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Good And Bad Reasons For Believing PDF Print E-mail
Written by Xue Jianyue   
Tuesday, 24 April 2012 22:42

The following letter was written by Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most respected scientists and an outspoken atheist. It is addressed to his daughter Juliet, who was ten years old at the time. The letter originally appeared as the last chapter of his 2003 book, A Devil's Chaplain.

 
By Richard Dawkins
 
Dear Juliet,
 
Now that you are ten, I want to write to you about something that is important to me. Have you ever wondered how we know the things that we know? How do we know, for instance, that the stars, which look like tiny pinpricks in the sky, are really huge balls of fire like the sun and are very far away? And how do we know that Earth is a smaller ball whirling round one of those stars, the sun?
 
The answer to these questions is "evidence." Sometimes evidence means actually seeing ( or hearing, feeling, smelling..... ) that something is true. Astronauts have travelled far enough from earth to see with their own eyes that it is round. Sometimes our eyes need help. The "evening star" looks like a bright twinkle in the sky, but with a telescope, you can see that it is a beautiful ball - the planet we call Venus. Something that you learn by direct seeing ( or hearing or feeling..... ) is called an observation.
 
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.
 
Scientists - the specialists in discovering what is true about the world and the universe - often work like detectives. They make a guess ( called a hypothesis ) about what might be true. They then say to themselves: If that were really true, we ought to see so-and-so. This is called a prediction. For example, if the world is really round, we can predict that a traveller, going on and on in the same direction, should eventually find himself back where he started.When a doctor says that you have the measles, he doesn't take one look at you and see measles. His first look gives him a hypothesis that you may have measles. Then he says to himself: If she has measles I ought to see...... Then he runs through the list of predictions and tests them with his eyes ( have you got spots? ); hands ( is your forehead hot? ); and ears ( does your chest wheeze in a measly way? ). Only then does he make his decision and say, " I diagnose that the child has measles. " Sometimes doctors need to do other tests like blood tests or X-Rays, which help their eyes, hands, and ears to make observations.
 
The way scientists use evidence to learn about the world is much cleverer and more complicated than I can say in a short letter. But now I want to move on from evidence, which is a good reason for believing something , and warn you against three bad reasons for believing anything. They are called "tradition," "authority," and "revelation."
 
First, tradition. A few months ago, I went on television to have a discussion with about fifty children. These children were invited because they had been brought up in lots of different religions. Some had been brought up as Christians, others as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or Sikhs. The man with the microphone went from child to child, asking them what they believed. What they said shows up exactly what I mean by "tradition." Their beliefs turned out to have no connection with evidence. They just trotted out the beliefs of their parents and grandparents which, in turn, were not based upon evidence either. They said things like: "We Hindus believe so and so"; "We Muslims believe such and such"; "We Christians believe something else."
 
Of course, since they all believed different things, they couldn't all be right. The man with the microphone seemed to think this quite right and proper, and he didn't even try to get them to argue out their differences with each other. But that isn't the point I want to make for the moment. I simply want to ask where their beliefs come from. They came from tradition. Tradition means beliefs handed down from grandparent to parent to child, and so on. Or from books handed down through the centuries. Traditional beliefs often start from almost nothing; perhaps somebody just makes them up originally, like the stories about Thor and Zeus. But after they've been handed down over some centuries, the mere fact that they are so old makes them seem special. People believe things simply because people have believed the same thing over the centuries. That's tradition.
 
The trouble with tradition is that, no matter how long ago a story was made up, it is still exactly as true or untrue as the original story was. If you make up a story that isn't true, handing it down over a number of centuries doesn't make it any truer!
 
Most people in England have been baptised into the Church of England, but this is only one of the branches of the Christian religion. There are other branches such as Russian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Methodist churches. They all believe different things. The Jewish religion and the Muslim religion are a bit more different still; and there are different kinds of Jews and of Muslims. People who believe even slightly different things from each other go to war over their disagreements. So you might think that they must have some pretty good reasons - evidence - for believing what they believe. But actually, their different beliefs are entirely due to different traditions.
 
Let's talk about one particular tradition. Roman Catholics believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was so special that she didn't die but was lifted bodily in to Heaven. Other Christian traditions disagree, saying that Mary did die like anybody else. These other religions don't talk about much and, unlike Roman Catholics, they don't call her the "Queen of Heaven." The tradition that Mary's body was lifted into Heaven is not an old one. The bible says nothing on how she died; in fact, the poor woman is scarcely mentioned in the Bible at all. The belief that her body was lifted into Heaven wasn't invented until about six centuries after Jesus' time. At first, it was just made up, in the same way as any story like "Snow White" was made up. But, over the centuries, it grew into a tradition and people started to take it seriously simply because the story had been handed down over so many generations. The older the tradition became, the more people took it seriously. It finally was written down as and official Roman Catholic belief only very recently, in 1950, when I was the age you are now. But the story was no more true in 1950 than it was when it was first invented six hundred years after Mary's death.
 
I'll come back to tradition at the end of my letter, and look at it in another way. But first, I must deal with the two other bad reasons for believing in anything: authority and revelation.
 
Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing in it because you are told to believe it by somebody important. In the Roman Catholic Church, the pope is the most important person, and people believe he must be right just because he is the pope. In one branch of the Muslim religion, the important people are the old men with beards called ayatollahs. Lots of Muslims in this country are prepared to commit murder, purely because the ayatollahs in a faraway country tell them to.
 
When I say that it was only in 1950 that Roman Catholics were finally told that they had to believe that Mary's body shot off to Heaven, what I mean is that in 1950, the pope told people that they had to believe it. That was it. The pope said it was true, so it had to be true! Now, probably some of the things that that pope said in his life were true and some were not true. There is no good reason why, just because he was the pope, you should believe everything he said any more than you believe everything that other people say. The present pope ( 1995 ) has ordered his followers not to limit the number of babies they have. If people follow this authority as slavishly as he would wish, the results could be terrible famines, diseases, and wars, caused by overcrowding.
 
Of course, even in science, sometimes we haven't seen the evidence ourselves and we have to take somebody else's word for it. I haven't, with my own eyes, seen the evidence that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Instead, I believe books that tell me the speed of light. This looks like "authority." But actually, it is much better than authority, because the people who wrote the books have seen the evidence and anyone is free to look carefully at the evidence whenever they want. That is very comforting. But not even the priests claim that there is any evidence for their story about Mary's body zooming off to Heaven.
 
The third kind of bad reason for believing anything is called "revelation." If you had asked the pope in 1950 how he knew that Mary's body disappeared into Heaven, he would probably have said that it had been "revealed" to him. He shut himself in his room and prayed for guidance. He thought and thought, all by himself, and he became more and more sure inside himself. When religious people just have a feeling inside themselves that something must be true, even though there is no evidence that it is true, they call their feeling "revelation." It isn't only popes who claim to have revelations. Lots of religious people do. It is one of their main reasons for believing the things that they do believe. But is it a good reason?
 
Suppose I told you that your dog was dead. You'd be very upset, and you'd probably say, "Are you sure? How do you know? How did it happen?" Now suppose I answered: "I don't actually know that Pepe is dead. I have no evidence. I just have a funny feeling deep inside me that he is dead." You'd be pretty cross with me for scaring you, because you'd know that an inside "feeling" on its own is not a good reason for believing that a whippet is dead. You need evidence. We all have inside feelings from time to time, sometimes they turn out to be right and sometimes they don't. Anyway, different people have opposite feelings, so how are we to decide whose feeling is right? The only way to be sure that a dog is dead is to see him dead, or hear that his heart has stopped; or be told by somebody who has seen or heard some real evidence that he is dead.
 
People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise, you' d never be confident of things like "My wife loves me." But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little titbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn't a purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.
 
Sometimes people have a strong inside feeling that somebody loves them when it is not based upon any evidence, and then they are likely to be completely wrong. 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.
 
Inside feelings are valuable in science, too, but only for giving you ideas that you later test by looking for evidence. A scientist can have a "hunch'" about an idea that just "feels" right. In itself, this is not a good reason for believing something. But it can be a good reason for spending some time doing a particular experiment, or looking in a particular way for evidence. Scientists use inside feelings all the time to get ideas. But they are not worth anything until they are supported by evidence.
 
I promised that I'd come back to tradition, and look at it in another way. I want to try to explain why tradition is so important to us. All animals are built (by the process called evolution) to survive in the normal place in which their kind live. Lions are built to be good at surviving on the plains of Africa. Crayfish to be good at surviving in fresh, water, while lobsters are built to be good at surviving in the salt sea. People are animals, too, and we are built to be good at surviving in a world full of ..... other people. Most of us don't hunt for our own food like lions or lobsters; we buy it from other people who have bought it from yet other people. We ''swim'' through a "sea of people." Just as a fish needs gills to survive in water, people need brains that make them able to deal with other people. Just as the sea is full of salt water, the sea of people is full of difficult things to learn. Like language.
 
You speak English, but your friend Ann-Kathrin speaks German. You each speak the language that fits you to '`swim about" in your own separate "people sea." Language is passed down by tradition. There is no other way . In England, Pepe is a dog. In Germany he is ein Hund. Neither of these words is more correct, or more true than the other. Both are simply handed down. In order to be good at "swimming about in their people sea," children have to learn the language of their own country, and lots of other things about their own people; and this means that they have to absorb, like blotting paper, an enormous amount of traditional information. (Remember that traditional information just means things that are handed down from grandparents to parents to children.) The child's brain has to be a sucker for traditional information. And the child can't be expected to sort out good and useful traditional information, like the words of a language, from bad or silly traditional information, like believing in witches and devils and ever-living virgins.
 
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. Lots of what the grown-ups tell them is true and based on evidence, or at least sensible. But if some of it is false, silly, or even wicked, there is nothing to stop the children believing that, too. Now, when the children grow up, what do they do? Well, of course, they tell it to the next generation of children. So, once something gets itself strongly believed - even if it is completely untrue and there never was any reason to believe it in the first place - it can go on forever.
 
Could this be what has happened with religions ? Belief that there is a god or gods, belief in Heaven, belief that Mary never died, belief that Jesus never had a human father, belief that prayers are answered, belief that wine turns into blood - not one of these beliefs is backed up by any good evidence. Yet millions of people believe them. Perhaps this because they were told to believe them when they were told to believe them when they were young enough to believe anything.
 
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. Even within Christians, Roman Catholics believe different things from Church of England people or Episcopalians, Shakers or Quakers , Mormons or Holy Rollers, and are all utterly covinced that they are right and the others are wrong. They believe different things for exactly the same kind of reason as you speak English and Ann-Kathrin speaks German. Both languages are, in their own country, the right language to speak. But it can't be true that different religions are right in their own countries, because different religions claim that opposite things are true. Mary can't be alive in Catholic Southern Ireland but dead in Protestant Northern Ireland.
 
What can we do about all this ? It is not easy for you to do anything, because you are only ten. But you could try this. Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: "Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority, or revelation?" 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.
 
Your loving
 
Daddy
Last Updated on Tuesday, 24 April 2012 22:54
 
Here's to your own perfect Christmas PDF Print E-mail
Written by Xue Jianyue   
Tuesday, 24 April 2012 22:31

This is a column written by Ong Soh Chin, senior writer from the Straits Times. It is published on December 24, 2010. She shares with readers her feelings as an agnostic during Christmas, the birthday of Jesus Christ and a special day for all Christians.

EVERY year, when the Orchard Road Christmas lights come on - sometimes prettily twinkly like colourful stars, at other times blindingly garish, like Vegas showgirls - I am reminded of the many reasons for the season.
 
For me, Christmas is the most ecumenical of holidays. Coming at the end of the year, it is a timely occasion for solemn reflection, just as it is also a time for baubles and tinsel, for pageantry and pizzazz.
 
The Orchard Road lights bring together people of every stripe and persuasion, albeit in possession of a camera and the temerity to brave the never-ending snarl of traffic. Similarly, Christmas is a time to enjoy the giving and receiving of gifts, to celebrate friends and family, and to be thankful for life's many blessings, no matter what religion one subscribes to.
 
To me, Christmas is an all-encompassing, all-loving state of mind, not circumscribed by dogma or teachings.
 
As an agnostic, I am thankful especially for the privilege of growing up and living in a secular country which has allowed me to immerse myself in the different religions of the land, to mingle with the people - including friends and family - who practise these religions and to finally make a decision for myself to not adhere to any one faith in particular.
 
I remember a time not so long ago when one never really spoke about religion in polite conversation, just as one never really talked about politics or sex or how much one earned. Things have changed dramatically in recent years.
 
Political talk is par for the course in a population that is increasingly well-travelled, well-informed and well-versed.
 
Lists are produced regularly listing the world's richest people and how much they earn.
 
As for sex, with the rise of tabloidism, reality TV, the Internet and Paris Hilton, the world is now our gynaecologist.
 
Coming back to the matter at hand, there also appears to be an increasing religiosity in Singapore, brought about partly by post-Sept 11 soul-searching, partly by a dissatisfaction with materialism and partly by the breakdown of family and social structures.
 
Religion has certainly been very much in the public discourse of late, and this has brought about a closer examination of the role of faith in society and, perhaps more importantly, the way in which different faiths must co-exist peacefully with one another.
 
The increasing frequency of inter-faith dialogues to foster a sense of community and mutual understanding between religions is a positive thing. There is definitely no virtue to staying mute if silence breeds suspicion. However, in these discourses, attended usually by leaders from the Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Baha'i communities, one voice remains notably absent - that of the non-believer.
 
Non-believers are invisible in the public domain for rather mundane but very real reasons. For starters, since we do not subscribe to any religion, we do not have religious holidays. We are never featured in the news media marking holy days at places of worship. We do not have our own temples or churches where we can gather as one in fellowship. We have no holy tracts or messiahs, no rich historical tradition to offer.
 
We exist as a silent vacuum of energy, like a black hole, a collapsed star. Just as a black hole can only be observed through its interaction with other matter, non-believers exist largely in dialectical relation to people of faith.
 
However, agnostics, atheists and humanists also live by moral codes and ethics, shaped by the laws of the land as well as the general Golden Rule of mankind - to behave towards others as you would want them to behave towards you.
 
It is no less or no more than what the holy books teach, and no less effective a moral compass to steer one through life's journey. And while most of us ascribe to the supremacy of science above spirit, there are many people of science who are also religious, or who admit, at least, to the limitations of science.
 
Even Stephen Hawking, an avowed atheist, has admitted that 'what is learned today changes tomorrow'. In other words, the laws of science are not immutable either.
 
At the end of the day, no matter what religion one holds to or doesn't, everyone is in a quest for truth and meaning in life. As Christmas approaches, I hope that all of us - in our individual personalised places of worship, physical or ethereal, real or metaphorical - will find equanimity and happiness in that quest.
 
In short, may you find your own perfect Christmas, every day of the year, wherever you are and whatever you believe in.
Last Updated on Tuesday, 24 April 2012 22:45
 
Aware: Lessons from a Fiasco PDF Print E-mail
Written by Xue Jianyue   
Tuesday, 24 April 2012 22:20

 

This essay was written during the Aware 'saga' in 2009 and first published on a Singapore socio-political website, The Online Citizen. The author is a respected media scholar, journalist and political commentator. The essay explores the nature of Singapore's secularism, civil activism and government policies towards religion. 

By Cherian George
 
The battle for control of Aware can be a learning experience for civil society activists and the wider public. There are at least three lessons to reflect on: the brand of secularism that works for Singapore; the type of representation that civil society organisations should offer; and the level of transparency and accountability that the public deserve from such groups.
 
Secularism
 
Some may view the outcome of the Aware showdown as a triumph over religious values and then – depending on their standpoint – either despair or gloat. But, this would be a wrong reading of events and only set the stage for more confrontational encounters.
 
The battle for Aware should be seen instead as a struggle over how – not whether – to insert faith-based values into public life. While there are some societies that interpret secularism as delegitimising the entry of religious values into the public sphere, that has never been Singapore’s way. Secularism here acknowledges that many Singaporeans are spiritually oriented; it respects their right to inject faith-based words and actions into public life. 
 
Crucially, however, the state stays separate and equidistant from the different religions. Even more crucially, when there are disagreements over public matters, Singaporean secularism cannot recognise religious arguments as a trump card. One could allow one’s reading of God’s will to dictate how one runs one’s own household or faith-based community (and even then only within the limits of the law); but God’s word cannot be the final word on how collective decisions are made in the public sphere. 
 
People of a particular faith must therefore be able to translate their values into secular terms to the satisfaction of fellow citizens who do not share those values, or else accept graciously that their desires are, for the moment, incompatible with what the wider society wants.
 
The Aware battle was not between the profane and the sacred, but between those who understand Singaporean secularism and those who apparently do not. The concerted steps they took to subvert a secular organisation and rid its leadership of its traditional diversity showed that the insurgents did not want merely to be part of a conversation; they wanted to be the only voice.
 
When intolerant – and considerably more violent – voices have surfaced in other religious communities, the moderate mainstream had to rise up to reclaim the microphone, to assure themselves and their fellow citizens that their faith was entirely compatible with peaceful co-existence in a multicultural and democratic society. Similarly, one of the most positive outcomes of the Aware saga is the strong assertion by Singaporeans of faith and their religious leaders: we are here, our faith makes us and our society stronger, but we will not impose our values on others.
 
Representation
 
The Aware old guard accused the insurgents of not reflecting Singapore’s cultural diversity. The insurgents retorted that, compared with the liberal old guard, their conservative values were more representative of Singapore’s majority. Who was right? Both, probably. But, neither diversity nor representativeness is a necessary or sufficient criterion when assessing a civil society group. 
 
First, while the expectation that a civil society organisation (CSO) should represent the majority view is superficially seductive, it is in fact fundamentally flawed. CSOs are not political parties, which must appeal to the majority to win elections. One of the chief values of CSOs is precisely that they fill the gaps left by political parties (and by the private sector), by serving causes that the majority may not embrace. 
 
For example, the majority of Singaporeans would probably not go out of their way to improve the lives of strangers with disabilities. When voluntary welfare organisations work passionately for the interests of disabled, it would be rather perverse if we criticised them for not representing the views of most Singaporeans. 
 
Indeed, if crude democratic logic were applied to gender issues, there would have been no Aware in the first place: when it was set up, most Singaporeans – men and women – held sexist views about the proper place of women and the abuses that they should endure quietly. That many CSOs are not representative is a fact, and a healthy one.
 
Still, some may wonder if society should tolerate CSOs that embrace seemingly far-out views. Again, it is important not to confuse CSOs with political parties. Electoral politics is more or less a zero-sum game. The winning party controls the government, which in turn monopolises certain powers and resources – including the powers to tax and to command the armed forces.
 
Civil society space is quite different. CSOs can gain influence, but have no power to set national policy. Furthermore, multiple CSOs can work within the same space simultaneously. Since a CSO has no monopoly over its area of work, it has no moral obligation to be representative in its values – or, for that matter, in its racial or religious composition. If others are fundamentally opposed to its direction, they can set up their own organisation.
 
CSOs face an inherent tension. On the one hand, they require a certain solidarity and unity of purpose if they are to overcome challenges. On the other hand, internal diversity can be key strength: a group’s problem-solving capacity is enhanced when it is able to look at situations from multiple angles. 
 
While it may be unfair and unrealistic to expect each CSO to reflect all colours of the rainbow, a CSO that aims to have national impact should certainly be outward-looking. An internally homogeneous community-based CSO is not a problem in itself; it should be judged by the friends it has. It deserves to be viewed with skepticism if it is unable to work with groups representing other communities. Fortunately, several faith-based and ethnic-based groups in Singapore have excellent records of working side by side with other groups, regardless of race, language or religion.
 
Transperency
 
Setting aside the substantive disagreements, the Aware saga offers lessons about civil society governance and process. What alarmed many neutral observers was the way the insurgents went about their plans. 
 
Civil society groups that want influence and respect should be transparent in their dealings and be ready to account for themselves. It would be an understatement to say that the insurgents were unprepared for the intense public scrutiny they attracted.
 
They were secretive in their plan to take over Aware and coy about their intentions. Based on their public statements, it is still unclear how much they were motivated by a single issue: their opposition to Aware’s liberal stand on homosexuality. If this was their target all along, it does not speak well for them that they did not state it plainly and publicly at the outset.
 
If this was not their primary concern, then an even more troubling concern arises. Their allegations at the height of the dispute, that Aware had been promoting homosexuality to children and teens, smack of a cynical (but, sadly, historically effective) political ploy: win support from the masses by turning a marginalised minority into an object of fear.
 
In many societies, the tactic would have worked. Governments lacking in moral courage are known to side with intolerant forces when they whip up mass sentiment against minorities. Fortunately, it did not work here. The Ministry of Education’s measured and rational response took the wind out of the sails of the insurgents and exposed them as scaremongers.
 
The Government is not known to be sympathetic to the progressive agenda of Aware’s liberals. Perhaps the insurgents had hoped that dragging the school sexuality programme into the debate would prod the Government to take its side. If so, they miscalculated. If there is one thing that is stronger than its antipathy towards liberal values, it is the Government’s resistance to letting its power and prestige become tools in the hands of any lobby group, whatever its ideological complexion.
 
No doubt, the weekend’s events would have made the insurgents feel utterly misunderstood and underappreciated, as losing factions are wont to. They have nobody to blame but themselves. No matter how pure their intentions, their words and actions were patently out of place in Singaporean civil society.
Last Updated on Tuesday, 24 April 2012 22:34
 
Being Human, Humane, Humanist—the Whole Shebang PDF Print E-mail
Written by Xue Jianyue   
Tuesday, 24 April 2012 22:11

This is a speech given by Catherine Lim upon receiving the Humanist of the Year Award 2011. Catherine is a well-known Singapore author who has published several books and political commentaries. The transcript is also published on her website and it describes her journey to become a humanist.

By Catherine Lim
 
I had the pleasure and honour of being presented the inaugural ‘Humanist of the Year’ award by the Humanist Society (Singapore) on 23 July 2011. Below is the transcript of my speech at the presentation:
 
I must begin by warmly thanking the Humanist Society for the inaugural award of Humanist of the Year. What an honour! Now somebody once described the ideal audience as intelligent, highly educated and a little drunk. Well, you qualify except on the last point. But not to worry. I am so intoxicated with the sheer pleasure of the award that I have enough giddy-headedness and light-heartedness to share all round!
 
But there’s a group of people who, alas, can’t share in my joy today. They’re my deeply religious friends, who are genuinely concerned about my spiritual welfare and who will view this award from a society of atheists, agnostics and free-thinkers as yet one more proof of the woeful state of my soul. I think they’ve given up on me! If I dare tell them that it has taken me thirty years of hard work to reach this status of the sinner, they will surely shake their heads in disbelief and say sadly: ‘Well, a fraction of that effort would have earned you sainthood!’
 
Let me now tell you about my strange but wonderful 30-year journey during which instead of losing my soul, as my kind friends feared, I reclaimed it. It began with saying goodbye to the Christian god whom I had worshipped since converting to the religion at age 15. Now it is said that the reprobate will be punished with a huge, God-shaped hole in his inner being, rather like a massive crater blown out of the ground in a catastrophic volcanic eruption. This is of course just a fanciful way of saying that religion is so crucial to a person’s well-being, that its abandonment will leave an unfillable void, a dark, screaming abyss of despair.
 
When, at age 40, I left the Roman Catholic religion, I was most relieved to be spared this horrifying punishment of the God-shaped hole. Indeed, instead of the fearsome, gaping abyss, I saw a bright open expanse of ground waiting to be built upon anew. Instead of despair, I felt only excitement at the thought of constructing my own paradigm of belief, conviction, hope and guidance, to replace the old one imposed by the teachings of the Church.
 
Now if is true that learning begins with unlearning, and creation begins with destruction, there was a lot of demolition work for me to do first. Out came the wrecking ball, which I used with great zest to swing against and get rid of, once and for all, the contradictions of my old religion. They all had to do with a perfect God who, alas, created imperfect men whose imperfections could condemn them to eternal punishment, a loving, all powerful god who, alas, was either not loving enough to save his children from unspeakable suffering, or not powerful enough to do so.
 
For years, taking on the role of God’s defender and apologist, I was troubled by these contradictions which led to all kinds of paradoxes. So I cunningly adopted what must be the theist’s ingenious strategy to get around the problem, namely, by describing God apophatically, that is, in the language of negatives only. Thus God is incomprehensible, inconceivable, unknowable, unfathomable, ineffable, all these negatives in effect making him one huge mystery, like a black hole, into which all the troublesome, unanswerable questions about him could be simply swallowed up, and all rational thinking stopped instantly by the stern injunction of faith. I was determined that such a deity, causing confusion and distress all round, would have no place in my new paradigm.
 
Indeed, it would be a human-centred paradigm, that is, it would adopt the humanistic approach of rational thinking based on the use of reason rather than a dependence on divine or supernatural agencies, with a focus on the here and now, rather than the hereafter. For a start, it would use this approach to answer some of those large existential questions which human beings have been asking from time immemorial, in their desire to understand themselves and the world around them: Who are we? Where did we come from? What is our place in the universe? Where did it come from?
 
The avid seeking of factual knowledge is innate in human beings; hence it would be an essential part of my paradigm. The humanist approach, based on empirical evidence, would ensure that knowledge about our universe comes not from a literal interpretation of the story of creation in the Bible, but from the hard-earned discoveries of cosmologists, planetary scientists and geologists. It would also ensure that what we know about our human nature, our instincts, drives and passions, what we share with the animal world, comes not from theological teachings about man’s fall from grace and subsequent punishment by God, but from the meticulous work of biologists, evolutionary scientists, anthropologists and paleontologists.
 
Science, as we know, is not infallible, but scientific knowledge is reliable precisely because it is open, transparent and best of all, subject to independent verification and correction. Today, it is even more dependable because it can be validated by the most advanced instruments, such as the Hubble Telescope used in the exploration of the vast cosmos of distant stars and planets, and the electron microscope used in the exploration of the tiniest cells and molecules inside our bodies. Hence the knowledge forming a crucial part of my paradigm would be the science-based, empirically and instrumentally validated kind.
 
But knowledge is not enough; it needs wisdom to be useful. Indeed, even the most extensive and advanced knowledge would be quite useless on its own, a string of zeroes only, without the integer of wisdom to give it value. My paradigm therefore would have to comprise both knowledge and wisdom, in equal parts. You can see how ambitious it was becoming! So the next set of crucial questions to ask, to build this second stage of the model, would be: how should we behave towards each other? What ought we to do, to lead good, useful lives? How do we give meaning to our existence?
 
For the answers, I had to leave the domain of scientific fact and turn to that equally vast domain concerned with values—religious, moral and philosophical systems, folkloric traditions of myth and ritual, even primal, aboriginal belief systems. Here is a vast repository of human wisdom that has accumulated through the ages, which uniquely defines our human species. Here is a veritable Ali Baba’s cave of treasures for the truth-seeker to pick and choose!
 
Yes, I wanted to pick and choose. For surely, I thought, it is not given to any one religion to claim monopoly of truth, nor to any one philosophical system to claim totality of wisdom. Each is a manifestation of but one aspect of that vast, collective storehouse of human insights, which belongs to everyone. Moreover, it is a continually growing storehouse, since the human spirit never ceases its quest. Wisdom-seeking is thus always a work-in-progress, never a completed process.
 
Living in the new millennium, I considered myself extremely lucky to have a huge legacy of hundreds, indeed thousands of years’ worth of wisdom at my disposal. I remember the sheer joy of making this or that selection, from this or that religion, to take home for the construction of my personal paradigm. I eagerly co-opted the warmth of Christian love and agape, the hospitality of Islam, the compassion of Buddhism, the sensuous exuberance of Hinduism, the close affinity with nature of the primal, aboriginal religions. I helped myself with equal excitement to the treasure trove of the thoughts of philosophers, from both East and West, down the ages, from the ancients, right down to modern thinkers grappling with the special quandaries of our times. My paradigm would be unabashedly eclectic and hybrid, endlessly fluid, open to revision and change. Above all, it would be deeply spiritual, without being religious.
 
Knowledge and wisdom—they ultimately constitute the essence of any worthwhile guide for human behaviour. For knowledge needs wisdom to give it purpose, and wisdom needs knowledge to give it relevance. Their interdependence is reflected in the title of my talk: ‘Being Human, Humane, Humanist—the whole Shebang’, the three words linked together in an affirmation of human identity and dignity, ‘human’ connoting the knowledge we need to understand ourselves and others, ‘humane’ the qualities to bring to this relationship, and ‘humanist’ the use of reason to apply to both.
 
The value of the humanist approach is best seen in the need to take an informed and principled stand on the most controversial moral issues in our times, namely, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality and human cloning. With specific reference to abortion: what would be an unacceptable stand according to the imperatives derived from my paradigm would be the outright condemnation of abortion as sinful under any circumstances, in the belief that God has already implanted an immortal soul made to his image at the moment of conception. One immediately thinks of extreme circumstances, such as when a young girl gets pregnant after a brutal rape, or when a woman is in danger of losing her life unless she terminates the pregnancy. How can abstract doctrine trump real crying human need?
 
The issue of abortion, like many issues related to life and death, will continue to be an emotionally-charged one. But whatever controversy it generates should have nothing to do with religious zeal, only with informed standpoints based on scientific findings. For instance, scientists may agree on a certain criterion by which abortion is inhumane and therefore unethical, such as the criterion of sentience, that is, the foetus becomes a sentient being when it is capable of feeling pain, and hence is entitled to protection under human rights, just as even lower forms of sentient life such as chickens are protected by animal rights. It does not matter if scientists do not agree on exactly when sentience takes place in foetal development. For the openness of scientific debate and the rigorousness of scientific method will ensure that reason, rather than religious emotionalism will prevail in the end.
 
Again in the equally contentious issue of homosexuality, the humanist cannot condone the religious fundamentalist’s prejudice against homosexuals based on Biblical evidence that they are an abomination in the eyes of God. The humanist would want to know if there is a genetic basis for gay behaviour, just as he would want to know if there is a genetic basis for criminal behaviour, since this will have an important bearing on questions of responsibility and justice. In general, the humanist will shy away from any extreme, absolutist stand on any human issue, simply because that will not square with the complex realities of the human condition.
 
Why the need for a paradigm? Why not simply go by the workings of the conscience which after all has served us well in our day to day lives?
 
My reason is a very personal one. I have to confess that my conscience can be a very unreliable guide in an increasingly complex world where forces such as globalization, the Internet, social media and most all, the mind-boggling advancement of scientific technology, especially biotechnology, have multiplied our choices, extended our moral dilemmas or even created new ones. The voice of my conscience is easily shouted down by the noise of competing influences, its sight easily dimmed by the swirling fogs of flux and change. Therefore for my own peace of mind I needed to work out for myself a clear system of rules and guidelines, my personal equivalent of the Ten Commandments, to provide a bright beacon where my conscience had only been a faint lamp.
 
A summary of my completed paradigm might go something like this: its goal, truth; its method, reason; its highest values, tolerance and compassion. It has given me a belief system which though avowedly secularist and atheistic, has all the hallmarks of a religion: there is a godhead, not out there, but right here, within each one of us, a sense of mystery and awe, not at miracles, but something even better, the marvels of nature everywhere around us, and best of all, there is a heaven right here on earth itself, a heaven of peace and harmony, attainable by all of us.
 
It has been an exhilarating 30 year journey—with no desire whatsoever, on my part, for arrival! For both knowledge and wisdom are inexhaustible and as goals, will always be beyond our reach: just when we think they are within our grasp, they slip away, but beckon and entice us on, making the journey more pleasurable than the destination, the road more enjoyable than the inn.
 
My quest for meaning—for ultimately that is what it is—has brought me so much satisfaction—emotional, intellectual, spiritual—that, at the risk of scandalizing my religious friends, I’m going to borrow the breathless language of religious ecstasy to describe it. Thus can I truly say that my atheistic journey has been no less than an epiphany, a rebirth, a moksha, a nirvana.
Last Updated on Tuesday, 24 April 2012 22:55