Letters to the Editor
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What a Load of Rich Creamery Butter
"But there is no meaning, I regret to tell you. [Laughs] We don't understand where the universe came from. But to say God made it, well, you want to say, who made God?"
Gosh, I've never heard it explained so eloquently as in this airtight argument. There can't be a God because we don't know what could cause God to come into being. I guess that closes the books on that one. If only Mr. Wolpert had been around 2,000 years ago, imagine all the trouble he would have saved humanity.
On the other hand, it's more than a little ironic that Mr. Wolpert believes that causal thinking is what impels the "illusion" of theistic belief systems, then goes on to justify his beliefs by the absence of....a cause. What the hell's the difference?
"Ultimate meaning has no meaning in my life. I sound a bit shallow, but I think it's actually quite deep not to be bothered by that sort of thing."
No, it might be quite deep to come to terms with not being able to find a deep meaning in life (as in pat answers), but it's hardly deep to simply ignore the question and laugh at anyone who wonders why we're here and how we came to be. That's actually pretty easy and common, even among a significant contingent of "churchgoers". Evolution only answers one of those "deep" questions, and not even that completely.
And I'd like Mr. Wolpert to explain how--or even, *gasp*, the atheist's least favorite question: why?--evolution selected for those who found an answer to a question that has no meaning.
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A logical flaw
Simply because we might want to believe in God, or that we're evolutionarily wired to have religious beliefs does not have any actual bearing on whether or not God exists. Religion may be something society has constructed for all the reason Wolpert says, but it's also possible that God may actually exist.
Simply because there are other explanations for religion/faith does not have any bearing on the ultimate question as to why we exist at all, the ultimate origin and fate of the universe, etc.
It does not logically follow that "we're wired to believe in God, therefore God does not exist and we have no purpose." Sure, there *may* not be a God, but certainly Wolpert hasn't proved anything. He simply has his own belief in unbelief.
I'm also not convinced that the benefits of belief were sufficient such that natural selection would have any bearing on making believers more successful and, thus, grow in number over time.
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Not science.
This is not really science, but "scientism" -- the idea that only scientific explanations are valid. Science is certainly very useful, but why should we believe that scientific explanations are the only means of understanding human experience?
What scientism does is to reduce ALL of human experience to molecules, chemicals, and other purely material properties. Do you love your wife? That's chemicals. Do you think of yourself as a "person?" That's electrons and wiring. Is killing an innocent person wrong? That's evolution. Is a rainbow beautiful? More chemicals. Is Beethoven's 9th symphony profound? Chemicals.
In other words, people such as Wolpert surgically remove humanity from humans. We are no longer people, but simply assemblies of various chemicals and physical structures. And in doing that the entire world of values disappears.
But scientism is rarely argued for. It is simply assumed as self-evident, and anyone who rejects it is portrayed as ignorant or in the thrall of evolutionary conditioning.
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Same old same old
All of these books by atheists say the same thing, and Salon appears to feel compelled to do a story on them every time they come out.
"We've evolved to believe in God." OK, I get it. But where's the insight? Where's the "ah hah!" moment that comes from discovery? There isn't any.
Sheldrake's experiments have been replicated, but of course the atheists just keep on ignoring them. Worse, they imply that they're just quirky one-offs; that's a lie.
It's getting to be like the cover story Time runs every couple of years: "Who was the real Jesus?"
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Atheists ... I Just Got It
It's not that atheists don't believe in God. It's that they're not willing to let somebody else be God.
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Not exactly
We are no longer people, but simply assemblies of various chemicals and physical structures. And in doing that the entire world of values disappears.
Well, the world of values that depends on supernatural intervention in human affairs, anyway. You don't have to believe God carved something on a tablet and handed it to Moses to understand that murdering people is generally a Bad Idea.
What you are really protesting is the loss of mystery as more and more of human thought and action becomes explicable through strictly material means. And it is a loss, in the same way that losing one's virginity is: one moves from a condition of second-hand information to one of empirical knowledge.
By the way, understanding how my brain works doesn't make music less beautiful, or the love I have for my wife less real, any more than understanding how a curve ball works make baseball less fun.
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A Few Classic Nuggets of Wisdom from People Who Knew It All
Whenever I see an article like this, with scientists like Wolpert and their last word on concepts humans have little grasp of, I remember some quotes I came across years ago:
“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British physicist, inventor, president of the Royal Society, 1895
“X-rays are a hoax.”
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British physicist, inventor, president of the Royal Society, 1900
“There is not the slightest indication that (nuclear) energy will ever be obtainable. That would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”
Dr. Albert Einstein, 1932
“Space travel is utter bilge.”
Richard van der Riet Wooley, British Astronomer Royal, 1956
“Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”
New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work, 1921
"Experts" tend to dismiss things they cannot explain with the tools they have. Wolpert might benefit from keeping more of an open mind about acupunture, energy fields, even the nature of existence. I already suspect there's a chance people will be reading his interview 100 years from now and wondering how humans could have been so short-sighted.