contact@onbelief.orgReader Responses: Page 2
Jak: I stopped reading it (the manifesto page) after a few lines. I have now read all 17 and ´believe´I have lived my life accordingly. When you see it written as a list it looks too much like a ritual (9) to avoid; a ritual which one should follow and believe in. 15)? Is it not possible that we might eventually find a perfectly logical scientifically provable meaning to life?
Commentary: On point 15 I would say science does not impart meaning in that sense. On point 9) I would say that obsession with any idea is unhealthy. It is better to consider the propositions as statements for debate.
Bill: Somebody needs to do the devil's work (said with a laugh).
Commentary: It often does not pay to take ourselves too seriously.
John: Have a look at a similar site .... a blog. Secular thoughts http://psiomniac.blogspot.com/
Commentary: Thanks John. The site you refer to has very interesting thoughts and responses. I would encourage those who are interested to read and enjoy the rich diversity of ideas and debate on the internet concerned with belief, skepticism, humanism, atheism, evolution and creationism. You could try to 'google' these terms. You might also go to the links page of this site by clicking here >
Dave: I've checked out the web site and was disappointed that a lad like you, shaped by his religious upbringing , has seventeen points in his manifesto, rather than ten commandments. Have you mellowed?
Commentary: See proposition 12.
Audrey: I am not insulted by your web site. I wonder what teenagers would make of it.
Commentary: No doubt the religious will see some of the propositions as a corrupting effect on the young. Perhaps we should bring debate and a more questioning attitude into our high school curriculum. There has been in school science classes a lack of connection between 'the facts', presentation of the experimental basis for particular theories, and the practical work undertaken by pupils.
Andrew: Lovely to hear from you [no other relevant comment]
Commentary: This is perhaps not surprising from a christian minister of religion. When recently attending a concert in his beautiful church he said to me. "Do you realise that this is a church" ... "Ah, so you have looked at the web site." "Yes."
Shabaz: I'm sure that if "No Brainer ( the previous site) " takes off, it will provide interest to other Nihilistic Buddhists! Of course I would have told you what my A-level physics teacher told me - the answer to life is the number 42. It would certainly save anyone experiencing the catalepsy of Nietzsche and the like.
Commentary: I hope you have not taken the propositions as a personal insult to your Muslim beliefs. Equally I hope you will not allow your fundamentalism to interfere with my way of life. I find the dichotomy between your scientific career as a biologist and your personal beliefs intriguing. Perhaps in your case it is related to the nature of the Koran and its reported lack of conflict with evolutionary science.
Dave: You stated that ' A highly intelligent, very educated but completely witless and amoral group of physicists developed the fusion bomb.' At least you got the 'highly intelligent, very educated' bits right;-) You then go on to state 'One has to wonder what new depth of depravity this "intellectual honesty" will take us to in future. The 'belief' that unrestrained science is inevitably good for us is demonstrable folly. ' There's no such thing as 'unrestrained 'science (even in wartime) so how can there be a belief in it?
Commentary: I agree that there are many financial, political, social and legal constraints on the practice of science and so science does not operate in a vacuum.However, I ask you what internal or external constraints have operated on those who have produced weapons of mass destruction. I include in this the nuclear scientists of the UK, France, USA, the Soviet Union and Pakistan who have produced WMDs or exported or shared destructive nuclear technologies. I would argue that the scientists who willingly participated in these projects and fostered their ambitions on an enormous industrial scale at vast public expense had in practice no constraints. We are also aware how nuclear scientists, even someone with the towering intellect of Albert Einstein, wrote several letters to convince American politicians how it would be possible to build a fission bomb. So not only were scientists participants they were co-conspirators. Following building of the fission bomb scientists were then given every encouragement to undertake further peacetime "experiments" by political elites of these countries in the building of "nuclear fusion bombs". Edward Teller for example has a particularly ignominious role in the course of events in the US. In the UK we then saw the hiding of expenditure on nuclear missile programs from the British parliament. We saw the obvious lies, now exposed for what they were, that the British civilian and military nuclear research programs were independent of one another. Worse still we now have the public acknowledgement of plutonium exports from the UK to the US and have every reason to assert that they were for military purposes. British politicians then did not seem to care what the plutonium was used for when it left our shores (see parliamentary answer). Where were the intellectually honest UK scientists in all of this? Were they hiding behind the walls of their laboratories, then going home to their families, to be followed by a relaxing game of badminton or a drink in the local pub. On what basis were these scientists and engineers acting? Did they do so merely as an extension of a laboratory based investigation? Were the nuclear tests in the pacific merely scientific investigations on a large scale? Did they 'believe' for example that they were doing some social good? Perhaps they did not really care about their effect on the world. Similarly were those who conducted 'experiments' in exposing native peoples and our service personal to radiation at detonation also participating in some benign restrained scientific exercise? ( one source )
Is the amoral scientist restricted to physics and engineering? Sadly not. In terms of the new biology, for example, we have already seen Monsanto trying to market reproductively disabled (sterile) and trait-restricted seeds to world farmers ( See Terminator Technology, and Monsanto at Wikipedia, Ban Terminator, Biotech Giant Monsanto Revises Pledge on 'Suicide Seeds' at Greenpeace UK). It remains to be seen whether or not external restraint can be brought to bear on Monsanto. Belief that economic power granted by science validates our actions is clearly dangerous.
When molecular medicine 'comes of age' as a technological discipline based on molecular biology where will the internal restraint of intellectually honest scientists leave us? Should we really ignore the example of unrestrained nuclear science?
Your Response
Please indicate if your response is not intended for publication on this site. Your response might be shortened or paraphrased or be restricted to a particular point you have made.
I am happy to discuss the ideas expressed on this site with religious and non-religious people alike. However despite my contentious remarks about religion, I no longer see any personal value in debating the correctness of particular details of the many theologies that exist with the religious or 'non-believers' and do not obtain any satisfaction from doing so. Perhaps you could direct such comments to a 'believer', priest, minster of religion, theologian, philosopher, atheist or skeptical thinker as you think appropriate. I hope you will not see that request as arrogance on my part but merely as a desire to move on to other areas of debate, which at this time in my life, I view as more productive. If you have been personally insulted by what I have written you have my sincere apologies for I seek to challenge rather than insult. I can say very little to those who see all challenges to their beliefs as an insult, especially if those challenges come in the form of newspaper cartoons. Otherwise your comment is very welcome.
On the Nature of Belief
www.onbelief.org
Scotland, 12th October 2007 and thereafter
Copyright 2007 onwards
