Mystery and our need for Certainty.
Mystery and certainty – in face of the former we seek the later. Our curiosity and imagination are stimulated by the unknown. They are the driving forces behind advances in science, maths and technology but despite huge progress many of the mysteries surrounding the human condition remain unexplained. Religion and philosophy step in to fill the voids in our understanding. We seem to need the comfort of words of wisdom, gods and myths in the same way that Linus needs his security blanket in the Peanuts cartoons.
Take these age-old questions:
- Why is there something rather than nothing?
- Was there really a Big Bang? What banged and what came before it?
- How did life begin and is there life elsewhere in the universe?
- Are human beings just highly complicated physics or is there something else, like an eternal soul?
- Do we have free will?
- Is there a God (or perhaps gods) and if so, what is God like?
- Is death the absolute end of us, or is there an existence beyond death?
- Where do the laws of science come from?
- Are moral laws just a human invention or are they built into the universe?
- Do miracles really happen?
- Etc etc
Why do we believe what we believe, and how do we know if we are right?
Here is a summary:
- Patternicity: Our brains are wired to find patterns in random data. This tendency helps us make sense of the world but can also lead to false beliefs.
- Agenticity: We often attribute agency to these patterns, believing that intentional agents (like gods, spirits, or conspirators) are behind them.
- Belief Formation: Beliefs are formed first, often based on emotional or intuitive responses, and then rationalized with logic and evidence.
- Confirmation Bias: Once a belief is established, we seek out information that confirms it and ignore or dismiss evidence that contradicts it.
- Cognitive Dissonance: When confronted with conflicting information, we experience discomfort and are motivated to reduce this dissonance, often by reinforcing our existing beliefs.
- Science as a Tool: Shermer advocates for the scientific method as a way to test and validate beliefs, helping us distinguish between true and false patterns.
These ideas illustrate how our brains can both help and hinder our understanding of reality.
Whatever our belief system, religious, humanist, philosophical, political, economic and so on there is a desire to be right, and our thinking will be strongly directed by the first five of Shermer’s core ideas. Once our beliefs are firmly established it becomes hard to question or overturn them. But the proper position for Homo rationalis is to treat beliefs with a degree of scepticism, being prepared to modify them in the light of new evidence and our own development, or even abandon them altogether.
Shermer advocates using science based reasoning as a tool.
- The Null hypothesis:
The assumption that something is not true until proven otherwise. - Burden of proof:
The burden of proof lies with those making a positive claim not with those who do not believe the claim. E.g. UFOs exist. Then show me an alien, or alien spacecraft. There is a God. Then give me the evidence. - Science of convergence:
Where lots of lines of evidence from different science disciplines converge on the same conclusion. The Theory of Evolution rest on data from many fields - geology, palaeontology, botany, zoology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, genetics, etc.
If someone wishes to challenge the evidence, they must overturn every piece from every field by giving alternative explanations for each one. - The Comparative Method:
This is a way of looking at history and asking why did this happen and not that? E.g why was America colonised by Europeans and not the other way round? Why is North Korea much poorer than South Korea? Explanations for these must rest on many lines of hard evidence not just simple ideas such as race superiority or ideology. - Positive Evidence:
The principle of positive evidence states you must have positive evidence in favour of your theory and not just negative evidence against rival theories. Creationists cannot assert the lack of a scientific theory for how life began means the theory of evolution is wrong and that God is the only explanation.
The Fundamentalist's & Certainy
Religions claim to have answers to the mystery of humanity's existence, but how does a non-religious person seeking spiritual truth decide which religion to embrace? For fundamentalist believers there is only one choice, their way or no way, and that choice determines a person's eternal destiny. If this really is at stake it must be the most important decision of one’s life, yet there is no rational way to make it. Suppose you make the wrong choice, what then?
Fundamentalism is all about certainty - the certainty of being right and the certainty everyone else is wrong. It not only pits one religion against another but inevitably leads to conflict as one certainty seeks to impose itself over another. In England, Catholics and Protestants vied for supremacy with bloody consequences. Islamic states demand conformity to the Koran and Sharia Law and crack down harshly on dissent. Under Modi in India, Hindu-based nationalism is growing and causing conflict with other faiths and secularists. In the USA, Christian Nationalists, who are mainly white evangelical fundamentalists, are aiming to impose their Christian values on the whole population because they are certain they are doing the will of God.
This short poem attacks the certainties of belief sytems:
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