This post originally started out as an article but then I found a video that goes along with the subject matter perfectly. So I re-named the article and inserted the video at the bottom of the page. The video is the first part of a two part series called "The Enemies of Reason," by Renown author and zoologist Richard Dawkins. The video is set in the UK but it is certainly relevant to everyone. Click here for the second part of the video.

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." -(Charles Darwin)

     The topics of religion, pseudoscience, spirituality, and superstition are not something I would normally write about on thinkersbebo because I never saw them as relevant to scientific and technological progression. However I'm beginning think that widespread non-rational beliefs are damaging to our species as a whole.. I see no reason why our civilization continues to carry on with these ancient inferior methods of thinking. Religion has become an obsolete system in our modern world. The advancements of science, rational thought, and logic have given us a much more complete understanding to the universe than supernatural creatures, and vengeful gods ever could have.
     We are now living in an incredible technologically constructed age with world wide instant communication, computers capable of processing pataflops of information, transplanted hearts, we are able to send probes all across the solar system and have even sequenced our own genome. All of this has been made possible by scientific progress, and rational thought. Our world - our very continued existence is built on science and reason. This should be obvious. Just look around the area surrounding you right now. Everything you see is the product of a scientific process put to material use. So you would think that we would be living in an age of reason and of scientific outlook. But somehow, statistically about ninety percent of the world population still harbor beliefs in religion, superstition, and/or spirituality of some kind. However it's not the theistic beliefs that are dangerous. It's the denial of any other systems of thinking, other then that of a theistic view, that is dangerous. And this I fear may becoming more and more common among the world's inhabitants, especially in the United States.
     It seems to me that it is by default that human beings think of their species as the focal point of all reality. In this state of mind, one perceives all actions and effects of the natural world/universe around them as a purposeful act directed towards them. This mind state can then be reinforced by parents, elders, leaders, and others of the same mind state. This default setting must have originally had some benefit to our species, so it was selected for. Because of our rather complex brain we are capable of cognitive, rational thought, which grants us the ability to overcome much of our default mind setting. Our species has come a long way because of this. The results of science and reason has provided our species with incredible capabilities, never before seen on the face of this planet. So why in the world would anybody want to stay on default settings and disregard all that our species has discovered and there by accomplished? This must be somewhat of a difficult task considering the abundance of information surrounding us at all times in our modern world. A person must have to make continual, cognitive decisions to ignore all forms of reason and rational concerning the plethora of information encircling them on a regular basis, in order to sustain a religious/superstitious mind-set. It is the willingness of so many people to make this decision that concerns me.
     Being the webmaster of a science related website, I get to witness the resistance to reason, firsthand on a regular basis. Every month I receive an increasing number of angry e-mails from people who adamantly disagree with what I have written because of their non-rational theistic beliefs. (It is fine if people disagree with me, I expect that to happen, but I also expect people to have a reasonable argument why they disagree with the information I have presented.) Most of these angry e-mails are either attacking science as a whole or specifically the validity of evolutionary processes. When I read these usually vulgar e-mails, it quickly becomes abundantly clear that the writers know very little (if anything) about the topics which they attack. The claims they make are generally unfounded, irrelevant, and absurd. Because there are no real relevant arguments in these sorts of e-mails, I rarely see any reason to defend my position. So my usual response to them is to recommend some books to read and ask that they e-mail me back after reading them. (I have yet to get a response from someone who read any of the books I recommended) I try to keep my response calm, respectful, and some-what humorous, but the truth is that the amount and the consistency of these emails deeply troubles me.
     What has happened to these people who work so adamantly to deny all the evidence, the information, that knowledge that our species has worked so hard to acquire? If the movement towards pseudoscience, spirituality, superstition, and elaborate religion, as a source of truth, continues to grow, we will be in real danger of sliding backwards on the road of civilized, cultural, and scientific progression. We need widespread rational thought and belief in scientific method to keep our civilization together. For an example of what happens when rational thought is not widely accepted we can look back to the dark ages. And the dark ages were not favorable to the average person, to say the least. Rampant disease, poor nutrition, lawlessness, lack of education, starvation, and environmental destruction, are just a few of the effects a non-scientific, non-rational civilizations bring about. This is serous. We would have never gotten anywhere without reason, we absolutely cannot afford a mass decision to ignore it now.

     In his book "A Devil's Chaplain" Richard Dawkins describes religion, spirituality, and superstition as playing the roles of a sort of "mind virus," much like a computer virus. This is not just an attempt at humor but is also an attempt to look at this non-rational thought pheromone from an objective, logical, view point. Dawkins argues that we as a society are getting too accustomed to non-rational thinking and that we need to start seeing it for what it is.
             From: A Devil's Chaplain, by Richard Dawkins
1.  The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as "faith."
2.  Patients typically make a positive virtue of faith's being strong and unshakable, in spite of not being based upon evidence. Indeed, they may feel that the less evidence there is, the more virtuous the belief. This paradoxical idea that lack of evidence is a positive virtue where faith is concerned has something of the quality of a program that is self-sustaining, because it is self-referential. Once the position is believed, it automatically undermines opposition to itself. The 'lack of evidence is a virtue' idea would be an admirable sidekick, ganging up with faith itself in a clique of mutually supportive viral programs.
3.  A related symptom, which a faith-sufferer may also present, is the conviction that 'mystery' per se, is a good thing. It is not a virtue to solve mysteries. Rather we should enjoy them, even revel in their insolubility.
4.  The sufferer my find himself behaving intolerantly towards vectors of rival faiths, in extreme cases even killing them or advocating their deaths. He may be similarly violent in his disposition towards apostates (people who once held the faith but have renounced it); or towards heretics (people who espouse a different - often, perhaps significantly, only very slightly different - version of the faith). He may also feel hostile towards other modes of thought that are potentially inimical to his faith, such as the method of scientific reason which could function rather like a piece of antiviral software.
5.  The patient may notice that the particular convictions that he holds, while having nothing to do with evidence, do seem to owe a great deal to epidemiology. Why, he may wonder, do I hold this set of convictions rather than that set? Is it because I surveyed all the world's faiths and chose the one whose claims seemed most convincing? Almost certainly not. If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so passionately believe would have been a completely different and largely contradictory set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a different place. Epidemiology, not evidence.
6.  If the patient is one of the rare exceptions who follows a different religion from his parents, the explanation may still be epidemiological. To be sure, it is possible that he dispassionately surveyed the world's faiths and chose the most convincing one. But it is statically more probable that he has been exposed to a particularly potent infection agent - a John Wesley, a Jim Jones or a St Paul. Here we are talking about horizontal transmission, as in measles. Before, the epidemiology was that of vertical transmission as in Huntington's Chorea.
7.  The internal sensations of the patient may be startlingly reminiscent of those more ordinarily associated with sexual love. This is an extremely potent force in the brain, and it is not surprising that some viruses have evolved to exploit it. St Teresa of Avila's famously orgasmic vision is too notorious to need quoting again. More seriously, and on a less crudely sensual plane, the philosopher Anthony Kenny provides moving testimony to the pure delight that awaits those that manage to believe in the mystery of the transubstantiation. After describing his ordination as a Roman Catholic priest, empowered by laying on of hands to celebrate Mass, he vividly recalls.

Enemies of Reason Part 1 of 2

Click here to see part 2 of the video.