Mof’s done a fair job of sticking up for all right-thinking atheists today, chief of whom at least in the popular consciousness at the moment seems to be Richard Dawkins. I thought, as a Spiritualist and therefore one of the people in Dawkins’ direct line of fire, I might put the opposite point of view. Before you scroll on past to the next post, or click to another page, let me explain that this won’t be a fundamentalist religious rant. I’m well aware that much of organised religion, popular culture and the other fish in that barrel into which Dawkins was shooting deserve to be shot, but Dawkins’ alternative “religion” – science – is not so lily white or perfect.
Dawkins’ insistence that, as Mof put it, “belief in the paranormal and superstitious thinking impedes human progress and impoverishes our culture. Science gives; religion, astrology and spiritualism only takes away” is just as dangerous a credo as that which Dawkins attacks. To suggest that either science or religion is exclusively positive or negative is far too simplistic a view, and one which a true scientist would not be peddling. Science gives us Thalidomide, and a culture based entirely on science and reason (leaving aside the simple truth that such a society, if it ever could exist, is still many hundreds of years away) would be so dry and mirthless as to be entirely self-defeating.
First off I should declare that as well as a Spiritualist, I am a scientist. Not only in the sense that I’ve studied science at various times in my life, but also that I’m familiar with the scientific method. I’ve read The Red Queen, Vital Dust and even some of Dawkins’ own works (The Blind Watchmaker; The Selfish Gene) so I’m thoroughly familiar not only with the principle that life is a cosmic imperative (i.e. that the state of the universe more-or-less dictates that life will arise given the right planetary conditions) as discussed in Vital Dust, but also why that is, and how it happens.
I’ve read the treatise on how the evolution of the eye, far from being a “miracle of God’s engineering,” is actually only the natural reaction of biological tissue to external influences, and an event that has actually occurred many times over during the course of the history of life on this planet, taking, as it does, only a few hundred thousand generations to perfect – a relatively short time evolutionarily speaking.
But understanding these things is a long way from understanding the universe and everything in it. Modern science is barely 300 years old and yet in his arrogance Dawkins is as happy to dismiss things he can’t explain as primitive man would have been to dismiss the concept of radio or television. In a 14 billion year old universe, isn’t there a quite staggering mathematical certainty that there will be some explanations that, in those 300 years, we have been unable to uncover?
Take, for instance, homeopathy. A subject Dawkins would no doubt love to lambast if he hasn’t already. Reason dictates that homeopathic remedies are so extremely diluted that there cannot possibly be any active ingredient left. Yet the remedies work, at levels that cannot be explained by simple placebo effects. Homeopaths maintain their solutions retain a “memory” of the active ingredient; science scoffs at the notion which cannot, as yet, be proven. My point exactly. Armed with the science available in the early 1400s, we would have been utterly unable to explain how the Earth orbits the Sun (even if we had believed such an incredible notion). If some forward thinking individual had suggested the possibility of unseen forces holding Sun, Earth and Moon in predictable patterns of movement, a 15th century Dawkins would have been waiting to call him a nut job (or, more likely, burn him at the stake). And with 21st century science we are unaware of any physical, biological, chemical or molecular property that would support or explain homeopathy.
Dawkins talks in measured, scientifically credible and weighty tones of the “dangers” inherent in people’s “belief” in alternative medicines. And yet figures published in the Lancet reveal that orthodox doctors are only right 48% of the time. Another way of looking at this is if there were two medical diagnoses for your symptoms, statistically you would be better off guessing which was the right one, rather than depending on your doctor. Alongside well-publicised cases of misdiagnosis, drug side-effects and deaths in clinical trials is it any wonder people turn to alternative therapies?
Almost everyone now has either personal or anecdotal experience of doctors who treat symptoms rather than causes. Modern complaints such as RSI are treated with anti-inflammatories and pain-killers by orthodox medicine, rather than trying to find the root of the problem. “Alternative” therapies involving massage, posture training and attitudinal therapies attack the origin of the inflammation which will then not only dissipate without the need for chemical treatments, but is far less likely to recur.
The “dangers” of organised religion (especially fundamentalism) are splashed across our headlines daily, fuelling Dawkins’ agenda. Rather trivially for such an important subject, Dawkins expressed concern over the level of belief in horoscopes. An easy target but one which, again, relies on there being no demonstrable scientific proof of the influence of other worlds on character or chance events (for which I refer you to the arguments above).
Dawkins’ reference to Spiritualism being “a darker world” might have been offensive had I been at all bothered by his opinion. Unfortunately as with so many of his targets the ground has been befogged in the past by charlatans and those out to exploit the masses. While it is undoubtedly true that this area is ripe for a rip-off, it is also true from personal experience that a Spiritualist reading from a legitimate medium is much more than a linguistic trick. Far from being asked general questions like “does someone know a Charles?” I have, without even so much verbal prompting as yes or no answers to specific questions, had events described to me of which I was the sole witness. I would welcome Derren Brown’s explanation of how a linguistic trick can allow a medium to describe in detail what I did on one particular afternoon, alone and unobserved, and which I had never discussed with anyone, and how she could do that without me ever opening my mouth or moving my head in a nod or a shake.
Dawkins may well find the notion of talking to the dead ludicrous, but many people draw comfort from knowing they will see their loved ones again in the future. This is why there are more questions about Charles than there are about conditions in the afterlife. But if that’s the kind of information Dawkins wants, it is available, most popularly in the writings of Silver Birch.
Mof says he doesn’t like religion and I would have to agree with him, in the large. The history of religion is like a microcosm of the history of man – littered with half-truths and control freakery on a massive scale and guilty of some of the worst atrocities against some of the weakest and most vulnerable members of the human race (against, it has to be said, most religions’ supposedly most fundamental tenets).
But Dawkins’ crusade, like all crusades, throws the baby out with the bath water. He doesn’t search for the nugget of truth in the thousand-year-old myth; he simply dismisses the entire edifice as “unscientific.” It’s a laugh that, really, since the true scientist would be more open and willing to search for the truth, rather than approaching with a closed mind that refuses to believe the possible. The ultimate logical conclusion to Dawkins’ argument is that human thought is merely a result of biological, chemical and electrical impulses. There is no “you” in your skull. Those thoughts that you believe to be yours are nothing more than the random firings of your neurons and that essence of you is not a soul but an ephemeral nothing that will blow away like dust as soon as you draw your final breath.
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