Economist: How religion takes advantage of human nature

Great article in the Economist on how to build a religion. Excerpt:

At the outset, you must realise that success is unlikely if you go wholly against the grain of human nature. Granted, religion is all about forging the perfect man, or at least ensuring that, as far as possible, he lives up to divine expectations. But preternatural power has forged man in such a way that he will swallow some of your ideas about how to achieve this more easily than others.

By stressing the right ones, then, you can do to give a fillip to the painstaking process of perfecting mankind. This is what some temporal powers have been doing of late, when trying to nudge their citizens towards individual choices which are more socially desirable, with notable success. You can do the same. This will, however, require that you rein in your dislike for a moment and listen to what those ungodly scientists have to say, despite their unremitting efforts to explain away the need for your enterprise.

As in the case of states, your principal concern is to encourage co-operation among your flock. In the long run, groups that co-operate more have an advantage over those whose members are less willing to do so. This also means limiting the number of actual and potential shirkers. People, it seems, are naturally inclined to do this anyway, but you can egg them on with a few simple tricks.

First, you are better off plumping for a personal god, rather than some sort of indeterminate life force. Research shows that people who profess a belief in such a deity judge moral transgressions more harshly, which in turn tends to make them more willing to abide by the rules, and expend resources on enforcing them. This may be down to a conviction that they are being incessantly watched over by an attentive minder, who tallies their contributions (or lack thereof) and rewards (or punishments) in a cosmic ledger. Speaking of which, incorporating the idea of just deserts is a fine plan, too. Apparently, people are born with an intuition to that effect. Just remember to keep the misfortunes visited on wrongdoers commensurate with their misdeeds. Otherwise people will think it unfair and won't buy it. No fire and brimstone for littering, and suchlike.

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It's a control thing: Religion and human reproduction

Christianity is, like many other religions, a reproduction control system.

Its various sects take great pains to enforce a sexual code of conduct—and for very good reason. There's no better way for churches to control group behavior and ensure the growth of their flock than through the control of human reproduction. This explains why many Christians find it so important to get involved in biotechnological and bioethical discourse; it's crucial for Christian leaders to show their followers that they have authority over these areas, as authority imbues a sense of ownership.

Catholicism is a prime example. The Vatican's uncompromising stance on virtually all facets of reproduction shows how integral it is to the faith. Birth control, abortion, homosexuality and recreational sex (including sexual acts and positions that cannot lead to procreation) are considered taboos as each of these things represent a kind of subversion. And as far as health science is concerned, procedures like in vitro fertilization (IVF) are shunned upon as such practices wrest control away from the Church and towards individual couples and doctors. The injunction to 'not play God' is a memetic trick which convinces the faithful to avoid certain areas of inquiry traditionally reserved for the Church.

At the same time, Christians work to uphold so-called family values, knowing full well that the family unit is unquestioningly the most important vector for the entrenchment and spread of religious values.

Religious leaders and ideologues may argue that the reasons for their interest in human biology extend beyond mere reproduction. Instead, they argue that their domain extends into the realm of morality and spirituality, and that 'reproductive control' is a trite interpretation of their motives.

Now, I'm sure many of them are sincere when they make this case. That's how memes work, with hosts convinced that they're acting rationally and in the collective best interest. Memetics is, at its core, a study of the tendencies and vulnerabilities in human psychology.

In the case of human reproduction, Christians make the case for such things as embryonic personhood (or ensoulment) and espouse a strong interpretation of naturalism (i.e. humans were created in God's image). The problem with these arguments, however, is that they are rooted in fictions. The subsequent rationalizations and injunctions that emerge from these premises are thus intrinsically flawed.

Ultimately, once the arguments are stripped down and exposed for what they are, it's painfully obvious that the Christian memeplex is merely working to control human reproduction and the makeup of family units for the purpose of producing more willing hosts. One merely needs to stand back and look at the world's most successful religions as proof; those faiths that work to control human reproduction, namely Christianity, Islam and Hinduism (though Islam and Hinduism less so than Christianity) are undeniably the ones who have fared the best over the ages. It's the killer memetic adaptation.

As an example of the opposite effect, take the Shaker movement. It's a 250 year old Christian sect that acquired a rather disadvantageous characteristic—call it a maladaptive trait. According to Shaker law, all members of the faith are forbidden to engage in sexual activity. Reproduction is completely prohibited. The only way for Shakers to have children is through adoption, but even that was rejected in 1960. The only way new members could be acquired was from outside the community, which happened with great infrequency.

Today, the Shakers are all but finished. Their communities started to dwindle in the late 1800s. Although there were 6,000 believers at the peak of the Shaker movement, there were only twelve Shaker communities left by 1920. As of today, they are down to their last three members.

While most Christian sects have avoided this particular problem, they're not immune to changing social patterns and mores. The Vatican is having fits over the whole birth control thing. When it comes to family planning and recreational sex, Catholics and Christians alike are increasingly turning a blind eye to scripture. Couples want to continue engaging in sexual activity without having to have eight children. Additionally, infertile couples are choosing to have babies through IVF despite the Church's admonition against it.

The decline of Christian influence in much of the developed world (especially in Europe, but except, quite perplexingly, the USA) can be attributed to higher living standards and improved education—factors that lead couples to want smaller families and less to do with organized religion. Meanwhile, Christianity and Islam continues to spread in developing nations whose populations are still primed for religious memes.

But given the speed with which the developing world is catching up to the rest, it will only be a matter of time before they too start to shun religious laws that govern sexual activities and reproduction. Mark this as yet another reason to bring everyone up to first world standards.

Daniel Dennett on domesticating the wild memes of religion

Check out this fantastic talk by philosopher Daniel Dennett from 2006 about religion as a natural phenomenon and how it works to manipulate its hosts for replicative purposes. Be sure to set aside the 40 minutes and watch the entire lecture.

If you're interested in this topic, be sure to check out his book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

NYT: The first church of robotics

Computer scientist and technology critic Jaron Lanier offers his two cents on the silicon valley mindset in his op-ed, "The first church of robotics." Excerpt:

The answer is simply that computer scientists are human, and are as terrified by the human condition as anyone else. We, the technical elite, seek some way of thinking that gives us an answer to death, for instance. This helps explain the allure of a place like the Singularity University. The influential Silicon Valley institution preaches a story that goes like this: one day in the not-so-distant future, the Internet will suddenly coalesce into a super-intelligent A.I., infinitely smarter than any of us individually and all of us combined; it will become alive in the blink of an eye, and take over the world before humans even realize what’s happening.

Some think the newly sentient Internet would then choose to kill us; others think it would be generous and digitize us the way Google is digitizing old books, so that we can live forever as algorithms inside the global brain. Yes, this sounds like many different science fiction movies. Yes, it sounds nutty when stated so bluntly. But these are ideas with tremendous currency in Silicon Valley; these are guiding principles, not just amusements, for many of the most influential technologists.

It should go without saying that we can’t count on the appearance of a soul-detecting sensor that will verify that a person’s consciousness has been virtualized and immortalized. There is certainly no such sensor with us today to confirm metaphysical ideas about people, or even to recognize the contents of the human brain. All thoughts about consciousness, souls and the like are bound up equally in faith, which suggests something remarkable: What we are seeing is a new religion, expressed through an engineering culture.

What I would like to point out, though, is that a great deal of the confusion and rancor in the world today concerns tension at the boundary between religion and modernity — whether it’s the distrust among Islamic or Christian fundamentalists of the scientific worldview, or even the discomfort that often greets progress in fields like climate change science or stem-cell research.

If technologists are creating their own ultramodern religion, and it is one in which people are told to wait politely as their very souls are made obsolete, we might expect further and worsening tensions. But if technology were presented without metaphysical baggage, is it possible that modernity would not make people as uncomfortable?

Link.

HuffPo: Sims, Suffering and God: Matrix Theology and the Problem of Evil

Check out Clay Farris Naff's latest article, Sims, Suffering and God: Matrix Theology and the Problem of Evil:

And that brings us back to the Sims. How can know whether we're simulations in some superduper computer built by posthumans? Some pretty amusing objections have been raised, such as quantum tests that a simulation would fail. It seems safe to say that any sim-scientists examining the sim-universe they occupy would find that the laws of that universe are self-consistent. To assert that a future computer could simulate us, complete with consciousness, but crash when it came to testing Bell's Inequality strikes me as ludicrous. Unless, of course, the program were released by Microsoft. Oooh, sorry, Bill, cheap shot. Let's take it for granted that we could not expose a simulation from within -- unless the Creators wanted us to.

But the problem of pointless suffering leads me to very different conclusion. Recall Bostrom's first conjecture: that few or none of our civilizations reach a posthuman stage capable of building computers that can run the kind of simulation in which we might exist. There are many ways civilization could end (just ask the dinosaurs!), but the one absolutely necessary condition for survival in an environment of continually increasing technological prowess is peace. Not a mushy, bumper sticker kind of peace, but the robust containment of conflict and competition within cooperative frameworks. (Robert Wright, in his brilliant if uneven book NonZero: The Logic of Human Destiny, unfolds this idea beautifully.)

What is civilization if not a mutual agreement to sacrifice some individual desires (to not pay taxes, for example, or to run through red lights) for the greater common good? Communication, trust, and cooperation make such agreements possible, but the one ingredient in the human psyche that propels civilization forward even as we gain technological power is empathy.

Link.

Singer: Religion's regressive hold on animal rights issues

Peter Singer wonders how we can promote the need for improved animal welfare when battling ancient religious views.

The chief minister's [Mohamad Ali Rustam of Malacca] comment is yet another illustration of the generally regressive influence that religion has on ethical issues – whether they are concerned with the status of women, with sexuality, with end-of-life decisions in medicine, with the environment, or with animals. Although religions do change, they change slowly, and tend to preserve attitudes that have become obsolete and often are positively harmful.

"Go forth and multiply" was a reasonable idea when the world had a few million humans in it. Now, unrestricted multiplication of our species has become a grave risk to the environment of our planet, and a significant cause of infant mortality and poverty. Yet some religious leaders continue to condemn not only abortion, but also contraception, and their condemnation of homosexuality also has the same roots in the non-reproductive nature of same-sex relationships.

In the same way, there has been great progress, worldwide, in attitudes to animals over the past century, but some religious believers, such as Mohamad Ali Rustam, remain stuck with attitudes that were formed many centuries ago.

Independently of the problems of reactionary religious belief, the trend to establish animal testing facilities in countries with weak or no regulations is an extremely worrying one. As regulations improve in Europe, North America, Australia and other countries, it seems that unscrupulous entrepreneurs are engaged in a race to the bottom.

If we are concerned about the exploitation of human workers in countries with low standards of worker protection, we should also be concerned about the treatment of even more defenceless non-human animals. At present, the only hope of reversing this trend seems to be pressure on companies not to test their products in countries without good animal welfare regulations, and pressure on research institutions not to have links with such countries. But to unravel the connections and make them clear to consumers is, unfortunately, going to be a difficult task.

Peter Singer: To defame religion is a human right

The UN human rights council recently adopted a resolution condemning "defamation of religion" as a human rights violation. As the text of the resolution reads, "Defamation of religion is a serious affront to human dignity" that leads to "a restriction on the freedom of [religions'] adherents."

As a supporter of the UN this came as both a shock and a disappointment. It's a step in the wrong direction as we work to protect and improve the integrity of the world's cultural health. It's also a punch in the face for freedom of speech advocates.

But leave it to Princeton's Peter Singer to tell it like it really is. In a recent article for the Guardian, Singer argues that defaming religion is hardly a human rights violation. On the contrary, says singer -- it's actually a human right. We must defend the right to cause offense to believers, argues Singer, but only when it's not meant to stir up hatred.

Sounds reasonable to me.

More.

Natural selection: Darwin's God killer

It's been 150 years since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, yet public acceptance of natural selection seems as elusive as ever. A recent poll in the United States, for example, revealed that most Americans don't believe in evolution; 51% of respondents still believe that God created humans in present form while 30% think that humans evolved, but that God guided the process.

The fact that the majority of Americans reject evolution outright is likely due to the generally weak understanding of scientific principles and the ongoing devotion to biblical literalism in that country. But the explanation as to why 30% believe that God 'guided the process' is a bit more involved, one that speaks directly to the larger problem.

There's a definite 'want to have my cake and eat it, too' aspect to this position. It's often voiced by the statement, 'You can believe in evolution and still believe in God -- there's room for both.'

But what this position flatly ignores is the ultimate power of Darwin's 'dangerous' idea, that natural selection is a stand-alone process that does not require the intervention of a higher power. Consequently, it has become the fuel that powers scientific naturalism -- the conviction that all phenomenon, whether biological or physical, can be explained by autonomous processes.

Since time immemorial, religions of all sorts have offered their creation stories. It was Darwin, however, who finally explained how we really got here. And his explanation -- that we're descended from animals -- was particularly upsetting to Christian sensibilities. No longer a creature positioned between God and the animals, Darwin reduced humanity to nature. The notion that humans were just another animal in the forest was -- and still is -- a very difficult pill to swallow.

This is ultimately why evolution remains largely rejected to this very day. Human arrogance has gotten in the way and many of us fear the implications. If we lack that 'divine spark,' and if God doesn't really exist, what's to prevent us from brutalizing each other? Are humans subject to the laws of nature rather than the laws of God? And what does it even mean to speak of 'human nature?' Is that as seemingly malleable as our physical form?

These may be challenging and provocative questions, but it's in response to the truth. Without it and our devotion to reason we live in a state of confusion and fumble in the dark.

Given the evidence in support of natural selection, and given that sensible people can no longer withhold reasonable consent on the matter, the cognitive dissonance created in the minds of the faithful must pound like a migraine. Their prescription has become this fatuous and pathetic attempt to reconcile religion and science -- the suggestion that God is somehow still in charge and directing traffic. It's delusion as comfort food.

I'd like to end this article by suggesting that we'll eventually get over it, and that someday we'll all accept natural selection as truth. But given that 150 years have passed and we're still largely in denial, it's an open question as to whether or not the greater public will ever come to accept Darwin's creation story and our place in the Universe.

Hitchens gets it wrong about Buddhism

"Don't believe me, don't believe anybody, don't accept anything based on tradition. Don't believe anything based on the fact that your community believes this or your country believes this or the people that you are around believe this." - Buddha

I’ve never really paid much attention to Christopher Hitchens, renowned and reviled critic of all things religious. But when my brother recently brought his anti-Buddhist sentiments to my attention I had to take a closer look.

As it turns out, he does indeed have some very uncomplimentary things to say about Buddhism.

Hitchens essentially believes that the West has been duped by what he regards as just another religion filled with all the usual trappings. He regards Buddhism as a “faith” that “despises the mind and the free individual." He says it preaches submission and resignation, and that practitioners come to regard life as a “poor and transient thing.”

In his book, God is not Great, Hitchens writes,

"Those who become bored by conventional "Bible" religions, and seek "enlightenment" by way of the dissolution of their own critical faculties into nirvana in any form, had better take a warning. They may think they are leaving the realm of despised materialism, but they are still being asked to put their reason to sleep, and to discard their minds along with their sandals."

Wow. Pretty harsh stuff. Hitchens doesn’t mince words and slams into Buddhism like he would any other religion.

That's all fine and well, except that Buddhism isn’t just any other religion.

What Buddhism is

Yes, Buddhism has the characteristics of religion, but it offers much more than that.

It’s an epistemological philosophy and an intrapersonal approach to perception, self-awareness and self-regulation. It’s an aesthetic. It’s a non-anthropocentric ethical viewpoint that places an emphasis on meaningful, compassionate and genuine relationships. It's a type of Humanism. It encourages meditation and a mindful approach to living. It’s a worldview and methodology that promotes skepticism, rationality, empiricism and even non-conformity. It is the practical acknowledgment of the unavoidable perceptual subjectivity that is part of the human condition. It is the recognition that the mind matters and that conscious awareness can and should be optimized.

Buddhists believe that by paying close attention to moment-to-moment conscious experience it is possible to move beyond the sense of “self” in favour of a new state of personal well-being. And if this can be incorporated within the framework of formal scientific investigation, then all the better.

And all this without the usual baggage and expectations of most religions, namely belief in God, the soul, judgment and the afterlife. It does not promote any fixed dogma, nor does the practice result in feelings of guilt or shame. There are no 'sins' to be committed in Buddhism, nor are there highly polarized notions of right and wrong; practitioners simply do the best they can to mete out as little suffering to the world as possible.

But like all Big Ideas, Buddhism can be prone to abuse and misunderstanding -- and as Hitchens has correctly noted, even tribalistic tendencies.

Institutionalized Buddhism

Indeed, a big part of Hitchens’s grief with Buddhism is its questionable history and how it has become highly ritualized and filled with other-worldly beliefs. As he has said, “Buddhism can be as hysterical and sanguinary as any other system that relies on faith and tribe.” Hitchens has railed against the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Buddhists. He condemns the Burmese dictatorship as a Buddhist one (which seems a suspicious claim to make these days seeing as thousands of monks have recently stood up against this regime). Hitchens dips deep into history and blames Buddhism for a number of misguided practices and atrocities.

While I agree that Buddhism has been used in this way and that blood has been shed in its name, I can’t agree that Buddhism is the cause of these things. What Hitchens is describing is the failure of human nature, the perils of insular groupthink, and politics itself. It is the same phenomenon that has led to the bastardization of the teachings of Jesus and the rise of such monolithic institutions as the Catholic Church (along with its sordid history of conquest and persecution). Consequently, Hitchens’s ire should be directed at the phenomenon of tribalism and not religion itself.

Buddhist faith?

Hitchens also makes the claim that Buddhists rely on faith. Undoubtedly, beliefs in reincarnation, karma and transcendence run deep within various Buddhist strains. This is currently a point of great contention among Buddhist scholars, some of whom, like the secular Buddhist Stephen Batchelor, contend that these precepts are unnecessary and that when it comes to metaphysics Buddhists should actually be agnostic. More traditional Buddhists, on the other hand, argue that belief in rebirth is absolutely necessary to the practice.

Interestingly, the Dalai Lama himself – a believer in reincarnation – maintains that science should take precedence over these sorts of notions. He once said, “My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”

Easier said than done, of course. Deeply embedded and ritualized religions have an incredibly hard time adapting to change -- including Buddhism.

As for the accusation that all Buddhists rely on faith, that's clearly a generalization. Most Buddhists, I would say, likely take nothing on mere faith alone.

Alternative perception

Hitchens also critiques the aims of Buddhist practice itself. He makes a number of suspicious claims -- that Buddhists despise the mind and the free individual, that Buddhism teaches submission and resignation, and that practitioners regard life as a fleeting thing full of suffering. He contends that Buddhists require a surrendering of the mind.

This is mostly nonsense. These claims have been countered elsewhere, so I won’t replicate them here, but there are a pair of issues I wish to address.

First, Hitchens appears to be confused. He seems to be conflating transcendental meditation (or something like it) with the more traditional practice of Vipasanna meditation and its focus on mindful awareness. There is nothing escapist or transcendent about this practice; rather, it's very much about focusing on the here-and-now and correcting the processes of a conditioned mind.

Second, Hitchens complains that Buddhists favour subjectivity over objectivity. “[Y]ou're supposed to be the subjective judge of what you're experiencing, are you not?,” he asks. Hitchens, being the uber-materialist that he is, is concerned that Buddhists don’t believe that anything can be accepted at objective face-value, that Buddhists merely see existence as some sort of grandiose illusion.

Hitchens's special claim into the true nature of reality aside, he is a bit off course here and his concern is exaggerated. Buddhists do not deny the presence of the material world or the value of objectivity – far from. What they assert is that the Universe will always be perceived through the lens of an observer and that our comprehension of reality must always take this into account. The only way the world can be observed is subjectively; there can be no such thing as a truly objective observer. We can and should strive towards an objective frame, but the world will always be perceived by an observer, which is by definition a subject.

It’s okay to be spiritual, really it is

What irks me most about Hitchens’s critique of Buddhism is the sense I get that what he is really complaining about are personal quests for spirituality. In fact, some of his arguments are so pithy (like making fun of Buddhist koans and Steven Seagal) that I'm inclined to think he is slamming into Buddhism just for the sake of it -- because it's just another "religion" on his hate list.

But Hitchens hasn't done his homework and it shows. Moreover, his limited acceptance as to what kind of worldview and perceptual lens is acceptable is extremely limited and narrow-minded.

Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with spirituality. Or, if you hate that word, a sense of existential awareness. In fact, I wish more people would consider the philosophic implications of existence and look deeper within themselves. There is far too much daydreaming going on today with people living way outside their heads.

On the issue of spirituality I’ll give Sam Harris the last word:

"There is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it could well be the highest purpose of human life...[I]t must be possible to bring reason, spirituality, and ethics together in our thinking about the world. This would be the beginning of a rational approach to our deepest personal concerns. It would also be the end of faith."

Sources:
"An Interview with Christopher Hitchens," C. P. Farley.
"Christopher Hitchens reduces Buddhism to a phrase," True Ancestor.
"His material highness," Christopher Hitchens.
"Christopher Hitchens: Religion Poisons Everything," Jon Wiener
"Hitchens - Zen is not Great?," Flapping Mouths.
Wikipedia and Wikiquote.

Scientific literacy as a means to inoculate against religion

"My only wish is…to transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians who, by their own procession and admission, are "half animal, half angel" into persons, into whole persons."

– Ludwig Feuerbach

There’s a current billboard in Toronto that reads, “Literacy is a right.”

Now, we’ve all be told to believe that rights are nonsense on stilts, but there is a certain significance to these sorts of proclamations. Clearly, when someone declares something to be a ‘human right’ they are making a very serious claim. They have pinpointed something they feel no person should have to do without, whether it be protection against racial discrimination, access to clean water, or in this case, the ability to read.

The impetus behind these sorts of social efforts is the assurance that persons be guaranteed the most basic tools and protections required to get through life fairly and safely. In the case of reading, it is generally acknowledged that illiteracy debilitates a person to the point where they experience undue difficulty engaging in all that life and society has to offer.

Interestingly, there’s a normative aspect to these sorts of ‘endowments’ and privileges. A few centuries ago most people did not need to know how to read to get through life. Today, however, it is near impossible – hence the call for literacy as a basic right.

But it’s not just the ability to read that is crucial today. Given the intricacies of the modern age and the ever-growing complexification of ideas and technology, it can be said that a scientific education is also increasingly necessary; if literacy can be considered a basic right, then so to must scientific literacy.

Yet, far too few people truly understand science and technology today. This is proving to be extremely problematic, particularly at the dawn of what looks to be a transformative future. Scientific illiteracy, quite unfortunately, appears to be an issue that will only get worse and create a slew of social problems.

Including the ongoing entrenchment and spread of religion.

We currently live at a time when rationality and tolerance have never been more important to the human species. Religion, with all its prejudices and devotion to ignorance, continues to present a threat to not just healthy and inquisitive minds, but to civilization itself.

Consequently, we need to place a much higher value on a scientific education. Simply put, there’s no better way to inoculate against religion and other forms of misinformation and unhealthy thinking habits. Our children deserve the right to a scientific, critical mind.

Soft memetic engineering

Indeed, the only truly effective and ethical way to combat viral religious memes is to nip them in the bud and prevent them from taking root in the first place. Prevention is what’s required rather than a cure.

Memetic theory -- the notion that ideas replicate by spreading from mind to mind – suggests that memes are only effective if they find a home in a sympathetic brain. The ability of a meme to take root in someone’s consciousness is a reflection of its ability to exploit human psychology (consequently, memetics can be thought of the science of understanding how human psychology responds to information). But this is only part of the story. Not all minds are alike, and not everyone is subject to the same information acquisition/transmission tendencies.

There are currently 6.6 billion human minds on the planet in various states of memetic receptiveness. Owing to new technologies, many these minds have unprecedented access to the world’s information. The current memepool is an anarchic mix of ideas bursting open like the Cambrian Explosion --each idea waiting for the opportunity to copy itself from one mind to another.

These conditions are the result of human ingenuity, creativity and tolerance. In free societies memes remain largely unchecked and are allowed to proliferate and mutate at will. In liberal democracies we consider freedom of speech and the right to free expression as among our highest values.

We also live in a world, quite thankfully, where people cannot be coerced into adopting a specific mindset. This was attempted in the 20th century by totalitarian Marxist regimes who, in the case of religion, banned spiritual practices, burned down churches and executed priests. The end result, particularly in post-Soviet Russia, was a religious community who survived the persecution only to come back with more power and fervor than before.

In other words, it backfired.

Indeed, this kind of ideological ‘memetic engineering’ is very much frowned upon today and should not be considered a viable solution in the struggle to maintain cultural health.

Unfortunately, however, there are consequences to having an anarchic memepool, namely the unchecked proliferation of misinformation, superstition, and of course, religion. These types of ideas are more than mere falsities, they create problems as well. Recently in Canada, for example, Catholic girls were nearly denied vaccinations for for human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease. As a result, these girls were put at risk of developing cervical cancer on account of religious sexual taboos.

As Thomas H. Hulxey once noted, “Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.” As we can attest to today, religious notions are interfering with the quality of human lives, whether it be public health issues, hallucinations of an intelligent designer or the blood lust of a suicidal would-be martyrs.

Thankfully, there is a gentle and elegant way to steer people in the direction of truth and rationality – what we can call a soft form of memetic engineering. I’m speaking, of course, of scientific literacy. Given our society's laws and values, the best we can do is to prime minds in such a way that they are equipped to fend off superstitious nonsense. A mind in tune with scientific methodology can better sterilize religious memes, and at the same time guard against other psychological pot-holes like pseudoscience and conspiratorial paranoia.

A way of thinking

A scientific education consists of more than just memorizing the periodic table of the elements or understanding Newton’s basic laws. In addition to these things it is the acquisition of the skeptical mind and the capacity for critical thought. Carl Sagan once noted that, “Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”

Skepticism should be considered a virtue and a redeeming characteristic. Physicist Richard Feynman agreed, “There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.” Conversely, Richard Dawkins describes the religious mind as being unimaginative, not poetic, not soulful. “On the contrary, they are parochial, small-minded, niggardly with the human imagination, precisely where science is generous,” he says.

Needless to say a number of things have to change. The education system needs to be reformed, while popular media needs to take on a more positive outlook when it comes to science.

Take school, for example. In addition to regular science classes students should have lessons dedicated to critical and healthy thinking (including lessons in emotional intelligence). These classes should teach the scientific method, empiricism, how to recognize biases and extraordinary claims, and how to properly source data and work with credible sources.

This would go a long way in making the learning of science much more palatable for students. Today, most students, particularly girls, find it off-putting. It’s geek stuff. It’s supposed to be hard. Moreover, science is often relegated to the sidelines in favour of easier or more romantic and exciting subjects, including athletics.

Districts should establish pro-science campaigns and bring in expert speakers and science-focused entertainers. Schools need more money, better equipment, and enthusiastic teachers. Students should have more time allocated each week to learning about science and critical thinking. Pop culture needs more positive role models like Bill Nye and outspoken individuals like Richard Dawkins and the late Carl Sagan.

Science can be sexy. It just has to presented that way.

Liberal education and home schooling

All of this, of course, cannot happen in a vacuum; science most certainly needs to be part of a broader liberal education. Students should understand the width and breadth of the world and avoid the insular thinking that characterizes religious minds and communities.

To this end, schools should introduce students to psychology, history and cultural studies at an earlier age. World religions should be taught to expand otherwise limited faith-based views, thus greatly reducing xenophobia and general lack of awareness. It would also establish a sense of humility and reduce notions of cultural relativism.

As for the issue of home schooling, yes, parents deserve the right to keep their kids at home or send them to private faith-based schools.

But such a decision may eventually come at a price. Standardized testing should be implemented and no student should be able to earn a high school diploma without a solid grasp of the basics of science and its methodology. Should some parents insist on teaching creationism instead of evolution, their children will have to face the consequences. The outcome may be that faith-based schooling will eventually carry a stigma. It’s conceivable that these children will have low employability and have difficultly earning admission to universities.

Democratic process

An implicit assumption in a democracy is that the collective actions of an informed populace will be to the benefit of both individuals and the community. The world, in order to be properly comprehended, and for an individual to fully engage in life, is increasingly dependent on persons having a scientific rather than a metaphysical interpretation of existence. Today, without critical thinkers, democracy and effective governance is in peril.

Moreover, given the complexity of today’s technologies and the dire consequences (or benefits!) of their development, the need to address global scale problems has never been more important. Scientific minds are absolutely necessary to not just identify these problems, but to solve them as well. Today we face such calamities as global warming and the spread of catastrophic diseases.

It should be noted that many Christian evangelists are global warming deniers -- not because they claim any special scientific knowledge, but because they are skeptical of any scientific claim, and any other 'belief system' like environmentalism that could rival their own. This is a recipe for disaster.

Close-mindedness is not what's required here; instead, we need dynamic and effective people to help humanity deal with problems like climate change.

Helping people and society

Scientific illiteracy is an impairment. Individuals without the capacity for critical and rational thought are increasingly having a difficult time understanding their world and relating to ‘mainstream’ society. There is a growing divide between the secular and religious worlds, giving rise to two distinct cultures who are increasingly unable to converse with each other.

Worse, those individuals who embrace more extreme or fundamentalist versions of religion feel increasingly alienated by modern society. The urge is to rail against the tide rather than seek a kind of reconciliation or understanding; cultural relations ends up regressing to an 'us versus them' mentality.

But a common ground does exist. Science is the universal language.

If literacy can be declared a right, then so too must scientific literacy. The health of individuals and society depends on it.

'Jesus Camp' and the art of brainwashing children

I recently picked up the DVD of Jesus Camp and I let it sit on the shelf for a couple of weeks. I was reluctant to watch it because I knew how upset it would make me. Well, I finally watched it, and let's just say that it didn't disappoint.

A lot of what I saw in Jesus Camp was expected, such as the ideologically far-right evangelical bent and the insane close-mindedness. But what I didn't expect was the sophistication of evangelical proselytizing techniques. Even more disturbing is how American evangelicals are using these strategies to brainwash their very own children.

These kids don't have a chance.

Far right theocratic ideology

American evangelicals are quite clearly situated at the extreme right of U.S. politics. They are polarized so right of center that their outlook is nothing less than ideological. They have framed the world in such a way that they only perceive things in black and white: there are the true believers and then there's everybody else. As one parent noted in the documentary, "We believe that there's two kinds of people in this world: people who love Jesus and people who don't."

The paranoia and sense of fanatical mission is palpable throughout Jesus Camp. The struggle to spread the Good Word has escalated beyond door-to-door evangelizing. The spread of liberalism and scientific naturalism in the U.S. has forced evangelicals to take it to the next level. They've declared war against their enemies and assumed ownership of the United States; they are working to reclaim what they see as God's country.

The language is not merely rhetorical. “This means war!" shouts an evangelical teacher to her young students, "Are you a part of it or not?” A cardboard cut-out of George W. Bush looks on. The allegiance to the Republican Party is assumed and undeniable, and for this the evangelicals make no apologies.

And it's not merely a battle for political power -- it's a culture war in which ideas themselves are under attack. Evangelical children are recruited into this struggle at a tender and suggestible age.

They are shown expertly produced and highly entertaining videos that mock evolutionary biology and laud creationism. "Do you really think we come from goo?" asks the man in the video, his hand covered in green slime. The children laugh at the absurdity of the suggestion. The word 'science' is bantered around like a pejorative.

In one scene a boy named Levi is shown at home being schooled by his mother. She asks, "Did you get to the part yet where they say that science hasn't proven anything?" She then turns his attention to global warming. If it's something that scientists have informed us about, like 'evolution,' then the evangelicals feel that something fishy must be going on. Climate change is dismissed out of hand. Silly scientists, what do they know?

Expert evangelical techniques

Ironically, evangelical parents and teachers are unknowingly applying memetic and neurolinguistic techniques in their practice. They teach their children to frame the world in a very specific way -- and they do it in such a way that they become 'locked-in' to that frame.

They teach and reinforce complete submission to God and are told that people are nothing more than vessels. As a result, children learn to see themselves as tools rather than free thinking agents. They are taught that independent and 'out of the box' thinking is deviant behavior and a sign of evil or weakness.

They are also taught how to identify those ideas that could subvert God's mission and how to deal with those contingencies. Children are instructed to recognize aspects of the world in one of two ways: it is either pure and righteous, or dirty and defiled. The idea that certain things are unclean and impure are anchored into their psyche. In one scene children are given an opportunity to cleanse themselves as the teacher pours bottled water over their hands. The look of desperation on the children's faces as they wait their turn is disturbing. Evangelicals have mastered the art of teaching shame.

It should come as no surprise that fundamentalist Muslims use similar lock-in techniques. This is an example of convergent memetics -- a similar phenomenon to what's often seen in evolution when different species acquire the same trait independently. Religions, particularly those with an evangelical focus, have independently acquired and refined those tactics which ensure practitioner lock-in and a desire to spread and defend the memeplex.

This is why fundamentalist religions are so hard to escape from psychologically. The mind has been programmed to respond to certain stimuli in a preconceived way and to perceive that response as a guide to action. Moreover, the desire to transcend the programming has been subverted by feelings of guilt, shame, or uncleanliness. At a deeper level, doubt or independent thinking is rationalized as the work of an outside force, namely the devil or non-believers.

As an interesting aside, when asked how they can justify the proselytizing of their children in this way, the evangelicals counter by claiming that the Muslims are doing it as well. The difference as they see it is that they have the true word of God, and it is better to get to their children before someone else does -- namely the enemy. As Camp organizer Becky Fischer noted:

"It's no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipling, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have... excuse me, but we have the truth!"

Child abuse in the name of God

Children are also taught how to deal with non-evangelicals, particularly if they are teased or rejected by them. They talk about how non-believers build walls around themselves and how they refuse to be happy or fulfilled. Children are encouraged to 'help' these people by proselytizing. They learn how to do cold approaches and are given opening scripts. They apply field tested techniques to help in the interaction and offer the target some literature.

At the Jesus Camp itself, the organizers recruit a series of expert speakers. These are presenters and teachers who excel at interacting with children. They know how to reach out to kids, maintain their interest, impart information, and keep them entertained.

And they do this extraordinarily well. Too well.

Children are treated as puppets to be manipulated and are frequently brought to tears. There are more scenes of kids crying in Jesus Camp than I care to mention. Speaker after speaker reinforce different points, and you can practically hear the doors of cognition slamming shut in the minds of the children. In turn, when the children actually speak and articulate their thoughts they sound as if they're channeling adults.

In one scene Levi says, "At five I got saved...because I just wanted more of life."

Say what? Now, what five year old feels he needs "more of life." I'm sorry, but five year olds do not talk or think in this way. This is a sad case of children regurgitating scripts fed to them by their parents and instructors.

Indeed, the evangelicals know exactly what they're doing and they're consciously going about the business of not just conversion but of refining their techniques as well. "I can go into a playground of kids that don't know anything about Christianity," says Fisher, "lead them to the Lord in a matter of, just no time at all, and just moments later they can be seeing visions and hearing the voice of God, because they're so open. They are so usable in Christianity."

Outspoken religious critic Richard Dawkins has a term to describe these types of individuals: child abusers. He believes that teaching religion to children is a form of abuse because they have not yet developed the psychological faculties to defend themselves against proselytization.

The trouble is, moderates and liberals cannot and will not struggle against evangelicals with equal fervor. Moderates are, well, too moderate. Moreover, the damage inflicted by ideas is much more difficult to ascertain than something like physical abuse. At the same time, religious and free speech rights are held with high esteem.

The answer, it would seem, is elusive. A good place to start, however, would be to ensure that each and every child receives a liberal and diverse education. Children deserve at least this much.

What happens at home may be beyond the purview of the state, but at least they can be given a chance at school.

Why BC was right to seize Jehovah's Witnesses babies

There is a high-profile case currently making news in Canada involving a Jehovah's Witnesses family whose three infants were seized by the government of British Columbia so that they could be given potentially life saving blood transfusions. The babies are three of four surviving sextuplets born in early January. The case raises a number of issues, including the limits to religious freedoms, the obligations of parents and the state, and the right to refuse medical treatment.

It is my opinion that the BC government acted appropriately and with complete justification; they were forced to act a) as a result of the parents' gross negligence -- religiously influenced or otherwise, and b) on behalf of the infants who were in need of state protection.

At a peripheral level, the issue is of significance to the therapy versus enhancement debate. Given changing conceptions of normal human functioning and health, it is an open question as to whether future interventions (such as the elimination of genetic disorders) should become mandatory, or if parents should be given the option to refuse treatment.

Before I get into my analysis, however, here is a run-down of what has transpired in BC thus far:

The events

Canada's first sextuplets were born in early January and that was in and of itself big news. The babies, four boys and two girls, were delivered after only 25 to 26 weeks of gestation -- one naturally and the rest via Caesarean -- and each weighed less than 2 pounds each.

They were smaller than an adult hand and were immediately placed in intensive care where they were listed under fair condition. Their vital signs were stable and within normal limits, but because they were born so premature, they were initially given an 80% probability of surviving. Preemies have underdeveloped organs and immune systems which make them more vulnerable to infection.

One baby died days after birth, and then another in the following weeks. The surviving four babies were clinging to life.

The sextuplets were born to Jehovah's Witnesses, a Protestant Christian sect that forbids blood transfusions and organ transplants. It is not uncommon for preemies to undergo blood transfusions; they tend to suffer from low hemoglobin and experience blood loss as a consequence of frequent blood tests.

Instead, the parents insisted on alternative measures including careful attention to minimal blood sampling, clinical acceptance of lower hemoglobin levels, use of erythropoietin and iron to stimulate natural production of red blood cells and other medical procedures.

Concerned about the surviving infants, the provincial government began to scramble and mobilize for more drastic action. On 29-January, under Section 29 of the "Child, Family and Community Service Act," and with the support of the Supreme Court, the government took temporary custody of one infant to allow for what was deemed an essential blood transfusion.

On the next day the Ministry of Children and Family Development asked the parents for permission to perform a blood transfusion on a second infant, but they received no response. The second child was taken into protective custody and given a blood transfusion. According to the father, he "could not bear to be at the hospital when they were violating [his] little girl." He complained that it was unfair of the ministry to label them as unfit because they "choose alternative medical treatments to blood transfusions."

Eventually the third baby was taken to the hospital, with the fourth remaining under the parents' guardianship. The Vancouver parents are now in a legal battle with the province, claiming the government violated their religious freedoms.

Religious freedoms

This case is an excellent example of why there needs to be a clear delineation between the church and state. Religious injunctions often contribute to poor and ill informed decisions. The state, on the other hand, can remain impartial and perform due diligence on matters of religious consequence. It is for this reason that I have also argued for the separation of church and bioethics.

The parents, who are clearly very happy to be parents and who claim to be looking out for their children's best interests, are refusing to allow treatment on nonsensical grounds. Scriptural or aesthetic justifications that inhibit life saving interventions are arbitrary and negligent at best (I say arbitrary because the mother utilized fertility treatments to help her get pregnant).

In our liberal democracies, the right to practice religion is largely a policy of tolerance. Citizens are given the benefit of the doubt in free societies to worship as they see fit. But it is a freedom that is endured so long as the social contract is maintained. One cannot break the law and decry that their religious freedoms have been violated. It is for this very reason, for example, that Sharia law will not be introduced in Canada despite pressure to do so.

The BC government did what they needed to do. Moreover, it is their responsibility to intervene in cases such as these. This is why we have governments. The parents made an extremely poor and dangerous decision on behalf of their children who were in no position to offer protest or defend themselves.

Parental obligations

But where do we draw the line? Is it merely life saving interventions that need to be enforced? Will enhancement technologies change this situation?

Like blood transfusions, future technologies will change expectations about what can and should be done. Access to genetic technologies, for example, may one day result in mandatory therapies that eliminate genetic disorders. This practice may become so standard and accepted that failure to do so may eventually be considered abusive.

There's the further risk that children born with preventable conditions will sue their parents for failing to intervene when they could have done so.

Consequently, the state will likely establish a minimum set of mandatory therapies. Creating such a list will not be easy, as there will forever be disagreement as to what constitutes a 'disorder' and how to discern the line between therapy and enhancement. This will become all the more complicated when traits that come about via enhancement start to normalize to the point where the absence of such endowments prevent an individual from partaking in society in the same way that the lack of an education and illiteracy does today.

These are not easy decisions, but neither is the choice to become a parent. Prospective parents must realize that the decision to have children comes with a requisite set of obligations. They need to ensure as is most reasonably possible that their children be given all the benefits that health technologies can bring so that they may live healthy, full, and open-ended lives.

The right to decline treatment

This case also raises the issue of the 'right' to decline treatment. The Jehovah's Witnesses parents, who were acting on behalf of their infants, claimed not only that their religious freedoms had been violated, but that they were unjustifiably prevented from using alternative therapies.

There are two things to consider here.

First, with two babies already dead and another 4 clinging to life, the decision to seize the children and force blood transfusions was not made lightly. The doctors chose to err on the side of caution as failure to act could have resulted in their deaths. Severe cases are not a time to experiment with alternative therapies. Moreover, aside from hurt religious sensibilities, the blood transfusions did not cause any harm.

The second issue is more complex as it deals with informed consent and the right to refuse treatment. As a supporter of voluntary euthanasia and alternative medicines, I believe that citizens deserve the right to manage their health in the best way they see fit (self-injury is a related issue, but one that falls outside the bounds of this particular post). Consequently, an adult Jehovah's Witness has the right to refuse a blood transfusion -- even if it is a foolish decision.

As for children, society is set-up such that parents make critical decisions on their behalf until they reach the age of consent. In this sense, children are a special class of citizens. They don't have the full spectrum of privileges that adults have -- for example they cannot vote or drink alcohol.

At the same time children also have special protections. The state, in conjunction with children's aid societies, are within their bounds to take a child into protective custody when the parents have been declared unfit. Parents have the authority to make decisions for their kids by default, but that privilege can be taken away from them when necessary.

In the case of the BC sextuplets, the decision to withhold treatment was tantamount to negligence and even abuse. Had the babies died as a consequence of insufficient treatment, the province would have been within their bounds to charge the parents with child abuse causing death and possibly even homicide. The rationale behind the parents' inaction makes no difference, whether it be instigated by religion, mental illness, or alcohol.

Closing notes

I am certain that the parents' decision to withhold treatment was an extremely difficult one and that this is a very trying time for them. It may take some time before they achieve any sense of normalcy again. They will have deal with the fact that their children were given blood transfusions and move on. I certainly hope that they will not look at their infants as being any less special. Moreover, I hope that their community will not shun them out like they have done to others in similar cases.

I also hope that when all is said and done that the parents will look back one day and be grateful that action was taken to save the lives of their children.

Brian Swimme on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

What is Enlightenment? + Zaadz has an extremely interesting interview with mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme in which he discusses the influential Jesuit mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Here's an excerpt from the article, Awakening to the Universe Story:

Teilhard also spoke in terms of “giving birth to person.” For example, your colleague Craig is there across the room. But if you go back five billion years, all of the atoms in Craig’s body were strung out over a hundred million miles. The process, as mysterious as it is, of matter itself forming into personality or personhood, is what Teilhard regarded as the essence of evolution. Evolution isn’t cold. He saw the omega point as that same process of giving birth to or actualizing this new, encompassing Divine Person—through not just all the atoms interacting with one another, but also the “persons” of all the humans and other animals. All of us together are part of this same process, so that the entire universe becomes God’s body. To really get how radical Teilhard’s view is, think about an animal and dissolve the animal back in time in your imagination, back into individual cells. There weren’t any multicellular organisms until about seven hundred million years ago. For over three billion years, there were just single-cell organisms. If you get to know an animal well, the animal really has a personality. But the personality is something that is evoked by the cells of the animal. It’s truly mysterious. The animal’s personality is real, but that personality is evoked by the cells. So in Teilhard’s view, the individual members of the universe are actually in a process of evoking a Divine Person. We are actually giving birth to a larger, more encompassing, mind-spirit-personality.