Perhaps Mr. Paul Kokoski (“Secular humanism loses its capacity to rise to the truth of being” March 3, 2008) doesn’t know it, but in many previous letters to the press I have already refuted the so-called ‘genius’ of that “non-democratic cabal of doddering old ecclesiastical celibates.” Been there. Done that. Here’s a sample: In 1633 the ‘genius’ of the Ecclesia sentenced Galileo to spend the rest of his life under house arrest for proving and teaching the ‘heresy’ of the heliocentric theory. In 1992 another ‘genius’ of the Ecclesia realized that a mistake had been made and Galileo was rehabilitated.
Mr. Kokoski then engages in a well-rutted rehash of Aristotelian logic based on unprovable premises, the same method of establishing ‘truth’ that was used by the Ecclesia. The Ecclesia might assume those premises are true, but such assumption does not mean they are true in the light of objective reality. Only the methods of science can determine the truth or fallacy of testable premises. This is exactly what the Ecclesia has been resisting for centuries. If the premises are unprovable or false, then any conclusion drawn from them is likewise unprovable or false, regardless of the impeccability of the logic.
As an example of an unprovable premise, Mr. Kokoski says, “God has all the answers.” The question then arises: Whose God has the answers? The Trinitarian God of the 1 billion odd Roman Catholics? The Unitarian God of the 1 billion odd Muslims? The Trimurtic God of the 1 billion odd Hindus? The God without God of the 1 billion odd Buddhists? The Glossalalia God of the odd several million Pentecostals? One God says it’s okay to eat meat. Another says it’s a sin to eat meat. One requires eating of certain meats as acts of the highest piety. Another condemns eating of the same meats as horrendous sacrilege. And yet another forbids eating meat on Good Friday. Each God gives different answers to the same universal problems that worshippers face. Each requires worship on a different day. Many God-worshippers will kill other God-worshippers to defend their God-concept.
So instead of declaring unprovable axiomatic statements, we would make better progress in finding the core, universal values common to all religions. One such value that immediately springs to mind is the universal commandment: You shall not kill. If all religious people were to embrace and practice this one value, murders and wars will immediately cease and chaplains will leave the army. But instead they burn heretics, embark on crusades and fly planes into buildings while calling on the names of their gods. No scientist ever committed such atrocities calling on the names of Galileo, Darwin and Einstein.
Mr. Kokoski’s ignorance of science is evident in his statement, “…while science has the ability and power to destroy all mankind it does not have the same foresight and present power to cure every human being of their illness.” I hope that he is not in a position to influence youth away from science. He confuses science with the military might of the religious right that has the real power to destroy all mankind via the Christian atomic bomb, the Islamic atomic bomb, the Hindu atomic bomb and the Jewish atomic bomb. For centuries humankind has seen the destructive power of non-science. It’s time we see the constructive power of science.
Given enough time, funding and further research science might one day probably be able to cure all human illnesses. This is not a certainty, but it is a real possibility. However, both Mr. Kokoski and I have deviated from our initial argument. Should suffering people be denied access to advanced science and technology just because some Ecclesia decides that such technology is evil or immoral?
A few days ago, in Germany, the laws regarding stem cell research were updated to bring them in line with new exigencies. This is as it should be. Let the Ecclesia offer advice, it will be considered; but don’t let them force their ideas of morality on suffering people.
In the view of science, every observable phenomenon can be explained on the bases of the known laws of nature or laws yet to be discovered. If there is a phenomenon that we cannot understand or explain with our present state of knowledge, then we have to await future discoveries and developments. The fact that we do not understand an event or a phenomenon should drive us to seek an understanding of it. There are no mysteries in science; everything has a scientific explanation. Even if “now we see through a glass, darkly,” later we shall see face to face. This is not arrogance, but simple confidence in the power of the self-correcting processes of science.
Yours faithfully,
M. Xiu Quan-Balgobind-Hackett
