.

So we need to understand the psychology of religion, not just with
untested just-so stories, or generalization from a few anthropological
facts, but deeply and experimentally with the actual religions at
hand.  All truth can turn into religion, and if we do not quickly
learn to understand the process, and develop antidotes, there will
be nothing left but religion.  If scientists become unwelcome among
religionists, as Dawkins seems to be working towards, this important
work will become very hard to do.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs