The Royal Society’s Zeal

This week (Seeptembe 15, 2008) , the Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s national academy of science, forced Michael Reiss to resign from his position as director of education because of a speech he made in which he reportedly said that “creationism is best seen by science teachers not as a misconception but as a worldview,” and therefore students must be allowed to discuss it in class. He also stated that a “student who believes in creationism has a nonscientific way of seeing the world, and one very rarely changes one’s worldview as a result of a 50-minute lesson.”
In the eyes of the prestigious Royal Society these are blasphemous utterances. According to a statement released by the venerable society, “Professor Michael Reiss’ recent comments … were open to misinterpretation … .While it was not his intention, this has led to damage to the society’s reputation. As a result, Professor Reiss and the Royal Society have agreed that, in the best interests of the society, he will step down immediately.” Whoever wrote this lofty condemnation of Reiss, a biologist and ordained Church of England minister, obviously does not realize that this move has probably led to even greater damage to the society’s reputation. One would have expected the society to clarify Reiss’ comments and avert any misinterpretation of them instead of summarily relieving him of his position.
If this reminds some of us of the treatment that Galileo received at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church, it should. In the one case, it was a fear of scientific knowledge, and in the other case, it is a fear of respect for religious visions.
An unexpected long-range effect of the Enlightenment has been to develop in rationalist thinkers and movements a veritable phobia for anything smacking of religion. After all, Voltaire’s injunction “Ecrasez l’infâme”—Wipe out religion!—has still not been fulfilled after more than two centuries.
This is quite irritating to many. In their enthusiasm to eradicate God from the hearts and religions from the minds of millions of people, those addicted to ratioaltry (the worship of reason alone), like all who are constrained by mono-visions, can’t brook any expression of a different view. When a devotee of Darwin (like Reiss) so much as suggests that we should allow other perspectives to be expressed in a classroom, he is pounced upon as a dangerous supporter of the forces of superstition and anti-science.
What such rationalist zeal fails to see is that by its intolerance it is not only stifling free thought—stooping to a level that science is supposed to condemn—but is also engendering sympathy and support for the forces that regard science as a dangerous element in society. It alienates millions by creating the impression that science is out to destroy everything that they hold to be uplifting, fulfilling, and meaningful.
Those who fear an idea usually silence those who express it. If you are not against my enemy, say people who are insecure, then you are not my friend. You don’t have to be a religious fanatic to behave this way.

Multiuniverse-metaphysics

Since the rise of modern science in the 16th century, science has been meticulous about what it will consider to be scientifically acceptable or even worthy of consideration, and what it will reject outright. Working in this framework, science has made stupendous progress in acquiring new understanding about the physical universe and extending the boundaries of human knowledge.
The question of the origin of the universe was not even raised by serious science until the second decade of the 20th century. Then, on the basis of observational evidence of the recession of galaxies, the notion of the big bang emerged. This has been improved upon and modified in interesting ways. At the same time, some interpretations arising from quantum mechanics suggest that there may be countless universes, not all like our own.
What is interesting in all of this is that while science started with an explicit rejection of metaphysics about the ultimate, physics has given rise to its own variety of metaphysics: uncertain and often fantastic models, but generally based on abstract mathematics intelligible to a handful, and propounded by the denizens of the ivory tower. These are taken seriously by the elite esoteric community which rightly enjoys the respect and trust of the rest of humankind. The experts present their latest speculations to the public through popular books and interviews with authority of any priestly class, with periodic revisions of scientific cosmogenesis.
All this is fine. After all, they provide food for thought and are as uplifting as good poetry and fine plays which take us away from humdrum life and depressions that are likely to ensue by contemplating on the current political and economic scene. Even if they are as incomprehensible to the uninitiated as abstract art or as jarring as dissonant music, these scientific ruminations come from men and women who are in a selfless quest for truth, whose goal is to unscramble the ultimate mysteries of the tangible world. But then, when one presents religious interpretations of origins and mythologies about different universes (what are heaven and hell and the lokas of Hindu reflection if not other universes?), those ideas are usually dismissed as expressions of the unscientific imaginativeness of our distant ancestors.
Of course I am not arguing that we must give religious pictures of the unfathomable cosmos equal billing in scientific textbooks: that would be mathematically impossible, conceptually alien, and terminologically unacceptable. I am merely drawing attention to the fact that in ontological terms and on the criteria of verifiability, current cosmological multiverses, for all their fascinating coherence and expert sources, are not much different from ancient visions of worlds beyond. I also suspect that these are likely to have a much shorter shelf-life even in the ranks of scientific literature than the more meaningful mythopoeia of ancient vintage.