INNOCENCE LOST

Sam Harris has some definite views on religion and what follows are an excerpt from his recent blog article, Freedom to Offend an Imaginary God.

 http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/on-the-freedom-to-offend-an-imaginary-god




The latest wave of Muslim hysteria and violence has now spread to over twenty countries. The walls of our embassies and consulates have been breached, their precincts abandoned to triumphant mobs, and many people have been murdered—all in response to an unwatchable Internet video titled “Innocence of Muslims.” Whether over a film, a cartoon, a novel, a beauty pageant, or an inauspiciously named teddy bear, the coming eruption of pious rage is now as predictable as the dawn. This is already an old and boring story about old, boring, and deadly ideas. And I fear it will be with us for the rest of our lives.


Consider what is actually happening: Some percentage of the world’s Muslims—Five percent? Fifteen? Fifty? It’s not yet clear—is demanding that all non-Muslims conform to the strictures of Islamic law. And where they do not immediately resort to violence in their protests, they threaten it. Carrying a sign that reads “Behead Those Who Insult the Prophet” may still count as an example of peaceful protest, but it is also an assurance that infidel blood would be shed if the imbecile holding the placard only had more power. This grotesque promise is, of course, fulfilled in nearly every Muslim society. To make a film like “Innocence of Muslims” anywhere in the Middle East would be as sure a method of suicide as the laws of physics allow.

What exactly was in the film? Who made it? What were their motives? Was Muhammad really depicted? Was that a Qur’an burning, or some other book? Questions of this kind are obscene. Here is where the line must be drawn and defended without apology: We are free to burn the Qur’an or any other book, and to criticize Muhammad or any other human being. Let no one forget it.

Religion only works as a pretext for political violence because many millions of people actually believe what they say they believe: that imaginary crimes like blasphemy and apostasy are killing offenses.

The freedom to think out loud on certain topics, without fear of being hounded into hiding or killed, has already been lost. And the only forces on earth that can recover it are strong, secular governments that will face down charges of blasphemy with scorn. No apologies necessary. Muslims must learn that if they make belligerent and fanatical claims upon the tolerance of free societies, they will meet the limits of that tolerance.

I have to agree with the above statements. Freedom of thought and expression, even if in poor taste, is a fundamental freedom that needs preserving.I do draw a line at hate speech, but criticizing a religion does not fall in that category. In my WAKING GOD TRILOGY, much is said regarding religious dogma and its historic, and current, destructiveness.  These books did not start riots even though there is much criticism of religion and one of the heroes in the novels is Lucifer. Just as Christianity should be faulted for the Inquisition and the crusades, no religion, including Islam, can justify the use of force to prevent criticism. That should be a no brainer that fundamentalists and hard-liners obviously don't get. You can't protect teachings by violating the teachings. The ends do not justify the means. Efforts in the Muslim world to further outlaw blasphemy is not acceptable. Are they so insecure in their faith that violence must be used to fend of anything offensive? Their ideas are a return to the intellectual dark ages and their arguments are based in ignorance.

So yes, Muslims must learn that if they make belligerent and fanatical claims upon the tolerance of free societies, they will meet the limits of that tolerance.

SAM HARRIS IS SO WRONG

I HAD TO POST THIS BLOG IN ITS ENTIRETY!

I'm glad that others are seeing the real truth with regard to Sam Harris and his objective morality. If there is one truth in science it is that the observer and observed are one. It is totally subjective; what you look for is what you find. For some reason, Sam Harris ignores this fundamental truth as it, a priori, totally destroys his entire argument. The universe is subjective-plain and simple. And while his take on traditional religion is, to me, correct, he obviously has no understanding of mysticism or spirituality. If he did, he would see that science, is in fact, proven what the ancients knew thousand of years ago-We are one and we create our reality. Kudos to John Horgan!

 

Be wary of the righteous rationalist: We should reject Sam Harris's claim that science can be a moral guidepost

By John Horgan Oct 11, 2010 09:00 AM
Say what you will about Sam Harris, the man's got guts. In The End of Faith (W. W. Norton, 2005) and Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf, 2006), Harris, a neuroscientist, rejects the notion that science and religion can coexist. We can't believe in science, Harris says, and still believe in supernatural beings that part seas, resurrect dead people and keep tabs on our naughtiness and niceness.
Harris slams nonbelieving apologists for religion such as the late biologist Stephen Jay Gould. With typical rhetorical grandiosity, Gould proposed that science and religion need not conflict because they are "nonoverlapping magisteria" that address separate realms of existence. Science tells us what is, religion what should be. Given all the crimes committed in religion's name, Harris retorts, why would anyone look to it for moral guidance?
I'm with Harris up to this point. I part company with him when he argues in his new book The Moral Landscape (Free Press, 2010)—which comes fortified with blurbs from Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins and other antireligious scientific luminaries—that science can take religion's place as the supreme arbiter of moral "truth". "There are right and wrong answers to moral questions," Harris asserts, "just as there are right and wrong answers to questions of physics." Questions about morality, he explains, are really questions about human happiness or "well-being," and these questions can be empirically resolved, just as questions about diet and disease can be.
One can raise all sorts of philosophical objections to this position, and the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah does just that in a New York Times review ironically titled "Science Knows Best". My concerns about Harris's proposal are simpler: I just look at the harm—historical and recent—wreaked by scientists supposedly concerned with humanity's well-being. Some examples:
—From 1946 to 1948, physicians funded by the National Institutes of Health deliberately infected nearly 700 Guatemalan prisoners, mental-hospital patients and soldiers with syphilis to test their responses to antibiotics. The leader of this research, John C. Cutler, was also involved in the infamous Tuskegee studies, in which scientists withheld antibiotics from black American males naturally infected with syphilis. "It's ironic—no, it's worse than that, it's appalling—that, at the same time as the United States was prosecuting Nazi doctors for crimes against humanity, the U.S. government was supporting research that placed human subjects at enormous risk," the bioethicist Mark Siegler told The New York Times.
—In the 1950s and 1960s researchers at leading universities embedded electrodes in the brains of mental patients to test whether minds and bodies can be manipulated via electrical stimulation of neural tissue. In 1969 the Yale physiologist Jose Delgado (whom I profiled in Scientific American in 2005), extolled the benefits of brain implants in his book Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society (Harper & Row, 1971). Delgado declared that brain implants could help create "a less cruel, happier and better man." In 1970 Frank Ervin and Vernon Mark, two brain-implant researchers at Harvard University with whom Delgado had collaborated, proposed in their book Violence and the Brain (HarperCollins, 1970) that brain implants and psychosurgery might quell violent crime and rioting in inner cities.
—In recent decades prescriptions of drugs for children, including infants, supposedly suffering from psychiatric illness have skyrocketed. Some 500,000 U.S. children and adolescents are now taking antipsychotic drugs, Duff Wilson reported recently in The New York Times, even though some experts believe the drugs "may pose grave risks to development of both their fast-growing brains and their bodies." In another Times article Wilson details how psychiatrists who tout the benefits of antipsychotics receive grants, vacations, meals and other gifts from drug manufacturers. The Harvard physician Joseph Biederman, whose research helped spur a 40-fold increase in diagnoses of bipolar disorders in children between 1994 and 2003, received $1.6 million, "from companies including makers of antipsychotic drugs prescribed for some children who might have bipolar disorder," according to Wilson.
Some will complain that it is unfair to hold science accountable for the misdeeds of a minority. It is not only fair, it is essential, especially when scientists as prominent as Harris are talking about creating a universal, scientifically validated morality. Moreover, Harris blames Islam and Catholicism for the actions of suicide bombers and pedophilic priests, so why should science be exempt from this same treatment?
Clearly, some bad scientists are just greedy opportunists who care about only their own well-being. But those who fervently believe their own rhetoric about saving humanity may be even more dangerous. Consider the harm done in the name of Marxism and eugenics, pseudoscientific (not religious) ideologies that inspired two of the most lethal regimes in history—Stalin's U.S.S.R. and Nazi Germany.
Harris asserts in Moral Landscape that ignorance and humility are inversely proportional to each other; whereas religious know-nothings are often arrogant, scientists tend to be humble, because they know enough to know their limitations. "Arrogance is about as common at a scientific conference as nudity," Harris states. Yet he is anything but humble in his opus. He castigates not only religious believers but even nonbelieving scientists and philosophers who don't share his hostility toward religion.
Harris further shows his arrogance when he claims that neuroscience, his own field, is best positioned to help us achieve a universal morality. "The more we understand ourselves at the level of the brain, the more we will see that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human values." Neuroscience can't even tell me how I can know the big, black, hairy thing on my couch is my dog Merlin. And we're going to trust neuroscience to tell us how we should resolve debates over the morality of abortion, euthanasia and armed intervention in other nations' affairs?
I suspect Harris wants to rely on brain scans to measure "well-being" because he doesn't trust people to simply say what makes them happy. If a Muslim girl says that she likes wearing a veil, as many do, she doesn't know what's good for her, Harris might say. Maybe she doesn't, but magnetic resonance imaging won't help us resolve these sorts of issues.
When scientists venture into the moral realm, they should not claim that their investigations of what is yield special insights into what should be. I realize I'm asking a lot of scientists—and secularists—to be humble when religious and political zealots like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are so bloated with self-righteousness. This asymmetry recalls Yeats's famous line from his poem "The Second Coming": "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." But if we all become zealots, we're really in trouble.

SAM HARRIS TRAPPED IN OUTDATED PARADIGM

It is ironic that Sam Harris, who blasts religious dogma, would then use similar dogma to try to create an “objective morality” based upon science. As I have said in the past, I agree with his assessment of the past, present and future danger of religion. My views are fairly clear in the WAKING GOD trilogy of which was said, “It makes The DaVinci Code” read like a church hymn. But somewhere, Sam Harris has gone astray in an attempt to find a working morality in science.



The very notion of a morality is not even an objective idea. To even say there is, or there should be morality does not logically flow from science, but rather from a subjective notion that humanity should live by some form of underlying, or overriding, set of rules. Let’s face it; if we look at traditional science, the only morality you might find is the “survival of the fittest.” Where in the sciences of chemistry, medicine, physics or biology does one find a basis for morality? I guess all atoms are created equal and that they should be able to combine freely with other atoms might work. But even the idea of equal and free are not scientific terms unless you talk of balancing an equation or free radicals.



Further, objectivity in morality would certainly open the proverbial Pandora’s Box. If, for example, we look at nature, we find no rationale for caring for the elderly, sick, or genetically deviant. Nature culls such creatures for the benefit of the whole and to prevent defects from spreading in the population as a whole. Is this objective morality? Sam Harris also points out that enslavement, mutilating female genitalia, public whippings or stonings are morally and empirically wrong. According to our way of thinking, this statement makes sense. But, it is opinion, and opinion is subjective. In an article called “Toward A Science of Morality” in the Huffington Post, Sam Harris says he agrees with physicist Sean Carroll when he says, “I want to start with a hopefully non-controversial statement about what science is. Namely: science deals with empirical reality -- with what happens in the world, (I.e. what "is.").”



At this point, the entire argument must totally shift. What Sam Harris fails to realize is that discussing issues like the definition of ‘well-being’ is not at the heart of the debate. He seems to think that there is a scientific definition that can lead us out of the valley of death of religious dogma into and into the garden of scientific objectivity. This garden would be free of cultural and religious differences and would create an empirical definition that would be beyond reproach. Sam Harris, unfortunately, has fallen prey to his own outdated paradigm. There is no such thing as objectivity. If this is true, then the notion of an objective morality must be tossed out the window, both the bathwater and the baby.



Look at the following excerpt from a piece written by Robert Lanza. It is but one of many articles that clearly indicate that science is leading us away from any notion of objectivity within the universe. It is becoming increasingly clear that the observed and the observer are one. This being the case, we must discover a new paradigm outside of religion and science that can lead us to a moral high ground.



“But a series of new experiments suggest this may be all wrong, and that part of us exists outside of the physical world. The implications of these experiments have been downplayed because, until recently, quantum behavior was limited to the microscopic world. However, this 'two-world' view (that is, one set of physical laws for small objects, and another set of laws for the rest of the universe, including us) has no basis in reason, and more importantly, is being challenged in labs around the world.

We're trapped in an outdated paradigm. A few more equations, we're told, and we'll know it all -- any day now. There's no adventure left, no lost gardens in far away lands. But we all intuitively know there's more to existence than our science books grant. It's the same nostalgic yearning that gives religion its persistent power over humanity.

We assume there's a universe "out there" separate from what we are, and that we play no role in its appearance. Yet since the 1920s, experiments have shown just the opposite; results do depend on whether anyone is observing. This is most vividly illustrated by the famous two-hole experiment. When you watch a particle go through the holes, it behaves like a bullet, passing through one hole or the other. But if no one observes the particle, it exhibits the behavior of a wave and can pass through both holes at the same time.

This and other experiments tell us that unobserved particles exist only as "waves of probability" as Max Born demonstrated in 1926. They're statistical predictions -- nothing but a likely outcome. Until observed, they have no real existence; only when the mind sets the scaffolding in place can they be thought of as having duration or a position in space. Experiments make it increasingly clear that even mere knowledge in the experimenter's mind is sufficient to convert possibility to reality.

Importantly, this behavior isn't limited to the microscopic world. New experiments carried out with huge molecules called "Buckyballs" show that quantum reality extends into the macroscopic world we live in. In 2005, KHC0₃ crystals exhibited entanglement ridges one-half inch high, quantum behavior nudging into everyday levels of discernment.

Biocentrism tells us that reality is a process that involves our consciousness, and that space and time aren't the hard objects we think. Recent experiments show that separate particles can influence each other instantaneously over great distances, as if they're endowed with ESP. They're intimately linked in a manner suggesting there's no space or time influencing their behavior. In 1997 Nicolas Gisin sent pairs of particles zooming along optical fibers until they were seven miles apart. But whatever action one took, its twin performed the complementary action instantaneously. Since then, other researchers have duplicated Gisin's work.

All of these experiments make perfect sense from a biocentric perspective. Everything we perceive is a whirl of information in our head. Time can be defined as the summation of spatial states occurring inside the mind. But that doesn't mean there's an invisible matrix in which changes occur. We watch our loved ones age and die and assume that an external entity called time is responsible for the crime. There's a peculiar intangibility to space, as well. Like time, it's just a tool of our understanding.

But the solution to this mystery lies within our grasp, a solution hinted at by the frequency with which the old paradigm breaks down. This is the underlying problem: we've ignored a critical component of the universe, shunted it out of the way because we didn't know what to do with it. This component is consciousness -- us, the great observer.”

Robert Lanza, M.D., Scientist, Theoretician, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/science-spirituality-what_b_624292.html?ir=Daily%20Brief

If we cannot rely upon biased religion or science to create a universal morality, what is left? Are we to be subject to the whims of moral fads or is there something that can guide humanity to a more logical way of living? To this topic, we shall return while keeping in mind that ‘what happens’ in this world is truly up to us.

SAM HARRIS-YOU'RE WRONG!

There is no such thing as objective science. If physics has taught us anything, it is that the observer and the observed are one. The idea that science can find an objective morality is, by its very nature, an oxymoron. Science is based upon "knowledge,knowledge requires a learner and a learner cannot be objective. Sam Harris would like us to believe that science can lead us to the promise land of well-being. That, while religion and all of its worn out dogma has failed to do so, a new religion of science will show us how to create a land of milk and honey. While I agree with his assessment of religion, his solution is just as inappropriate. In a response to his critics, Sam Harris tried to clarify his position. What follows are parts of his response as posted on his site and my comments are in bold.

Last month, I had the privilege of speaking at the 2010 TED conference for exactly 18 minutes. I was not suggesting that science can give us an evolutionary or neurobiological account of what people do in the name of “morality.” Nor was I merely saying that science can help us get what we want out of life. Both of these would have been quite banal claims to make (unless one happens to doubt the truth of evolution or the mind’s dependency on the brain). Rather I was suggesting that science can, in principle, help us understand what we should do and should want—and, perforce, what other people should do and want in order to live the best lives possible. There is an obvious bias in the preceding statements. The notion that science can tell people what they ‘should’ do or should not do indicates simply another form of dogma that has been found not to work by religions. My claim is that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, just as there are right and wrong answers to questions of physics, and such answers may one day fall within reach of the maturing sciences of mind. As the response to my TED talk indicates, it is taboo for a scientist to think such things, much less say them public. While there is no doubt that it is appropriate for scientists to discuss such issues, the notion that there are right and wrong answers is a matter of judgment and subjective bias. What is the difference between science telling people what is wrong and the Church, any church, telling people what is right or wrong? Actually, the notion that there is right or wrong, good and evil, flies in the face of science. There are certainly positive and negative forces. But calling hot right and cold wrong is ludicrous. Despite the influence of religion on the issue, calling murder wrong is a moral judgment.


Some of my critics got off the train before it even left the station, by defining “science” in exceedingly narrow terms. Many think that science is synonymous with mathematical modeling, or with immediate access to experimental data. However, this is to mistake science for a few of its tools. Science simply represents our best effort to understand what is going on in this universe, and the boundary between it and the rest of rational thought cannot always be drawn. There are many tools one must get in hand to think scientifically—ideas about cause and effect, respect for evidence and logical coherence, a dash of curiosity and intellectual honesty, the inclination to make falsifiable predictions, etc.—and many come long before one starts worrying about mathematical models or specific data. Clearly, from the above definition, i.e. “our best effort to understand,” is not objective. History is replete with our misunderstanding of science and the fire pits are filled with the charred memories of those who defied our ‘best efforts.”

There is also much confusion about what it means to speak with scientific “objectivity.” As the philosopher John Searle once pointed out, there are two very different senses of the terms “objective” and “subjective.” The first relates to how we know (i.e. epistemology), the second to what there is to know (i.e. ontology). When we say that we are reasoning or speaking “objectively,” we mean that we are free of obvious bias, open to counter-arguments, cognizant of the relevant facts, etc. There is no impediment to our doing this with regard to subjective (i.e. third-person) facts. It is, for instance, true to say that I am experiencing tinnitus (ringing in my ears) at this moment. This is a subjective fact about me. I am not lying about it. I have been to an otologist and had the associated hearing loss in the upper frequencies in my right ear confirmed. There is simply no question that I can speak about my tinnitus in the spirit of scientific objectivity. And, no doubt, this experience must have some objective (third-person) correlates, like damage to my cochlea. Many people seem to think that because moral facts relate entirely to our experience (and are, therefore, ontologically “subjective”), all talk of morality must be “subjective” in the epistemological sense (i.e. biased, merely personal, etc.). This is simply untrue. Sorry, Sam, but it is true. While on its face, it is easy to understand why one would claim that five birds just flew by; it is raining; I just stubbed my toe, etc. Reality is only our perceptions. And, I suppose you can also say that quantum physics is also all wrong, too, but that just makes you as dogmatic as those you criticize.

Many of my critics also fail to distinguish between there being no answers in practice and no answers in principle to certain questions about the nature of reality. Only the latter questions are “unscientific,” and there are countless facts to be known in principle that we will never know in practice. Exactly how many birds are in flight over the surface of the earth at this instant? What is their combined weight in grams? We cannot possibly answer such questions, but they have simple, numerical answers. Does our inability to gather the relevant data oblige us to respect all opinions equally? For instance, how seriously should we take the claim that there are exactly 23,000 birds in flight at this moment, and, as they are all hummingbirds weighing exactly 2 grams, their total weight is 46,000 grams? It should be obvious that this is a ridiculous assertion. We can, therefore, decisively reject answers to questions that we cannot possibly answer in practice. This is a perfectly reasonable, scientific, and often necessary thing to do. And yet, many scientists will say that moral truths do not exist, simply because certain facts about human experience cannot be readily known, or may never be known. As I hope to show, this blind spot has created tremendous confusion about the relationship between human knowledge and human values. Is it really possible for what science says is a finite mind to know and understand the infinite? Or, is it possible that we see the mind as finite because we define ourselves by it. Since it weighs x grams there is no way it can carry the infinite knowledge of the universe. Or, is it possible that we are not at limited by the size of our brain and that there is transcendent knowledge that we can know?


When I speak of there being right and wrong answers to questions of morality, I am saying that there are facts about human and animal wellbeing that we can, in principle, know—simply because wellbeing (and states of consciousness altogether) must lawfully relate to states of the brain and to states of the world. Facts are merely our ‘best understanding’ at any given moment. Many facts of the past were clearly not. Is it the states of the brain that laws relate to or something bigger? Are there even really any laws. Can we test a law an infinite number of times to see if it ever deviates? Has not quantum mechanics shown that what we have held as physical laws are not true at the sub-atomic level? And have not recent experiments shown, as mystics have known all along, that such deviations to laws can now be demonstrated at the physically observable level?

And here is where the real controversy begins: for many people strongly objected to my claim that values (and hence morality) relate to facts about the wellbeing of conscious creatures. My critics seem to think that consciousness and its states hold no special place where values are concerned, or that any state of consciousness stands the same chance of being valued as any other. While maximizing the wellbeing of conscious creatures may be what I value, other people are perfectly free to define their values differently, and there will be no rational or scientific basis to argue with them. This is perhaps the one place where Sam Harris is correct, i.e., what we value does relate to well being of consciousness. However, we should not assume a value on levels of consciousness.

Carroll appears to be confused about the foundations of human knowledge. For instance, he clearly misunderstands the relationship between scientific truth and scientific consensus. He imagines that scientific consensus signifies the existence of scientific truth (while scientific controversy just means that there is more work to be done). And yet, he takes moral controversy to mean that there is no such thing as moral truth (while moral consensus just means that people are deeply conditioned for certain preferences). This is a double standard that I pointed out in my talk, and it clearly rigs the game against moral truth. The deeper issue, however, is that truth has nothing, in principle, to do with consensus: It is, after all, quite possible for everyone to be wrong, or for one lone person to be right. Consensus is surely a guide to discovering what is going on in the world, but that is all that it is. Its presence or absence in no way constrains what may or may not be true. There seems to be confusion all around since there really is no current scientific truth.



There are many things wrong with this approach. The deepest problem is that it strikes me as patently mistaken about the nature of reality and about what we can reasonably mean by words like “good,” “bad,” “right,” and “wrong.” In fact, I believe that we can know, through reason alone, that consciousness is the only intelligible domain of value. What’s the alternative? Imagine some genius comes forward and says, “I have found a source of value/morality that has absolutely nothing to do with the (actual or potential) experience of conscious beings.” Take a moment to think about what this claim actually means. Here’s the problem: whatever this person has found cannot, by definition, be of interest to anyone (in this life or in any other). Put this thing in a box, and what you have in that box is—again, by definition—the least interesting thing in the universe. Therefore, in order to place a moral value against killing, all must kill-otherwise; the value of not killing has nothing to do with actual/potential experience. Does the value precede the experience or vice versa?

So how much time should we spend worrying about such a transcendent source of value? I think the time I will spend typing this sentence is already far too much. All other notions of value will bear some relationship to the actual or potential experience of conscious beings. So my claim that consciousness is the basis of values does not appear to me to be an arbitrary starting point.

Now that we have consciousness on the table, my further claim is that wellbeing is what we can intelligibly value—and “morality” (whatever people’s associations with this term happen to be) really relates to the intentions and behaviors that affect the wellbeing of conscious creatures. And, as I pointed out at TED, all the people who claim to have alternative sources of morality (like the Word of God) are, in every case that I am aware of, only concerned about wellbeing anyway: They just happen to believe that the universe functions in such a way as to place the really important changes in conscious experience after death (i.e. in heaven or hell). And those philosophical efforts that seek to put morality in terms of duty, fairness, justice, or some other principle that is not explicitly tied to the wellbeing of conscious creatures—are, nevertheless, parasitic on some notion of wellbeing in the end (I argue this point at greater length in my book. And yes, I’ve read Rawls, Nozick, and Parfit). The doubts that immediately erupt on this point seem to invariably depend on extremely unimaginative ideas about what the term “wellbeing” could mean, altogether, or on mistaken beliefs about what science is.

Those who assumed that any emphasis on human “wellbeing” would lead us to enslave half of humanity, or harvest the organs of the bottom ten percent, or nuke the developing world, or nurture our children a continuous drip of heroin are, it seems to me, not really thinking about these issues seriously. It seems rather obvious that fairness, justice, compassion, and a general awareness of terrestrial reality have rather a lot to do with our creating a thriving global civilization (Creating a thriving global community is not desired by all and not really a value, a goal perhaps, but not a value)—and, therefore, with the greater wellbeing of humanity. And, as I emphasized in my talk, there may be many different ways for individuals and communities to thrive—many peaks on the moral landscape—so if there is real diversity in how people can be deeply fulfilled in life, this diversity can be accounted for and honored in the context of science. As I said in my talk, the concept of “wellbeing,” like the concept of “health,” is truly open for revision and discovery. Just how happy is it possible for us to be, personally and collectively? What are the conditions—ranging from changes in the genome to changes in economic systems—that will produce such happiness? We simply do not know.

But the deeper objection raised by scientists like Carroll is that the link I have drawn between values and wellbeing seems arbitrary, or otherwise in need of justification. What if certain people insist that their “values” or “morality” have nothing to do with wellbeing? What if a man like Jefferey Dahmer says, “The only peaks on the moral landscape that interest me are ones where I get to murder young men and have sex with their corpses.” This possibility—the prospect of radically different moral preferences—seems to be at the heart of many people’s concerns. In response to one of his readers, Carroll writes:

[W]e have to distinguish between choosing a goal and choosing the best way to get there. But when we do science we all basically agree on what the goals are — we want to find a concise, powerful explanation of the empirical facts we observe. This is not true. The idyllic notion here is that all scientists are purists who only seek to discover how the universe works. It assumes no hidden or subjective agenda. While it is fine to argue that a person on a spiritual quest for meaning and truth is really just seeking new dogma to impose on humanity, this cannot be true for the scientist. Clearly, the use of science to further specific political, social, economic or religious goals can be demonstrated throughout history. Again, is there really empirical fact? Sure, someone can choose to disagree with those goals — but then they’re not doing science, they’re doing philosophy of science. Which is interesting in its own right, but not the same thing.

When it comes to morality, there is nowhere near the unanimity of goals that there is in science. That’s not a minor quibble, that’s the crucial difference! If we all agreed on the goals, we would indeed expend our intellectual effort on the well-grounded program of figuring out how best to achieve those goals. That would be great, but it’s not the world in which we live.

Again, we encounter this confusion about the significance of consensus. But we should also remember that there are trained “scientists” who are Biblical Creationists, and their scientific thinking is purposed not toward a dispassionate study of the universe, but toward interpreting the data of science to fit the Biblical account of creation. Such people claim to be doing “science,” of course—but real scientists are free, and indeed obligated, to point out that they are misusing the term. A real scientist? Does that exist? How can you base a system on an imaginary ‘real scientist’? Certainly, a person with a religious agenda cannot conduct this so called pure science. But neither can the mythical real scientist, who, unless they grew up with no human interaction, be free of any bias. Similarly, there are people who claim to be highly concerned about “morality” and “human values,” but when we see that they are more concerned about condom use than they are about child rape (e.g. the Catholic Church), we should feel free to say that they are misusing the term “morality,” or that their values are distorted. As I asked at TED, how have we convinced ourselves that on the subject of morality, all views must count equally? It is clear that Harris cannot make his arguments without reverting to moral judgment.


The very idea that a morality exists has not come from science. To say that women should not be degraded, people should not be enslaved, that there should be no war, did not stem from some scientific observation. To even say that there should be an objective morality is, of itself, a subjective moral judgment. What might nature tell us about morality. Survival of the fittest? No room for the weak? Only cooperate if your own well-being is enhanced? In nature, there are animals that herd together for mutual protection. There are also lone hunters, hives, colonies, predator and prey. Would not objective science say that it makes no sense for the genetically weak or defective to survive? In nature, the weak and deformed are left behind. Why would science make an argument for weakening the gene pool and promote the perpetuation of the "defective?" It is not science that has said that the likes of Steven Hawking should survive. Make no mistake, religion has not provided the answer, but within religion has been pearls of wisdom that form the fundamentals of a working morality. I will continue with Sam's talk on TED in Part II.

Let me leave you with some quotes from a real scientist, Albert Einstein:

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

END PART I

QUANTUM PHYSICS AND ANCIENT WISDOM

Is science beginning to verify ancient mystical truths? Here are two events as reported in Scientific American that, to me, show that continued discoveries in quantum physics leave little doubt as to the answer.
“PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers have demonstrated a device that can pick up single quanta of mechanical vibration similar to those that shake molecules during chemical reactions, and have shown that the device itself, which is the width of a hair, acts as if it exists in two places at once—a "quantum weirdness" feat that so far had only been observed at the scale of molecules.

"This is a milestone," says Wojciech Zurek, a theorist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "It confirms what many of us believe, but some continue to resist—that our universe is 'quantum to the core'."

Physicists have long known that, following the laws of quantum mechanics, objects at the scale of atoms or smaller can exist in multiple simultaneous states. For example, a single electron can move along multiple different paths or an atom can be placed in two different places, simultaneously. This so-called superposition of states should in principle apply to larger objects, as well… As to how the day-to-day reality of objects that we observe, such as furniture and fruit, emerges from such a different and exotic quantum world, that remains a mystery.”

In another story written by Geoff Brumfiel we see that, “A team of scientists has succeeded in putting an object large enough to be visible to the naked eye into a mixed quantum state of moving and not moving.

Andrew Cleland at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his team cooled a tiny metal paddle until it reached its quantum mechanical "ground state"-- the lowest-energy state permitted by quantum mechanics. They then used the weird rules of quantum mechanics to simultaneously set the paddle moving while leaving it standing still. The experiment shows that the principles of quantum mechanics can apply to everyday objects as well as as atomic-scale particles.
The work is simultaneously being published online today in Nature and presented today at the American Physical Society's meeting in Portland, Oregon.
According to quantum theory, particles act as waves rather than point masses on very small scales. This has dozens of bizarre consequences: it is impossible to know a particle's exact position and velocity through space, yet it is possible for the same particle to be doing two contradictory things simultaneously. Through a phenomenon known as "superposition" a particle can be moving and stationary at the same time--at least until an outside force acts on it. Then it instantly chooses one of the two contradictory positions.

But although the rules of quantum mechanics seem to apply at small scales, nobody has seen evidence of them on a large scale, where outside influences can more easily destroy fragile quantum states. "No one has shown to date that if you take a big object, with trillions of atoms in it, that quantum mechanics applies to its motion," Cleland says.”

There is no obvious reason why the rules of quantum mechanics shouldn't apply to large objects. Erwin Schrödinger, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, was so disturbed by the possibility of quantum weirdness on the large scale…
"It's wonderful," says Hailin Wang, a physicist at the University of Oregon in Eugene who has been working on a rival technique for putting an oscillator into the ground state. The work shows that the laws of quantum mechanics hold up as expected on a large scale. "It's good for physics for sure," Wang says.
So if trillions of atoms can be put into a quantum state, why don't we see double-decker buses simultaneously stopping and going? Cleland says he believes size does matter: the larger an object, the easier it is for outside forces to disrupt its quantum state.

So what’s the big deal? Mystics have long held to several fundamental maxims. The macrocosm, large, and the microcosm, infinitely small, are one: what applies to one, applies to the other. Mystics have said that we create our own reality; form follows thought; what we seek is what we find; like attracts like; our focus is our reality; reality is merely our thoughts made manifest and we can alter that reality with thought; and we are all one.

Until now, many scientists simply shunned much of what was happening on the quantum scale and felt that it just did not matter with regard to the larger world in which we live. The mentioned experiments would seem to point in the direction that they are wrong. What we hold as laws of the physical world are not immutable and only reflect our current state of awareness. Almost every day, some basic scientific law is found to be false. We have seen that if we seek to measure electrons as particles, we get particles. But, if we seek to measure electrons as waves, we get waves. Science is finding that things can be in different places at the same time and can be opposite and alike at the same time. They are have shown that what is done to one atom can affect an atom at an infinite distance at the same time. Words like quantum entanglement and superposition may not be just unusual phenomena at the sub-atomic level but can be observed at the larger scale. What may be happening is that as human awareness expands, granted at the moment through the use of new equipment, we are beginning to observe a closer version of reality–one that can change with a thought. When we are only aware of things at the gross level, then we only perceive what appears to be true at that level. But when we look closer at the detail, a whole new world and sets of laws emerge. These are the same laws that mystics intuited in ancient days when they were not under the mental restrictions of scientific, religious, political or even social dogma.

This is why I cannot accept some of the basic premises of author Sam Harris. While I applaud his fight against religious dogma, he is actually creating a new dogma based upon science and reason. But as we see, science and reason are also suspect as they are ever changing and never creating a true picture of the inner workings of the universe. They find what they seek. But if your search is based upon preconceived notions and false science, you have merely done what all movements do; collapse under their own biased philosophy. They create laws where there are none.
Many seers and prophets tell of two possible futures for humanity: one in which dogma leads to destruction and one where spiritual enlightenment leads to a world of balance and harmony. Nostradamus, the Mayans, the Hopi, biblical seers, Newton, DaVinci and others tried to tell us that we cannot rely upon our physical senses, science or religion to guide our thoughts and actions. They tell us that there is something deeper, something spiritual, that we must remember if we are to control the future of our evolution. Those working on the quantum physics scale are beginning to ‘get it.’ Given enough time, if there is enough time, they will lead us full circle back to ancient truths that were discovered without the microscope or the Bible. If there is to be a “Great Awakening” by 2012, it will be necessary to shed all of the old ways of thinking and embrace a new reality that we consciously create and founded on the ancient universal principles that include: what we due to the least of our brethren, including all species, we do to us and, what we do to others, we do to ourselves.

The articles references can be found at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=supersize-quantum-mechanics&sc=physics_20100319
And
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=quantum-microphone&sc=DD_20100319