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Tuesday, May 15, 2007 12:00 AM

Manufacturing belief

The origin of religion is in our heads, explains developmental biologist Lewis Wolpert. First we figured out how to make tools, then a supernatural being.

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  • Tuesday, May 15, 2007 02:17 PM

    Zen and the science of deferred motorcycle maintenance

    Maybe the neural wiring of the knee-jerk believers does differ from that of the skinnerian unbelievers. But most of us combine aspects of unsullied transcendence with uncommon logic.

    What it comes down to is that there is now and always will be - world without end - one and only one "Science". There will also be plenty of pseudosciences to go around - another name for these are "lies, damn lies, and statistics".

    There is now and always will be - as Wolpert says - many religions. These are not the same thing as lies, even though no more than one (and possibly fewer than one) can be true. Few could be characterized as pseudo-religions, though their premises may seem silly to outsiders (including to the devout of other spaghetti monsters).

    But any religion that is likely to survive and prosper through the centuries must be fit for survival. It isn't enough to reduce people's blood pressure - after all, apparently any old set of quaint traditions and opaque beliefs can bring calm to our separate inner worlds. Rather, the one thing that these many religions must share if they are to persist is a reasonable accommodation with our common outer world.

    Many church traditions are the equivalent of blowing out birthday candles - unlikely to bring harm, and thus unlikely ever to be seriously challenged. Others, however, we have already seen extinguished by social darwinism. Where is the inquisition today? Polygamy anyone? Latin masses? There's a reason that Shaker chairs are highly collectable.

    Our religions may have different books, disjoint congregations, conflicting aspirations. But they are all embedded in one common cosmos. God isn't silent - she's all around us speaking the language of the birds, writing with lizard tracks, watching our every move with (separately evolved) vertebrate and invertebrate eyes, providing us with oxygen to breathe from the rain forest, sequestering carbon dioxide through plate techtonics.

    Gaia, smaia - but technological toys won't save us either. She's not blinding us with science - we're doing that to ourselves.

    We don't all need to share the same "why" - just a better common understanding of the what.

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