RE: Evolutionary biology adopting religious traits
December 27, 2014 at 8:29 am
(This post was last modified: December 27, 2014 at 8:44 am by tantric.)
Darwin Day (what the hell, why can't I post links?) Google it. No Einstein Day. Newton Day in America would be about fig bars.
In any case, that caused me to inspect how ordinary people experience science. It's a little disconcerting. Imagine a post-apocalyptic tribe that has inherited our base knowledge, but not the proofs of that knowledge. They believe in a heliocentric solar system, the cosmological model, germ theory, etc, but they have absolute no proof and no knowledge of the scientific method. The knowledge is passed down by priests, who memorize it. They believe, very firmly, in No God and secular humanism. Do these people have a religion?
Many people, even most people, treat science like magic and scientists like priests. It's a source of orthodox information, the approved world view, but they have no understanding of how it came to be. Even intellectuals do it...the other day I was talking about how food preferences can be passed from mother to child, and someone said, "I refuse to believe that memories can be passed..." What? Why do you need to believe anything - it's science, you know or you don't.
People get VERY attached to their theories, especially those they use to form their world views. Consider dark matter - what is that but some idea a physicist made up to plug a hole in a theory/observation set. The whole idea is fairly new, and considering how cosmological theories come and go, it likely has a short life span. But some folks just can't handle having unknowns, or worse, unknowables. They will *believe* anything to avoid that hole.
Consider Marxist-Leninism. It went from a political philosophy to a state religion. Like it or not, religion plays a part in human social organization. When we move beyond ethnic chiefdoms to multiethnic states, historically, religion has been the glue. In the USSR, is seems that in some horrid way Communism became a substitute for the binding religion, and began to take on religious traits. They pickled their prophet and made him a shrine. They have a holy book, and persecute heretics. There are zealots and true believers, etc. Hell, in the PRC people pray to Mao.
See, I'm kind of purist with science. I REALLY don't want to see a similar process occur, creating Science instead of just doing science. That's one of the reasons I have a religion, to make sure that part of my psyche is occupied. Now y'all can explode, because I'm stretching the definition of 'religion' to breaking. I don't use that word myself, I use 'dharma' - teachings, a classification of constituents of the entire material and mental world. Atheism isn't a religion, but secular humanism is a dharma. State communism certainly is. And I really don't want science to be - it should remain, simply, a process of investigation, nothing more.
BTW, one of the bits of Buddhism I follow is called 'Right Speech', meaning not lying and not using language to damage your community. Meaning I don't like snotty crap, just saying.
In any case, that caused me to inspect how ordinary people experience science. It's a little disconcerting. Imagine a post-apocalyptic tribe that has inherited our base knowledge, but not the proofs of that knowledge. They believe in a heliocentric solar system, the cosmological model, germ theory, etc, but they have absolute no proof and no knowledge of the scientific method. The knowledge is passed down by priests, who memorize it. They believe, very firmly, in No God and secular humanism. Do these people have a religion?
Many people, even most people, treat science like magic and scientists like priests. It's a source of orthodox information, the approved world view, but they have no understanding of how it came to be. Even intellectuals do it...the other day I was talking about how food preferences can be passed from mother to child, and someone said, "I refuse to believe that memories can be passed..." What? Why do you need to believe anything - it's science, you know or you don't.
People get VERY attached to their theories, especially those they use to form their world views. Consider dark matter - what is that but some idea a physicist made up to plug a hole in a theory/observation set. The whole idea is fairly new, and considering how cosmological theories come and go, it likely has a short life span. But some folks just can't handle having unknowns, or worse, unknowables. They will *believe* anything to avoid that hole.
Consider Marxist-Leninism. It went from a political philosophy to a state religion. Like it or not, religion plays a part in human social organization. When we move beyond ethnic chiefdoms to multiethnic states, historically, religion has been the glue. In the USSR, is seems that in some horrid way Communism became a substitute for the binding religion, and began to take on religious traits. They pickled their prophet and made him a shrine. They have a holy book, and persecute heretics. There are zealots and true believers, etc. Hell, in the PRC people pray to Mao.
See, I'm kind of purist with science. I REALLY don't want to see a similar process occur, creating Science instead of just doing science. That's one of the reasons I have a religion, to make sure that part of my psyche is occupied. Now y'all can explode, because I'm stretching the definition of 'religion' to breaking. I don't use that word myself, I use 'dharma' - teachings, a classification of constituents of the entire material and mental world. Atheism isn't a religion, but secular humanism is a dharma. State communism certainly is. And I really don't want science to be - it should remain, simply, a process of investigation, nothing more.
BTW, one of the bits of Buddhism I follow is called 'Right Speech', meaning not lying and not using language to damage your community. Meaning I don't like snotty crap, just saying.
