An Evening With The Archbishop

Have you heard the one about the theoretical physicist and the archbishop?

Last night saw an evenings conversation between theoretical physicist and Faraday Prize recipient Jim Al-Khalili (a man who sparked my own fascination in physics with ATOM – an excellent 3 part documentary, the first part of the first episode can be found here) and Dr. Rowan Williams, academic and the current Archbishop of Canterbury. As head of the Anglican Church, you’d expect the Archbishop to perhaps provide an insightful contribution to any debate pitting religion against science. In this respect, you’d be disappointed. You would find an approachable and intelligent human being though; and most importantly, one with a sense of humour. The Archbishop is a shining example of the kind of Christianity, and religion more generally, that even the most militant atheist would find hard to pick a bone with over a great range of issues. The sinister nature of a figure like Ratzinger is, thankfully, absent.

The ‘nicety’ of the conversation (an interview in essence) was added to by Al-Khalili’s reluctance to push the Archbishop when he slipped into poetic language to try and answer difficult questions. It was apparent from Al-Khalili’s manner, he was uncomfortable with many answers given in response to questions of miracles, divine intervention etc. When asked to comment on the rise of creationism, the Archbishop rightly disregarded it as nonsense. But his account of the supernatural, which religion demands a certain degree of belief in, was equally nonsensical.

A God, postulated the Archbishop, who is constantly “anxiously fiddling” with His creation, suggests He did a botch job in the first place. A clearly logical and fairly uncontroversial statement. But Dr. Williams also argues for a God that’s “bubbling” under creation, occasionally bursting through and causing miraculous events. “That’s not the same thing as tinkering with the works?” asked Al-Khalili. Of course not, replied the Archbishop. Once this logical void had been brushed over, the Archbishop continued with his ‘bubbly-god model’. In an interview with Richard Dawkins (whose name came up often), the Archbishop offered a similar argument which Dawkins was less reluctant to voice his concerns about (to view this, watch this video from about 29 mins 50 secs until 32 mins 59 secs) .

As well as this questionable lyricism, the Archbishop uttered comments on morality which, under examination, reveal a deep suspicion of humanity. Al-Khalili put it to the archbishop that his “moral compass” was perfectly in tune without the need of God or gods. Williams questioned how that moral compass could be set in the first place. Why is it even there at all? Now, although Williams denied that he was advocating a 'God of the gaps' earlier on, he seemed to be doing just that. We don’t know why we have “moral compass” so God must have done it. No, in fact. There are many fascinating evolutionary explanations of altruism that don’t rely on commandments or grand tinkerers. The belief that humanity wouldn’t know right from wrong without a God is theistic fatalism. Quoting Etty Hillesum writing of the Nazi Occupation of Amsterdam, the Archbishop said “somebody’s got to take responsibility for God”. This statement is revealing in more ways than the Archbishop considered.

There was a great deal more content to this talk I haven’t offered my thoughts on, and it’s all worth a listen. I’ll post a link to the event as soon as I find one.

Science: What More Do You Want?

John Kubinski, inspired by Dawkins and Sagan, reminds us that science has more properties than being a tool in the debate against religion; science embodies that remarkable process of human inquiry which is beautiful in its own right.

The beauty of science is that it has the ability to shatter common sense. Time and time again, the awe inspiring nature of the truth is revealed to us by scientific inquiry. Unceasingly, science pulls the warm blanket of familiarity from under us, and exposes our minds to the once inconceivable wild bewildering truth. The truth itself is not the only thing that is beautiful, though it often can be rather elegant and stunning. But the fact that we comprehend the truth, the fact that we can successfully pursue the truth, the fact that the only place the truth is ever actually manifested is within our own minds - these are the beautifying aspects of the human relationship with science.

Science is a wholly human endeavour, we know not of any other life that attempts to discern the true nature of reality. And we, as science has shown, are a part of the very symphony we study. Matter is investigating matter. Through science we learn not only about how the world around us operates, but we learn about the fabric of our essence on every single level, from the atomic to the genetic to the cognitive. Could there be a more incredible aspect of the world than the fact that evolved primates such as us can not only ponder, but understand the many great puzzles of the universe? (If there is a more incredible fact, be assured that science will produce it.) And to whom do we owe our advances in understanding? Ourselves. We own the truths that we have unveiled; through nothing but the sheer power of human reason we have vastly improved our comprehension of the cosmos. Could those early Homo Sapiens roaming the Savannah ever have dreamed of calculus, quantum mechanics, relativity, game theory, philosophy, evolution? Our ancestors had no hope of ever comprehending the rationale behind their existence; that is a privilege that (if it ever came at all) could only belong to their progeny. And it didn’t have to be that way. We are unbelievably special in that regard. If you did the calculations, the percentage of matter in the universe that could ponder its origins (or anything at all!) would be infinitesimally small. It is just absolutely astonishing that rationality and sentience manifest in a mammalian brain made of ordinary matter and energy, just like anything else. The difference between you and the objects around you are configuration; the atoms that comprise you are arranged one way, theirs in another. A truth like that is so intensely fascinating and intellectually provocative, it is just amazing that we know of it. Such truths melt our intuition into a shapeless mess of incomprehensibility.

Science makes that sense of flawed understanding and unfamiliarity possible, it expands our cognitive landscape by pushing back ever further against our convenient yet mistaken perceptions of reality. The intellectual process by which one gains greater insight into the universe, and sees reality in a new light, is one of the finest experiences that higher order consciousness privileges us to. But of course, the truths were always true. Reality does not change, just our malformed perceptions do. Much of the wonder lies in this aspect of science; the perseverance of human reason over our innate deficiencies. Science is an exciting foray into the yet-to-be-known, with our collective capacity to reason and the hard-won truths uncovered by those before us as the only guiding lights.

Life has always evolved, entropy has always increased, gravity has always weakened proportionally to the square of the distance of the source, the atoms of solids have always been comprised mostly of empty space, and mass-energy equivalence has always held - but only in the past thousand years have these truths ever been grasped. We breathe life into the equations as much as they breathe life into us, for it is us, and as far as we know only us, who have been able to appreciate the elegant truths that make reality the way it is. Empowering, liberating, inspiring, confusing, humbling - these are just some of the things that science does to life which makes existence fuller, broader, richer, and dare I say, more meaningful.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and don't necessarily reflect the views of Young Freethought's editors.

Edgar Allan Poe Should've Read Carl Sagan

Throughout the ages, it seems as if poets, writers and those of any artistic temperament have seen science as the enemy of the creative process. Science has been, and still is, viewed as reductionist and therefore unable to posses beauty. A prime example of this is Edgar Allan Poe’s Sonnet: To Science (emphasis mine) -

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

For the sake of a brief note on taste and my less than authoritative poetic judgement, I don’t think this is Poe at his best anyway. The Raven, stereotypically, is my top Poe poem. But let’s focus on the phrase “dull realities” that the “vulture” of science lays bare. What does Poe mean here? It seems that he believes by removing the veils of ignorance from cosmic mystery, we dampen the universes’ aesthetic qualities. Knowing that a star is a burning ball of light elements means something is missing when we lie down and stare at those pinpricks of light on a cloudless night.

Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Knowing how something works not only takes nothing away from its immediate qualities of beauty, but it adds, not subtracts, mystery and awe. An interesting question arises regarding the nature of reality in this context though – is any reality beautiful by definition? In other words, if this world was different, would we still be saying its scientific mechanisms were beautiful simply because it happens to be that they are the case?

I would answer this question with a tentative yes. Any reality that can produce creatures capable of asking the question ‘is this beautiful?’ must be marvellous. But in our own particular universe, we do find unique beauty. A peek through the Hubble telescope far surpasses anything written by Poe. Of course, poetry can be equally or more beautiful than science, since it reveals the complex nature of what it means to be human. A poem, essentially, will always be about humanity because it is inescapably written with perspective. But Grand Indifference, a phrase I’ve used before, can only be achieved with science.

Bertrand Russell likened the beauty of mathematics to that of sculpture:

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

Although this may seem a little dated to modern ears, it expresses the kind of sentiments shared by many scientists and mathematicians. But, of course, (and I bet you saw it coming), feelings of this kind have, in my view, always been expressed most eloquently by the late Carl Sagan. In his epic Cosmos he writes:

The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

The greatest of mysteries indeed. To those who say science is nothing but “dull realities”, why not take a look at what’s out there? If you’re still unimpressed, then Poe certainly isn’t going to offer anything better...

The Last Man Who Knew Everything

Thomas Young (1773-1829) was a man from a by-gone age. The last da Vinci, the extent of his knowledge and scale of achievement will perhaps never be matched. The subtitle to Andrew Robinson’s book from which this post borrows it’s title is Thomas Young, The Anonymous Polymath Who Provided Newton Wrong, Explained How We See, Cured the Sick, and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Among Other Feats of Genius. Readers of this blog might be interested to know Simon Singh describes (as does his wikipedia article) that, at the tender age of 14, Young was fluent in Latin and Greek and knew his way around French, Italian, Hebrew, German, Chaldean, Syriac, Samaritan, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Amharic.

The conditions required for genius are diverse, there isn’t a formula, but there usually are subtle reasons. Young was distant from his Quaker parents and a keen autodidact – he believed that the need for a tutor was purely the result of a lack of self-discipline. He said of himself that he was born old and died young.

To those of us who recognize the importance of youth in shaping your own future and who desire to be informed human beings, the thought often occurs of men such as Young. To what extent should they be mimicked, copied and imitated? Upon reading of the lone, self-taught polymath, should we swiftly lock ourselves up in voluntary confinement? This is neither likely, nor wise. Genius probably can be developed and honed, but the decision should not be prescriptive. Besides, none of us really have any hope of achieving a fraction of what Young managed in his 55 years on planet Earth. Tentative talent too, rarely morphs into success later on. But, said Isaac Asimov of Young... "He was the best kind of infant prodigy, the kind that matures into an adult prodigy”.

I hope there are young readers of this blog who will achieve something like one of Young’s multitude of accolades – I also think it likely. Future scientists, authors, speakers and keen amateurs all can learn something from the early life of this admirable truth-seeker. An innocence; that all knowledge is attainable and worth attaining, should not be lost entirely with age. Young Freethinkers – let’s do our best to keep this freedom.

Creation - A Film About Darwin The Man

Fundamental disagreements about the nature of existence, and love, are not often compatible. Love is not transcendent, and it must cope with practical, moral and philosophical (in the broadest sense of the term) disagreements. In a letter to Darwin from his wife Emma, she presents her worries about her husband’s increasing doubt. Her fears were undoubtedly those of a sincere and loving wife; one that wanted to see her husband in the afterlife. Famously, Darwin wrote at the bottom of that letter “When I am dead, know that many times, I have kissed and cried over this.”

This extremely personal (now public) side of Darwin is the focus of a new film entitled Creation. Young Freethought was invited, along with several other bloggers, to an online chat with director Jon Amiel. During the course of the film, Amiel said of Darwin that he had “grown to love him”. The film is largely sympathetic to a man it portrays as a sometimes distant but always loving father.

Darwin saw the cause of the fear his wife possessed about his place in the ‘hereafter’ as “a damnable doctrine”. Darwin’s unique understanding of the acerbic viciousness of “nature red in tooth and claw” naturally led him to doubt the benevolence of any supposed creator. But he needed not have sought evil in nature, for Darwin’s Victorian life was scattered with corpses. After the death of what was affectionately his ‘favourite’ child Annie from Scarlet Fever aged 10, he wrote "We have lost the joy of the household, and the solace of our old age”.

In 2000, Darwin’s descendent Randal Keynes published Annie’s Box. A book based on a collection of memories Charles and Emma kept of their beloved daughter that Keynes stumbled across (what a find!). Scriptwriter for Creation John Collee would use this book as a source for the film. Annie is a somewhat ominous figure throughout Creation, returning as a manifestation of Darwin’s fears and sorrow. A blur between fact and fiction is a recurring feature fans of Darwin will notice. Though such liberties are mostly executed with care and tenderness, some fictitious signposts provided by the film seem quite unnecessary.

To anyone familiar with Socratic humility, reading The Origin of Species is like discovering Socrates’ great lost work. Darwin goes to extraordinary pains to explain the weaknesses of his theory. And though Amiel was quite right in stating it is “a difficult book to plough through”, in it, Darwin embodies the scientific ideal of dispassionate pursuit of knowledge, whilst retaining his humanity and gentle nature. It seems to me that Darwin was undoubtedly a complete English toff (though Amiel disagrees), but without caricaturing the man, he can safely be said to have been a loveable one. Creation is a worthwhile endeavour, executed well. Its subject matter is universal and touching, always compensating for one or two weak points. Amiel certainly seemed to possess a deep solidarity with Darwin’s ghost and others too, will see why after watching this film.

Creation is out on DVD in the UK and is released in American cinemas on Friday.

Don’t forget, the question of the success of 2009 as Darwin’s year is still a suggested topic for submissions!

So You Want To Be A Scientist?

Any budding scientists over the age of 16? A competition is being run by BBC Radio 4’s excellent science programme Material World. The competition called ‘So you want to be a scientist?’ is, I’m afraid, only open to UK residents, but I highly recommend the podcast to everyone. The material world website states:

It's not just working scientists who have light bulb moments. Anyone, anywhere can have a brainwave that's worth investigating. But most of us never get the chance. This is that chance.

We want to hear your ideas, however practical, whimsical, big or small. We're not hoping to crack nuclear fusion, reverse climate change or discover the Higgs particle.

[...]

Science isn't all about giant leaps and sudden paradigm shifts.

It's mostly the opposite - single steps which contribute to the body of knowledge in a particular field.

Your idea is likely to be on a small scale, perhaps observational in nature, and be based around simple experiments.

It could be focused on exploring some aspect of your local environment or perhaps even put someone else's scientific claims to the test.

Sounds like a good idea to me; a great opportunity for keen amateurs and something many of our readers might be interested in. For more information, visit the Material World website. Good luck to those who enter.

Refuting Common Sense & Pascal's Wager

This essay was written by Eric Stockhausen. Eric is an 18 year-old freethinker from Texas. In this essay he tries to refute both the author Steven E. Landsburg and his believing brother who offered him 'common sense' arguments for God's existence.

I have heard arguments for belief that range from ‘common sense’ to usefulness. The common sense argument generally aim at how it is ‘impossible’ for a god (and they mean God) not to exist. Anyone who studied the history of science knows that nature goes against common sense. Two examples that spring to mind include heliocentricity and quantum mechanics.

There may be many things human minds may not be able to conceive, which is why I dislike mathematics being used to heavily in theories for or against a god. Steven E. Landsburg, writer of The Big Questions, uses his understanding of mathematics to prove that both intelligent design and Richard Dawkins are both using flawed arguments. The problem is he evokes Euclidian geometry and ‘conceivable’ mathematics. The universe has ‘inconceivable geometry’. The evidence for general relativity on the macro-level has shown that we do not exist in the simplistic three dimensions of Euclid. The problem of looking at the universe in a traditional mathematics approach is that one does not realize that nature is very different to our expectations.

To be fair, Landsberg’s arguments do not rest on top of Euclidian geometry; but on principles I believe many atheists may agree with; like mathematics in totality is very complex. Anyone who has studied calculus and trigonometry know the way mathematics works is very complex in the sense of proofs and mathematical relationships. I would not agree with Richard Dawkins, if he had believed that it was philosophically impossible for there to be an intelligent designer. I have heard Richard Dawkins use qualifiers forming the distinction between philosophical knowledge and empirical knowledge. For instance, philosophically, I do not know if the universe was created five minutes ago. Richard Dawkins, on principle, does not believe it like most people.

Landsburg ends his argument against Richard Dawkins’ atheism with the problematic Pascal’s Wager. Basically, it argues that the possible benefits of belief justify belief. On the same logic, the belief that (A) believing in unicorns will give me (B) fifty million dollars is justified (he actually states fifty million dollars would justify a wager for a Nigerian scam in a footnote). One problem is that anyone can replace A and B with whatever they want, even believing with disbelieving. Another is that most people would not believe in unicorns just because I said there would be a benefit in it for them. What I think is most telling about this is that it makes the mistake of confusing genuine belief with a gamble. A person cannot believe with Pascal’s Wager but only assert that they believe. The person claims to believe not because they do but because it is beneficial. Belief is an intelligent decision based on the best of one’s knowledge. If a person really thinks he or she believes in a god because of Pascal’s Wager, they are deluding themselves. Even Landsburg admits that it is very unlikely that God exists.

In conclusion, common sense can be wrong and cannot prove god’s existence; Pascal’s Wager is only seems useful to the faithful in its narrow interpretation but it has a whole world of philosophical problems.

The views expressed in this post are those of the author and don't necessarily reflect the views of Young Freethought's editors.

Nanotechnology - The World Of Tomorrow

Something slightly different today: a minor curveball. The topic of Nanotechnology looms large over the future of our species. Due to its all-encompassing and scientific nature, it seemed just about appropriate enough to publish on a blog such as this. The piece is adapted from multiple speeches written by myself and fellow Young Freethought editor Paul McClean. We both hope you read it with fascination and care. It leaves plenty of room for a good follow-up discussion. In particular, an issue I've purposefully ommited is the impact on religious belief of such technology. Anyway, please read and discuss.

Imagine a world, where there was no such thing as illness, a world where you could create almost anything that took your fancy at the touch of a button, a world where space travel was for everyone, where buildings never collapsed and bridges never fell. Welcome to the world of nanotechnology.

Of course, at a first glance, most of this seems to be precious little but science fiction – a collection of mankind’s greatest wishes, the folly of fantasists and naive utopians gathered and pasted together in a manifesto for the delusional. Yet this is not science fiction; sooner than you might think, this will be science fact. Nanotechnology, as I’m sure you’re aware, is the science of the small; the very small. An average human hair, for example, is 90,000 nanometres across. Of course, objects this small behave very differently to how we would expect them to, based on our everyday, Newtonian experiences. A very simple example, in recipie-like fashion, is as follows: take silicon; a dull, grey and dreary looking material. Take a nano-sized piece of the element using a ‘nano-ice-cream scooper’, and you will find it glows blue. Take a slightly larger size, and it glows red; simply due to the change in size. This is just one visual example of quantum mechanical 'weirdness'; which nanotechnology exploits, in turn exposing ‘a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality "ought to be"’ As Richard Feynman put it. However nanotechnology allows us to venture into far more intriguing possibilities than simply that of changing the colour of metals.

Try hard, very hard if you will, to conceive of a material hundreds of times stronger than steel, yet one thousand times thinner than each hair on your head. For one, I just can’t quite do it. But it might startle you to know as it first did me, we have already produced such a material: the carbon nanotube – simply a nano-sized cylinder of carbon molecules, which just so happens to be the strongest material known to humankind. Constructing bridges and tower blocks out of nanotubes would make them just too strong to fall in most earthquakes and floods. In fact, you could replace all the steel in New York’s Brooklyn Bridge with carbon nanotube cylinders merely a few nanometres across.

Yet the greatest technological prospect is to be found in space exploration. The problem with today’s space travel is cost. A rocket uses roughly 90% of its highly expensive fuel in the first moments after takeoff due to gravity on Earth. But what if we could produce a lift, of sorts, to mechanically hoist the rocket up the first three thousnad  or so metres and then on into space? This easily laughable and simply incredulous idea was first proposed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. The downfall then, as until recently, was that as soon as any 'space elevator' is erected, the strength of the Earth’s centripetal force immediately snaps it: confirming the common wisdom that the whole idea was a waste of human cortex. But, in case you didn’t see it coming, carbon nanotubes are strong enough to withstand this centripetal force. The idea was first taken seriously by NASA in the nineties and now creators of the first viable working model for a space elevator will receive a handsome cash sum in a prize sponsered by the agency that put man on the moon.

That first landing was just over forty years ago now. Yet, in reality, the expected ‘giant leap’ in space exploration envisaged since then has been nonexistent. Nanotechnology has the power to reenergise space travel, bringing down costs by a factor of one hundred. In theory it would be possible to send every human on this planet up into space, to look at their home from the greatest distance commonly feaseable. Some have talked of ‘conscience-raising’. I cannot imagine a better method than actually raising ourselves above our home and gazing down on it in all its all too human glory. We might go some way to realising the sentiments of the Pale Blue Dot. Michio Kaku, great scientist and futurist, even suggests a period of peace and stability following on from such an achievement.

So, if nanotechnology can change the way society views itself, there is surely very little it cannot do. If this space elevator is made of a material we humans have made, what if we could use nanotechnology to create materials itself? Nanotechnology does in fact have the power to manipulate individual atoms. If, therefore, atoms are the building blocks of everything we see in our world, then there is a possibility of using nanotechnology to create anything molecularly stable – be it a chair or a potato. Fast forward one hndred years, and it is possible that in every home around the world, there may be a box the size of a microwave, which can create almost anything with the twisting of knobs and the touch of a button. Starvation may become a horror of the past. One replicator per desperately unfortunate community and the extinction of hunger may be near

Capitalist economic systems and their social superstructures cannot remain unaffected by this result of engineering endeavour. If my replicator could fashion anything, industry as we know it would be ruined -with nothing to replace the millions without a job. The principle of money would become flawed as people simply feed a block of atoms into their ‘personal fabricator’ and receive a lump of coal, a nourishing meal or a handful of diamonds. Society would become incredibly unstable, and, working on the basic human attribute of greed, wars would surely break out. It just so happens that our own brilliance may well prove to be the downfall of our society.

The final possibility of nanotechnology I wish to look at is that of medicine. The current greatest dilemma in medicine is the treatment of illnesses and diseases which infect the cell internally. Current antiviral treatments do little else other than prevent the spread of the disease from one cell to another – they do not kill the infection. Nanotechnology once again comes to the rescue, as it is possible for nanobots, that is, nano robots, to enter your body, seek out the cancerous or infected cell, and destroy it. Effectively, there will be no such thing as illness ever again. This is not a hope for the future; this is happening now, albeit in a different form. In The Times on the 5th November, an article described how, next year, human trials of a ‘nano-weapon’ against prostate cancer begin. The researchers behind the treatment believe it will eliminate the need for immunosuppressant drugs and chemotherapy. They claim the ‘drug’ has virtually no side effects and will be on the global market within five years. The most incredible fact? The treatment, though currently applied to prostate cancer, can be altered to eliminate any form of cancer that existent. Now consider that on in three  people will contract cancer in their lives. I wonder for how long that infamous statistic will hold true. Whilst nanobots may still be a long way off, nanotechnology and medicine are already merging successfully.

Catastrophic flipsides are inevitable with such a powerful tool. Suppose this or that nanobot with 'nano-lasers' or some other barely believable whimsy, is programmed to kill a virus. Bu then it proceeds to malfunction and self replicates (the property of self-replication, it is envisaged, will occur through a kind of chemi-robotic contamination on contact). Suddenly, a group of nanobots programmed to seek out and kill harmful cells would instead seek out the healthy ones. Death for the host is certain. But he greatest worry is surely that of military use. If nanobots can be programmed to cure people, there is an equally likely chance they could be used to kill people outright. If the military of any nation on Earth were to programme nanobots for use in a war, the result would be a monster greater than the atom-bomb. A future Oppenheimer might well find themselves repeating the same phrase as he did from the Bhagavad-Gita – ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’. A current major investor in nanotechnology? The U.S Military. 30% of the DoD budget goes straight to it.

Combining these two problems together, however, creates a situation potentially so catastrophic, that it provoked Prince Charles to demand that research into nanotechnology should be heavily regulated. If nanobots used in the military malfunction and self replicate, then instead of being programmed with instructions, ‘kill the French’, they, hypothetically could become programmed with, ‘kill everything’. The prophesized result is an eschatological scenario known as Grey Goo. That is, these robots will take over the world and reduce the Earth to nothing but a mass of goo. Once again, humankind would be undone by its very own brilliance.

Of course, all of this, if we’re honest, seems completely fictitious. Yet rewind a few centuries, and the idea of an airplane, a desk light, or a computer would have seemed utterly ridiculous too. And in fact, nanotechnology, despite being the unspoken buzz word of the decade, is not a completely new phenomenon. Stain glass windows have been around since the medieval period, and these were created by heating and cooling nano-sized particles so as to achieve their appreciable (even by atheists) myriad colours.

As we have seen, there are great problems which we must face if we wish to live in a world of nanotechnology. And yet, despite all this, it is my own view that Nanotechnology must become a part of our future if we wish to fulfil our own relentless inquiring nature of intrepid discovery. A rather crude yet apt analogy I like to use is that of the first caveman (or woman – for rhetoric's sake, I’ll stick with ‘man’). He is sitting in his cave, as the cold winter draws in, huddled against the fur of some woolly mammoth. And then he discovers fire. The fire brings him warmth and light and a place to cook food. Not that he knows it, but it also kills nearby bacteria and pathogens that could cause him and his family grave illness. He doesn’t know how lucky he is. But, simultaneously the fire can burn him and in a less than attentive moment of Palaeolithic daydreaming, he could well carelessly severerly scorch his cavernous home. Yet this new found ‘technology’ gives him the building blocks for further life, and he goes on to develop, and fulfil his hominid capabilities. Nanotechnology is like the fire: unchartered territory for us. Yet I feel we must not shy away from this scientific breakthrough. Whilst trying as best we can to be aware of the consequences we should utilise the benefits – benefits for all humanity, indiscriminate of any fictitious racial or religious boundary. In doing so, we will expand our horizons and see the Earth in a completely new manner. We must step out of our cave, and boldly enter the world of the future; the world of nanotechnology.

Crossroads

This very thought-provking article was written by Lew Zi Qi. Lew is a 15 year old school student from Singapore.

“These new tools, provided by science and technology, are more than just tools – they’re instruments of social revolution, violent or peaceful. As the tools change, so too does the ability of society to organize itself.” - James Burke

I believe that Science is characterized primarily by three main aspects: its ability to empower us and give the gift of Life, its ability to destroy us on catastrophic levels never before matched in history and lastly, its ability to provide glimpses into deep and profound knowledge that can alter our views of ourselves and the world we live in.

If we trace our ancestry back far enough, we find that all of us ultimately descend from a small group of hunter-gatherers in the eastern part of Africa. We were plagued by diseases, preyed upon by predators, subjected to the whims of Nature. Surviving was a daily struggle. Yet in little less than a hundred thousand years – a mere bubble on the frothing river of evolution – we have grown to populate all the continents of the earth. We have effective cures for most diseases - what would be fatal a mere hundred years ago can be solved with a simple vaccination. Searching for food is as simple as a trip to the nearest supermarket – and no worries about becoming food ourselves as we do so. That we are able to propagate so successfully, that our daily lives are free from the primeval struggles of life and death is in no small part due to the benefits that Science provides. Indeed, most of us owe our very existence to advancement in Science: without technological advancement in agriculture, the Earth would have only been able to support paltry tens of thousands of humans. Given that there are now six billion of us, it would seem safe to venture that most of us would not be here today if not for Science.

But Science comes with a deadly caveat. For despite its ability to provide us with a bountiful supply of food, with great industrial plants, with high-seed transportation, Science carries with it the ability to destroy us all. And we are finding ever more efficient ways to destroy each other. Our biological weapons have evolved from the make-shift method of slinging diseased corpses over city walls to finely-honed, secretly-delivered laboratory germs able to cause mass pandemics. At a press of a button, the world’s leaders can destroy all life on the planet. From the cannons of Gettysburg to the nuclear bombs of the Cold War, the destructive abilities of our best weapons have grown over a billion times in a hundred years.

Our great industrial plants emit vast amounts of harmful gases daily, doing irreparable damage to our only home. Yet, we seem to lack the collective willpower to stop the slow rot. Is it only a matter of time before we are wiped out by our own achievements, going out either in the big bang of a nuclear holocaust or the small whimper of a slow global warming?

Will Science be our undoing, or will it be our liberator?

I believe that there are two possible paths humanity can take. We can continue to remain prisoners of our own inventions, or we do what we do best: we adapt and flourish.
The first path is a bleak one. On that path, a promising primate species rise on an insignificant planet in a solar system but eventually destroys itself. Such a possibility is not far fetched – throughout our brief history, we have shown tendency to think only of short term benefits. In modern times, we need to look no further than America’s refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol (without American support, its effectiveness is greatly reduced). Self-preservation is hardwired into our evolutionary instincts. We have to conquer our selfish desires for the benefit of the species. Male jumping spiders do it all the time when they sacrifice themselves as food for their female counterparts during mating. I do not believe that we cannot do the same.

If we are to take the path of survival, there has to be a shift of mindset, a social revolution of sorts. Somehow, we have to find the collective willpower to utilize Science for the greater good. If we manage to do so, it will be an unprecedented feat in our history – the entire human race working together for a single cause. Perhaps this sounds like imaginary fluff – the wishful thinking of a person living in a safe and prosperous country. As one China official put it, “You cannot talk to a person about saving the environment if he can’t even find food to put in his mouth.” Given more pressing issues around the globe, a coordinated attempt to turn Science into a tool for survival will not be an easy feat. But we have no choice: the rules of this planet are clear enough – we adapt or die. Rapid advancements in Science mean that now more than ever, our actions will have great ramifications for this planet. This has come to a point where we are at the crossroads of destiny, and what we do in the next few decades can affect the survival of our species.

I believe that the issue here is more than that of Science being a tool for survival or destruction. It would be myopic for this essay to focus solely on the physical benefits (or harms) of Science. This brings me to the third and last aspect of Science: its ability to alter our understanding of who we are.

There is a famous picture of Earth from space. Called Pale Blue Dot, it was captured by Voyager 1 from the edge of our solar system. In the centre of this picture is our home – a tiny blue speck 0.12 pixels across set against the vastness of space. From such a distance, it appears pathetically small, an indistinguishable mote of blue dust in the vast cosmic ocean highlighted by the falling of sunlight upon the lenses of Voyager 1. How many wars have been fought over a tiny fraction of this precious piece of real estate? It is the culmination of our cultures, our ideologies and religions, our joys and sorrows – it is the sum total of us. Pale Blue Dot challenges our perceptions of who we are. It puts to shame our tendency for anthropocentric notions. It tells us that however advanced our Science may be, we are only minor players on a small stage within the cosmic arena. And as astronomer Carl Sagan put it, “Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.”

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and don't necessarily reflect the views of Young Freethought or its editors.

Religion, Atheism & Science

This essay was written by Alex Charlton. At 18 years old, Alex is a psychology student at Plymouth University here in the UK.

If you follow this blog, chances are you also follow sites such as pharyngula, or richarddawkins.net, rationally speaking, or why evolution is true, and if not then you should. They are all maintained by top scientists defending atheism and reason, along with evolution in particular but also science in general. I say that you should follow at least some of them because these bastions of rationality are not just popular but accessible and informative, giving an insight into the difficulties between science and religion. But why are they so popular?

It’s indisputable that a larger proportion of working scientists are atheists compared to the general population¹. Historically, many eminent scientists have been theists and Christians, but until recently atheism was socially unacceptable, with non-Christians facing persecution and discrimination, so this isn’t surprising. There are also some eminent scientists today who are Christians, such as Francis Collins, but they are in a minority.

There are two potential explanations as to why this is: it could be that science education causes people to lose their faith, or that atheists are more likely to pursue a career in the sciences. Neither explanation bodes well for theists. If the former, this has important implications for education. Recently, the UK government agreed to put evolution on the primary school curriculum. If science dispels religion, then perhaps a proper science education is all that is needed to bring religious belief down to levels found in regions like Scandinavia or countries such as Japan². However, I don’t find this outcome very plausible, simply because a number of factors, other than education, negatively affect the religiosity of a country; factors like societal health.

If the latter, then this raises the question of why atheists are more concerned with science than theists? One answer is that many theists are apt to reject the findings of science when they appear to conflict with their religious beliefs. Of course, theists often contend that these conflicts can be reconciled, but I would argue that there is a deeper conflict between science and religion, of which these factual disputes are symptomatic.

Religion and science aren’t incompatible in the sense that science refutes religion, but I believe that science and religion have conflicting approaches to knowledge. On the one hand, science is a method by which hypotheses and explanations of the world are tested and retested against empirical observation and other scientific theories. Since most theories turn out to be wrong, science must be open to refutation and scepticism, so that incorrect views can be weeded out. By this slow and uncertain process of inquiry and refinement, science inches ever closer to knowledge. Religion, on the other hand, uses the methods of revelation and tenacity to come to knowledge. The founders of a religion claim to have special knowledge imparted to them by supernatural beings, which is then codified into dogma, and reinforced over generations.

Whilst the methods of science have led to amazing technological advances and a deeper understanding of the world we live in, religion has led to a great amount of confusion, especially since the dogmas of the different religions contradict one another. This shows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that revelation and tradition are unreliable guides to truth. It also explains why religions have such a bad track record with making testable empirical claims; why, for example, the Roman Catholic Church forced Galileo to recant his belief that the Earth orbited the Sun. But if we can't rely on religion to get that right, why should we base ethical and political systems on it? Whilst few religious beliefs can be scientifically disproven, to hold them is nonetheless unscientific, since no religion would stand up to the scrutiny that is applied to even the most widely accepted scientific theories. Put simply, using the methods of science on the claims of religion would be like using a machete to spread butter.

PZ Myers puts this point well in his blog post, “What should a scientist think about religion?”

What should a scientist expect from an idea? That it be a reasonable advance in knowledge; that it be built on a foundation of evidence; that it be testable; that it should lead to new and useful questions and ideas. If we look at religion from that perspective, it doesn't help. At best, the hypothesis of the supernatural and/or a supreme being is vague, unfounded, and inapplicable in any practical fashion—deistic views, for instance, are so abstract and so carefully divorced from risk of challenge that they represent an empty hypothesis, and the most flattering thing you can say about them is that they're harmless. At worst, religion is confused, internally contradictory, and in conflict with evidence from the physical (and near as we can tell, only) world.

Most theists care whether or not religion can be reconciled with science, though most scientists don’t care if science can’t be reconciled with religion. Why? Because science doesn’t need to draw confirmation from religion, it can stand on its own merits. Just imagine a world without science, compared to a world without religion.
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¹ See Michael Martin, "The Cambridge Companion to Atheism", Cambridge University Press (2008), p 307-313
² Ibid., p 56

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and don't necessarily reflect the views of Young Freethought or its editors.

Where is God at the LHC?... Nowhere

In today's The Times, in Eureka magazine, there is a small article by John Polkinghorne entitled 'Where is God at the LHC?' (it can be found online here). Polkinghorne was Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge between 1968-1979 and the 2002 recipient of that infamous award - the Templeton Prize. In this shameful piece of reasoning in the form of an article, Polkinghorne commits such trecherous acts of logic, it is hard to imagine him being a mathematician at all.

The LHC, which goes online later this month after a year’s delay, will, it is hoped, reveal the elusive Higgs boson and help resolve some deep mysteries about the Universe. Polkinghorne’s article is really a poor philosophical argument, likely presented to appease readers of The Times. What follows is a criticism of the standpoint he advocates.

He begins by stating the Universe 'is certainly not full of ideas stamped "Made by God", for the Creator is more subtle than that'. Presumably, Polkinghorne would not be making the same assertion if we did find compelling evidence for God's existence in the Universe. Thus begins his support of the 'science tells you how, religion tells you why' so called 'argument'.

After some explanation of the Physics, Polkinghorne plainly defines his position - 'To believe in a Creator is not to answer the question of who lit the initial touch paper, but to address the much deeper question of why there is something rather than nothing'. This statement makes a fatal assumption; it presumes that value statements regarding the universe are valid questions. They may be grammatically sound, but do they really mean anything beyond their own mere existence? Why are trees vengeful? Why do chairs smell of purple? Why does Bigfoot eat humility? These questions are pure nonsense. They mean nothing and to attempt to find an affirmative answer to them is futile.

Polkinghorne asks that we should 'look to see if there might be signs of a divine Mind behind the order of the Universe'. He poses the question 'why is science possible at all?' and why can we humans understand the universe in the first place? The latter question is perhaps unqualified at this time. Currently, we know embarrassingly little about the Universe. Dark matter and energy, which makes up well over 90% of all the 'stuff' there is, has remained elusive. That does not rule out the possibility that we will someday understand the Universe, and Polkinghorne is right to ask this kind of question.

But does the fact that we can, or will at some point, understand the Universe, mean that God is behind it? It most certainly does not, even though Polkinghorne somehow thinks it does; he asks 'Is it all just our luck, or is it a sign that a divine Mind does indeed lie behind cosmic order?' Polkinghorne is simply advocating the god of the gaps. Incredibly, he asserts that all our current physical theories - M-Theory, Multi-verses, the Big Crunch, - are just the same as 'luck'. It is a shame that such a highly qualified physicist holds this view. We are so ignorant, despite our best efforts, about just how it all got here, that we have to honestly and openly suspend judgement and work hard on the problem; not wildly assert that the god ‘I’ happen to believe in did it. It begs the question 'who did god then?' and makes wild leaps of faith regarding 'his' nature.

At best, Polkinghorne's argument might suggest an incredibly intelligent (but not omniscient) force of some very strange kind is behind the universe, but this is just as, or much less likely than any current theory around. But as for a prayer-answering, omnibenevolent and human-like god (the Protestant God in Polkinghorne's case), he is way off the mark.