Valdemar W. Setzer
www.ime.usp.br/~vwsetzerOriginal version: Feb. 16, 2008 -- last version: May 3, 2010
1. Introduction
The themes "Science and religion" and "Science and spirituality" have been lately the subject of many papers, debates and lectures. For instance, the B2005 Boyle Lecture, hold by Simon Conway Morris, handled precisely this topic. In his recent book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins tries to show that the concept of God and religions are a delusion, and even that "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other." that is, he proposes that the question of the existence or non-existence of God should be treated scientifically [DAW b, pp. 72, 83, etc.]. On November 2007 I attended in a medical conference a podium discussion having as its title the theme "Science and spirituality", and I became very unsatisfied with what I heard. On the other hand, I received some criticisms on my paper "Is there just matter or also spirit in the universe?", and I noticed that I should clarify some points. With all this, I decided to restructure and deepen some ideas about the title of this paper, and expound them, making some incursions on science, materialism and institutional religions or confessions, complementing the ideas of the mentioned paper. I will write about the unfortunate abyss which exists between science and religion, which could be eliminated with changes in both, with what I am going to call "scientific spirituality". In order to characterize such a spirituality, which involves working hypotheses and not faith, I characterize these two concepts in section 2, showing their differences. In section 3 I advance what I think is a correct cognitive attitude, which I call "scientific attitude". In section 4 I characterize what I understand under "materialism", showing that there are two types of it; I show that this worldview (Weltanschaaung), if coherent, cannot admit various human characteristics, especially free will. In section 5 I cover spirituality, of which I also characterize two types; one of them, the "scientific spirituality" mentioned above, uses a "scientific attitude" for cognition. Adopting such a worldview, it is possible to admit human characteristics which do not make sense from a materialist view, e.g. freedom. Section 6 shows that there are worldviews which combine materialist and spiritual views. Modern science is examined in section 7, showing that it is essentially materialist. In section 8 I describe certain characteristics of institutional religions, characterizing the type of spiritual view they embrace, and stating that, from certain points of view, they are materialist. The current abyss between science and religion is described in section 9, where I show how it could be eliminated by modifying both. I also state that this abyss is due to both prejudiced materialism as well as from the type of spirituality typical of institutional religions. In section 10 I expound various reasons for someone feeling inclined to adopt the materialist view, and in section 11 I do the same for scientific spirituality. Finally, in section 12 I describe an example of a scientific spirituality which I consider adequate for the modern human being, showing briefly certain of its characteristics and applications.
This paper is a translation of the original in Portuguese, "Ciência, religião e espiritualidade".
2. Hypothesis and faith
Over time, humans gradually developed intellectual capacities. One of the consequences of this fact is that today every adult human being longs for understanding. For example, when observing phenomena everybody tries to conceptually understand why they happen. Also, accepting social laws and rules without understanding the reason for their existence does not satisfy her/him anymore. (For the sake of conciseness, from now on I will use the masculines "he" instead of "s/he", "his" instead of "his/her" and so on.) The same happens when he is presented with theories without their making sense to him, or without being logically coherent and corresponding to what he may observe outside and inside himself. It seems to me that each modern person should have a conscious conception of the world, a worldview; from it, he should orient his thinking, feelings and actions. In terms of conceptions of the world, it is important to separate what is a working hypothesis and what is faith; let us begin by examining the characteristics of each one, pointing out their differences.
2.1 A hypothesis is a statement which is taken as truth, or has been proved to be true in some theory or experiment, and is used as a basis for explaining some experimental evidence or for extending that theory. A theory may involve many hypotheses and their consequences; thus it is wider than a hypothesis. A fundamental characteristic of a theory is its logical coherence, that is, there should be no contradictions among its hypotheses and the statements resulting from them.
Therefore, a hypothesis is the basis for some conceptual understanding, that is, for the correct mental association between a correct perception and a correct concept, or between correct concepts which are interrelated. Note the use of the word "correct" – I admit that there exist correct and incorrect perceptions, concepts and associations. For example, if the reader looks at the entrance of his room, and if his visual system is healthy, probably he will initially have a correct perception of light impulses; then he will make a correct mental representation of the viewed object and, finally, will make, with his thinking, a correct association of this representation with the concept "door". Generally, one says that a door is "seen", but in fact what is seen are light impulses; "door" is a concept, an idea, and cannot be seen with our eyes. A counter-example could be seeing a person at some distance, and not being able to distinguish if it is a man or a woman. In this case, probably there is an error or imprecision in the perception, and this fact may become conscious through the difficulty in associating to the corresponding blurred mental representation one of various possible concepts. Another counter-example is seeing the Sun moving during the day through the sky, and making to this correct perception an association with the incorrect concept of its movement around the Earth, instead of associating this perception to the correct concept that the Sun stays still and the Earth is revolving around its axis.
Faith is a statement taken as truth, and is the basis for a worldview which may not involve, partially or totally, a conceptual understanding. Faith does not depend on experimental evidences. On the contrary, it closes the doors to understanding and research.
2.2 A hypothesis should be clearly formulated through concepts, and be based upon evidences, either through observations or through coherent and extensive theories derived from them. Furthermore, it should be always subject to revision.
Faith does not have to be clearly formulated, because it is not directed to the intellect; it is accepted as truth, and has a character of permanence, that is, it is not subjected to revisions.
2.3 A hypothesis should have a character of objectivity and universality. Thus, it should not be based upon feelings, because the latter are always subjective and individual.
On the contrary, faith may involve concepts (because it is impossible to express something through words without using concepts), but should essentially be based upon feelings, that is, it should be essentially subjective: one has the feeling that some belief is true.
2.4 A working hypothesis should always be part of some research of facts, or of a theory being established or already established.
On the other hand, faith is something terminal, self-contained. It may be part of a wider worldview, but it should not necessarily lead to some research, on the contrary, many times faith impairs the latter. Richard Dawkins criticizes religions saying: "One of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding." [DAW b, p. 152; see also pp. 154, 159-60.]
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In this text I am going to use the expression "to believe" as an exclusive synonym to "to have faith", in the expounded sense. As an example, in the Catholic doctrine, one should believe in God and should not believe in the reincarnation of the human being (in spite of some clear references about it in the New Testament). Note that there is no clear concept of what God is, either in that religion as in other religions. Therefore, in the sense of the characterization 2.2, one should not refer to a "hypothesis of the existence of God", expression used by Dawkins [DAW b, p. 138].
Another example of faith is taking the images of the Genesis as literal facts, considering for instance that the "creation days" had 24 hours, as taken by many biblical creationists. A working hypothesis could be that those images are symbols to facts that really occurred. Through this example one may see that a hypothesis should necessarily lead to a research: in this case, what are the realities represented by those biblical images. On the other hand, the mentioned faith does not lead to any investigation or search for understanding.
Using the same example, it is a fact that many people consider biblical images as invented stories, tales. There are then two possibilities: taking it as faith or working hypothesis. In the second case, one tries to justify this consideration speculating through some theory, for example, that ancient human beings had childish fears, and those tales helped them to face those fears. Another possibility is that humans had a need of locating themselves in relation to the past, so that they invented a ghostly cosmogony, as they didn’t have at that time the possibility of inventing a conceptual theory such as the Big Bang. As a matter of fact, this is also a ghostly theory: how did matter and energy appeared before they condensed and exploded? Even admitting a series of expansions and contractions, this series must have had a physical beginning.
3. Scientific attitude
Scientific attitude is one of the greatest conquests of humanity. After the beginning of the 15th century it began to effectively develop as everybody’s possible attitude. Before this time, it partially appeared in a few individuals. It should be applied whenever something is observed and described, and when concepts are formulated. In these cognitive activities, it seems to me that it is the correct attitude for modern human beings. This means that a person who does not adopt a scientific attitude in his cognitive day-to-day life is unduly returning to the past. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that this attitude does not apply to the whole of human life, because cognition is just part of it, as will be expounded after listing its fundamental characteristics.
In cognition, a scientific attitude is adopted when the following requisites are satisfied:
3.1 Having working hypotheses, and not faith, cf. section 2 above.
3.2 Permanent curiosity is exercised, that is, one should be always trying to know new things and ideas. If a phenomenon is observed and not understood, it should be observed from all possible angles, and it should be studied in order to be understood. If an idea is not understood, or looks strange, one should make an effort to learn it and understand it.
This attitude means that one should have an interest for all phenomena and theories.
A counter-example to this attitude is the fact that very few people know how airplanes fly, albeit seeing them quite frequently. Understanding this phenomenon, due to a property of fluids discovered in 1738 by Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782), is a relatively simple matter: it may be demonstrated very easily by blowing over a sheet of light paper stretched with the hands and maintained with its top touching the inferior lip, and observe that the sheet goes up.
I have been stating for a long time that the absence of this constant curiosity may produce an undesirable effect: the development of a mental paralysis. According to Plato, in Menon, Socrates goes even further, saying: "Some things I have said that I am not altogether confident. But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; – that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power." [PLA a, p. 183.]
3.3 One tries to objectively observe the world, that is, observations should concentrate on the phenomenon; no observed aspect should be disregarded and no observation should depend on previous hypotheses.
This action is characterized by the observer exercising a total openness both to inner and outer phenomena in relation to him.
3.4 One should try to understand the world objectively and conceptually, specially living beings and humans.
3.5 Feelings are not used as a basis for observations and in formulating concepts about observed objects or studied theories.
This requisite is a consequence of 3.3 and 3.4, and is due to the fact that feelings are purely subjective. In fact, every person has his own feelings and another person cannot feel the feelings of the former; what the latter may do is to recognize them, for instance perceiving that the first person is happy or sad. But it is impossible to the latter to feel the happiness or sadness being felt by the former.
An example of an undue use of feelings in the acquisition of knowledge is using one’s sympathy or antipathy for somebody to reach conclusions about the latter. It is interesting to note that, when somebody has a feeling regarding something, it tells much more about the former than about that object. For instance, an antipathy towards somebody may be the result of his face suggesting the face of another person, who did something nasty to the observer. Another example could be observing and studying some phenomenon or object due to a strong sympathy towards them, and avoiding studying others which arise antipathy.
Notice the use of the word "basis" in the formulation of this attitude. Exercising a scientific attitude does not mean ignoring feelings, but they should not be used both for orienting curiosity and research, and for stating concepts about some phenomena. Feelings should be made conscious and taken into consideration whenever making some judgment, because it is impossible to have a total knowledge about something real (total knowledge exists only in Mathematics, in well-defined areas; there are well-formulated mathematical problems which do not have a solution). For example, if there are two coherent but conflicting theories about the same subject, and there are no evidences of which better adapts itself to reality, one may use a feeling of sympathy towards one of them to temporarily adopt it; but one should have full consciousness about this reason for having chosen one of them.
On the other hand, there may be essential feelings involved in scientific activities, as for instance the enthusiasm for discovering new facts and for obtaining more knowledge. Certain feelings should also be used when choosing what research should be done and in making the results public. For instance, a moral filter may hinder a veterinary of sacrificing animals in his research, or a biologist of using human stem cells extracted from human embryos, if it is necessary to kill them. If a new discovery may represent an ecological or human danger, maybe the researcher, based upon his feelings, may decide not to make them public (this reminds the excellent theater play by F. Dürrenmat, Die Physiker, "The Physicists", written in 1962, and considered his best play [DÜR]; see alsohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Physiker]).
3.6 The description of phenomena and the formulation of concepts and theories should be directed exclusively to the understanding of the reader and should be universal.
This requisite is a consequence of the previous one. A counter-example would be transmitting concepts enthusiastically, trying to influence the feelings of the receptor in order to convince the latter of the arguments’ validity. I expect the readers of my papers and books to notice that I try to direct myself exclusively to the understanding of the reader, and not to his feelings.
3.7 One should have absolutely no prejudices, in any knowledge area, that is, one should be always ready to verify any fact or phenomenon, or to study any theory.
For instance, if one says "The twin towers in New York have been hit by two commercial airplanes" a scientific attitude could be "This looks extremely strange, but I will investigate." A non-scientific attitude could be "This is highly improbable, so I will not give it any attention."
Another example is Newton’s theory of colors [NEW]. He clearly has started from the preconceived idea that "white light" is composed of all the colors of the rainbow, and arranged his experiments to prove his theory of differential refrangibility. That’s why he used a particular aperture (hole) in his window, and a certain distance from his prism to the screen, thus creating a beam of sunlight whose dispersion produced the colors of the rainbow: "[…] at a round hole, about one third Part of an Inch broad made in the Shut of a Window (sic) [...]" [NEW, p. 26 (Prop. II, Theor. II, Exper. 3).] If the beam had been very thin, or the screen placed at a greater distance, only three colors would have appeared (red, green and violet). On the other hand, if the aperture would have been much larger, or the screen placed close to the prism, a white part would have appeared in place of the green. The latter, as one may clearly observe by gradually increasing the distance to the screen, results in the superposition of the yellow and blue parts of the resulting colors. I recommend to the reader personally observing these phenomena: for this, just take two pieces of black paper, setting them over a white paper. The white strip thus formed should be looked through a prism with its axis parallel to this strip (the easiest way is to point an angle of the prism downwards and view through it with an eye close to it). To modify the width of the strip, one of the black papers should be moved towards or apart from the other black paper. One should take advantage of this setting to repeat the experiment with two white papers over a black paper, forming a black strip. The "complementary spectrum", according to Goethe’s theory of colors, will be seen. Goethe, in his theory of colors, makes it a point not to start with Newton’s preconceived idea, criticizing it [GOE, Vol. 3, p. 48: Der Newtonsche Optik – erstes Buch, erster Teil (Newton’s Optics – vol. 1, part 1), Props. 86-93, see also ZAJ, p. 209, SEP, p. 142]. It is interesting here to cite the physicist Tolger Holtsmark: "Newton thought that he explained the existence of the spectrum by means of a physical model of the light, whereas he in fact used an image of the spectrum to explain one possible physical model of the light." [HOL T, p. 1235, my emphasis.]
This requisite complements the one examined in 3.3.
3.8 The adopted conceptual worldview should be coherent and, if logically conflicting points are known, one tries to investigate them to solve the conflicts.
3.9 There should be a permanent interest in opinions contrary to one’s own, specially if well-based.
Contrary opinions may help to change working hypotheses (cf. 3.1); they should be used at least to test one’s own hypotheses and theories and, eventually, collect more arguments in favor of the latter.
3.10 Observation of phenomena and their conceptual description should always be made in full awaken consciousness; the observer should permanently maintain his self-consciousness and his individuality.
Counter-examples to this requisite are the use of dream images as they would have been concepts, and psychic communications, that is, those made through mediums. In the fist case, dream images, instead of being taken literally, may inspire some concepts, such as the well-known experience by F.A. Kekulé, who in 1865 had a dram of a snake biting its own tail, inspiring him to discover the form of the benzene ring of carbon atoms. In the second case, there are two possibilities: the medium is unconscious or is conscious during his observations or communications. The first situation goes directly against the requisite being discussed here. An example of the second case is psychic writing (many books with them are quite popular in Brazil): the medium who does it is not expressing his own individuality, because he transmits knowledge that he does not have, and in general uses a writing style which is not his; everything happens as his own personality having been replaced during this activity.
Only by preserving this requisite one may guarantee that there are no errors in one’s own observations and description of phenomena and concepts. Goethe, who is unfortunately not recognized as a great scientist, in spite of his scientific contributions and his introduction of an effective scientific method, declared once that "The senses do not deceive, our judgment does" ("Die Sinne trügen nicht, das Urteil trügt" [in Maximen und Reflexionen, No. 527]). When the observer is conscious while doing his observations, he may recognize that his senses are not sufficiently accurate, or the apparatus used to make the observations has some limitations, or even recognizing that there are eventually different judgments that can be made from a particular observation.
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When an attitude is the contrary to any of the above requisites, I will call it "anti-scientific attitude".
It is very important to recognize that the scientific attitude characterized here does not embody the whole of human activities, because they are not just of the cognitive type. In fact, there are at least other two: artistic and social attitudes. I am going to write just briefly about them, because their subjects are not the purpose of this paper.
In both these attitudes, feelings acquire fundamental importance, contrary to requisite 3.5. Furthermore, in both of them the individual, subjective aspect is absolutely essential. In fact, an artist should necessarily put in his work something about his particular way of expressing something objective or subjective, contrary to the scientific attitude, which should lead to something universal and be expressed universally. In other words, an object of art is something objective and universal, and what it expresses may also be universal, but the manner in which this expressions manifests itself should have some subjective element stemming from the artist’s individuality and depending on the individuality of the observer (for more details, see my paper "The computer as an instrument of counter-art"). For example, a painter may represent hunger or fear in a certain way, another painter in another way (quite characteristic of expressionistic paintings). It is interesting to note that every work of art should necessarily touch the feelings of the observer, that is, his subjectiveness is an essential part of the observation process; the contrary happens with a work of science. A work that is just an outcome of objective conceptualization, and the means of expression is universal, independent of the observer’s interpretation, is not a work of art, but of science. Science has as its primary goal the formulation of concepts for the understanding of the universe; on the other hand, arts' primary goal of is the production of objects to be observed through the senses. Along this line, it is interesting to observe that architecture is the most objective art, and poetry the most subjective.
Social attitude also differs from scientific attitude, because the former involves necessarily actions on individuals and their subjectivity. If individuals could be treated objectively, economists would always have success in their theories and practices. One of the most important social attitudes is compassion, that is, the capacity of suffering when perceiving the suffering of another person. By no means it is derived from a scientific attitude. Daniel Goleman’s "emotional intelligence" [GOL], of fundamental social importance, even in professional activities, is not a scientific attitude, but a social one.
4. Materialism
I characterize materialism as a worldview which admits just the existence of physical phenomena in the universe. According to it, the world is constituted just of physical matter and energy, and the phenomena which happen to them have physical causes only.
There is no complete knowledge of what matter is. Nevertheless, we have an intuitive notion of it, because we are confronted with it through our senses. We also have an intuitive notion of what energy is, because any physical action we perform requires a certain effort exercised for some time, called "work" in Physics.
There are two types of materialism. I call the first one scientific materialism, characterized by the adoption of the world view mentioned at the beginning of this section in a strictly scientific attitude, cf. section 3. I call the second type faith materialism, which is the faith in that worldview. Thus it does not follow a scientific attitude, specially characteristics 3.1 (as it involves faith), 3.2 (in the sense that such a materialist does not have a curiosity about the existence of non-physical phenomena) and 3.7 (in the sense that there is a preconceived idea that there are just physical phenomena in the universe).
The most typical difference between them is that a scientific materialist should be open and have interest in non-materialist views of the world. He should be ready to review his position if he becomes convinced that there are also non-physical phenomena. On the other hand, a faith materialist takes his view as dogma, and is not open to views of the world which admit the existence of non-physical phenomena. Typically, he not only does not try to know these types of views, but even avoids entering in touch with any view that is not materialist.
For example, a faith materialist says: "It is obvious that our thinking is generated by our brain, how could it be different?" or "It is obvious that Darwinian evolution is a reality, how could it be different?" On the other hand a scientific materialist would say: "According to my conception of the world, thinking is generated by the brain, but as there is no complete physical knowledge about this process, I am open to other explanations, independently of what concepts and experiences they employ. Maybe they can present evidences or a coherent and wide theoretical framework, and then I will change my fundamental hypotheses." The same for Darwinian evolution. In other words, a scientific materialist takes these two concepts as theories (as they really are), and not realities, as it frequently the case with faith materialists.
I called the first type "scientific" for a simple reason: a scientist, by necessarily adopting a scientific attitude as expounded in section 3, should not have prejudices and should have a total openness to everything. One of the most frequent attitudes of faith materialists is having a total prejudice against any explanations that are not based upon purely physical phenomena, which they also call "natural phenomena". It is quite common for them to refuse to study any theory which involves non-physical (or supernatural) processes, and to examine evidences thereof. It is also quite typical for them to ridicule any theory or worldview which uses non-physical phenomena in its explanations, as were the cases of Freud, Bertrand Russel and, more recently, Richard Dawkins [DAW b, pp. 51, 59, 85, 135, etc.].
Obviously, there exist variations of faith materialism: a materialist may adopt a scientific attitude towards certain phenomena, and a faith attitude towards others. On the other hand, there is only one type of scientific materialism, for if a person adopts it, he should have no faith whatsoever.
It is very important to consider the following: what characterizes a person as a materialist, of any type, is the way he thinks. Someone may frequently refer to God (independently how he understands or does not understand this word), but if his way of thinking is materialist, that is, he looks for and uses just physical causes for all phenomena, applied only to physical entities, he should be classified as a materialist.
Many people – maybe all – who say they are "atheists" are in fact materialists, in general of the faith type. This denomination of "atheist" has many problems. American Heritage brings the definition "One that disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods." That it, it starts from "God" or "gods". Therefore, an atheist should initially explain what is God or what are gods, in order to say that he does not believe or denies their existence. If he says that he believes that tomorrow is not going to rain, he has as starting point the supposition that there is a correct understanding of "tomorrow" and "to rain". But what does he understand under God or gods? The atheist would have to precisely characterize these entities, and their actions, in order to be able to discuss their existence or lack of existence. Note that it is possible to clearly describe something physically impossible, such as a castle which floats in the air. Furthermore, those entities are obviously non-physical. Nevertheless, any materialist denies the existence of non-physical "objects" or entities, and the processes involving them; thus, how is he going to characterize something non-physical, so that we may discuss it with him? I will return to the problem of the concept of God in section 8, in relation to the monotheism of various religions.
Dawkins calls himself an atheist, a denomination that pervades his whole book [DAW b]. But he is more than a person who does not believe in God, whatever this is: his reasoning is absolutely materialist, that is, he cannot assume the existence of any non-physical process. So, in fact, he is a materialist.
Many people call themselves "skeptical", when, in reality, they are materialists. American Heritage says about it: "1. One who instinctively or habitually doubts, questions, or disagrees with assertions or generally accepted conclusions.2. One inclined to skepticism in religious matters." I wonder if a skeptic is skeptical of his own existence (which is obviously naïvely accepted by everybody who knows him), because in this case he would at least be a bit schizophrenic, if not having even more serious psychological disorders. I have the impression that a person declares to be a skeptic to indicate that he does not believe in anything non-physical; in this case, my denomination of "materialist" characterizes much better this person. By the way, the expression "believe" classifies such a person as a faith materialist, according to my characterization at the end of section 2.
Many skeptic people are faith materialists. One of these seems to be Michael Shermer, who writes the permanent section Skeptic of Scientific American, and is the editor of Skeptic – see http://www.skeptic.com. On this web site, in the section About us – Discover Skepticism one reads: "Modern skepticism is embodied in the scientific method, which involves gathering data to formulate and test naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena." Thus, all non-natural, that is, non-physical phenomena are excluded, and seriously examining them or theories based upon them is refused. Therefore, for Shermer science is a faith materialism, because it only admits material explanations and is closed to non-physical ones.
The positivism of Auguste Comte (1785-1857) is based on physical experience (inheritance of empiricists such as Hume and Berkeley) and denied any metaphysics (besides Logics and Mathematics, classified as "formal pure sciences"). Thus, he was a materialist.
It seems to me that my "materialist" denomination characterizes much better a person than classifying him as atheist, skeptic or positivist.
For the sequel, it is fundamental to recognize that a coherent materialism should: a) limit human individuality just to heredity and the past influence of the environment; b) deny the existence of free-will; c) deny individual and collective responsibility; d) deny the existence of moral attitudes and actions; e) deny the possibility of an action being due to unselfish love; f) deny that the universe and human life have a sense. I am going to briefly justify these assertions.
a) The question of individuality is trivial: if every human is made just of matter, there can be no other component in his individuality than that due to heredity and to his environment.
b) I consider free will, or the freedom to consciously perform inner actions (such as thinking) or outer actions (doing something to the external world with one’s hands or feet, moving or speaking), as the possibility of a person executing an action without any inner or outer imposition. Outer imposition is clear: forcing someone, physically or emotionally, to execute some action. An example of the second case is forcing someone to do some action by instilling fear that if this action is not done, something bad will occur with that person, his family or friends; another example is conditioning a person through advertising to do some action, such as buying or eating something. An inner imposition occurs, for instance, when someone acts following a feeling, such as not speaking to somebody who, at first glance, looks antipathetic.
An action is executed in freedom if there are other possible actions to be taken at that moment, and the choice of the first one is done in full consciousness, mentally examining what would be the consequences of the execution of each action. This does not exclude the execution of an action based upon some feeling, as the case of a person who is following a diet to lose weight but, in a hot day, consciously decides to break the diet and to savor a good ice cream.
Materialism has to necessarily deny free will, because freedom cannot result from matter: this is always subjected to physical "laws" and conditions. There are two possibilities here. There may be some determinism, that is, given the state of a body and certain conditions in its environment, it will always undergo the same transformation. A famous example of a person with a fully deterministic view of nature was Einstein, following the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza (see, for instance, the excellent [ISA, pp. 102, 335] and also [JAM, pp. 37, 69-71]).
The other possibility is the existence of randomness or chance, that is, given certain initial conditions, matter behaves in various possible manners, without a cause for taking any of the variants. Chance is the basis of Quantum Mechanics, which has a great experimental success, but which has transformed the atomic world in something incomprehensible. If a human being acts randomly, he does not act in freedom, because the action has not resulted from a conscious act.
An old reasoning may help to better clarify the point that freedom cannot result from matter. Obviously an atom cannot have freedom. Thus, a molecule formed by a group of atoms also cannot have freedom. A cell, formed by a group of molecules, idem. A group of cells, forming an organ, ibidem. Finally, a group of organs forming a human being also cannot have freedom. This is one of the reasons why scientists and coherent materialists deny the possibility of free will, which they consider to be an illusion. Einstein was absolutely categorical about this; in his words: "I am a determinist. I don’t believe in free-will." [ISA, p. 397]; "I absolutely don’t believe in free-will in the philosophical sense. Every person acts not only under the pressure of external compulsions, but also according to internal needs." [p. 140]; "Human beings, in their thoughts, feelings and actions, are not free, but are imprisoned by causality, in the same way as stars in their movements." [p. 401.] As for the illusion of free-will, he said: "I am compelled to act as free-will would exist because, if I want to live in a civilized society, I have to act in a responsible way." [p. 403.]
c) It is obvious that, without freedom, there is no personal or collective responsibility. Einstein denied its existence, because he thought that every human action is a consequence of his state and the state of the environment: "I know that, philosophically, a killer is not responsible for his crime, but I prefer not to drink tea with him." [p. 403.] By the way, he was not coherent in this and other philosophical questions, because, after getting to know the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis in concentration and extermination camps, he assigned responsibility for this not only on them, but on the whole of the German people: "Germans, as a whole nation, are responsible for these mass killings and should be punished as a whole nation." [ISA, p. 514, JAM, p. 71.] As a matter of fact, it is quite seldom to find a really coherent materialist, because most of them cherish at least intellectual freedom; furthermore, the concept of freedom has been deeply ingrained in humanity since the 19th century. It is possible that these people’s unconscious is wiser than their conscious; due to the former, they may have an intuition that the human being may have free will, and do not perceive that this contradicts their materialist worldview.
d) Without responsibility, there is no moral. In this sense, it is necessary to clearly distinguish "moral" from "ethics". The latter refers to norms established by a group, in general a professional one. For example, it is ethical for a lawyer to defend and try to convince other people (e.g. a jury) that some person is innocent, albeit being convinced that this person really killed someone; but this is not a moral act. In this case, a moral action could be for this lawyer to publicly recognize the guilt of the accused, but objectively show to the jury eventual attenuating factors.
e) An act is a consequence of exercising unselfish or altruistic love if it is of benefit to something or someone, is executed in full consciousness and freedom, and does not bring any benefit to the person who does it. Therefore, altruistic love also also makes no sense from a materialistic point of view. From it, only egotistical actions, and those moved by greed make sense. About this, it is worth noting that the theory of Darwinian evolution is based upon egotism: the fight for existence by individuals or species, without taking care of what happens to other individuals or species. I am aware that Darwin had already formulated a speculative theory trying to explain altruism: an altruistic person is better accepted by his community and thus has a greater chance of surviving and leaving offspring. It is really strange that unselfishness derives from egotism! Richard Dawkins has expressed very well the materialist point of view: in his speculation, egotism is inherent to humans, and is in their own genes, as if the latter could have consciousness [DAW a]. From modern materialistic science one cannot get to altruism.
It is interesting to note hat many scientists are idealists, and have great satisfaction in their research activities because they feel that they may thus unselfishly help humanity. Albeit this attitude is quite positive, it should be recognized that it is incoherent from their part as materialists (which is the case of the majority of them, if not almost all of them), because unselfishness cannot derive from matter.
f) From matter there can result no sense for the existence of the universe and human life, because they are outcomes of chance phenomena. For example, in Darwinian natural selection the best fit predominates, but it has this characteristic by chance, due to random genetic mutations (according to neo-Darwinism), random combination of genes from the parents, and random encounters with other individuals, where it may predominate. Curiously, Dawkins repeatedly writes that natural selection eliminates chance [DAW b, pp. 141, 145]. In the human case, a materialistic view has to necessarily admit that birth and death are chance happenings. Thus, from a point of view of this concept human life has no meaning: it simply exists, therefore, e.g., Sartre’s existentialism. The development of the universe, of the solar system, of Earth, the appearance of life and the evolution of living beings are all basically due to chance. Thus, the whole universe has no sense, no meaning.
Many convinced materialists have difficulty understanding what life having a sense could possibly mean. This is perfectly understandable, because from matter and physical forces it is impossible to reach such a sense.
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We are in the age of materialism. A person who is a materialist is totally in tune with humanity’s present way of being. In fact, one may regard the history of humanity as the "fall" into matter and materialism. In this sense, the wonderful biblical image of the Paradise [Gen 2:8] represents an initial period in which humans had no knowledge and self-awareness: they still had not "eaten" from the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" [2:17], and still could not recognize that they were "nude" [3:7]. Their "expulsion from Paradise" may be considered as a symbol for that fall. (As a matter of fact, in this sense the expressions "Temptation" and "Original Sin" do not make sense, because it is only possible to "sin" if it is possible to make a conscious choice, and this requires self-consciousness and knowledge; note that animals do not "sin".) It was necessary for humanity to pass through this "fall", because it is only due to our immersion in matter and acting upon it that we may make mistakes and therefore be free: if we would be unconscious, or there was only Good, we could not choose and therefore we would not be free. Our self-awareness and higher self (as will be characterized in the next section) were also developed due to this "fall" into matter. Nonetheless, we are in an age where this phase of materialism has to be overcome, but without losing everything that has been conquered in terms of scientific attitude, consciousness, knowledge, freedom and individuality. Let us see the way I think is the adequate one.
5. Spirituality
I characterize spirituality as a worldview which admits, besides physical matter and energy, and physical phenomena, both a non-physical "substantiality" as non-physical phenomena which involve this "substantiality". Furthermore, an essential part of spirituality is the hypothesis that non-physical phenomena may influence physical matter. In this section I will briefly expound my theory of how this may occur in certain phenomena of living beings and in humans.
There are two facts that do not make physical sense, and could be taken as a strong indication that spirituality may make some sense: the origin of physical matter and energy, and the limits of the universe.
Analogously to materialism, there are two types of spirituality. I call the first one scientific spirituality, characterized by the adoption of the world view mentioned at the beginning of this section in a strictly scientific attitude, cf. section 3. I call the second type faith spirituality, which is the faith in that worldview, therefore it does not follow a scientific attitude.
I will call "spiritualist" someone who adopts spirituality in the sense given above. It should not be mixed with a common understanding of this word as meaning someone who believes in communicating with the dead.
It may sound strange that a spiritualist can exercise a strictly scientific attitude as characterized in section 3. Examining what was expounded in that section, it may be recognized that the requisites for this attitude by no means restrict the phenomena of the universe just to physical ones.
Analogously to materialism, there is just one type of scientific spirituality, but there are many types of faith spirituality. In the latter case, a scientific attitude is adopted in relation to certain phenomena, and a belief regarding others.
It is very important to recognize that scientific spirituality, as characterized, is a proper superset of the materialistic view, that is, a scientific spiritualist admits all physical scientific facts, but admits something more, of non-physical nature. Thus, this spirituality is an extension of scientific materialism. It is important to stress the expression "scientific facts". In fact, a spiritualist is not obliged to accept materialistic judgments, as for instance the presumption that thinking is originated in the brain and Darwinian evolution, because these are not scientific facts: they are scientific speculations. Another example is the presumption that the Earth was formed about 6 billion years ago; this time is not a scientific fact: it is the result of a calculation which represents a very rough extrapolation (of radioactive decay). The calculation may be correct, but it should simply be called "extrapolation of the radioactive decay" and not "the age of the Earth", because this is a judgment. This extrapolation, as well as others based upon other phenomena, start from the supposition that physical constants have always been the same, and do not depend, for instance, on totally different physical conditions than the present ones. By the way, to avoid misconceptions, I state here that I am not an adept of what is called "Young Earth Creationism", which says that the Earth is about 6,000 years old.
A faith spiritualist may deny some scientific facts, because he may have the prejudice of not studying or verifying them. Some scientific facts may even contradict his faith because, as such, they are not subjected to revision; otherwise they would be on the way to become working hypotheses.
Faith spirituality may be also called "mysticism". In general, mystics do not try to understand non-physical phenomena; for them, feelings inspired by the latter are sufficient, as well as an intuition that they exist.
In section 8 I will show that many followers of institutional religions are in fact materialists.
It is of fundamental importance to separate physical from non-physical phenomena. Any explanation of the latter in physical terms, as for instance paranormal phenomena (e.g. telepathy) as being caused by "waves" of some unknown physical energy, is materialism and not spirituality. Note that "waves" are mechanical phenomena (as for instance those caused in a lake when a stone is thrown into it, or those caused by sounds propagating through air); their application in non-mechanical phenomena is problematic even from a physical point of view. For example, any wave has to propagate in some physical medium. What is the medium where electromagnetic waves propagate? Even worse, what is the propagation medium of Quantum Mechanic’s probability waves, as probability is a purely mathematical concept, without physical consistency?
Dawkins demonstrates that the God of institutional religions cannot be the designer of the whole universe (as supposed by those religions), because he should also have a designer. Furthermore, God, as a designer, should be more complex and improbable than complex and thus improbable living beings [DAW b, 188]. Here one sees a clear example of mixing physical with non-physical concepts. Clearly, those religions take God as a non-physical entity. But designing and constructing physical entities, such as living beings, is acting upon the physical world in accordance with its conditions and laws; speaking about the improbability of a living being having attained a high complexity is also a view which applies to that world. But speculating about the necessity of a non-physical entity having a designer is applying the reasoning based upon the physical world to a non-physical entity. Speculating about a non-physical entity being more improbable than something physical is again applying upon a non-physical entity a reasoning based on the physical world. Curiously, Dawkins relates that in a recent conference on science and religion, representatives of institutional religions could not reasonably argue against his two objections [p. 187]. From my point of view, this is absolutely clear: institutional religions also mix physical with non-physical concepts (apart from not having a clear concept of what God is).
Going back to great problems of Physics, they may be an indication that at the atomic level, and also at the cosmic level of stars, galaxies and nebulae, one is at the frontier between the physical and non-physical realms. For instance, it is not possible to understand with a reasoning based upon our experience of matter, that is, upon our senses, the non-locality of Quantum Mechanics, in which there is an apparent instantaneous influence between "entangled" atomic or sub-atomic "particles", independently of the distance between them [GRE, p. 83]. The same applies to the "spin" of "particles", which does not correspond to our notion of rotation [p. 104]. On the other hand, the relativistic notion of time and space, in which they depend on speed, does not correspond to our perception that time is absolute, as in Newtonian Mechanics. Moreover, the time of Physics models is reversible [p. 145], that is, for these models there is no distinction between past and future [p. 156]. This goes against our experience: nobody has seen a spilled milk going spontaneously back to the bottle. Furthermore, we have a precise notion of the "now", which also does not make sense in Physics [p. 141]. Other big problems in science are "dark energy", which could be responsible for the repulsion resulting in the expansion of the universe, forming ¾ of its contents [CON, p.25] (but does not affect "small" distances such as those of our galaxy), and "dark matter", which may consist of 85% of all matter in the universe [p. 27]; nobody knows what they are.
As I showed in section 4, free will does not make sense from a materialistic point of view. But it makes all sense from the view of scientific spirituality. I am going to justify this assertion using my theory on how the non-physical realm may act upon the physical, leading to human freedom. I will be brief, because I expounded this theory in detail in my paper "Is there just matter or also spirit in the universe?". Suppose that, associated to each living being, there exists a unique non-physical "member". Suppose further that in living beings there are many physical non-deterministic phenomena. One example is the fact that from a single gene various different proteins may be formed [HOL C, p. 78]. In his excellent book, Jeffrey Smith says: "The old theory of genetics asserted that each gene is coded to produce one single protein. On this basis, biologists predicted that there would be about 100,000 genes in human DNA, to account for the various proteins. When the number of human genes was reported in June 26, 2000 as 30,000, it exploded the myth of one-gene, one-protein. In reality, the vast majority of genes can encode for more than one protein; some can produce several." [SMI J, p. 117.] My theory is that the choice of which protein should be formed from a certain gene does not require energy. Thus, one of the ways of a living being’s non-physical "member" acting upon its physical matter is precisely in this choice. In my paper mentioned above, I showed that there is apparently a non-determinism in a cell maintaining its state, or starting to subdivide (mitosis and meiosis) or to die (apoptosis). The choice of one of theses paths does not require energy, so here one may again have the action of a non-physical member working as a (mental!) model for the growth and regeneration of living tissues. This is a possibility for explaining certain morphological phenomena of living beings, which are a mystery from a purely physical point of view, such as the symmetry of a person’s ears, the symmetries of some extraordinary colored designs in butterflies’ wings (see in that paper my pictures showing examples of these symmetries), etc. Besides a gene being able to give origin to different proteins, and cells changing their state, there are other non-deterministic transitions in any living being, where the choice of what transition will be taken, not requiring energy, may have the influence of something non-physical uniquely associated to that being. An example of this maybe what combination of parent’s genes is made in the formation of an egg. Another one is the fact that if a neuron is in a certain state, with the same input impulses sometimes it fires, sometimes it doesn’t; this means that its firing may be non-deterministic. Then our non-physical thinking may act upon neurons, producing their activity (see more on this on my cited paper). Notice here possible physical consequences of assuming the existence of non-physical members of living beings; compare this hypotheses of scientific spirituality with the totally abstract concept of the God of institutional religions, which cannot explain how s/he acts.
In this schema, human free will comes from the conscious action of a non-physical individual member, which is part of each person, and which I call "higher self", choosing one of various non-deterministic actions. For example, suppose that a person is at the corner of a rectangular block, and needs to walk to the diagonally opposed corner in the same block. He may follow one of two possible ways: beginning at the left or the right sidewalk. Suppose that there is nothing that gives him some preference for one or the other way (as could have been the case if one of them has less traffic, or has a nicer view). If under these conditions he makes a conscious choice, that is, thinking on the two possible ways and then deciding which one he is going to take (instead of doing it instinctively), and then following his decision, he would be acting in freedom. An instinctive action may be in this example taking the way he is used to take everyday: this would not be a free action. Note that there could be preference conditions for one of the ways, as already mentioned: even then, a conscious choice may be an act of freedom because, for example, the person may take a certain way precisely because he recognizes a preference for the other one. But if there is a preference for one of the ways, which is taken because of this preference, this choice is not made in freedom. Whenever one follows a feeling or an unconscious impulse, one does not act in freedom.
Obviously, a materialist will say that the person who is at the corner has the illusion of being free to choose one of the two ways. It is important to know that the former cannot prove this fact, so it is perfectly possible to make the hypothesis that the choice was a free one. In my paper mentioned above I give purely mental exercises showing oneself that it is possible to fully control one’s thinking, at least for some moments. This permits every person to mentally observe that he has the possibility of choosing in freedom his next thought, giving him personal evidences that free will may exist.
In conscious decisions, the non-physical "member", which I called "higher self", may take a mental decision in freedom, making the person to act in freedom. An accurate observation shows that animals always act by instinct or by conditioning: in the sense expounded here, they cannot be free. Therefore, one may conclude that they do not posses this non-physical "higher self" member (obviously, neither plants nor minerals have it). A consequence of this fact is that, from this spiritualist point of view, humans are not animals. Materialism cannot reach this conclusion, and it is natural that it calls humans "rational animals" (a curious fact: why, analogously, animals are not called "movable plants"?). As a matter of fact, a child cannot have freedom: his "higher self" does not yet impregnate his physical body enough to manifest itself consciously through thinking; his physical body has not been sufficiently elaborated to permit this impregnation.
An interesting hypothesis is that this higher self has no sex (which is a characteristic of the physical body and of vital functions, as well as of the soul, as for instance characterized by Jung), neither race (that is, it is independent of heredity), nor nationality. Its development, and constantly increasing manifestation along history, could be the reason for the present impulses to consider both sexes with equal mental capacities, for anti-racism and universalism (anti-nationalism). These impulses, which I conjecture cannot be explained through natural selection, are clearly modern ones and are becoming more and more intense. One of is beautiful manifestations is the respect to the human essence, independently of what a person is from an outer point of view. It seems to me that this is the cause for the relatively recent movements of protecting and giving some advantages to the physically handicapped and to old people. In Brazil, old people have the right of paying half the price of tickets for theater, movies, concerts, etc.; in some cities, public transportation is free for them; in queues they have the right of stepping ahead of other people; banks have to have special cashiers for them, and so on. In both old and handicapped people, this higher self is of the same nature as of all humans; it exists, but cannot fully manifest itself. In other words, what really matters in a human being is his non-physical essence. In a small child, this higher self exists too, but it also cannot fully manifest itself, because this depends on the development of the physical body, vital functions and also the maturation of capacities of perception, feeling, thinking, being conscious, etc. Note how in modern times there also appeared a deep respect for children – to the point of laws having been instituted forbidding that they be physically punished (something which was considered quite natural in the past). There is an intuition that each child brings with himself certain characteristics and certain capacities which should be respected. According to the concepts presented here, they are due to this higher self, which is unique for each human being, and has to progress during the latter's life.
Many religions are used to speak about God – as we have seen, without characterizing this entity and without clearly showing how s/he acts. What I called "higher self", being a unique non-physical member of each human being, could be considered the truly divine element that everyone has in himself. I have the impression that many people, when saying "My God!" are unconsciously referring to this unique divinity which exists inside them. After all, God is universal, how could s/he be personal and belong to anybody? Dawkins asks the question of how God "is a being capable of […] talking to a million people simultaneously […]" [DAW b, p. 185] – again, a mixture of physical and non-physical concepts,; nevertheless, it shows the universal aspect of the God of institutional religions (albeit acting upon each individual). On the other hand, the higher self is individual, that is, it really belongs to everyone. Admitting by hypothesis the existence of this higher individuality, the spirit becomes something which acts, and not a mere abstraction as the notion of God has become. This non-physical member may be perceived when, in a meditative state, thinking concentrates upon itself.
In a spiritualist worldview, it makes sense considering that human freedom exists. Therefore, in this view it also makes sense speaking about responsibility, moral and unselfish love which, as we have seen, do not make sense from a strictly materialistic point of view. Thus, only spirituality may lead to a conscious and coherent overcoming of egotism and greed. In fact, I consider altruistic love an essential requisite to the practice of a scientific spirituality: a true spiritualist should dedicate unselfish love to nature and other human beings, because he recognizes that the spirit pervades everything.
At the end of section 4 I mentioned that materialism was a necessity for humanity. Since the end of the 19th century it should be overcome by a special spirituality: precisely scientific spirituality. There is no way out for humanity: materialism and faith spirituality can only continue to lead to the destruction of nature and of humanity; this destruction may be observed by the disasters produced by technology and by religious confessions Regarding the latter, Dawkins describes very well in his book the moral destruction produced by many religioins. Both are serving egotism and ambition; only scientific spirituality may lead humanity to assume the unselfish attitude necessary for changing the way of the present destructions. It is interesting to note that religions go against free will, because they impose ideas and actions (well described by Dawkins); on the other hand, free will makes no sense to materialism and present science.
Unfortunately, I have no hope for the whole of humanity. It seems that there is no possibility of mass reverting the increasing decay of human values, due both to materialism and religion. This decay is shown by the continuous increase in egotism, and greed for money and power, and by the enormous influence exercised upon individuals, limiting their freedom, for instance conditioning them, on one side for consumption and for having certain points of view (e.g. inducing a deep veneration for technology), on the other side to blindly follow literal interpretations of religious images transmitted in various scriptures and myths. But I am sure that these destructive tendencies can and should be reverted individually. It is to individuals that I am writing at this moment.
I am not totally negative or pessimistic: I recognize some highly positive advancements of humanity, such as the movements for human rights and for universal peace, and the ecological movement. But the global final balance seems to me highly negative. I really cannot have hope as far as the masses are concerned – it suffices to consider that about half of humanity is conditioned and bestialized everyday by TV (see my papers on electronic media on my web site).
This paper is a translation of the original in Portuguese, "Ciência, religião e espiritualidade".
2. Hypothesis and faith
Over time, humans gradually developed intellectual capacities. One of the consequences of this fact is that today every adult human being longs for understanding. For example, when observing phenomena everybody tries to conceptually understand why they happen. Also, accepting social laws and rules without understanding the reason for their existence does not satisfy her/him anymore. (For the sake of conciseness, from now on I will use the masculines "he" instead of "s/he", "his" instead of "his/her" and so on.) The same happens when he is presented with theories without their making sense to him, or without being logically coherent and corresponding to what he may observe outside and inside himself. It seems to me that each modern person should have a conscious conception of the world, a worldview; from it, he should orient his thinking, feelings and actions. In terms of conceptions of the world, it is important to separate what is a working hypothesis and what is faith; let us begin by examining the characteristics of each one, pointing out their differences.
2.1 A hypothesis is a statement which is taken as truth, or has been proved to be true in some theory or experiment, and is used as a basis for explaining some experimental evidence or for extending that theory. A theory may involve many hypotheses and their consequences; thus it is wider than a hypothesis. A fundamental characteristic of a theory is its logical coherence, that is, there should be no contradictions among its hypotheses and the statements resulting from them.
Therefore, a hypothesis is the basis for some conceptual understanding, that is, for the correct mental association between a correct perception and a correct concept, or between correct concepts which are interrelated. Note the use of the word "correct" – I admit that there exist correct and incorrect perceptions, concepts and associations. For example, if the reader looks at the entrance of his room, and if his visual system is healthy, probably he will initially have a correct perception of light impulses; then he will make a correct mental representation of the viewed object and, finally, will make, with his thinking, a correct association of this representation with the concept "door". Generally, one says that a door is "seen", but in fact what is seen are light impulses; "door" is a concept, an idea, and cannot be seen with our eyes. A counter-example could be seeing a person at some distance, and not being able to distinguish if it is a man or a woman. In this case, probably there is an error or imprecision in the perception, and this fact may become conscious through the difficulty in associating to the corresponding blurred mental representation one of various possible concepts. Another counter-example is seeing the Sun moving during the day through the sky, and making to this correct perception an association with the incorrect concept of its movement around the Earth, instead of associating this perception to the correct concept that the Sun stays still and the Earth is revolving around its axis.
Faith is a statement taken as truth, and is the basis for a worldview which may not involve, partially or totally, a conceptual understanding. Faith does not depend on experimental evidences. On the contrary, it closes the doors to understanding and research.
2.2 A hypothesis should be clearly formulated through concepts, and be based upon evidences, either through observations or through coherent and extensive theories derived from them. Furthermore, it should be always subject to revision.
Faith does not have to be clearly formulated, because it is not directed to the intellect; it is accepted as truth, and has a character of permanence, that is, it is not subjected to revisions.
2.3 A hypothesis should have a character of objectivity and universality. Thus, it should not be based upon feelings, because the latter are always subjective and individual.
On the contrary, faith may involve concepts (because it is impossible to express something through words without using concepts), but should essentially be based upon feelings, that is, it should be essentially subjective: one has the feeling that some belief is true.
2.4 A working hypothesis should always be part of some research of facts, or of a theory being established or already established.
On the other hand, faith is something terminal, self-contained. It may be part of a wider worldview, but it should not necessarily lead to some research, on the contrary, many times faith impairs the latter. Richard Dawkins criticizes religions saying: "One of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding." [DAW b, p. 152; see also pp. 154, 159-60.]
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In this text I am going to use the expression "to believe" as an exclusive synonym to "to have faith", in the expounded sense. As an example, in the Catholic doctrine, one should believe in God and should not believe in the reincarnation of the human being (in spite of some clear references about it in the New Testament). Note that there is no clear concept of what God is, either in that religion as in other religions. Therefore, in the sense of the characterization 2.2, one should not refer to a "hypothesis of the existence of God", expression used by Dawkins [DAW b, p. 138].
Another example of faith is taking the images of the Genesis as literal facts, considering for instance that the "creation days" had 24 hours, as taken by many biblical creationists. A working hypothesis could be that those images are symbols to facts that really occurred. Through this example one may see that a hypothesis should necessarily lead to a research: in this case, what are the realities represented by those biblical images. On the other hand, the mentioned faith does not lead to any investigation or search for understanding.
Using the same example, it is a fact that many people consider biblical images as invented stories, tales. There are then two possibilities: taking it as faith or working hypothesis. In the second case, one tries to justify this consideration speculating through some theory, for example, that ancient human beings had childish fears, and those tales helped them to face those fears. Another possibility is that humans had a need of locating themselves in relation to the past, so that they invented a ghostly cosmogony, as they didn’t have at that time the possibility of inventing a conceptual theory such as the Big Bang. As a matter of fact, this is also a ghostly theory: how did matter and energy appeared before they condensed and exploded? Even admitting a series of expansions and contractions, this series must have had a physical beginning.
3. Scientific attitude
Scientific attitude is one of the greatest conquests of humanity. After the beginning of the 15th century it began to effectively develop as everybody’s possible attitude. Before this time, it partially appeared in a few individuals. It should be applied whenever something is observed and described, and when concepts are formulated. In these cognitive activities, it seems to me that it is the correct attitude for modern human beings. This means that a person who does not adopt a scientific attitude in his cognitive day-to-day life is unduly returning to the past. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that this attitude does not apply to the whole of human life, because cognition is just part of it, as will be expounded after listing its fundamental characteristics.
In cognition, a scientific attitude is adopted when the following requisites are satisfied:
3.1 Having working hypotheses, and not faith, cf. section 2 above.
3.2 Permanent curiosity is exercised, that is, one should be always trying to know new things and ideas. If a phenomenon is observed and not understood, it should be observed from all possible angles, and it should be studied in order to be understood. If an idea is not understood, or looks strange, one should make an effort to learn it and understand it.
This attitude means that one should have an interest for all phenomena and theories.
A counter-example to this attitude is the fact that very few people know how airplanes fly, albeit seeing them quite frequently. Understanding this phenomenon, due to a property of fluids discovered in 1738 by Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782), is a relatively simple matter: it may be demonstrated very easily by blowing over a sheet of light paper stretched with the hands and maintained with its top touching the inferior lip, and observe that the sheet goes up.
I have been stating for a long time that the absence of this constant curiosity may produce an undesirable effect: the development of a mental paralysis. According to Plato, in Menon, Socrates goes even further, saying: "Some things I have said that I am not altogether confident. But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; – that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power." [PLA a, p. 183.]
3.3 One tries to objectively observe the world, that is, observations should concentrate on the phenomenon; no observed aspect should be disregarded and no observation should depend on previous hypotheses.
This action is characterized by the observer exercising a total openness both to inner and outer phenomena in relation to him.
3.4 One should try to understand the world objectively and conceptually, specially living beings and humans.
3.5 Feelings are not used as a basis for observations and in formulating concepts about observed objects or studied theories.
This requisite is a consequence of 3.3 and 3.4, and is due to the fact that feelings are purely subjective. In fact, every person has his own feelings and another person cannot feel the feelings of the former; what the latter may do is to recognize them, for instance perceiving that the first person is happy or sad. But it is impossible to the latter to feel the happiness or sadness being felt by the former.
An example of an undue use of feelings in the acquisition of knowledge is using one’s sympathy or antipathy for somebody to reach conclusions about the latter. It is interesting to note that, when somebody has a feeling regarding something, it tells much more about the former than about that object. For instance, an antipathy towards somebody may be the result of his face suggesting the face of another person, who did something nasty to the observer. Another example could be observing and studying some phenomenon or object due to a strong sympathy towards them, and avoiding studying others which arise antipathy.
Notice the use of the word "basis" in the formulation of this attitude. Exercising a scientific attitude does not mean ignoring feelings, but they should not be used both for orienting curiosity and research, and for stating concepts about some phenomena. Feelings should be made conscious and taken into consideration whenever making some judgment, because it is impossible to have a total knowledge about something real (total knowledge exists only in Mathematics, in well-defined areas; there are well-formulated mathematical problems which do not have a solution). For example, if there are two coherent but conflicting theories about the same subject, and there are no evidences of which better adapts itself to reality, one may use a feeling of sympathy towards one of them to temporarily adopt it; but one should have full consciousness about this reason for having chosen one of them.
On the other hand, there may be essential feelings involved in scientific activities, as for instance the enthusiasm for discovering new facts and for obtaining more knowledge. Certain feelings should also be used when choosing what research should be done and in making the results public. For instance, a moral filter may hinder a veterinary of sacrificing animals in his research, or a biologist of using human stem cells extracted from human embryos, if it is necessary to kill them. If a new discovery may represent an ecological or human danger, maybe the researcher, based upon his feelings, may decide not to make them public (this reminds the excellent theater play by F. Dürrenmat, Die Physiker, "The Physicists", written in 1962, and considered his best play [DÜR]; see alsohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Physiker]).
3.6 The description of phenomena and the formulation of concepts and theories should be directed exclusively to the understanding of the reader and should be universal.
This requisite is a consequence of the previous one. A counter-example would be transmitting concepts enthusiastically, trying to influence the feelings of the receptor in order to convince the latter of the arguments’ validity. I expect the readers of my papers and books to notice that I try to direct myself exclusively to the understanding of the reader, and not to his feelings.
3.7 One should have absolutely no prejudices, in any knowledge area, that is, one should be always ready to verify any fact or phenomenon, or to study any theory.
For instance, if one says "The twin towers in New York have been hit by two commercial airplanes" a scientific attitude could be "This looks extremely strange, but I will investigate." A non-scientific attitude could be "This is highly improbable, so I will not give it any attention."
Another example is Newton’s theory of colors [NEW]. He clearly has started from the preconceived idea that "white light" is composed of all the colors of the rainbow, and arranged his experiments to prove his theory of differential refrangibility. That’s why he used a particular aperture (hole) in his window, and a certain distance from his prism to the screen, thus creating a beam of sunlight whose dispersion produced the colors of the rainbow: "[…] at a round hole, about one third Part of an Inch broad made in the Shut of a Window (sic) [...]" [NEW, p. 26 (Prop. II, Theor. II, Exper. 3).] If the beam had been very thin, or the screen placed at a greater distance, only three colors would have appeared (red, green and violet). On the other hand, if the aperture would have been much larger, or the screen placed close to the prism, a white part would have appeared in place of the green. The latter, as one may clearly observe by gradually increasing the distance to the screen, results in the superposition of the yellow and blue parts of the resulting colors. I recommend to the reader personally observing these phenomena: for this, just take two pieces of black paper, setting them over a white paper. The white strip thus formed should be looked through a prism with its axis parallel to this strip (the easiest way is to point an angle of the prism downwards and view through it with an eye close to it). To modify the width of the strip, one of the black papers should be moved towards or apart from the other black paper. One should take advantage of this setting to repeat the experiment with two white papers over a black paper, forming a black strip. The "complementary spectrum", according to Goethe’s theory of colors, will be seen. Goethe, in his theory of colors, makes it a point not to start with Newton’s preconceived idea, criticizing it [GOE, Vol. 3, p. 48: Der Newtonsche Optik – erstes Buch, erster Teil (Newton’s Optics – vol. 1, part 1), Props. 86-93, see also ZAJ, p. 209, SEP, p. 142]. It is interesting here to cite the physicist Tolger Holtsmark: "Newton thought that he explained the existence of the spectrum by means of a physical model of the light, whereas he in fact used an image of the spectrum to explain one possible physical model of the light." [HOL T, p. 1235, my emphasis.]
This requisite complements the one examined in 3.3.
3.8 The adopted conceptual worldview should be coherent and, if logically conflicting points are known, one tries to investigate them to solve the conflicts.
3.9 There should be a permanent interest in opinions contrary to one’s own, specially if well-based.
Contrary opinions may help to change working hypotheses (cf. 3.1); they should be used at least to test one’s own hypotheses and theories and, eventually, collect more arguments in favor of the latter.
3.10 Observation of phenomena and their conceptual description should always be made in full awaken consciousness; the observer should permanently maintain his self-consciousness and his individuality.
Counter-examples to this requisite are the use of dream images as they would have been concepts, and psychic communications, that is, those made through mediums. In the fist case, dream images, instead of being taken literally, may inspire some concepts, such as the well-known experience by F.A. Kekulé, who in 1865 had a dram of a snake biting its own tail, inspiring him to discover the form of the benzene ring of carbon atoms. In the second case, there are two possibilities: the medium is unconscious or is conscious during his observations or communications. The first situation goes directly against the requisite being discussed here. An example of the second case is psychic writing (many books with them are quite popular in Brazil): the medium who does it is not expressing his own individuality, because he transmits knowledge that he does not have, and in general uses a writing style which is not his; everything happens as his own personality having been replaced during this activity.
Only by preserving this requisite one may guarantee that there are no errors in one’s own observations and description of phenomena and concepts. Goethe, who is unfortunately not recognized as a great scientist, in spite of his scientific contributions and his introduction of an effective scientific method, declared once that "The senses do not deceive, our judgment does" ("Die Sinne trügen nicht, das Urteil trügt" [in Maximen und Reflexionen, No. 527]). When the observer is conscious while doing his observations, he may recognize that his senses are not sufficiently accurate, or the apparatus used to make the observations has some limitations, or even recognizing that there are eventually different judgments that can be made from a particular observation.
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When an attitude is the contrary to any of the above requisites, I will call it "anti-scientific attitude".
It is very important to recognize that the scientific attitude characterized here does not embody the whole of human activities, because they are not just of the cognitive type. In fact, there are at least other two: artistic and social attitudes. I am going to write just briefly about them, because their subjects are not the purpose of this paper.
In both these attitudes, feelings acquire fundamental importance, contrary to requisite 3.5. Furthermore, in both of them the individual, subjective aspect is absolutely essential. In fact, an artist should necessarily put in his work something about his particular way of expressing something objective or subjective, contrary to the scientific attitude, which should lead to something universal and be expressed universally. In other words, an object of art is something objective and universal, and what it expresses may also be universal, but the manner in which this expressions manifests itself should have some subjective element stemming from the artist’s individuality and depending on the individuality of the observer (for more details, see my paper "The computer as an instrument of counter-art"). For example, a painter may represent hunger or fear in a certain way, another painter in another way (quite characteristic of expressionistic paintings). It is interesting to note that every work of art should necessarily touch the feelings of the observer, that is, his subjectiveness is an essential part of the observation process; the contrary happens with a work of science. A work that is just an outcome of objective conceptualization, and the means of expression is universal, independent of the observer’s interpretation, is not a work of art, but of science. Science has as its primary goal the formulation of concepts for the understanding of the universe; on the other hand, arts' primary goal of is the production of objects to be observed through the senses. Along this line, it is interesting to observe that architecture is the most objective art, and poetry the most subjective.
Social attitude also differs from scientific attitude, because the former involves necessarily actions on individuals and their subjectivity. If individuals could be treated objectively, economists would always have success in their theories and practices. One of the most important social attitudes is compassion, that is, the capacity of suffering when perceiving the suffering of another person. By no means it is derived from a scientific attitude. Daniel Goleman’s "emotional intelligence" [GOL], of fundamental social importance, even in professional activities, is not a scientific attitude, but a social one.
4. Materialism
I characterize materialism as a worldview which admits just the existence of physical phenomena in the universe. According to it, the world is constituted just of physical matter and energy, and the phenomena which happen to them have physical causes only.
There is no complete knowledge of what matter is. Nevertheless, we have an intuitive notion of it, because we are confronted with it through our senses. We also have an intuitive notion of what energy is, because any physical action we perform requires a certain effort exercised for some time, called "work" in Physics.
There are two types of materialism. I call the first one scientific materialism, characterized by the adoption of the world view mentioned at the beginning of this section in a strictly scientific attitude, cf. section 3. I call the second type faith materialism, which is the faith in that worldview. Thus it does not follow a scientific attitude, specially characteristics 3.1 (as it involves faith), 3.2 (in the sense that such a materialist does not have a curiosity about the existence of non-physical phenomena) and 3.7 (in the sense that there is a preconceived idea that there are just physical phenomena in the universe).
The most typical difference between them is that a scientific materialist should be open and have interest in non-materialist views of the world. He should be ready to review his position if he becomes convinced that there are also non-physical phenomena. On the other hand, a faith materialist takes his view as dogma, and is not open to views of the world which admit the existence of non-physical phenomena. Typically, he not only does not try to know these types of views, but even avoids entering in touch with any view that is not materialist.
For example, a faith materialist says: "It is obvious that our thinking is generated by our brain, how could it be different?" or "It is obvious that Darwinian evolution is a reality, how could it be different?" On the other hand a scientific materialist would say: "According to my conception of the world, thinking is generated by the brain, but as there is no complete physical knowledge about this process, I am open to other explanations, independently of what concepts and experiences they employ. Maybe they can present evidences or a coherent and wide theoretical framework, and then I will change my fundamental hypotheses." The same for Darwinian evolution. In other words, a scientific materialist takes these two concepts as theories (as they really are), and not realities, as it frequently the case with faith materialists.
I called the first type "scientific" for a simple reason: a scientist, by necessarily adopting a scientific attitude as expounded in section 3, should not have prejudices and should have a total openness to everything. One of the most frequent attitudes of faith materialists is having a total prejudice against any explanations that are not based upon purely physical phenomena, which they also call "natural phenomena". It is quite common for them to refuse to study any theory which involves non-physical (or supernatural) processes, and to examine evidences thereof. It is also quite typical for them to ridicule any theory or worldview which uses non-physical phenomena in its explanations, as were the cases of Freud, Bertrand Russel and, more recently, Richard Dawkins [DAW b, pp. 51, 59, 85, 135, etc.].
Obviously, there exist variations of faith materialism: a materialist may adopt a scientific attitude towards certain phenomena, and a faith attitude towards others. On the other hand, there is only one type of scientific materialism, for if a person adopts it, he should have no faith whatsoever.
It is very important to consider the following: what characterizes a person as a materialist, of any type, is the way he thinks. Someone may frequently refer to God (independently how he understands or does not understand this word), but if his way of thinking is materialist, that is, he looks for and uses just physical causes for all phenomena, applied only to physical entities, he should be classified as a materialist.
Many people – maybe all – who say they are "atheists" are in fact materialists, in general of the faith type. This denomination of "atheist" has many problems. American Heritage brings the definition "One that disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods." That it, it starts from "God" or "gods". Therefore, an atheist should initially explain what is God or what are gods, in order to say that he does not believe or denies their existence. If he says that he believes that tomorrow is not going to rain, he has as starting point the supposition that there is a correct understanding of "tomorrow" and "to rain". But what does he understand under God or gods? The atheist would have to precisely characterize these entities, and their actions, in order to be able to discuss their existence or lack of existence. Note that it is possible to clearly describe something physically impossible, such as a castle which floats in the air. Furthermore, those entities are obviously non-physical. Nevertheless, any materialist denies the existence of non-physical "objects" or entities, and the processes involving them; thus, how is he going to characterize something non-physical, so that we may discuss it with him? I will return to the problem of the concept of God in section 8, in relation to the monotheism of various religions.
Dawkins calls himself an atheist, a denomination that pervades his whole book [DAW b]. But he is more than a person who does not believe in God, whatever this is: his reasoning is absolutely materialist, that is, he cannot assume the existence of any non-physical process. So, in fact, he is a materialist.
Many people call themselves "skeptical", when, in reality, they are materialists. American Heritage says about it: "1. One who instinctively or habitually doubts, questions, or disagrees with assertions or generally accepted conclusions.2. One inclined to skepticism in religious matters." I wonder if a skeptic is skeptical of his own existence (which is obviously naïvely accepted by everybody who knows him), because in this case he would at least be a bit schizophrenic, if not having even more serious psychological disorders. I have the impression that a person declares to be a skeptic to indicate that he does not believe in anything non-physical; in this case, my denomination of "materialist" characterizes much better this person. By the way, the expression "believe" classifies such a person as a faith materialist, according to my characterization at the end of section 2.
Many skeptic people are faith materialists. One of these seems to be Michael Shermer, who writes the permanent section Skeptic of Scientific American, and is the editor of Skeptic – see http://www.skeptic.com. On this web site, in the section About us – Discover Skepticism one reads: "Modern skepticism is embodied in the scientific method, which involves gathering data to formulate and test naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena." Thus, all non-natural, that is, non-physical phenomena are excluded, and seriously examining them or theories based upon them is refused. Therefore, for Shermer science is a faith materialism, because it only admits material explanations and is closed to non-physical ones.
The positivism of Auguste Comte (1785-1857) is based on physical experience (inheritance of empiricists such as Hume and Berkeley) and denied any metaphysics (besides Logics and Mathematics, classified as "formal pure sciences"). Thus, he was a materialist.
It seems to me that my "materialist" denomination characterizes much better a person than classifying him as atheist, skeptic or positivist.
For the sequel, it is fundamental to recognize that a coherent materialism should: a) limit human individuality just to heredity and the past influence of the environment; b) deny the existence of free-will; c) deny individual and collective responsibility; d) deny the existence of moral attitudes and actions; e) deny the possibility of an action being due to unselfish love; f) deny that the universe and human life have a sense. I am going to briefly justify these assertions.
a) The question of individuality is trivial: if every human is made just of matter, there can be no other component in his individuality than that due to heredity and to his environment.
b) I consider free will, or the freedom to consciously perform inner actions (such as thinking) or outer actions (doing something to the external world with one’s hands or feet, moving or speaking), as the possibility of a person executing an action without any inner or outer imposition. Outer imposition is clear: forcing someone, physically or emotionally, to execute some action. An example of the second case is forcing someone to do some action by instilling fear that if this action is not done, something bad will occur with that person, his family or friends; another example is conditioning a person through advertising to do some action, such as buying or eating something. An inner imposition occurs, for instance, when someone acts following a feeling, such as not speaking to somebody who, at first glance, looks antipathetic.
An action is executed in freedom if there are other possible actions to be taken at that moment, and the choice of the first one is done in full consciousness, mentally examining what would be the consequences of the execution of each action. This does not exclude the execution of an action based upon some feeling, as the case of a person who is following a diet to lose weight but, in a hot day, consciously decides to break the diet and to savor a good ice cream.
Materialism has to necessarily deny free will, because freedom cannot result from matter: this is always subjected to physical "laws" and conditions. There are two possibilities here. There may be some determinism, that is, given the state of a body and certain conditions in its environment, it will always undergo the same transformation. A famous example of a person with a fully deterministic view of nature was Einstein, following the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza (see, for instance, the excellent [ISA, pp. 102, 335] and also [JAM, pp. 37, 69-71]).
The other possibility is the existence of randomness or chance, that is, given certain initial conditions, matter behaves in various possible manners, without a cause for taking any of the variants. Chance is the basis of Quantum Mechanics, which has a great experimental success, but which has transformed the atomic world in something incomprehensible. If a human being acts randomly, he does not act in freedom, because the action has not resulted from a conscious act.
An old reasoning may help to better clarify the point that freedom cannot result from matter. Obviously an atom cannot have freedom. Thus, a molecule formed by a group of atoms also cannot have freedom. A cell, formed by a group of molecules, idem. A group of cells, forming an organ, ibidem. Finally, a group of organs forming a human being also cannot have freedom. This is one of the reasons why scientists and coherent materialists deny the possibility of free will, which they consider to be an illusion. Einstein was absolutely categorical about this; in his words: "I am a determinist. I don’t believe in free-will." [ISA, p. 397]; "I absolutely don’t believe in free-will in the philosophical sense. Every person acts not only under the pressure of external compulsions, but also according to internal needs." [p. 140]; "Human beings, in their thoughts, feelings and actions, are not free, but are imprisoned by causality, in the same way as stars in their movements." [p. 401.] As for the illusion of free-will, he said: "I am compelled to act as free-will would exist because, if I want to live in a civilized society, I have to act in a responsible way." [p. 403.]
c) It is obvious that, without freedom, there is no personal or collective responsibility. Einstein denied its existence, because he thought that every human action is a consequence of his state and the state of the environment: "I know that, philosophically, a killer is not responsible for his crime, but I prefer not to drink tea with him." [p. 403.] By the way, he was not coherent in this and other philosophical questions, because, after getting to know the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis in concentration and extermination camps, he assigned responsibility for this not only on them, but on the whole of the German people: "Germans, as a whole nation, are responsible for these mass killings and should be punished as a whole nation." [ISA, p. 514, JAM, p. 71.] As a matter of fact, it is quite seldom to find a really coherent materialist, because most of them cherish at least intellectual freedom; furthermore, the concept of freedom has been deeply ingrained in humanity since the 19th century. It is possible that these people’s unconscious is wiser than their conscious; due to the former, they may have an intuition that the human being may have free will, and do not perceive that this contradicts their materialist worldview.
d) Without responsibility, there is no moral. In this sense, it is necessary to clearly distinguish "moral" from "ethics". The latter refers to norms established by a group, in general a professional one. For example, it is ethical for a lawyer to defend and try to convince other people (e.g. a jury) that some person is innocent, albeit being convinced that this person really killed someone; but this is not a moral act. In this case, a moral action could be for this lawyer to publicly recognize the guilt of the accused, but objectively show to the jury eventual attenuating factors.
e) An act is a consequence of exercising unselfish or altruistic love if it is of benefit to something or someone, is executed in full consciousness and freedom, and does not bring any benefit to the person who does it. Therefore, altruistic love also also makes no sense from a materialistic point of view. From it, only egotistical actions, and those moved by greed make sense. About this, it is worth noting that the theory of Darwinian evolution is based upon egotism: the fight for existence by individuals or species, without taking care of what happens to other individuals or species. I am aware that Darwin had already formulated a speculative theory trying to explain altruism: an altruistic person is better accepted by his community and thus has a greater chance of surviving and leaving offspring. It is really strange that unselfishness derives from egotism! Richard Dawkins has expressed very well the materialist point of view: in his speculation, egotism is inherent to humans, and is in their own genes, as if the latter could have consciousness [DAW a]. From modern materialistic science one cannot get to altruism.
It is interesting to note hat many scientists are idealists, and have great satisfaction in their research activities because they feel that they may thus unselfishly help humanity. Albeit this attitude is quite positive, it should be recognized that it is incoherent from their part as materialists (which is the case of the majority of them, if not almost all of them), because unselfishness cannot derive from matter.
f) From matter there can result no sense for the existence of the universe and human life, because they are outcomes of chance phenomena. For example, in Darwinian natural selection the best fit predominates, but it has this characteristic by chance, due to random genetic mutations (according to neo-Darwinism), random combination of genes from the parents, and random encounters with other individuals, where it may predominate. Curiously, Dawkins repeatedly writes that natural selection eliminates chance [DAW b, pp. 141, 145]. In the human case, a materialistic view has to necessarily admit that birth and death are chance happenings. Thus, from a point of view of this concept human life has no meaning: it simply exists, therefore, e.g., Sartre’s existentialism. The development of the universe, of the solar system, of Earth, the appearance of life and the evolution of living beings are all basically due to chance. Thus, the whole universe has no sense, no meaning.
Many convinced materialists have difficulty understanding what life having a sense could possibly mean. This is perfectly understandable, because from matter and physical forces it is impossible to reach such a sense.
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We are in the age of materialism. A person who is a materialist is totally in tune with humanity’s present way of being. In fact, one may regard the history of humanity as the "fall" into matter and materialism. In this sense, the wonderful biblical image of the Paradise [Gen 2:8] represents an initial period in which humans had no knowledge and self-awareness: they still had not "eaten" from the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" [2:17], and still could not recognize that they were "nude" [3:7]. Their "expulsion from Paradise" may be considered as a symbol for that fall. (As a matter of fact, in this sense the expressions "Temptation" and "Original Sin" do not make sense, because it is only possible to "sin" if it is possible to make a conscious choice, and this requires self-consciousness and knowledge; note that animals do not "sin".) It was necessary for humanity to pass through this "fall", because it is only due to our immersion in matter and acting upon it that we may make mistakes and therefore be free: if we would be unconscious, or there was only Good, we could not choose and therefore we would not be free. Our self-awareness and higher self (as will be characterized in the next section) were also developed due to this "fall" into matter. Nonetheless, we are in an age where this phase of materialism has to be overcome, but without losing everything that has been conquered in terms of scientific attitude, consciousness, knowledge, freedom and individuality. Let us see the way I think is the adequate one.
5. Spirituality
I characterize spirituality as a worldview which admits, besides physical matter and energy, and physical phenomena, both a non-physical "substantiality" as non-physical phenomena which involve this "substantiality". Furthermore, an essential part of spirituality is the hypothesis that non-physical phenomena may influence physical matter. In this section I will briefly expound my theory of how this may occur in certain phenomena of living beings and in humans.
There are two facts that do not make physical sense, and could be taken as a strong indication that spirituality may make some sense: the origin of physical matter and energy, and the limits of the universe.
Analogously to materialism, there are two types of spirituality. I call the first one scientific spirituality, characterized by the adoption of the world view mentioned at the beginning of this section in a strictly scientific attitude, cf. section 3. I call the second type faith spirituality, which is the faith in that worldview, therefore it does not follow a scientific attitude.
I will call "spiritualist" someone who adopts spirituality in the sense given above. It should not be mixed with a common understanding of this word as meaning someone who believes in communicating with the dead.
It may sound strange that a spiritualist can exercise a strictly scientific attitude as characterized in section 3. Examining what was expounded in that section, it may be recognized that the requisites for this attitude by no means restrict the phenomena of the universe just to physical ones.
Analogously to materialism, there is just one type of scientific spirituality, but there are many types of faith spirituality. In the latter case, a scientific attitude is adopted in relation to certain phenomena, and a belief regarding others.
It is very important to recognize that scientific spirituality, as characterized, is a proper superset of the materialistic view, that is, a scientific spiritualist admits all physical scientific facts, but admits something more, of non-physical nature. Thus, this spirituality is an extension of scientific materialism. It is important to stress the expression "scientific facts". In fact, a spiritualist is not obliged to accept materialistic judgments, as for instance the presumption that thinking is originated in the brain and Darwinian evolution, because these are not scientific facts: they are scientific speculations. Another example is the presumption that the Earth was formed about 6 billion years ago; this time is not a scientific fact: it is the result of a calculation which represents a very rough extrapolation (of radioactive decay). The calculation may be correct, but it should simply be called "extrapolation of the radioactive decay" and not "the age of the Earth", because this is a judgment. This extrapolation, as well as others based upon other phenomena, start from the supposition that physical constants have always been the same, and do not depend, for instance, on totally different physical conditions than the present ones. By the way, to avoid misconceptions, I state here that I am not an adept of what is called "Young Earth Creationism", which says that the Earth is about 6,000 years old.
A faith spiritualist may deny some scientific facts, because he may have the prejudice of not studying or verifying them. Some scientific facts may even contradict his faith because, as such, they are not subjected to revision; otherwise they would be on the way to become working hypotheses.
Faith spirituality may be also called "mysticism". In general, mystics do not try to understand non-physical phenomena; for them, feelings inspired by the latter are sufficient, as well as an intuition that they exist.
In section 8 I will show that many followers of institutional religions are in fact materialists.
It is of fundamental importance to separate physical from non-physical phenomena. Any explanation of the latter in physical terms, as for instance paranormal phenomena (e.g. telepathy) as being caused by "waves" of some unknown physical energy, is materialism and not spirituality. Note that "waves" are mechanical phenomena (as for instance those caused in a lake when a stone is thrown into it, or those caused by sounds propagating through air); their application in non-mechanical phenomena is problematic even from a physical point of view. For example, any wave has to propagate in some physical medium. What is the medium where electromagnetic waves propagate? Even worse, what is the propagation medium of Quantum Mechanic’s probability waves, as probability is a purely mathematical concept, without physical consistency?
Dawkins demonstrates that the God of institutional religions cannot be the designer of the whole universe (as supposed by those religions), because he should also have a designer. Furthermore, God, as a designer, should be more complex and improbable than complex and thus improbable living beings [DAW b, 188]. Here one sees a clear example of mixing physical with non-physical concepts. Clearly, those religions take God as a non-physical entity. But designing and constructing physical entities, such as living beings, is acting upon the physical world in accordance with its conditions and laws; speaking about the improbability of a living being having attained a high complexity is also a view which applies to that world. But speculating about the necessity of a non-physical entity having a designer is applying the reasoning based upon the physical world to a non-physical entity. Speculating about a non-physical entity being more improbable than something physical is again applying upon a non-physical entity a reasoning based on the physical world. Curiously, Dawkins relates that in a recent conference on science and religion, representatives of institutional religions could not reasonably argue against his two objections [p. 187]. From my point of view, this is absolutely clear: institutional religions also mix physical with non-physical concepts (apart from not having a clear concept of what God is).
Going back to great problems of Physics, they may be an indication that at the atomic level, and also at the cosmic level of stars, galaxies and nebulae, one is at the frontier between the physical and non-physical realms. For instance, it is not possible to understand with a reasoning based upon our experience of matter, that is, upon our senses, the non-locality of Quantum Mechanics, in which there is an apparent instantaneous influence between "entangled" atomic or sub-atomic "particles", independently of the distance between them [GRE, p. 83]. The same applies to the "spin" of "particles", which does not correspond to our notion of rotation [p. 104]. On the other hand, the relativistic notion of time and space, in which they depend on speed, does not correspond to our perception that time is absolute, as in Newtonian Mechanics. Moreover, the time of Physics models is reversible [p. 145], that is, for these models there is no distinction between past and future [p. 156]. This goes against our experience: nobody has seen a spilled milk going spontaneously back to the bottle. Furthermore, we have a precise notion of the "now", which also does not make sense in Physics [p. 141]. Other big problems in science are "dark energy", which could be responsible for the repulsion resulting in the expansion of the universe, forming ¾ of its contents [CON, p.25] (but does not affect "small" distances such as those of our galaxy), and "dark matter", which may consist of 85% of all matter in the universe [p. 27]; nobody knows what they are.
As I showed in section 4, free will does not make sense from a materialistic point of view. But it makes all sense from the view of scientific spirituality. I am going to justify this assertion using my theory on how the non-physical realm may act upon the physical, leading to human freedom. I will be brief, because I expounded this theory in detail in my paper "Is there just matter or also spirit in the universe?". Suppose that, associated to each living being, there exists a unique non-physical "member". Suppose further that in living beings there are many physical non-deterministic phenomena. One example is the fact that from a single gene various different proteins may be formed [HOL C, p. 78]. In his excellent book, Jeffrey Smith says: "The old theory of genetics asserted that each gene is coded to produce one single protein. On this basis, biologists predicted that there would be about 100,000 genes in human DNA, to account for the various proteins. When the number of human genes was reported in June 26, 2000 as 30,000, it exploded the myth of one-gene, one-protein. In reality, the vast majority of genes can encode for more than one protein; some can produce several." [SMI J, p. 117.] My theory is that the choice of which protein should be formed from a certain gene does not require energy. Thus, one of the ways of a living being’s non-physical "member" acting upon its physical matter is precisely in this choice. In my paper mentioned above, I showed that there is apparently a non-determinism in a cell maintaining its state, or starting to subdivide (mitosis and meiosis) or to die (apoptosis). The choice of one of theses paths does not require energy, so here one may again have the action of a non-physical member working as a (mental!) model for the growth and regeneration of living tissues. This is a possibility for explaining certain morphological phenomena of living beings, which are a mystery from a purely physical point of view, such as the symmetry of a person’s ears, the symmetries of some extraordinary colored designs in butterflies’ wings (see in that paper my pictures showing examples of these symmetries), etc. Besides a gene being able to give origin to different proteins, and cells changing their state, there are other non-deterministic transitions in any living being, where the choice of what transition will be taken, not requiring energy, may have the influence of something non-physical uniquely associated to that being. An example of this maybe what combination of parent’s genes is made in the formation of an egg. Another one is the fact that if a neuron is in a certain state, with the same input impulses sometimes it fires, sometimes it doesn’t; this means that its firing may be non-deterministic. Then our non-physical thinking may act upon neurons, producing their activity (see more on this on my cited paper). Notice here possible physical consequences of assuming the existence of non-physical members of living beings; compare this hypotheses of scientific spirituality with the totally abstract concept of the God of institutional religions, which cannot explain how s/he acts.
In this schema, human free will comes from the conscious action of a non-physical individual member, which is part of each person, and which I call "higher self", choosing one of various non-deterministic actions. For example, suppose that a person is at the corner of a rectangular block, and needs to walk to the diagonally opposed corner in the same block. He may follow one of two possible ways: beginning at the left or the right sidewalk. Suppose that there is nothing that gives him some preference for one or the other way (as could have been the case if one of them has less traffic, or has a nicer view). If under these conditions he makes a conscious choice, that is, thinking on the two possible ways and then deciding which one he is going to take (instead of doing it instinctively), and then following his decision, he would be acting in freedom. An instinctive action may be in this example taking the way he is used to take everyday: this would not be a free action. Note that there could be preference conditions for one of the ways, as already mentioned: even then, a conscious choice may be an act of freedom because, for example, the person may take a certain way precisely because he recognizes a preference for the other one. But if there is a preference for one of the ways, which is taken because of this preference, this choice is not made in freedom. Whenever one follows a feeling or an unconscious impulse, one does not act in freedom.
Obviously, a materialist will say that the person who is at the corner has the illusion of being free to choose one of the two ways. It is important to know that the former cannot prove this fact, so it is perfectly possible to make the hypothesis that the choice was a free one. In my paper mentioned above I give purely mental exercises showing oneself that it is possible to fully control one’s thinking, at least for some moments. This permits every person to mentally observe that he has the possibility of choosing in freedom his next thought, giving him personal evidences that free will may exist.
In conscious decisions, the non-physical "member", which I called "higher self", may take a mental decision in freedom, making the person to act in freedom. An accurate observation shows that animals always act by instinct or by conditioning: in the sense expounded here, they cannot be free. Therefore, one may conclude that they do not posses this non-physical "higher self" member (obviously, neither plants nor minerals have it). A consequence of this fact is that, from this spiritualist point of view, humans are not animals. Materialism cannot reach this conclusion, and it is natural that it calls humans "rational animals" (a curious fact: why, analogously, animals are not called "movable plants"?). As a matter of fact, a child cannot have freedom: his "higher self" does not yet impregnate his physical body enough to manifest itself consciously through thinking; his physical body has not been sufficiently elaborated to permit this impregnation.
An interesting hypothesis is that this higher self has no sex (which is a characteristic of the physical body and of vital functions, as well as of the soul, as for instance characterized by Jung), neither race (that is, it is independent of heredity), nor nationality. Its development, and constantly increasing manifestation along history, could be the reason for the present impulses to consider both sexes with equal mental capacities, for anti-racism and universalism (anti-nationalism). These impulses, which I conjecture cannot be explained through natural selection, are clearly modern ones and are becoming more and more intense. One of is beautiful manifestations is the respect to the human essence, independently of what a person is from an outer point of view. It seems to me that this is the cause for the relatively recent movements of protecting and giving some advantages to the physically handicapped and to old people. In Brazil, old people have the right of paying half the price of tickets for theater, movies, concerts, etc.; in some cities, public transportation is free for them; in queues they have the right of stepping ahead of other people; banks have to have special cashiers for them, and so on. In both old and handicapped people, this higher self is of the same nature as of all humans; it exists, but cannot fully manifest itself. In other words, what really matters in a human being is his non-physical essence. In a small child, this higher self exists too, but it also cannot fully manifest itself, because this depends on the development of the physical body, vital functions and also the maturation of capacities of perception, feeling, thinking, being conscious, etc. Note how in modern times there also appeared a deep respect for children – to the point of laws having been instituted forbidding that they be physically punished (something which was considered quite natural in the past). There is an intuition that each child brings with himself certain characteristics and certain capacities which should be respected. According to the concepts presented here, they are due to this higher self, which is unique for each human being, and has to progress during the latter's life.
Many religions are used to speak about God – as we have seen, without characterizing this entity and without clearly showing how s/he acts. What I called "higher self", being a unique non-physical member of each human being, could be considered the truly divine element that everyone has in himself. I have the impression that many people, when saying "My God!" are unconsciously referring to this unique divinity which exists inside them. After all, God is universal, how could s/he be personal and belong to anybody? Dawkins asks the question of how God "is a being capable of […] talking to a million people simultaneously […]" [DAW b, p. 185] – again, a mixture of physical and non-physical concepts,; nevertheless, it shows the universal aspect of the God of institutional religions (albeit acting upon each individual). On the other hand, the higher self is individual, that is, it really belongs to everyone. Admitting by hypothesis the existence of this higher individuality, the spirit becomes something which acts, and not a mere abstraction as the notion of God has become. This non-physical member may be perceived when, in a meditative state, thinking concentrates upon itself.
In a spiritualist worldview, it makes sense considering that human freedom exists. Therefore, in this view it also makes sense speaking about responsibility, moral and unselfish love which, as we have seen, do not make sense from a strictly materialistic point of view. Thus, only spirituality may lead to a conscious and coherent overcoming of egotism and greed. In fact, I consider altruistic love an essential requisite to the practice of a scientific spirituality: a true spiritualist should dedicate unselfish love to nature and other human beings, because he recognizes that the spirit pervades everything.
At the end of section 4 I mentioned that materialism was a necessity for humanity. Since the end of the 19th century it should be overcome by a special spirituality: precisely scientific spirituality. There is no way out for humanity: materialism and faith spirituality can only continue to lead to the destruction of nature and of humanity; this destruction may be observed by the disasters produced by technology and by religious confessions Regarding the latter, Dawkins describes very well in his book the moral destruction produced by many religioins. Both are serving egotism and ambition; only scientific spirituality may lead humanity to assume the unselfish attitude necessary for changing the way of the present destructions. It is interesting to note that religions go against free will, because they impose ideas and actions (well described by Dawkins); on the other hand, free will makes no sense to materialism and present science.
Unfortunately, I have no hope for the whole of humanity. It seems that there is no possibility of mass reverting the increasing decay of human values, due both to materialism and religion. This decay is shown by the continuous increase in egotism, and greed for money and power, and by the enormous influence exercised upon individuals, limiting their freedom, for instance conditioning them, on one side for consumption and for having certain points of view (e.g. inducing a deep veneration for technology), on the other side to blindly follow literal interpretations of religious images transmitted in various scriptures and myths. But I am sure that these destructive tendencies can and should be reverted individually. It is to individuals that I am writing at this moment.
I am not totally negative or pessimistic: I recognize some highly positive advancements of humanity, such as the movements for human rights and for universal peace, and the ecological movement. But the global final balance seems to me highly negative. I really cannot have hope as far as the masses are concerned – it suffices to consider that about half of humanity is conditioned and bestialized everyday by TV (see my papers on electronic media on my web site).
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