Einstein on Religion and Science

Any Scientific minded person who considers himself as a religious or an atheist, should read thses wonderful articles of Albert Einstein. These are, in a sense, an eye-opener to me, that how beautifully one could express how religion and science can be reconciled. There are four master-pieces, all of them are worth reading at a stretch. I know there will be many religious people claiming that Einstein was a ‘deeply religious’, but what I found here, that he defined the religion in totally a different way to build himself as ‘deeply religious’. Let’s go through a few excellent quotes.

On how the religion has come :

“With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions - fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. Thus one tries to secure the favor of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation … This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste which sets itself up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear …”

Problems in the above definition of religion and his own view :

“Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. … I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. … The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this. “

On morality :

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.”

In praise of religion (article 1 and 2):

“The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. If one were to take that goal out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.”

Defining a religious person and religion (Article 3) :

“a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonalvalue. … Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts.”

In support of Science :

“For example, a conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs.”

This is exactly where he sounds like an absolute Atheist :

“Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is, if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him? … The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God. “

How religions with ‘personal God’ will play around Science :

“To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. “

A request to religious leaders to modify their approach to religion :

“In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests.”

Again restricting religion in the domain of idealism and attitude :

“As regards religion, on the other hand, one is generally agreed that it deals with goals and evaluations and, in general, with the emotional foundation of human thinking and acting, as far as these are not predetermined by the inalterable hereditary disposition of the human species. Religion is concerned with man’s attitude toward nature at large, with the establishing of ideals for the individual and communal life, and with mutual human relationship.”

On in-community brotherly love :

“For while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. “

Overall, I feel the articles are really great. The gist is - Science and Religion are friends is they stay in their own ground. Science should not try to guide what is worthy and what is worthless, what we should do and what we should not. At the same time, Religion should not try to describe how the nature works, neither should it insist anything to be ‘created’ by God as a person. He condemned the idea of ‘religion of fear’, that is, the idea to tell people to be good only because some Omnipotent God will punish them otherwise after death. Overall, these come under one of the best read articles of my life time - they sound very strong.

Links once more.

My Third Article on Mukto-Mona

My third bengali article also got published at Mukto-Mona yesterday. The topic was the Dawkins' letter to his daughter, that I have discussed previously. There are a few good Bengali Articles present in the same site. I would recommend one to read Avijit Roy's "Amader Kajer Swikriti" (Recognition of our work), that covers a brief history of atheism along with a history of struggles those Mukto-mona had gone through. The context of the article is the receipt of Jahanara Imam Memorial award, that is given for encouraging free thinking in society.

Coming back to the article, I tried to change the context of the letter so that it becomes acceptable to the public in general, especially to the people of South Asia. I have mentioned the examples (castes and dogmas) to suit South Asian readers.

My next assignment is foing to be a translation of one of my all time favourites - The God Delusion. The first chapter of the same book has already been translated and kept in the mukto-mona site. I am trusted with the translation of at least one chapter from the same. I am planning to take the same route - replace the original examples with the South Asian ones. Given that a Bengali reader is going to be most probably from this region, it's my responsibility to make the translation smooth to him. An overdose of references to the Catholic Church and their activities might not get a warm welcome from people here.

Once I am done, I will definitely come up with the same in my blog.

A Letter to a Daughter

In his interview, Dawkins said about child-indoctrination and why he considers it as a child-abuse. He also mentioned that a true education of children should include teaching of all kinds of religion, including atheism. Also, they should be encouraged to have a critical view on religion, if they wish to. However, he did not actually mention how that kind of education will look like. In his letter to his 10 year old daughter Juliet, I can see a glimpse of that scientific education.

Dawkins classified belief into 'good' and 'bad' categories. He tries to answer the critical question on why anybody should 'believe' in science. He explains what is evidence and how carefully science gather it. He then cited three other popular reasons for belief - "tradition," "authority," and "revelation." He presented examples for all these and explained how they might drift one away from truth. He didn't only talk about religion, but also about language and other traditions. In the end he separates out the knowledge of "revelation", "tradition" and "authority" from the knowledge out of evidences and guided her to choose knowledge-resources carefully.

I cannot but quote a few lines from his letter. A wonderful similarity between detectives and the scientists are the way the find out evidences. Dawkins says :

"Often, evidence isn't just an observation on its own, but observation always lies at the back of it. If there's been a murder, often nobody (except the murderer and the victim!) actually observed it. But detectives can gather together lots or other observations which may all point toward a particular suspect. If a person's fingerprints match those found on a dagger, this is evidence that he touched it. It doesn't prove that he did the murder, but it can help when it's joined up with lots of other evidence. Sometimes a detective can think about a whole lot of observations and suddenly realise that they fall into place and make sense if so-and-so did the murder."

He even classified 'love' based on evidence and without evidence. He said :

"There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves them, when really the film star hasn't even met them. People like that are ill in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you just can't trust them."

And of course on child-indoctrination :

"It's a pity, but it can't help being the case, that because children have to be suckers for traditional information, they are likely to believe anything the grown-ups tell them, whether true or false, right or wrong. ... Millions of other people believe quite different things, because they were told different things when they were children. Muslim children are told different things from Christian children, and both grow up utterly convinced that they are right and the others are wrong."

Of course his most valuable guidance to her daughter comes with :

"And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: "What kind of evidence is there for that?" And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say."

I am trying to translate it in Bengali. In case I am done, I will update this blog to have that link too. Till then read the finest English letter from Richard Dawkins - the smartest intellectual.

The Bengali Resources at Mukto-Mona

While I write on Richard Dawkins and Evolution in my blog, a group named mukto-mona have taken up their pens to write up in Bengali. It's great to see people scribing for Atheism and Dawkins in Bengali. Let me refer you all to some of the best resources available in Bengali.

1) The first chapter of The God Delusion.
2) A book on Evolution by Bonnya Ahmed - continued for multiple chapters. It is also available as a book at Bangladesh Ekushe Boimela.
3) A Richard Dawkins article on Religion and Evolution.
4) The Journey of Science to find Life - An excellent write up on modern science (especially focussing on the roots of Universe and what is Life) starting from Big Bang to Extraterrestrial life, divided into multiple parts.

The life of Charles Darwin is described in Bengali.

And of course, anybody want to publish their views in Bengali, can send it to them or join a yahoo group called mukto-mona. There are numerous good articles both in English and Bengali published at the site. I bet that anybody will enjoy most of them. To a Bengali living in West Bengal, I would recommend these article since they should know how close they are to someone living accross the border - in Bangladesh.

Atheism, Bangladesh, Bengali, Darwin, Dawkins, Evolution

Videos on Evolution

The Discovery channel on Evolution of life on Earth is amazing and entertaining. Here's the list of of the links -
part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12. The program is named as "Walking With Monsters". In fact the entire set uploaded by TruthTheory should be watched.

An knowledgable description of the process is found in Dawkins' video -
The evolution of the eye. The full video is available in part 1 and part 2, titled The Blind watchmaker. Another video, comparatively less attractive, was the Nice guys finish first.

The wonderful story of Human evolution is at 5 parts -
part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5. The series is named as "Human Life - Evolution To Self-Evolution". It also lists the proofs gathered with respect to human evolution.

Evolution, Science, Dawkins, Darwin.

Memetics and Cultural Evolution: The Roots of the Religion

What is Memetics?
The term "meme" coined and popularized by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene, refers to a "unit of cultural information" (cognitive or behavioral pattern) which can propagate from one mind to another in a manner analogous to genes (i.e., the units of genetic information). Some contemporary examples of meme can be popular proverbs (“Hard work pays”), gossips, health consciousness (“wash hands before eating”), nursery rhymes (even epics and religious books), conspiracy theories, terms and phrases (“Whassup”) and a lot more.

Memeplexe or Meme-complex is a group of Memes; those are interdependent and survive as a ‘colony’ of memes – such as religion, culture or political doctrines.

Memetics, coined as a similar sounding word of Genetics, is an approach to evolutionary models of information transfer based on the concept of the meme. The popular Memetics hypotheses that memes do not replicate only, but refined, recombined or modified in new memes.

Propagation of Memes
The better a meme can be copied; more it will become common part of the culture. This depends on copying fidelity (accuracy of copy), fecundity (rate of copying) and longevity of the meme. The successful propagation of memes depends on various things – experience of the individual, speculation of the individual, social censorship, distinction of source of the meme. Two communities, those who mix rarely, can be thought of as memetically isolated communities, e.g. Americans and Arabs.

Children as the media of meme propagation
As per behavioral evolution, children who are more obedient to their parents get natural selective advantage over others. This unique nature of children enables human civilization to build upon past experiences. Children, who accept the words of adults as rule of thumb, as “Don’t go to cliff of the roof”, “Don’t swim into the deep water” or “Don’t go to the forest alone”, are more likely to survive and reproduce later. When grown up, they propagate their memes, accumulated in the childhood to the next generation, and may be in a modified format. The memes that are more appealing tends to propagate more accurately than the others.

Religion as a Memeplex
Religion and the existence of God as a set of memes have got the unique appeal to human civilization. It provides plausible answers to deep and troubling questions of the nature, suggests the ‘injustice’ will be rectified in the next and one will be placed in relatively good or bad places after death depending on the performance in this life. Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion (pg 199) has provided a list of religious memes those had high survival values in human civilization.

The reasons for the high survival of religious memes include social experience, speculations and distinct source. The religious people always express their experience as positive to add the survival value to the meme, e.g. faith is a virtue and prayer is the way to seek help from God. People speculate about mysteries of nature, miracles, life and death that ensure high survival for the religious explanations. Last but not the least, the revered and distinct source (religious leader/book) adds additional survival value to it. Presence of ‘exclusivist’ memes in the organized religion is striking. For example, punishment or ostracism for heretics, apostates and blasphemers are such ‘exclusivist’ memes. These memes protects the memeplex to get infected from 'outsider memes'. One of the distinct features of Indian culture is the lack of 'exclusivist' meme, that enables India to be built on top of a unique plural society.

A reflection on the above theories can provide you clues why religious sects exist. Sects came into being due to different variation of ‘interpretation’, resulted out of different memetic evolutionary path followed by different sects. Same way, the recombination of different memes resulted in same religion to be performed in different ways in different regions.

The Roots of Religion
As we know how religion and the features propagate, we can proceed how it came into being initially. The best explanation, although controversial, I have got is from Daniel Dennett, in his book The Intentional Stance. He classified the stance of human beings with respect to an object in three ways – physical stance, design stance and intentional stance. In a Physical stance, man tries to explain the object and its’ behavior in terms of natural laws. The second one is design stance, to predict the behavior of the object as it is designed to perform that, e.g., the bird flies by flapping the wings or an alarm clock is designed to ring at a particular time. This is in effect a shortcut over the earlier one and provides advantages if established upon experience. The last one is the intentional stance, that enables personification of the object and predict the behavior as per the intention of the object. The intentional stance, very frequently gave humans advantage over other animals e.g., to identify predators (like Tiger) and cattle (Dogs). The noticable point is that the abstraction of objects is increasing in each stance. The human civilization is basically a race from the third one to the first - initially they had to take the more abstract ones due to lack of knowledge to go to physical stance. Dennett argues that it is best to understand human beliefs and desires at the level of the intentional stance, without making any specific commitments to any deeper reality to the artifacts of each and every folk psychology. The gods and the God, along with the Angels and Daemons are nothing but these personifications of these objects - survived in human societies as memes.

The Future
The clash of reason and religion is basically the clash of memes. The memes of reason are supported by evidences, those a human being can directly experience. The memes of religion are appealing and has high propagation value. The battle is likely to continue in future.

Conclusion
A memetic view of religion is undoubtedly better than any view proposed by the popular religions as the ‘first cause’ or the beginning of themselves. The explanation gives us idea on how the simple ‘personification’ of unknown objects turned into what we see as organized religion, by means of propagation of memes. The hypothesis, may have a lot of technical drawbacks, but overall is very effective in this case.

References
A bibiliography on meme.
The multi-dimensional evolution.
Susan Blackmore and her "The Meme Machine".
The Selfish Meme - a concept.
Intentional Stance made easy.


Atheism, Evolution, Meme, Dawkins, Religion.

The Richard Dawkins FAQ

Richard Dawkins, the author of NY Times bestseller The God Delusion, has been interviewed many a times recently. The questions asked were mainly related to his book, the views on atheism, morality and present world. He answered all the question in a flawless and confident way. Each and every answer of him speaks about his passion and eagerness to explain his stance on every point. It's an amazing experience to watch him speak. I have tried to pick up a few commonly asked questions and his answers on different topics.

Why are you against faith?

Because, I am a kind of person who cares about the Truth. The religion and any sort of dogma are the biggest obstacle against the Truth. Not only that, I am worried about the position religion enjoys in our society. You can attack other's political view, criticise a football coach but cannot attack one's religious faith. It's a kind of immunity from criticism that religion enjoys, despite being proven to be mostly illogical.

There are billions of people across the world following their faiths and living their life. How do you describe them?

Of course, there are billions of people living their religious life and most of them are harmless people. But, they are carrying a virus of faith with them, that they transmit from generations to another, and could create a 'epidemic' of faith any time. As I said, I am a kind of person who cares about the truth and also want to see people following the truth. The truth is not a revelation, but truth that has been established though evidences and repeated experiments.

Even there are scientists who are religious. How do you feel about them?

Yeah, unfortunately there are many good scientists who do this. Although, I do not clearly understand their position in life, it seems to me, either they act like religious people consciously for some other purpose or compartmentalize their views based on the context.

Religious people claim they derive their morality from religion. Where from an atheist derive his morality?

Religious people do not derive their morality from religion. I disagree (with the interviewer) on this point. Almost all of us do agree on moral grounds where religion had no effect. For example we all hate slavery, we want emancipation of women - they are all our moral grounds. These moral grounds started building only a few centuries ago and long after all major religions were established. We derive our morality from the environment we live in, Talk shows, Novels, Newspaper editorials and of course by the guidance of parents. Religion might only have a minor role to play in it. An atheist derives his morality from the same source as a religious people do.

But, all the religious books have given moral guidance to the people, like not killing the neighbors. Why do you think they are still bad?

The religious books do talk about not killing your neighbors, at the same time they talk about not showing skins of women or killing the infidels. The God of the Old Testament, as I described, is not at all a good 'person'. The God is certainly a lot better in New Testament. However, when you pick and choose the good verses out of a religious book, the parameters those you use, does not certainly come from the religion itself. For example, when you say New Testament is better, you are certainly not using Christianity as a judge. The parameters you use, are the effect of the morality that is already with you, assimilated from different sources in your life time.

In your book, you've said that God 'almost certainly' does not exist. Why are you leaving open the possibility?

Any scientific people will leave open that possibility, that they cannot disprove whatever unlikely the event might be. I would be the first person to acccept God once evidence comes in favour of it.

So you accept Science cannot disprove God. What is the problem if people follow religions till God is disproved?

Science cannot disprove God as well as they cannot disprove Apollo or Juju or Thor with his hammer or even a Flying Spaghetti Monster creating the universe. However, we do not believe them as they are unlikely to exist. We do neither believe in fairies of Hans Andersen although we cannot disprove them. To believe in an unlikely event or a deity only because we cannot disprove it, sounds foolish to me.

Why don't you thing that the Universe, huge, complex and mysterious, is not a creation of a Supreme Being, where we see all complex things are in fact created?

First of all if you assume that all complex things are created, then a God, capable of creating such a complex Universe, should also be a complex being and should also has a creator. On the other hand, if you follow the Darwinian Evolution path, you'd see how a complex organism can be built upon relatively simpler beings by the process of Natural Selection. And it is far more logical to believe that we and the Universe in general, started from a simpler start that a complex creator starting it up.

When you stand on the top of a mountain doesn't the vastness of the world strike you? Don't you feel charmed by the beauty of the nature, and the mysterious laws of the vast Universe?

Of course I do. And I have mentioned about it in the first chapter of my book as the spirituality followed by Einstein. He was so charmed about the mysteries of the world and it was such an exciting experience to explore it. It's a kind of spirituality that does not require God, a personal deity to explain the mysteries of Nature. It is quite different from a religion centered around a God who can read mind, keeps track of sins, judges people after death punishes the disbelievers and rules the Universe.

What is your opinion about Stalin and Hitler as Atheists?

I have said in my book that Hitler is not at all atheist, as he was religiously biased against Jewish people. Stalin was following communism dogmatically. I have already said that none of us, in effect derive our morality from religion. Stalin, in fact, used the dogmatic communism as his source of morality - if we call it morality at all. Being atheist does not ask you to become dogmatic or communist, but only ask you not to believe in God. A person working in a Mafia group can also be an atheist although it will be illogical to say that atheism pushed him to the Mafia group. There are other colleagues working with him who are religious.

Why do you link religion with 'Child-abuse'?

I link the marking of children as 'Jewish boy' or 'Muslim child' as a child abuse, since, in childhood they are yet to choose their religious views. Not only that, they are brought up in a way that he gets separated from other religious groups and views so that he follows the religious faith of his parents. Obstructing the view of children clearly comes under child abuse.

Your ambition is that people reading this book should abandon their faith. Isn't that?

There is no harm in aiming high and you can say that is my ambition. But, in practice, we want the people who follow the middle ground, who never have thought deeply on this topic, to think twice and consciously reject God. Also, I can see that in United States 10-15% people are Atheists, larger than any minority religious groups. However, they don't have any political power or a lobby compared to strong Jewish lobby. I want Atheists to come together and establish a God-neutral political view, a view of their own, for a better balanced world.

References

1) Interview with Jeremy Paxman on BBC.
2) Interview on CNN on Darwin Day.
3) TV Ontario interview (part 1, part 2 and part 3).
3) The Hour interview, (part 2).
4) The debate - part 1, part 2 and part 3.
4) RichardDawkins.net for more video/interview resources.

Atheism, Religion, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion.