This is one of severa excellent videos Fry has narrated for the British Humanist Association.
Here Fry is talking about how we discover truths about the universe. As he says, “Science: there is no better method.”
Fry’s contrast between science and religion as ways of “knowing” the truth is explicit. To me, the distinction between science-based and spiritual healing is especially striking. How come religious people, who are so sure that revelation tells them what is true, shy away from equally revelation-based spiritual healing (except for Christian Scientists and other such misguided folk)? Why won’t they put their trust in a healer who says that “faith” has told him how to cure their infection or their cancer? Why, when there is a choice, do they put their present lives in the hands of science?
After all, the matter of your fate in eternity is surely more pressing than your urinary tract infection. Why do you put the former in the hands of faith and the latter in the hands of science? I’m absolutely serious about this.
And, after all this time, and all the lucubrations of faitheists and theologians, I have yet to see a single “truth” that is discerned by anything other than science broadly construed (empirical observation, experiment, and reason). Moral “truths” are not “truths,” but preferences (yes, I know theologians hate that, but it’s true, even if the preferences are firmly grounded on reason), and I have yet to find a truth about nature, or about humans (beyond their subjective experience), that is discerned by the humanities exclusive of empirical observation and confirmation.
Be sure to watch Fry narrating “What should we think about death?” The sentiments are nice, but really, it seems to make a necessity into a virtue. I’m not one of those who think that it would be extremely boring to read a book that never ends, or to live on forever in some form. Like Hitchens, the party goes on, but we won’t be there. I know others disagree, but how many people go gentle into that good night, even when very old?
sub
Sub, 2
sub 3
sub 4
Excellent stuff.
The BHA is investing a lot in outreach, and makes good use of humanist celebrities with broad appeal, esp. Fry.
/@
in the same vein, why do churches have lightning rods on them?
From the Times, 18 August 2010: “Only after a catastrophic lighting strike in Brescia in 1769 did the Church accept that Franklin’s invention was not a sinful aberration On this day in 1769 lightning stuck the Church of San Nazaro, in Brescia, Italy, with catastrophic results. About 90 tons of gunpowder belonging to the Republic of Venice had been stored in the church vaults for safekeeping and when the lightning struck the gunpowder exploded, killing 3,000 people and destroying a sixth of the city.”
/@
“About 90 tons of gunpowder belonging to the Republic of Venice had been stored in the church vaults for safekeeping”
Lightning or not, that’s pretty daft.
What could go wrong in a house of god? Maybe a gay person had slipped into town unnoticed?
Same happened with the Parthenon in 1687: Venetians again, mortared it while the Turks were storing gunpowder in it. Lord Byron wasn’t pleased at the time.
Christians and Mohammedans collaborate to damage pagan antiquity.
I’m not sure I agree that moral “truths” are preferences. Surely preference plays a role in their establishment, but frequently things get categorized as moral which go against many people’s preference. Possibly a better way of describing them would be “negotiated political positions.”
Shall we turn out that old chestnut this way?: No faith-healers in the ER!
Same goes for how we know something is false. Or, as George Carlin gently reminds us, “Stupid, full of shit, and/or fucking nuts!”
Pascal’s wager. I’m fairly sure that’s the main reason for the otherwise reasonable people to hold on to religion.
At least here in Scandinavia, religion doesn’t really demand anything of you, but it gives you a warm and cosy feeling, and a lot of people think being a bit religious just might give you a lottery ticket for an eternal life.
Science and atheism promise you no afterlife. Religion promises at least an chance to have one. Most people fear death, and so they prefer a rosy fairytale to the cold reality.
Probably I’m no better myself, since my atheism is more of a choice, much less a result of evidence. I just abhor the idea of a whimsical celestial dictator, or living an indefinite amount of trillions of years with no getting out. Then again, the idea of being the master of my own fate instead of an eternal slave, and eventually reaching a sweet oblivion, that is what I find comforting.
I kind of think that you have to be a scientist to even ask why people have irrational beliefs. Of course they do, animals acting on feelings and instinct.
To most people, not being scientists, evidence is almost irrelevant. Decisions are almost always emotional, not rational. Beliefs are choices made in the pursuit of happiness, not rational conclusions based on logic or facts.
I guess I kind of prefer scientists to most people. So feel free to correct me.
“I just abhor the idea of a whimsical celestial dictator, or living an indefinite amount of trillions of years with no getting out.”
Absolutely. I just cannot fathom why religious believers think that an eternity spent singing sycophantic hymns of praise to a cosmic tyrant is something to look forward to. It would be like being trapped forever in a celestial version of North Korea. And as for the alternative notion that heavenly existence is spent in some blissed-out trance of unending ecstasy, well I’ll pass on that too. If I have to lose my individual personality in exchange for being absorbed into some Borg-like hive mind, in what sense do I, as an individual, have “eternal life”? A short but rewarding life, followed by oblivion, is preferable to either of those.
To be fair, the modern Christian understanding of “heaven” includes (admittedly rather vague) references to “being united with God” rather than eternal singing in a choir :-).
I think that “being united with god” falls under the second conception of heaven I’ve listed. I enjoy my life as an autonomous individual and have no wish to be subsumed into some collective consciousness after my death, and certainly not to be trapped in one for all eternity.
The point is that once you’re trapped in there, you will find it quite pleasant. You know, like a lobotomy patient :-).
I’d love for a Christian to explain to me exactly what it means to be “united with God” and how it differs from NOT being “united with God”. It is a completely bogus concept, IMO.
Oddly, I don’t find it completely bogus. “United with God” may, for example, mean “completely at peace and endowed with deeper understanding” (something that Buddhists aspire to as well, I guess).
Granted, there is not a shred of evidence for an eternal, all-encompassing being, or for the existence of a human soul that unites with that being after death. On the contrary, there is quite solid evidence from neurobiology that the attributes ascribed to the “soul” are dependent on brain anatomy and function. But if there were an immortal soul, the idea of it uniting in the end with some universal force that is the source of truth and goodness seems quite appealing. I think this may reflect the human longing for peace of mind.
That just pushes it back a bit. I don’t really have a clue what “completely at peace and endowed with deeper understanding” actually means or how it differs from the alternate. (Perhaps something like being a Republican?)
Maybe it’s like smoking weed. Feeling high for eternity, what’s not to like? :-D.
Definitely not like a Republican.
I meant the alternate was like being a Republican.
I would assume it’s rather like being united with a Reticulated Python or a pack of hyenas. Or like a sausage maker who gets behind in his work, and becomes one with the Ground of Being.
I never understood the attraction of Pascal’s wager, which to me seems so intelectually deficient, that I can’t believe how the name of a distinguished matematician became attached to it. It assumes the very narrow choice between atheism and a single religious myth, one that rewards you after death for being religious. Once you accept that many religious myths are possible (including those that punish one for being religious), this doesn’t make much sense. Which of the unfounded, contradictory myths should we choose without a shred of evidence and why?
Religion poisons everything. He had religion.
It is also unclear what Pascal’s *point* was. He was obviously very distraught and depressed a lot, so maybe it was just a “motivational” thing, like some claim.
Pascal’s wager is a terrible reason for belief in a god. For starters, in which of the thousands of gods should one believe? As that great philosopher Homer Simpson once said: “What if we picked the wrong religion? Every week we’re just making God madder and madder.” Second, any god worth her salt would recognize lack of sincerity in a worshipper following a bet-hedging strategy and, I should think, be mightily offended.
Personally, I agree with you. But I don’t think my religious friends think believing in the “wrong” god means you’re going to hell or anything like that. Their religious dogma is very vague and diffuse, so it’s actually quite futile to even talk about religion here. And it’s also considered an improper topic anyway. Talking about your religion is like talking about the most hidden perversions of your sex life.
But as far as I understand, it seems they consider every religion the same, like a different translation of the same thing. One Lutheran lottery ticket covers all possible religious eschatologies. And an effort to believe in some universal deity seems to be considered belief enough. So, with that logic the manage to make Pascal’s wager hold water.
I think there’s more going on than Pascal’s wager. I agree with psychologist Paul Bloom that folks are natural-born dualists, because when we are infants the part of our brain designed to figure out the !*social*! world is different from the brain section figuring out the !*material*! world. When the former over-reaches, partly due to cultural conditioning, we anthropomorphize and regard as animate many things that are not.
Thus religious scientists (like Ken Miller) are compartmentalizing their brains but IMO it’s likely a compartmentalization we are already born with. I vigorously disagree with the many who have posted here previously on Miller that there is something “schizophrenic” there.
Recommended reading by Paul Bloom
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/12/is-god-an-accident/304425/
A significant percentage of Paul Bloom’s work echoes that of Pascal Boyer author of “Religion Explained”
So to paraphrase, in addition to considering Blaise Pascal, consider Pascal Boyer, 🙂
That may well be, but then we grow up and find out that certain things in the world are counter-intuitive. Thus we (should) learn that we can’t always rely on our instincts to figure out reality.
Perhaps compartmentalizing is how Ken Miller’s brain works.
But I consider myself an atheist, and I certainly don’t believe there’s anything supernatural influencing our lives or the universe. Yet again, I might even pray, if I sometimes need an extra push. It’s like talking to a certain part of my own brain, a psychological trick of focusing myself, based on the tradition of the culture I happened to be born in. And as such, it often works: it calms me down, diminishes my anxiety, helps me to concentrate, boosts my confidence. Perhaps it soothes the abstract fears of my inner child by reminiscing my passed-away religious grandmother. Or whatever.
My religious friends say their religion has nothing to do with any kind of dogma, physical miracles or things like the creation of the universe. It’s an internal feeling of divinity. Their particular religion is just one language of divinity they learned as children.
I have to say I understand that feeling. It’s quite close to my own feeling of awe when I think about the universe, or cultural pride of being a member of an ape species that has accumulated certain understanding of it all.
To venture a guess, I think it might be something like that the religious scientist feel. Religion is an emotional attachment to feelings of security, not a rational analysis of the reality.
And yet to most people, that’s not what they’re doing — that’s what those other people are doing.
Which means that there’s also an emotional attachment to the belief that one is rational.
Well, most people do admit their choices are not always rational. When asked about their major life choices, almost always you hear the sentence “of course that would have been the sensible and rational thing to do, but that didn’t feel right at the time” or something like that. And it’s probably not just self-deprecating, as rationality is often equated with all things cold, inhuman and boring. People seem to take pride in acting out of instinct.
So no, in my experience people don’t consider themselves rational either, even though they might consider others even less so.
It seems to me though that people generally do value ‘being reasonable’ as a virtue — and their own ideal.
Even when they’ve straw-manned “rationality” into a cold, inhuman, boring calculation which avoids the emotional component of their ultimate goal instead of working towards it ( i.e. “the rational thing would have been to marry the rich suitor instead of choosing the poor suitor who could make me happy”)– they still seem to frame it as emotion/intuition being more reasonable. They do what they do for good reasons. They don’t really discard evidence; sometimes they invoke emotions and intuitions as a higher level of evidence.
The desire to frame reason and emotion/intuition as competing “ways of knowing” is I think an immunizing strategy. They’re usually trying to avoid being accountable for one of their choices.
Reblogged this on CancerEvo and commented:
Yes, it’s science
Very good
The thing about dying is that I won’t get to see what happens next.
After seeing four people die (all of old age but still differently, each one,) it can be said that at least one of them did “go gently into that good night.” He was just sitting quietly at the breakfast table, but he ate nothing and wanted no food. Then there was a strange sound (death rattle?) and that was it, he was gone. For him, there was no agony, no thrashing about, no drawn-out illness. That’s the best if you’re lucky, but for others, we really ought to start thinking about medically regulated euthanasia. To see someone you know is going to die needlessly suffer, sometimes terribly, for days and days makes you ask why we can’t do something to end it peacefully without all that. As my spouse asked, when he was still many days from dying and could barely even move, “Why don’t I just die? This is so futile.”
Larry, I am so sorry about your spouse.
I agree.
I’m sorry too. I couldn’t imagine the agony of watching a loved one suffer and slowly die like you describe. What a horror.
Regulated euthanasia is such a no-brainer. We treat other animals better than other humans in this regard.
“Why won’t they put their trust in a healer who says that “faith” has told him how to cure their infection or their cancer? Why, when there is a choice, do they put their present lives in the hands of science?”
A fair number of people do. At least enough to make the more popular faith healers quite rich. Maybe these are the ‘other misguide people’ Jerry referred to–a subtle reference that IMHO deserves a little more comment.
James Randi’s The Faith Healers documents not just the foolishness of believing in faith healers, but the damage that faith healers do.
So when the faith healer says someone can toss out their insulin, because their diabetes has been cured, sure enough the uncured believer will be in the ER the next day seeking a science-based cure. Do they learn their lesson? Hard to say, faith healers still get rich despite constant debunking.
If Heaven is infinitely blissful and better than this life, why attempt being healed at all? There’s very obvious cognitive dissonance going on here. Religious people, despite protestations to the contrary, are not confident in their assertions about this infinite bliss, thus the term faith.
Every thought one has about death and dying is from the perspective of being alive. There is no perspective from being dead. The act of dying is an act of the living [AC Grayling]. No matter how gruesome the experience of dying there is no continuity into death; there is no relief, no peace to experience once dead.
For myself, the idea of oblivion is rather comforting; the loss of perspective, the cessation of experience, to me is a whole lot more appealing than any afterlife myth concocted by humankind so far. What does eternal bliss even mean? Is it the same as the endless book or the endless cupcake?
I for one vote for longevity, but that is from the perspective of being alive, being relatively well placed and in good health. I know that one day “I” as an organism will cease to function and then “I” will cease to exist. The idea that I will live on, through my work and the memories of family and friends, is ludicrous. It’s as much as a cathartic as burying me with all of my possessions so I will be comfortable in the afterlife.
The promise of an afterlife is the biggest con ever invented – accept your lot in life, don’t ask for or fight for an equitable share in the societies in which you live; you will be duly rewarded in the next life.
I used to think that belief God, religion the afterlife were delusional, a true pathology of the brain beyond the control of the individual. It’s all escapism built around the fear of death held in the grip of a denial of realty so pervasive, so historic, it appears delusional, and prevents those persuaded by the illusion of a full life, here and now – very sad.
The only downside of the thought of death is thought of missing out on being alive.
One possible way to cope with death is to rethink the narrative from the first-person perspective and reframe your vision. As far as I’m personally concerned, if we get technical about it I am immortal. There is no existence before me and none after me. My life is the subjective boundary which contains the whole of all the reality it is possible to know. The internal is eternal.
Of course, this is not a good mental storyline to live by, since it egocentrically blocks out the value of leaving a legacy, making an impact, and mattering to someone other than oneself. But it seems to me that it would be good story to die by — and permissible, under those limited circumstances.
[ Woody Allen quote about immortality goes here. ]
/@
I don’t discount leaving a legacy and contributing to the greater good of humanity, locally and globally. For me, it is not a justification against or substitution for an afterlife.
I embrace my mortality, for whatever we think about death, we cannot know our own death and this makes life all the more precious, not to be put-off or squandered with the promise of an afterlife.
I embrace the concept of eupraxsophy, as conceived by Paul Kurtz, living one’s life with joyful exuberance and eudaimonia. To live morally, ethically to make a difference when and where, I can and at the very least do no harm.
As a humanist I have compassion for all of humanity and do what I can to make for a better world as insignificant as I am – a mere raindrop in the flood of humanity. How we harness this flood, for the collective good, or our utter demise as a species, is up to all of us – that is the challenge. I believe if we lose the afterlife and the promise of religion(s) we would all come to our senses much sooner.
I do agree.
The bit about ‘living on in the memories of others’ is really just a bit of metaphorical comforting. It is NOT the same as being alive.
Living longer is much preferable – as long as your quality of life is maintained. (Getting old and having things stop working is a bitch). When it reaches the point where continued existence is not worth going on, then I would wish to just stop. Voluntary euthanasia should be every ones right, in my view.
Oh, and we’ve only got one life – so make the most of it.
Very glad to hear you reject the curious pro-death sentiment you hear from even some atheists. I strongly recommend Oxford Uni’s Professor Nick Bostrom, “Fable of the Dragon Tyrant” on this: http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
Because most religious people seem to be under the impression that that trite little joke about the man on the roof of a flooded house who turns away help because “God will save me” * is one of the parables in the Bible, that’s how come.
*(Spoiler alert: the punchline is something like “But I sent you a raft, a boat, and an airplane!”)
I hate that one. I used to get it from my aunt all the time. If she said something was God’s will and it happened the way she said, then it’s because, ya know, God. But if it didn’t happen the way she said it would, here comes the mysterious ways card. I wish I had the ability to seamlessly shift between the literal and the metaphorical. Where does one get a double-clutch rhetorical transmission?
“how many people go gentle into that good night, even when very old?”
Even the amoeba can sense threat and will move away from the bright/hot light of a microscope. I’m stating the obvious, but every living cell has evolved to stay that way- alive. There are more positives to sentience than negatives, but death is probably the biggest negative, which as others posted above leads to many aspects of the afterlife and delusion.
Well, not being alive for the first baker’s dozen billion years since the Big Bang didn’t bother me all that much. I’d love to see more than just the usual several decades we tend to get — maybe even several millennia. But I’m pretty sure that not being alive for the next trillion billion years isn’t going to bother me any more than not being alive until a few decades ago bothered me.
Death doesn’t bother me. Dying I’m not looking forward to, and would just as soon put off as long as practical. But death itself? Meh.
b&
Yep,that’s it,Ben! Couldn’t agree more…
Agree…and spoken like a true Twainphile.
This just doesn’t resonate with me. I couldn’t care about being alive before my birth and I won’t care about being alive once dead because I obviously can’t reflect. So once alive, I have everything to lose. I don’t fear the process of death–I’ve been in pain before. But I despise the idea of non-existence, the state of never again being able to think. And you never ever recover–you never come back–you never wake up. What could be worse? Even when sick and disabled you get to see a loved one or glimpse a sunset or laugh a moment. Remind me again why losing all that for eternity is not a horrible prospect? So, just lose your ability to care for anything (after death) and you’ll feel much better? Am I missing something?
What you don’t know won’t hurt you. Oblivion is just that…oblivion. Don’t fret, happens to the best of us.
Except that there’s no “you” to wake up. Lots of things could be worse.
I’ve spent many a dreamless night (or at least no recollection of them). It’s never bothered me that I lacked any awareness during those intervals. For all practical purposes, this is death, we just won’t wake up to note how we have no recollection of it.
And sub.
Thanks for your responses, peers. I am being (dead) serious with this discussion and not just making some philosophical point.
I understand your points but they all seem to imply ‘once in a state of death you’ll have no regrets,’ like a dreamless sleep. Agreed but I’m alive and thinking now and able to try to anticipate the future (however vain or impossible) and the prospect of non-existence fills me with dread in the present. I feel substantial anxiety now if I allow myself to contemplate it deeply, like regret (which is the past) of the future which sounds silly but not if it is 100% probability.
Would you feel anxiety if you were to be executed in exactly four years at noon through no fault if your own and knowing it is absolutely unavoidable? Put another way, what if I said to the twenty people having this conversation on this site ‘pick a straw, the short one dies of cancer in two years,’ and YOU end up picking the short straw?
Now, feeling a bit anxious? So what does 2 or 4 or 12 years matter? That’s my feeling about death. (Apologies for depressing topic but I’m being sincere. Disclaimer: I’m not depressed and love life and hopefully have another 30 years on the clock)
Yeah well that is statistically probably 20 more years than I have.
I know exactly what you mean about being non-alive. I would like to live for many, many more years, there’s so much interesting stuff to do. That presupposes I have the money and bits of me don’t break down, which realistically they will since evolution ‘designed’ me for a reliable working life of maybe 30 years and ever since then I’ve been running on the safety margin like an old DC-3.
But on the whole I just don’t think about it. I unconsciously assume I’m going to go on living for [an indefinite period of time approximately equal to forever].
I had a heart operation ~3 years ago. The surgeon did mention that there was a small risk (I can’t recall the figure, maybe under 1%) I might not survive. I seem to remember feeling slightly nervous for a few minutes, then I mentally swept it under the carpet. I kept *expecting* panic to hit me and wondering when it would, but it never did. On the whole, going to the hospital for surgery, I was much less nervous than I am going to a dentist (I hate going to the dentists).
Knowing the time of my death would be awful, though.
Don’t get me wrong, I find the thought of dying anywhere from sad to horrifying depending on my mood when I think about it. But, not existing in the year 2200 can’t possibly bother me anymore than not existing in 1800 did.
One great thing about science is that it has dramatically increased lifespans and quality of life. We wouldn’t be driven to do that if death doesn’t matter. Then again, I can imagine getting old and unhealthy enough to lose the drive to live. I cannot imagine it realistically now being pretty healthy and in my mid 30s, but I can rationally accept that I may one day feel that way.
There’s also the occasional need, especially when overtired or perhaps coming off a hangover, where I have to beat back the childhood indoctrination of hell. I’ll admit to being terrified at the thought of oblivion on occasion, but it pales in comparison to the thought of eternal torture, especially the thought that you can never know for sure if you’re worthy until it’s too late.
For those that want to dive deeper into the science and philosophy of evidence-based truth, I can recommend David Deutch’s The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World where he sets things up with a discussion of what constitutes ‘explanatory power’. Deutsch says that the truth consists of detailed and “hard to vary assertions about reality”
“hard to vary”?
/@