We celebrate Thanksgiving Day in the United States this time each year, so this episode is dedicated to the concept of being thankful.
I guess you could say that “I am a man of science (echo)”. Proper grammar demands that I clarify that all of us are creatures of that discipline. Science is nothing more or less than “a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.”
One doesn’t worship science any more than one would worship democracy, or nihilism. Science never claims to be 100% absolutely correct all of the time but it can, and it does, present us with overwhelming evidence in many cases; evidence that the uneducated are not invited to counter with magical claims and fantasy.
That doesn’t stop the "Jenny McCarthy's" of the world from telling you that vaccines will harm your children...even though they don't.
That doesn’t silence GOP Presidential Candidate Ben Carson, who believes that the earth is less than
10,000 years old, even though it isn't.
That doesn't shut the mouth of GOP Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee who thinks that Global Climate temperature on Earth isn't increasing, even though it is.
That doesn't muffle the maw of GOP Presidential Candidate...I'm not joking: Donald Trump, who actually believes that there is a connection between vaccines and autism, even though there isn't.
That doesn’t keep former Presidential speechwriter and actor: Ben Stein from expressing his belief that evolution must not be accepted as a scientific theory supported by verifiable facts, even though: it is.
That won’t mute the quacking of Prince Charles who attempts to legitimize and promote the use of untested, unapproved and implausible alternative medical therapies, such as homeopathy, even though they cannot heal or reduce pain.
These people who believe in untrue, imaginary fantasies are supremely uneducated in the areas of science for which they rail against.
What troubles me most about those who believe in such magic: that the world is flat, or that the moon is made out of cheese, is they do not think skeptically or often for themselves.
But that is not their worst offense…the worst offense is that they miss the miracles of the universe all around them.
“The dude abides”…
Let's be clear:
- The creation of vaccines is a miracle,
- The fact that we live on a 4.5 billion year old planet, is a miracle,
- The fact that we have observed the increase in global temperature over the past 135 years is a miracle,
- The fact that we now know that thimerosal does not cause autism is a miracle,
- The fact that our species has evolved from Homo Erectus which lived almost 2 million years ago is a miracle,
- And the fact that medicine exists that can cure the sick and relieve pain is a miracle.
The real issue for me, and the one I’d like to address in today’s epsiode is this: that the universe is an incredibly, beautiful, complex, interesting, surprising and awesome thing…and that should be enough. Shouldn’t it?
Let’s consider what defines a miracle, because my skeptical friends out there are going to lose their noodles if I babble onward using that word without explaination:
According to that wise depository of quasi-factual information, Wikipedia:
“A miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws. Such an event may be attributed to a supernatural being, a miracle worker, a saint or a religious leader.”
I'm not talking about THAT kind of miracle. To me, THIS is the true definition:
The term "miracle" is used to characterize any event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a "wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood, such as a birth. Other miracles might be: survival of an illness diagnosed as terminal, escaping a life-threatening situation or 'beating the odds'. Some coincidences may be seen as miracles.”
I am interested in what the great philosophers have had to say about miracles:
David Hume wrote that
"a miracle is... a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent. No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact which it endeavors to establish."
"a miracle is... a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent. No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact which it endeavors to establish."
The Christian theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher said that ”every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle as soon as the religious view of it can be the dominant".
And James Keller said that "The claim that “God has worked a miracle implies that God has singled out certain persons for some benefit which many others do not receive” implies that God is unfair." "If God intervenes to save your life in a car crash, then what was he doing in Auschwitz?"
In other words, Keller felt that an all-powerful, all-knowing and just God would not perform miracles.
In other words, Keller felt that an all-powerful, all-knowing and just God would not perform miracles.
In my opinion, for whatever sad, sorry denomination that might be worth, miracles are statistically unlikely events not due to the intervention of some invisible agent…miracles are all around us…we are, both statistically and naturally: miracles. The very fact that you’re able to listen to me right now and comprehend what I’m saying is, to my way of thinking, very much a miracle.
And it is my conjecture that such miracles should be appreciated more often than is common.
For me, the appreciation starts in my back yard, sitting by my little fire pit in a small New England town, gazing at the stars high above me.
Consider their origin, consider their size, power and distance from our eyes. The closest star in our sky is Proxima Centauri, a bright 1.35 magnitude star that rises in the south at around 1 AM in the Northern Hemisphere this time of year and is part of the Alpha Centauri system of three stars which reside some 4.24 light years away. The photons of light which enters our eyes when we look at it, left that star back in the year 2001.
How about the miracle of the origin of that first single celled prokaryotic organism that arose upon this third rock from the sun 3.8 billion years ago?
How about the miracle of the 13.7 billion year old singularity event where matter, space and time itself first came into being?
And what about the first time you held your newborn child in your arms? How about that miracle of witnessing your infants birth, a miracle more significant and important than any mythical fable about global floods, medieval vampires, sunken utopias, giant fire-breathing lizards and flying spaghetti monsters?
I’m not jabbing a stick at blind faith or in the super-(as in “not”) natural. I’m just asking the friendly reasonable question: are not the miracles of the universe enough?
If you are someone who believes in magic, ghosts, lake monsters or abominable Yeti…then here’s my rule: as long as you’re not hurting anyone through your blind faith, I won’t try to enlighten you to the physical natural splendor of reality and the REAL miracles the exist all around us.
It’s not my place to ridicule your fantasy: I just hope you can appreciate the real miracles of nature. We do not need magic or make believe to enhance our experience in life.
This world is enough.
In his brilliant book “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” Carl Sagen wrote:
”For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. Which attitude is better geared for our long-term survival? Which gives us more leverage on our future? And if our naïve self-confidence is a little undermined in the process, is that altogether such a loss? Is there not cause to welcome it as a maturing and character-building experience?”
Here’s what I believe: It’s very simple: There are many people out there in the world: who will lie to you with ill will or good intention to sell you sugar water with false promises of a cure, they’ll tell you exactly what you desperately want to hear and believe.
If they’re lying to you, maybe they just want you to feel better, somehow…and I get that, I understand the power of positive thinking and the placebo effect…but if they’re not lying, maybe they honestly believe that they possess supernatural powers or the homeopathic secret of chee to cure illness, disease and pain. If that’s the case, then they are delusional…because there is no good and significant evidence to support their claims.
I wish that magic was real..I wish that everyone could be happy and that the universe wouldn’t end in a cold motionless death…but the counter evidence to the efficacy of the phenomenon of magic overwhelmingly fails every test.
But there are miracles to experience in the world.
Is it a miracle that we can run? Yes, it most certainly is. We are descended from tree climbing mammals who began to run upright across the African plains, chasing after hovering carrion seen in the distance, flying over freshly killed prey.
Our species, Homo Sapien Sapiens, became thinking hominids only 200,000 years ago in part because we started eating more protein, in the form of meat, which caused our brains to grow.
You, I, and every living human being on the planet are related to a single female who lived in Africa 200,000 years ago. She is known as our Mitichondrial Eve...not the fictional Apple tempting woman from Genesis...but an actual person of whom we all are related. Similarly, we are all related to a single male whom we call Y-Chromosomal Adam, who lived 239,000 years ago. There was no talking snake, no rib turned flesh, no tree of knowledge, and no garden of Eden, although Key West is pretty close.
It's a miracle that we are here today, considering the fact that 74,000 years ago our species almost became extinct, with only a few thousand humans left living on Earth.
60,000 years ago we began to move to the coast of Asia and Australia.
By 40,000 years B.C.E. we began to migrate to Europe.
Considering that the universe is 13.7 Billion years old, the 200,000 year old objective reality of our species with respect to the existence of time, is insignificant, and the statistical odds that we would even exist is crazy slim. There's nothing supernatural about this fact: but it is miraculous never-the-less!
And isn't that good enough? With all that we know and understand, shared experiences and observations about the universe...and all that we don't yet understand or might not ever understand...isn't it enough?
Is not the glory and wonder of the universe enough?
Of course it is...our lives are short, but they're certainly long enough...our minds are small, but their certainly big enough.
I am just a stupid tiny ape-like creature living in the Holocene, desperately wanting to believe in solid explanations about things that I don't understand...but I refuse to give credit to an invisible flying spaghetti monster for the miracles I witness every day:
- The love of my family,
- The beauty of a sunset,
- The astonishing complexity of the cosmos,
- The healing power of medicine,
- And the technology that allows you to hear me talking right now.
These are some of the REAL miracles that exist in our world, and they are so much better than the unsubstantiated and imaginary.