The words of Edward O.Wilson are encouraging to those of us who espouse 'scientific humanism'. At the time of the great scientific advances of the renaissance the Catholic church used its enormous power to suppress and condemn those who dared hold such views. Today we can easily describe the Church’s old attitude to knowledge as selfish, arrogant, bullying and wrong. The ideas of Copernicus, Bruno and Galileo were a threat to an authoritarian Church preferring its own childish notions to the exciting new scientific ideas that were increasingly drawing on the explosive combination of rational thinking, careful observation and mathematical modelling. Those who opposed the Church’s authority were forced to recant, burned at the stake or confined to house arrest. Today, central Church authority lacks the power to be physically cruel on that grand old scale. However, the wider Christian, Jewish and Islamic agenda is as cruel as ever in the way it influences young minds to adopt a schizophrenic approach in which ‘holy writ’ and science are supposed to be reconciled.

America’s hugely powerful Christian fundamentalist machinery is well set up to challenge selectively the scientific advances of their great country. Their widely distributed organisation contrasts with the highly centralised power machinery of the old papacy but its aims are little different - believe in our God or be damned. And so, as Edward O. Wilson reminds us, evolution is under attack from those who would have us believe the Bible knows better.

Another example of Church interference in a valiant effort of discovery cropped up on BBC 1 on 27th November and 4th December in a short two-part documentary simply called 'Egypt'. This dealt with the well known story of deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics with the aid of the Rosetta Stone. The polymath English physicist, Thomas Young, and the brilliant young French linguist, Jean-François Champollion, sought to break the code. But Champollion, in the 1820s, won the prize of discovering that Egyptian hieroglyphs were truly alphabetic/phonetic. The Catholic Church got wind of Champollion’s work and made a shameful effort to put a stop to it. The Church feared a translation might reveal things contrary to its own teaching on such matters as the age of the earth, Noah’s flood, Adam and Eve, and other gems of ‘Biblical truth’. While in Egypt, Champollion realised some of the Egyptian inscriptions pre-dated the biblical flood, on the Church’s chronology. He kept the information to himself because French ecclesiastics had subtly ordered him not to publish any such findings. Scholarship could not be allowed to embarrass the Church.

The other Abrahamic religions are no better and their techniques of exerting authority are, in some respects, even worse.

All efforts by these defunct ‘upholders of truth’ to arrest the progress of science have failed. But they are fully programmed to go on trying.

ARC

The great works of Darwin have thrived through 150 years of critical analysis and still deserve a place on our book shelves. For the first time, this new publication includes all four books in one cover bearing the title, 'From so Simple a Beginning'. Its editor, Edward O.Wilson, is a leading thinker in the biological sciences in the USA. His own works, eg 'The Future of Life' and 'Consilliance' are highly respected scientific works written in a compelling literary style.

Wilson says in his ‘afterword’ that, “…evolution by natural selection is still under attack from those wedded to a human-centred or theistic world view.” He wonders whether science and religion can ever be reconciled.

He continues. “It is surpassingly strange that half of Americans recently polled (2004) not only do not believe in evolution by natural selection but do not believe in evolution at all. Americans are certainly capable of belief, and with rock-like conviction if it originates in religious dogma. In evidence is the 60% that accept the prophecies of the Bible’s 'Book of Revelation' as truth…. Most of the religious right opposes the teaching of evolution in public schools (state schools), either by an outright ban on the subject or, at the least, by insisting that it be treated as “only a theory”…….

……“On the basis of strong evidence, natural selection grows ever stronger as the prevailing explanation of evolution. Many who accept the fact of evolution cannot, however, on religious grounds, accept the operation of blind chance and the absence of divine purpose implicit in natural selection. They support the alternative explanation of intelligent design. The reasoning they offer is not based on evidence but on the lack of it. The formulation of intelligent design is a default argument advanced in support of a non sequitur. It is in essence the following: there are some phenomena that have not yet been explained and that (most importantly) the critics personally cannot imagine being explained; therefore there must be a supernatural designer at work. The designer is seldom specified, …. but is not conspicuously different from the god(s) accepted in the believer's faith………

……“In all of the history of science, only one other disparity of comparable magnitude to evolution has occurred between a scientific event and the impact it has had on the public mind. This was the discovery by Copernicus that Earth, and therefore humanity, is not the centre of the universe, and the universe is not a closed spherical bubble. Copernicus delayed publication of his master work 'On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres' until the year of his death [1543]. For his extension of the idea, Bruno was burned at the stake [in 1600], and for its documentation Galileo was shown the instruments of torture and remained under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

“Today we live in a less barbaric age, but an otherwise comparable disjunction between science and religion still roils the public mind. Why does such intense and pervasive resistance to evolution continue 150 years after the publication of 'On The Origin of Species', and in the teeth of the overwhelming accumulated evidence favouring it?

"The answer is simply that the Darwinian revolution, even more than the Copernican revolution, challenges the prehistoric and still-regnant self-image of humanity. Evolution by natural selection, to be as concise as possible, has changed everything.

“In the more than slightly schizophrenic circumstances of the present era, global culture is divided into three opposing images of the human condition. The dominant one, exemplified by the creation myths of the Abrahamic monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - sees humanity as a creation of God…. who brought us into being and … guides us still as father, judge and friend. We interpret [God’s] will from sacred scriptures and the wisdom of ecclesiastical authorities.

“The second world view is that of political behaviourism. Still beloved by the now rapidly fading Marxist-Leninist states, it says that the brain is largely a blank state devoid of any inborn inscription beyond reflexes and primitive bodily urges. As a consequence, the mind originates almost wholly as a product of learning, and it is the product of a culture that itself evolves by historical contingency. Because there is no biologically based "human nature", people can be moulded to the best possible political and economic system, namely communism. In practical politics, this belief has been repeatedly tested and, after economic collapses and tens of millions of deaths in a dozen dysfunctional states, is generally deemed a failure.

“Both of these world views, God-centred religion and atheistic communism, are opposed by a third and in some ways more radical world view, scientific humanism. Still held by only a tiny minority of the world's population, it considers humanity to be a biological species that evolved over millions of years in a biological world, acquiring unprecedented intelligence yet still guided by complex inherited emotions and biased channels of learning. Human nature exists, and it was self-assembled. Having arisen by evolution during the far simpler conditions in which humanity lived during more than 99 per cent of its existence, it forms the behavioural part of what, in 'The Descent of Man', Darwin called "the indelible stamp of [our] lowly origin".

“So, will science and religion find common ground, or at least agree to divide the fundamentals into mutually exclusive domains? A great many well-meaning scholars believe that such rapprochement is both possible and desirable. A few disagree, and I am one of them. I think Darwin would have held to the same position. The inexorable growth of biological science continues to widen, not to close, the tectonic gap between science and faithbased religion.

“Rapprochement may be neither possible nor desirable. There is something deep in religious belief that divides people and amplifies societal conflict. The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.

“Religions continue both to render their special services and to exact their heavy costs. Can scientific humanism do as well or better, at a lower cost? Surely that ranks as one of the great unanswered questions of philosophy. It is the noble yet troubling legacy that Charles Darwin left us.”

These selections were drawn from a fuller account in New Scientist 02/11/2005

Anthony Constable, Editor

The opening presentation was made, unconventionally on tape, by Tony Constable who was unable to attend owing to a prior engagement. Raymond Carlisle then began by referring to a circulated questionnaire. “I think we managed to persuade him,” commented Charles Rudd, “to take the beginnings of modern science back to Galileo (early 17C) rather than 200 years ago. I thought Raymond was often on the verge of interesting topics e.g. scientific education, which would have merited a whole evening in itself. Discussion afterwards raised the question whether science can tell us how to act, some of those present holding that this is where science ends and ethics begins, others that science CAN so guide us (and failure to allow this may be indicated by the dearth of scientists in the House of Commons)”.

In summary, Tony Constable began by saying that, whatever philosophers of science have said on this topic, the nature of science is best understood by those who practise it. This is equivalent to saying that the nature of the violin is best understood by the violinist. He also thought that most people, whether scientists or not, do practice the ways of science from a very young age - it is a natural way of behaviour often diminished by undue emphasis on religious dogma in the classroom.

He said that practitioners of the basic sciences, engineering and all the interconnected science-based disciplines understood the methods of science which are so fundamental to the way in which the rational intellect works that they are almost instinctive. He thought all scientific understanding derives from the four basic principles: observing, modelling, experimenting, and validating. These principles then characterise the nature of science and reflect how science differs from other modes of knowing.

He distinguished between the basic sciences of physics chemistry and biology on the one hand and the applied sciences on the other, stating that the former provide a common language for the latter. He also claimed that the complete working scientific enterprise involves a union between science, mathematics and technology.

Science, he said, presumes that the things and events in the universe occur in consistent patterns that are comprehensible through careful, systematic study. Scientists use their intellect, their rationality and their sensory experience (aided by instruments that extend the senses - telescopes, microscopes, voltmeters etc) in order to discover patterns in all of nature and that the universe is a vast single system in which the basic rules are everywhere the same. Knowledge gained from studying one part of the universe is applicable to other parts. With some modifications, the same principles of motion (the same mathematical models) apply to everything, from the smallest nuclear particles to the most massive stars, from bicycles to space shuttles, from cricket balls to light rays.

Additional modifications (relativity and quantum mechanics) have endowed that basic model with greater and greater predictive powers. It is in the Nature of Science to establish models of nature that enable reliable prediction.

New models demand good evidence - i.e. reliable data that can be measured to within acceptable levels of certainty and repeatability. Medicine used to be a confused hotchpotch of personal opinion (and sometimes, sadly, still is!!). Today, however, we set great score in demanding high quality evidence for all medical practices. Thus, the old-time hotchpotch of medical opinion has slowly evolved into the evidence-based discipline we now have in modern scientific medicine. Traditional or fringe medicine can sometimes transfer to the objective scientific domain but only by acquiring enough evidence through controlled experiment.

When a science has accumulated enough observations, carried out enough experiments, generated enough tentative models and sought to validate the models with additional observations etc - only then does the model graduate to becoming an established theory. A theory is a grand concept that is highly reliant on all those preliminaries.

The idea that theories are plucked out of nothing is comic book science. A theory is not a hypothesis….. it is based on hard fact and only becomes an established theory when it is widely accepted. We then look upon the theory as an expression of scientific consensus. At the same time, science relies on the disbeliever, the sceptic, in order to feed back the very challenges necessary to test and re-test the theory and thereby strengthen it or abandon it in favour of one that better fits the facts.

A final note: Science is constantly under attack by people who desperately want to believe in things that are unsupported by science... e.g. ghosts, alien abductions and miracles! Bad science is often generated by pressure groups to support pre-conceived notions.

When creationists say Darwinian evolution is only a theory they clearly show they do not understand how powerful scientific theory really is. Darwinian evolution is based on a vast accumulation of incontrovertible factual evidence. It is one of the greatest of all scientific theories and enjoys universal consensus. It may well undergo modifications - but it has long been out of the realm of mere hypothesis.

But creationists battle away trying to replace it with the old mediaeval idea of ‘Intelligent Design’ (ID). Christian fundamentalists continue to promote ID by bending existing evidence to fit their religious, biblical belief system and Moslems do much the same thing because ID better fits Koranic ‘truth’.

This is a profound example of bad science. Others abound - all of them totally lacking the necessary characteristics of the nature of science.

Anthony Constable

It is hoped Raymond Carlisle’s presentation will be summarised in the February 2006 Bulletin.

When we lost our dog to congestive heart failure in September, I was surprised at the extent of the loss we felt. Most of what follows applies equally to human bereavement: that is not to sentimentalise a bond with an animal, simply to invite a parallel or analogy with human bonds. Above all, he was part of our domestic routine, from the time we acquired him as a puppy of ten weeks, alert to everything that moved in the house: not a mouse stirred but Jasper noticed it (as indeed he did on one occasion) with a quick bark. One morning we came downstairs to find some disorder in the lounge: a fox just outside perhaps (or an intending burglar?), enough to cause Jasper to jump up onto the window-sill. I used to like watching him walk along, four paws in perfect coordination: you just imagine suddenly having four legs instead of two, and trying to walk in an orderly fashion. Then when his speed had reached a critical point he would break into a gallop, with an undulating movement. At top speed he could outrun me, but you may think that is not saying very much. Like us in many ways--internal organs, certain behaviour patterns such as sleeping, yawning and stretching--the differences commanded our respect, especially the acuity of his senses. We could only guess at the wealth of impressions which assailed his nostrils on his walks, constantly interrupted by pauses to sniff the signals left by other dogs, or some piece of vegetation. Communication was in body-language: eye-contact, sometimes quite prolonged, to see what we were going to do next; tail-wagging (the full wag was over 180 degrees) not I think to wheedle anything out of us but simply to show he was wide awake; front paw stroking the door to be let in or out; the bark could be quite loud at times, with head thrown forward to amplify the sound. The heart problem is congenital to the breed: Jasper spent his last three years on medication, and his last ten months in some discomfort from fluid in his lungs, but no actual pain so far as we could see. His senses remained sharp to the end, and he seemed so stable that we were looking forward to his eighth birthday. He seems to have retreated to the bathroom, a room he seldom visited, when he felt the end was near. At least he died peacefully at home, not kidnapped, nor run over. We laid him in state overnight, and the following day in bright autumn sunshine took him to a village in south Herts for cremation. His was a shorter life than that of a healthier dog, nevertheless I believe a life worth living. Strange to think that eight years ago not only did we not know him, but he was not yet born (behind what curtain hid?): our lives, like his, emerge from and return to non-being in a kind of circle. We seem to be back where we were eight years ago, yet with the difference that he made: what remains of lasting significance has to be constructed by the survivors. Life is a mystery, as our President Arthur Atkinson is wont to say--perhaps that is part of what he meant.

Charles Rudd

Many of us have seen TV nature programmes containing vivid scenes of Emperor Penguins as they march along their annual route to the most inhospitable terrain on earth in Antarctica. Now it has been made into what might be a good nature film for general release. However, fundamentalist Christians are using this film as yet another means to prop up their creationist viewpoint. They must be getting pretty hard up for material because the family values they originally thought the fim promoted are no part of the survival of the fittest battle in which these creatures particpate. They are also rushing to see 'Narnia' in the belief that this also contains profound religious symbolism. The same pressure groups supported Mel Gibson’s 'Passion of the Christ' last year and will doubtless go on hunting for profundity as new films are churned out. I wonder if they have gained any solace from the 'Da Vinci Code' apart from a better knowledge of Opus Dei. Long may these simple-minded fundamentalists languish in their childish pursuits.

ARC

The New Scientist carried an informative article with this title on 8th October 2005, pp 40-43. It dealt with the current wave of religious fundamentalists who are committed to values and beliefs which are threatened by the secular world of the early 21st century. In response, increasing numbers are joining militant religious groups and living, voting and battling for their beliefs. They outnumber secular rationalists whose thinking underpins today’s western urban society. And their numbers are growing by the day. The twentieth century was characterised by “secularisation theory” in which it was supposed that religion would dwindle in importance. Muslim and Christian fundamentalists are joined by similar movements within Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism. These movements are driven by a desire to turn the clock back to a supposed golden age when their religions were untainted by secular influences. They fervently believe they alone are in possession of the truth - usually an overt literal interpretation of a sacred text. They have an equally fervent desire to impose that ‘truth’ on others. They cannot tolerate dissent and adopt the stance that, “You’re either in the charmed circle of believers or you’re the enemy”. The question is, “Does religious fundamentalism really pose a threat to the scientific world view?” The article, written by Debora MacKenzie, has numerous quotations from experts who are studying the phenomenon. The general conclusion is that the inheritors of the enlightenment should remain true to their values and be tolerant and pluralistic - even in the face of an opponent that can never reciprocate. That means understanding fundamentalist mentality, and at least not adding to the alienation that inspires the more extreme among them. The more you deny and attack it the more defensive it gets.

Let’s hope that, as some scholars believe, fundamentalism is religion’s last hurrah - a necessary way-station back to enlightenment.

ARC

Five members gathered for our regular coffee morning discussion. Two articles in the current issue of the New Humanist were selected. The first, by Dave Belden proposed that a form of humanism should be developed which included ‘services and rituals’ ..to fill what the author thought of as basic human needs. Our small discussion group had little time for this proposal and thought the author had fallen into the trap of thinking that, because he had such needs everybody else had them also. We thought his ideas were trivial and suggested he might get what he personally wanted by going to soccer matches and joining in the sing-songs. The second article was by Anthony Grayling who opposed Belden’s ideas saying, “…that is just what we could do without.” As might be expected, Grayling’s article was far better written. It was also philosophically sound and elegantly argued. He carefully defined the terms 'humanism' and 'religion'. Humanism, he said, is not a movement with a credo. It is a general outlook based on two premises, that there are no supernatural entities in the universe and that ethics must be based on facts about human nature and circumstances. Religion, on the other hand, is premised on the belief in the existence of supernatural agencies that in some way matter to the human good. “We fail in imagination,” he said, “if we do not see that when people go to art galleries or concerts, enjoy gardening, dine with friends or go on country walks they are expressing themselves aesthetically and socially in the same (and arguably) better way as people coming together in church congregations”. We agreed with Grayling’s ideas and thought rituals of any sort were quite irrelevant. Humanism has no need for church-like rituals in whatever guise they take. The discussion then, as usual, broadened out to include many other matters.

Most of those present at the Coffee Morning discussion went out to lunch. They then visited the Hillingdon Hospital to visit our Life President Arthur Atkinson and his wife both of whom were well and very talkative.

Anthony Constable