  |
 |
| |
|
|
|
 Render Unto Darwin That Which Is Darwin’sPosted on May 11, 2008
By Chris Hedges The German chemist August Kekulé fell asleep in his study after a fruitless struggle to identify the chemical structure of benzene. He dreamed of a snake eating its own tail and awoke instantly. The dream gave him, through the ancient language of symbolism, the circular structure of the benzene ring that had eluded his conscious mind. The dream may have had its basis in Kekulé’s experiments, but it was the nonrational that brought him his discovery. Many physicists see “string theory”—in which the structure of the universe is made up of resonating, one-dimensional submicroscopic strings—as plausible. Yet no scientist has ever seen a string. No direct experimentation has established a firm ground for strings. Cosmology routinely bases arguments on things that cannot be seen in order to explain things that can, as in the case of “dark matter,” whose effects can be seen. Quantum physics demolished the assumption that physical elements are governed by fixed laws. Science is often as inexact and intuitive as theology, philosophy and every other human endeavor. A mirror demonstrates the randomness of nature. A mirror reflects about 95 percent of light hitting it. The other 5 percent passes through the mirror. Photons, which are invisible, are either reflected or pass through the mirror’s surface. But there is no way of knowing which photons will be reflected and which will be absorbed. Electrons are also subject to these quantum effects. This led Werner Heisenberg to formulate his “uncertainty principle.” This principle states that we cannot know everything about a particle. If we can determine a particle’s position we cannot determine its momentum. We can measure momentum, but in this measurement we lose the particle’s exact position. We can know a particle’s momentum or its position. We cannot know both with definitive accuracy. Science is not always directly empirical. Science is not governed by absolute, immutable laws. Science, and especially quantum mechanics, far from telling us we can know everything, tells us there will always be things we cannot know. No one ultimately understands. Science affirms the complexity and mystery of the universe. Science, like the religious impulse, opens us up to a world where we face mystery. There are forces in the universe that will always lie beyond the capacity of the human mind. The New Atheist writers from Richard Dawkins to E.O. Wilson to Sam Harris have become the high priests not of science but the cult of science. Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore, for example, call religious beliefs “memes.” Memes are defined as cultural artifacts—prototypical ideas—that invade and restructure minds in order to reproduce themselves. A meme replicates in human minds, they argue, the way genes replicate in human bodies. Memes include a word, belief, thought, religious ritual, dance, poem or any of the myriad of behaviors that are copied and reproduced in human societies. Although memes, unlike genes, are not identifiable physical structures, Dawkins uses the image of a virus to describe them. Religion, for Dawkins, is equated with a disease, and the religiously inclined are disease carriers. The attempt to equate patterns of human society with the behavior of genes, while it sounds plausible, and may even be instructive in some settings, is part of this cult of science. The genetic coding that permits the transfer of DNA-encoded units of information is fairly precise. But this model fails to work for the transfer of cultural, social, ethical and political behavior. Patterns of morality are easily reversed or erased, especially in ages of revolutionary fervor, war, anarchy, fear, social decline and despotism. Those who are schooled in identical religious texts, even within the same communities, have different views of morality and ethics. It is possible to transfer literal meaning. It is possible to transfer genetic information. It is possible to pass on heritable characteristics mediated by hard-and-fast rules of chemistry and physics. These rules, however, have no counterpart in the dissemination of ideas. Ideas do not replicate like genes. Ideas are snuffed out or forgotten, often for centuries. Ideas that prevail are often not the best ideas but more often ideas backed by power. The rise of Christianity owed more to the brutality of Constantine and the Holy Roman Empire than it did its particular theology. Those who advocate the theory of memes ignore the role of power, repression, persecution and force in human history, as well as the inherent chaos and irrationality of human thought. Human thought cannot be treated like an object in a laboratory. There is no scientific mechanism that explains cultural evolution. Those who endorse the meme theory speak of memetic engineering. This memetic engineering would involve the conscious manipulation of intellectual evolution by disseminating good memes and curtailing bad ones. The question of who decides which memes are good and which bad is not raised. Dennett has argued that human evolution can be shaped and directed through memetic engineering. He advocates not science but indoctrination, an updated version of thought control. The theory of memes and memetic engineering, like the idea of the new man, is another form of magical thinking. It is not real. It has no more scientific validity than Intelligent Design. And, should it ever be adopted it would result in anti-intellectualism, a war on science and democratic freedom and a silencing of those who fail to conform. The world the high priests of memetic engineering propose is as repugnant as the fundamentalist utopia advocated by the radical Christian right. Einstein’s quest for a unified field theory explaining subatomic structure or the Big Bang no more undermined religious contemplation than evolutionary biology. The questions of science are not the questions of religion. Science does not attempt to address, nor is it capable of addressing, the final mystery of existence, our moments of transcendence, the moral life, love, our search for meaning and our mortality. Science, limited to what can be proved and disproved, is a morally neutral discipline. It serves human needs and human ambitions. There are times when it protects and advances life. There are times when it empowers ambitions that are immoral and deadly. Science, like all human endeavors, comes with good and bad, possibilities of hope and possibilities of destruction.
1
2
NEXT PAGE >>>
Previous item: Baghdad's Other Power Struggle Next item: Taking a Stand Against War Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig.
Comment Pages:
1
»
By Wink Magic, May 14 at 1:53 pm # Interesting articleI enjoyed the article. Despite the derogatory comments I hope you will still continue to write in this vein. Sun surely,
By Wilf Loree, May 14 at 10:41 am # A simple answerWith such complicated argument and rebutal, how is the “average” person to understand what life and living are all about? There must be, like the seaarch for a consice and comprehensive theory of existance, a simpler explanation. Perhaps we are so caught up and confused by knowledge and the confusing content of consciousness we cannot see what is simply true. And such truth, I suggest, is beyond words that can only otherwise be conveyed and passed on in behaviour. And only if that behaviour reflects a love for one another is there any chance for our civilization, so called, to survive.
By Richard Hudson, May 14 at 8:37 am # Hedges must devolve into beating the same old dead horse because all of the arguments that are pro-deity become categorically formulaic. I have said for a long time that church attendance was listening to the oldest and most boring book report, and poor Chris has no other ammunition than this. Hedges is a Christian moderate and rails against the evangelicals of his faith, calling them “fascists”. Sam Harris, whose writings show only passing interest in meme theory, considers moderate Christians such as Hedges to be the war elephants on which the wild-eyed evangelicals ride. I believe this is what rankles Hedges against Harris. Uniquely, Hedges fails to mention Christopher Hitchens whose antipathy toward religion is, in my opinion, more inflammatory and every bit as cogent as the “group” that Hedges has chosen to do battle with. Also, I believe, Hitchens’ is the only one who has taken Hedges personally to task and I can’t imagine why he chose to leave poor Christopher out of the group. Was it, perhaps trepidation? Alas, it’s true; a debate with Christopher Hitchens tends to leave God’s defenders more than a bit bloodied. Hitchens will only go at it bare-knuckled.
By demar, May 14 at 8:03 am # I love the way the truth manifests itself with such clarity. Your comments on Chris Hedges blarney make my day. Could anyone explain to me why the left is pushing back on writers such as Sam Harris? Tom Hartman of Air America had Sam on as a guest and proceeded to attack him from the get go. Hartman hadn’t even read his whole book so he misunderstood him completely. What is the origin of the term, radical atheist? Is Truthdig part of this push back?
By Bruce, May 14 at 7:58 am # huhI have seen Hedges talk and read his ramblings on truthdig, and always have the same reaction.
By woody, May 14 at 5:47 am # Wisdom from a child-molester? Great.
By Terry Sanders, May 14 at 5:19 am # In sum, you’ve become the defender of superstition. By criticizing the extreme far-right, you feel empowered to proclaim that primitive superstition is still ok as long as it doesn’t go Taliban wacko. Science really doesn’t matter here. It is your insistence on denying common sense in the vain hope of validating your very expensive and pointless degree that appears to be your real agenda.
By omprem, May 14 at 4:50 am # reply to lightiris May 12What is your point? All you have done is to issue a series of ad hominems against Mr Hedges and restate what you claim to be his point of view to suit your own purposes. If you have something to say, say it.
By Robert Brwon, May 14 at 4:50 am # Hedges ought to try actually reading Dawkins etHedges’ arguments are not even wrong, they’re just incomprehesible pseudoscientific giberish. It’s not even worth responding to so I’ll only say that if he has read any of the authors he criticises he obiously hasn’t understood a word they wrote and clearly he has no idea of what science is or isn’t. robbrownsyd
By Lena Herzog, May 13 at 6:27 pm # Science vs religion = wrong to even compareThe profound difference between science and religion is that a paradigm change and even slight readjustments are in the very nature of science. Belief never does that; it is a static system. Any credible adjustment of a faulty paradigm in any discipline of science brings about changes, small and big, sometimes so profound that they change the way we view the world. As religious institutions always sought a tight grip on our existential outlook they rightly saw science as a threat. But it is a psychological reaction and has a poor intellectual ground. Science and religion have nothing to do with each other. Chris Hedge’s resentment towards science as the usurper of truth is misplaced, science falters and makes mistakes and clings to myths (he rightly observes) as its authors are human, they are the same authors of god. But science is an usurper of a more dynamic method which at its best application brings out the best in us: ability to think critically and re-evaluate.
By c, May 13 at 6:22 pm # At no point do Dawkins and E.O. Wilson “insist we are moving toward a final good.” You have misunderstood their viewpoints, possibly out of a lack of scientific knowledge, perhaps on purpose. They argue that our intelligence and reasoning capacity gives us the ability to, in Dawkins’ words, “rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators”—our genes. There is a simple proof for this: birth control. We use it, although our biological makeup is configured to compel us to reproduce far more often. There. You lose. Seriously, look it up—that’s the kind of thing they’re talking about. Don’t just take my word for it. As for the rest of the article—well, if it had some structure, I could maybe address a few of its points. But it’s all over the map, like a Burroughs novel. The point seems to be to pile on enough innuendo and strawman arguments that readers will just throw their hands up in surrender. And the sentences are needlessly convoluted. You know, kind of like when a writer is trying to obscure the weak points of an argument. Now stay the hell off of my turf.
By Uncle Ernie, May 13 at 12:23 pm # Render Unto Darwin That Which Is Darwin’sSon you better put that crack pipe down, it’s making you null and void. Harvard Divinity, why am I not surprised? Could you explain the talking snake theory, please?
By DR, May 13 at 11:25 am # Give it up, HedgesHow many times can you write the same post, but with different words? Mr Hedges is certainly attempting to establish the record here. Give it up, and go on to better pursuits; you have lost all credibility on this issue a while ago. Here’s what you’ve been going for the last year, Mr Hedges: 1. You claim without any sort of substantial argument, that Atheism is nothing but another religion. 2. You claims and whatever thin arguments are thoroughly rebutted, repeatedly. 3. You completely ignore the counter arguments, and simply go on and repeat the whole cycle all over again. It’s like a dog chasing its tail: good for some entertainment at first, but after a while you start thinking he might need some kind of medical help…
By Vermonter17032, May 13 at 9:49 am # Hedges is a good man, but off baseI suspect the reason religious people get so agitated by a few atheists is that they realize that their altars are built on sand. Unlike too many religious people, no modern atheists call for wars against those with other views, despite what Hedges tries to imply. Science itself evolves. It admits mistakes and adapts. It grows and, while never perfect, always improves our understanding of the universe. Religion, on the other hand, has not substantially brought us any closer to understanding the universe than it did 3000 years ago. Every atheist I know is a moral person. That’s more than I can say about all the religious people I know—in case this last sentence is misunderstood, let me clarify: I know people who espouse religious beliefs who are immoral people. I do not know any atheists who are. There are religious people who support violence against those who do not share their views. Then think about this: In the United States an avowed atheist would have no chance to be elected president. People would gladly tell pollsters, “No, I will not vote for someone who does not believe in God.” Yet, I would bet you will not find a single atheist who would not vote for someone simply for his or her religious beliefs. And yet it is the religious who get their holy relics in a bunch because a few atheists have managed to get a word or two in edgewise in this debate. Says something to me about the strength of their beliefs.
By Luigi, May 13 at 9:23 am # Non-Existence of GodAs Woody Allen once said, “No one can prove the non-existence of God. It’s something that has to be accepted on faith.”
By David Bryson, MD (Yale '63), May 13 at 6:28 am # physics first had its Newton, and then had its Einstein - evolution first had its Darwin, and has
By J. Smith, May 13 at 4:13 am # Dear Chris Hedges, The following are some concerns and critique I have with regard to your arguments. “It certainly is not Darwinian science. Darwin wrote nothing to indicate...” This is inconsistent. Here you cite Darwin directly in support of one of your arguments, but in another section, you observe (accurately), that Darwin was not the final word on evolution and that we have learned a great deal more since Darwin’s time. In the second, third and fourth paragraphs you seemingly attempt to undermine science in the mind of the reader through a disingenuous misrepresentation of the uncertainty principle (which has yeilded predictions and formulae that have proved to be anything but uncertain) and several other areas of research. Your comments about Dark Matter not being “seen”, and the not-so-subtle implication that therefore Science is faith-based is simply obfuscating the conversation without making any real contribution to it. This is also just grossly wrong, and I shouldn’t need to spell out to you the rock solid merits of implied scientific observations. The idea that only by having actual photons from an event strike your retina can you make any truly meaningful ‘observation’ is just absurd and flies in the face of many great scientific breakthroughs that were made in exactly this manner. To say that the “questions of science are not the questions of religion” is to ignore the current reality faced by many concerned parents at the prospect of intelligent design being forced into American schools, and then there is the whole tiresome issue of stem-cell research. What you mean when you say “religion” seems to be your own idealistic benevolent definition of religion - or perhaps what you wish religion could become - and it is at variance the religion those of us out here in the real world are experiencing. This was also very apparent in your debate with Sam Harris I thought. If you are advocating a contemporary, thoughtful, evolved version of religion, please make this clear. Attacking Harris and others for calling a spade a spade, when you are substituting his spade for a queen of diamonds benefits no-one. I find this article contradictory and idealistic, and coming up short in furthering our discussion or understanding of this issue. You are preoccupied with attacking these “leaders of the cult” personally, rather than suggesting alternative ideas. Instead of offering contructive critique, you offer obfuscations. I’m not necessarily disagreeing with everything you’re saying. This debate is very important and I have been following your contributions. But please, please, let’s be honest about it. If you cannot make a point in a thoroughly truthful, genuine manner, don’t attempt to make it. I look forward to hearing more from you.
By congressive, May 13 at 1:12 am # The Nash Equilibrium defines morality, particularly behaviors which best insure the success of proximate populations, much better than any delusions of religious madmen high on acacia bark. No, religion will go the way of segregation. They are both crowd control based on ignorance and ego.
By Epicurus, May 12 at 2:52 pm # Science does something that religion never does, and never will do: science welcomes and incorporates facts as they are presented, whether they agree with the theory to which they apply, or not, and adjusts any discovery to incorporate the newly-discovered evidence – thus growing and improving the view we have of reality. Science is never “proven” – it offers a view that explains the world as we see it, a view that is subject to improvement, adjustment, or even reversal, if the facts require that to be done; science gets better by discrete steps, getting closer to the truth, with each step. Religion, on the other hand, is set, hardened, incorrigible, dogmatic, and incapable of changing its notions. It rules as a dictator, denying any and all facts that oppose its dogma. It does not grow.
By truthreader13, May 12 at 2:34 pm # This article is nothing but a piece of nonsense , |
Chalmers Johnson on Our ‘Managed Democracy’
Email
Print
Share
Del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Ma.gnolia
Newsvine
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo
Jump to Comments
COMMENT TOOLS:
Hide comments
Show comments
Comment on this article