Science and modernity

Emergence of science and modern secular philosophy

Thousands of years ago, most people believed the earth was flat, and that gods were responsible for the motion of the sun, the moon, and the stars. The ancient Babylonians described the universe as a closed chamber with the earth as its floor. Around the earth lay a moat of water, beyond which stood high mountains supporting the dome of the heavens.

Years were measured by the passing of the seasons. Months were measured by the phases of the moon. The Babylonians devised a calendar with 12 months in a year. Each month had 29 or 30 days in accordance with the lunar cycle. Every few years, a 13th month was added to keep the years in step with the seasons.

Variations of the Babylonian calendar continued to be used across much of the ancient world until the year 46 BC, when Julius Caesar introduced a new calendar throughout the Roman Empire.

Recognizing the need for a stable and predictable calendar, Caesar asked for help from Alexandrian astronomers, who recommended disregarding the lunar cycle and fixing the average length of a year to 365 days. The new calendar was proclaimed to have 12 months and 365 days in a year with one extra day every 4 years. The Julian calendar was so successful that it continued to be used throughout Europe for the next 1600 years.

The library of Alexandria

The city of Alexandria in Egypt was established by Alexander the Great around 330 BC as a port near the mouth of the Nile River. Because of its convenient location on the major trading routes, it quickly grew to become one of the wealthiest cities in the Mediterranean, and one of the largest trading centers in the ancient world.

The Great Library of Alexandria was built by the Greek kings of Egypt who inherited this part of Alexander's empire. Over the centuries, they devoted much of their wealth to collecting and copying books to add to their library. They collected books on every subject from all over the known world. The library soon grew to become the largest collection of literature in the ancient world, possibly containing hundreds of thousands of hand-written papyrus scrolls.

The library also had research halls, laboratories, observatories, a dissecting room, a museum, a botanical garden, and a zoo. People traveled from all over the ancient world to study its collection of books on architecture, astronomy, geography, history, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, and physics.

Many famous discoveries were made at the library. Euclid wrote a book about geometry which has remained the standard for over 2000 years. Archimedes invented the water screw. Herophilus and Erasistratus laid down the foundations of medicine. Heron built steam powered machines and made plans to build robots.

Alexandrian astronomers studied the stars. By performing clever experiments and making careful measurements, they were able to calculate the size of the earth, the moon, and the sun, as well as the distances between them.

One astronomer, Aristarchus, wrote a book suggesting that the earth was just another planet. He said that the earth was spinning, the planets revolved around the sun, and the stars were a great distance away from the sun.

His ideas were rejected at the time because most people believed the earth was the center of the universe. They thought that if the earth was moving then it would leave the moon behind. And it did not make sense that the earth moved because nobody could feel the movement beneath their feet.

Around the year 150, a researcher named Ptolemy wrote a book in which he summarized the work of the Alexandrian astronomers. Although Ptolemy considered the earth to be the center of the universe, he was able to accurately describe the relative motion of the sun and the planets by using circles within circles. Ptolemy's work remained the ultimate astronomical reference for the next 1400 years.

When Julius Caesar arrived in the city of Alexandria in 48 BC, he became involved in a civil war between Queen Cleopatra VII and her brother King Ptolemy XIII. Caesar's forces came under attack from both land and sea. He gained an upper hand in the battle by setting fire to the docks to block the enemy fleet. Unfortunately, the fire spread from the dockyards to the library and destroyed many of the books.

Although damaged, the library continued to operate, but gradually lost prestige over the centuries. Funding dried up as the wealth of Egypt was drained by Rome. Its buildings were damaged by war. Scholars were driven out by political purges. And competing libraries appeared in other lands.

By the time Christianity rose to power, little remained of the library beyond a smaller collection housed in an old temple. When a Christian emperor outlawed pagan worship, that temple was torn down by a mob of Christians.

Some years later, under the influence of a bishop named Cyril, Jews were expelled from the city, and the most celebrated mathematician and philosopher in Alexandria, a woman named Hypatia, was brutally murdered by the bishop's supporters. The city's ancient tradition of learning was coming to an end. Cyril was later honored with a sainthood.

Only a small number of the books that were kept in the library have survived. All that remains of some of them are scattered fragments. Among the losses that we know about were several hundred pieces of classical Greek literature, as well as books about science, mathematics, and the history of the ancient world.

Copernicus

The calendar introduced by Julius Caesar was only accurate to 1 day in every 128 years. Over the centuries, there was a growing concern about the slipping of time. After the decline of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church grew to become the only institution in Europe with enough authority to change the calendar. In 1514, the Church asked for the opinion of a highly respected Polish scholar named Nicolaus Copernicus.

Copernicus said that the motions of the sun and the moon were not yet sufficiently understood to attempt changing the calendar. He then continued for more than ten years to make careful observations of the night sky before finally writing a book in which he argued that the earth revolved around the sun.

Copernicus was reluctant to release his book out of fear of the criticism he would receive. His friends eventually convinced him to publish it shortly before his death. Although his ideas were not popular, they did influence calendar reform. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII decreed a new calendar in which three out of every four centuries lost one of their extra days. The new Gregorian calendar was accurate to 1 day in every 3000 years.

Catholic countries adopted the new calendar immediately. Protestant countries like England and Germany took until the 1700s to change their calendars. Eastern European countries under the Greek Orthodox Church refused to change their calendars until the 1900s. The new calendar was eventually accepted across Europe and America and is still being used today.

Galileo

As people get older, they often lose the ability to focus their sight on nearby or distant objects. The ancient Greeks knew that curved glass could bend light and make images appear larger or smaller. But it was not until the late 1200s that the quality of glass, and techniques for working with glass, had improved enough to allow craftsmen to begin making lenses for eyeglasses. By 1608, techniques for grinding and polishing lenses and mirrors had improved enough to allow the invention of the telescope.

Galileo Galilei was an Italian mathematics professor who designed and built many of the world's first high-powered telescopes. When he studied the night sky with his telescopes, he saw mountains and craters on the moon, he saw moons orbiting Jupiter, and he saw spots on the sun. From 1610, he published books about his observations and his name soon became famous throughout Europe.

His discoveries suggested that the earth was just another planet. This upset a lot of people. University professors accused him of challenging the teachings of Aristotle, whose ideas about the universe had been considered the ultimate truth for centuries.

Aristotle said it was common sense that the sun revolved around the earth. He also wrote that different weights fall to earth at different speeds. Galileo was said to have proved this was wrong by dropping two different-sized stones from the leaning tower of Pisa. They both hit the ground at the same time.

Galileo was constantly forced to defend himself against accusations of heresy by the Church. After appearing before the Vatican inquisition, he was ordered not to hold or defend the belief that the earth revolves around the sun. Earlier, in a letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, he wrote...

Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness knows, I discovered many things in the heavens that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them, contradicted the commonly held notions of the academic professors, and stirred many of them up against me - as if I had placed these things in the sky with my own hands in order to upset nature and overturn the sciences. They seemed to forget that discovering new truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts - and does not diminish or destroy them.

Showing a greater fondness for their own opinions than for the truth, they sought to deny and disprove these new things, which if they had cared to look for themselves, their own senses would have demonstrated to them. To this end they hurled various charges and published numerous writings filled with vain arguments, and they made the grave mistake of sprinkling these with passages taken from places in the Bible, which they had failed to understand properly, and which were poorly suited to their purposes.

Men with a strong understanding of astronomical and physical science were immediately persuaded by my discoveries. There were others who denied them or remained in doubt only because they were strange and unexpected discoveries, and because they had not yet had the opportunity to see for themselves. These men are gradually becoming satisfied. But there are some who stubbornly cling to their original ideas, and for some unknown reason, they remain hostile not only towards my discoveries, but also towards me.

These men persist in their resolve to destroy me by any means they can think of. They are aware of my views in astronomy and philosophy. They know that I believe the sun to be situated in the center of the celestial bodies while the earth revolves around the sun. And they have endeavored to spread the opinion that such propositions are contrary to the Bible and as such are damnable and heretical.

Their reason for condemning the opinion that the earth moves and the sun stands still is that in many places in the Bible one may read that the sun moves and the earth stands still. Since the Bible cannot be wrong, it follows as a necessary consequence that anyone is mistaken and heretical who maintains that the sun is motionless and that the earth moves.

These men go about using the Bible for their own deceitful purposes. Contrary to the intention of the holy fathers, they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, although under its surface the passage may contain a different meaning.

Nobody can deny that the Bible is often ambiguous, and may say things that are quite different from what its bare words suggest. If one were to always read the Bible literally, then one might fall into error. Not only contradictions and falsehoods might appear, but even grave heresies and follies. One might believe that God has hands and feet, as well as human emotions such as anger and hatred, and sometimes even forgetting the past or not knowing the future.

These propositions, inspired by the Holy Spirit, were written by the sacred scribes to accommodate the capacities of the common people, who are simple and uneducated. For the sake of those who deserve to be separated from the herd, it is necessary to express the true meaning of such passages, together with the special reasons for why they were set down in these words.

Who can rightly say that the Bible should be taken literally when it is speaking casually about the earth, the sun, or any other created thing? Especially when these things do not concern the primary purpose of the sacred writings, which is the service of God and the salvation of souls - matters that are beyond the comprehension of the common people.

The Holy Bible and the phenomena of nature both proceed from the designs of God. But in order to accommodate the understanding of every man, it was necessary for the Bible to say many things that may appear to be different from the absolute truth. But Nature, on the other hand, is exact and unchangeable. She never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares about whether her methods of operation are understandable to men.

For that reason it appears that nothing which we can experience with our senses, or which can be proven by demonstration ought to be called into question (or much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages that may have some different meaning beneath their words. God is no less excellently revealed in the laws of Nature than in the sacred statements of the Bible.

I am not suggesting that we should not have the greatest respect for the passages of Holy Scripture. I should judge that the authority of the Bible was designed to persuade men of those articles of faith, which surpassing all human reasoning could not be proven by science, or by any other means other than through the very mouth of the Holy Spirit.

Hence I should think it would be sensible not to permit anyone to use scripture to argue some physical conclusion to be true, when at some future time, a reasonable demonstration might show the contrary. Who indeed will set bounds to human ingenuity? Who will assert that everything in the universe capable of being known has already been discovered? Let us rather be honest and say, "The truths that we know are very few in comparison with those which we do not know."

In 1633, at the age of 69, Galileo was brought before the Vatican inquisition and threatened with torture if he did not publicly retract his views. His books were banned, he was sentenced to imprisonment, and he spent the rest of his life under house arrest. The persecution of Galileo remained an embarrassment for the Catholic Church for the next three centuries. The Vatican finally conceded they were wrong in 1992.

Science

Although mainstream European society in the 1600s appeared to be faithfully Christian, the religious authorities were losing their power to silence criticism. After the religious wars between the Catholics and Protestants, and with the growing availability of books containing skeptical ideas, many educated people were beginning to doubt that there was anything worth believing in, least of all religion.

In the 1640s, the French philosopher Rene Descartes noticed that...

Almost everyone who regards themselves as more intelligent than others takes refuge in skepticism, when they find nothing in the currently accepted philosophy to satisfy them, and they cannot see any alternative which is more true.

The Church and the universities at the time were too blinded by superstition to support scientific discovery, but throughout the major European cities, there were wealthy men with free time on their hands who enjoyed dabbling in science.

Early progress was slow, as there are limits to what can be observed with the naked eye. They lacked instruments to make precise measurements, but occasionally, some creative thinker would devise a clever experiment, carefully measure the results, and a profound discovery would be made.

In the 1680s, an English scholar named Isaac Newton modernized our understanding of the universe by explaining the laws of gravity and motion.

His theories indicated that we live in a 'mechanical universe', where everything works like the moving parts of a machine. The machine is always moving and it is the work of science to find out how. Many people at the time believed that God created the universe but then left it alone to operate, governed only by the laws of nature.

Scientists continued to write books and share their observations, forming a growing collection of real knowledge about the workings of nature. As one discovery led to another, a growing number of people became convinced that all of the secrets of the universe might eventually be discovered through the methods of science.

Natural religion

European thinkers in the mid-1700s began to openly criticize Christianity. Although they were divided in their opinions, they valued the freedom to have an opinion, and they dared to express their views on religion without fear. The public was exposed to an avalanche of new ideas.

This period of history became known as 'the Enlightenment', because it marked the beginning of a long struggle to free people's minds from more than a thousand years of domination by the teachings of the Church. The thinkers of the enlightenment wanted to replace revelation and faith with knowledge and reason.

Some favored a more enlightened form of Christianity. They embraced the teachings of Jesus as a moral guide and a foundation for social justice, but they attacked the miraculous and supernatural aspects of the religion. They wanted Christianity to change and become more compatible with a scientific understanding of the world.

Others openly condemned Christianity, believing that it had long lost any intellectual credibility. The Church was authoritarian, superstitious, and fearful of science and philosophy. It was disconnected from reality and lost in dark delusions of sin, redemption, and hell.

Some philosophers wrote books trying to persuade people to believe in a more natural form of religion, one that rejected the need for churches or religious scripture. It was said that God shows himself in nature, and that we worship him best by living constructive moral lives.

Voltaire

The French philosopher Voltaire wrote that although our observations of design and intelligence in nature make the existence of God obvious, organized religion can cause people to associate God with superstition and fanaticism. He said that faith in God makes people aspire to be good, so if God did not exist, we would need to invent him.

In 1764, he released a book called 'Philosophical Dictionary' in which he exposed the myths of Christianity and highlighted the corruptions of the Church. Addressing those who would defend the Church and its mythology for the sake of trying to uphold public morality, he wrote...

Don't you see that you pervert these poor people? Among them are many more rational thinkers than you realize. They laugh at your miracles and superstitions. They have enough good sense to see that you are preaching to them a discreditable religion, but they do not have enough sense to raise themselves to a pure religion free from superstition. Their passions make them believe that there is no religion at all because the only one they are taught is ridiculous. And so you become guilty of all the vices into which they plunge.

You would be stoned to death by the people if you taught them impure morals. Men have been made in such a way that they are quite willing to do evil, but they do not want it preached to them. Nothing can be gained from preaching wise morals that will be rejected because they are mixed with absurd fables. Because of your deceptions, which you could easily do without, you weaken the morality which you are obliged to teach.

It is necessary for every man to be honest, and the surest way to instill justice in all men is to teach them religion without superstition.

Attempts were made to define natural religion in a way that would inspire new believers, but it was never really able to establish itself as a popular belief. Most people saw it as little more than a skeptical reaction against traditional religion.

Natural religion continued to attract a small following of free-thinkers, many of whom became members of the Unitarian Church. Although the Unitarians were often persecuted by conservatives, their church provided a safe meeting place where free-thinking people could share their enlightened views without being accused of atheism.

David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher in the mid-1700s who developed powerful arguments against religion. He said that religion was nothing more than a human invention. It was simply the projection of human hopes and fears onto external invisible objects. Religion began as an instinctual belief in spirits controlling the forces of nature, and this evolved into a cultural obligation to worship a single God of creation.

Hume did not deny the existence of God, but he rejected using myths about miracles to prove God's existence. He believed that miracles were violations of the laws of nature, and that our faith in the laws of nature should be as firm as any faith could ever be, because the entire world sees these laws working in a reliable way every day. And so regardless of how strong the argument is for a miracle, the evidence against it is stronger.

He said that human trickery and stupidity were so common that he would think that any reports of miracles were due to these reasons rather than admit that there had ever been any violation of the laws of nature. Only those claims that can be demonstrated by experimental science should be considered true. Any other claim should be thrown into the fire.

Hume concluded that no reasonable argument could ever provide an adequate justification for religious morality. Our feelings about each issue have more authority than the application of any arbitrary system of moral values. Ideas about right and wrong are really whatever is in the best interests of the community at the time.

He also concluded that no reasonable argument could ever explain the existence of God or any of his attributes. He did concede that there may be grounds for a rational belief in a supreme creator and a world ordered and governed by divine providence, but this would be a leap of faith until science was able to provide deeper explanations for the mysteries of nature.

He said that although some rational minds were moved to believe in God through admiration for the natural order of the universe, the vast majority of ordinary men and women were moved by emotional responses to the uncertainties of life. They lived in fear and hope of secret and unknown causes, and so they were easily led to believe in superstition. Organized religion thrived by helping to relieve feelings of insecurity and vulnerability in a confusing and often hostile world.

Atheism

Atheism grew more as a reaction against the absurdities of traditional religion than an exact belief. The writings of Hume and other secular thinkers helped to calm the religious tensions that were still simmering throughout Europe after the religious wars. By raising the level of skepticism against Christianity, many people became less passionate about their own religion and more tolerant of others.

Atheists believed that good and evil were merely human inventions rather than universal absolutes, but then this led to the question of how anyone can justifiably argue against selfish greed or callous disregard. Unrestrained selfishness can end up harming everyone, including ourselves, so we need to accept some practical restraints.

Although atheist philosophers could see the need for upholding standards of acceptable behavior, they could not agree on what they were or how to promote them.

Since the ancient Greeks, philosophers had struggled to find a non-religious way to define and promote a system of ethical values. For Plato, the very purpose of philosophy was to devise convincing arguments to inspire people to believe in meanings and values worth living for. However, by the end of the 1700s, the enlightenment had failed to offer any clear alternative to religion.

Marquis de Sade

The abandonment of faith in universal goodness was explored in the writings of the Marquis de Sade, who also abandoned any faith in the value of human life. De Sade declared that we are free from all moral values. Nature, far from having any purpose or any inherent goodness, is absolutely indifferent to the struggles of humanity.

The world according to de Sade was the opposite of what the religious prophets and moral philosophers had been preaching. He wrote that generosity is often abused by those who see it as weakness, those who give more than they take just end up with less, and the selfish get what they want much more than the good.

He wrote that in a world without any true values, the only thing to do is to pursue one's own pleasures. The greater the pleasure, the greater the value of the act. He wrote that since sexual pleasures are usually the most intense, these can be pursued without restraint. And he wrote that crime is even better than sex under some circumstances, because it can be more exciting.

Many atheists viewed de Sade with horror because they saw in him the logical conclusion of their own beliefs. If there is no God, no purpose, no plan, no design, then there is no underlying foundation for morality, and no fundamental reason for the preservation of life in this world or in this universe. Nobody can be truly justified in imposing their own ideas about right and wrong upon anyone else.

Political revolution

The political upheavals that spread throughout Europe after the French Revolution came as a shock to Christianity, which had long depended on a close association between church and state.

The old aristocracy began losing political and cultural authority, and were replaced by the new industrial elite. The new capitalist values, with their emphasis on competition and profit, had little in common with Christianity.

By the mid-1800s, the Catholic Church had grown openly hostile to the modern world. They publicly condemned democracy, freedom of speech, and freedom of thought. When one pope demanded more influence over the governments of the world, many countries reacted by passing laws restricting Catholicism. The population of Italy rose up in rebellion against papal control.

Other European churches withdrew from politics. While most Europeans remained members of their traditional state churches, in the United States there were no state churches. This led to an intense competition between the different denominations for religious market share. Driven by market forces, without the deeper explorations that European theology once provided, Christianity in America grew increasingly fundamentalist and evangelical.

While conservative churches tried desperately to cling to the old ways, progressive churches compromised with scientific ideas and modern values, quietly admitting that the Bible was full of myths intended to support morals that were open to interpretation. The focus of these churches shifted towards providing social networks, promoting community values, doing charity work, and performing weddings and funerals.

Skepticism

The enlightenment philosophers had tentatively ventured beyond traditional Christian ideas, and then when it seemed safe to speak freely, they turned against Christianity with a vengeance, punishing it for having held back the progress of philosophical questioning for so long. But then once they were free to ask themselves what the real truth was, they found that they could be certain of nothing.

Philosophers like Immanuel Kant wrote books trying to restore people's confidence in absolute truths and values, but by the mid-1800s, every attempt to devise a convincing philosophy or start a popular philosophical movement had failed. The search for meaning had revealed no great answers.

As scientific ideas like the theory of evolution replaced the biblical creation myth, a radical new form of skepticism descended upon the world of philosophy with disastrous consequences. It was the end of the innocence of philosophy.

Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher in the late 1800s. His father and grandfather were Lutheran church ministers. After spending his childhood studying Christianity, it was assumed that he would follow in their footsteps. After being influenced by modern philosophy, he lost faith in Christianity and became one of its fiercest critics.

He said that now the idea of God is dying, we should abandon any sentimental notions of right and wrong too. Such notions are merely the residual effects of baseless religious and philosophical moralizing. He said that the only solid foundation upon which we can build a system of values is on the conscious struggle for power.

According to Nietzsche, our primary driving force is not survival or reproduction, as others might argue, but rather the pursuit of power and dominance. The 'will to power', as he called it, motivates us to self-improve, overcome challenges, seek new experiences, and assert our individuality.

Conventional morality often suppresses the 'will to power', enforcing mediocrity and conformity instead of encouraging achievement and excellence. Embracing your 'will to power' means transcending moral boundaries and striving to become a more worthy kind of person, who has the courage to decide their own values and live life to its fullest potential.

Nietzsche argued that religions and moral philosophies preach self-sacrifice, which goes against our natural instincts. Perhaps such morality is actually a cultural disease that we need to rise above.

For Nietzsche, the illness began with Judaism and reached its destructive potential with Christianity. The Christian values of gentleness, forgiveness, and mercy are against the competitive forces that drive the evolution of both man and society.

Nietzsche believed history has proven the urge to succeed and dominate is the guiding force behind all human endeavors. Even Christianity's most striking characteristic is its drive to take power and impose its will.

He suggested that Christian morality was just a clever deception used by the ignorant and weak to assert power over the strong and smart. He argued that if mankind was the end product of evolution, then intelligent thinking should replace ignorance and superstition.

One of the last books Nietzsche wrote was called 'The Antichrist'. In his early books, as he was developing his ideas, he wrote mostly in dense prose for an academic audience, but by the time he wrote The Antichrist, his ideas were clear, his words were direct, and he no longer cared about offending anyone. In this book, Nietzsche wrote...

What is good? Anything that makes us more powerful. What is bad? Anything that results from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power grows, that resistance is overcome. Not contentment, but more power. Not peace, but war. Not virtue, but strength and ability. What is more harmful than any vice? Compassion for the sickly and weak, in other words, Christianity.

The question is not "what should replace mankind as the next species?", as human beings are the conclusion, but rather what type of human being we should breed, we should will, as being more valuable, more worthy of life, more certain of the future. This more valuable type has existed often enough already, but only as an exception. His appearance has often struck terror into the hearts of others, and from their fear, the reverse animal has been bred - the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick animal, the Christian.

Mankind in general is no stronger or smarter today than he was in the past. The idea of such progress is a myth. But there are some cases in today's world where a higher type of man has emerged. And compared to the rest of humanity, he is a kind of superman. Even entire races, tribes, and nations, can under certain circumstances represent such people. Christianity must not be defended. It has waged a war to the death against this higher type of man. It has rejected all of his instincts, declaring them to be evil. The stronger man has been despised and treated like an outcast. Christianity has taken the side of everything weak, and has made an ideal out of opposing the preservative instincts of a strong life. It has corrupted the minds of even the most intelligent by teaching men to feel that intelligent ideas are sinful misleading temptations.

The people of Israel once stood in a correct relationship to nature. Their God was an expression of their consciousness of power, of their delight in themselves, of their hope for themselves. In him they anticipated victory and salvation. But after being defeated, every hope in their God lay unfulfilled. They should have abandoned him, but instead they changed their conception of him. All good fortune would now be interpreted as reward, and all misfortune as punishment for disobedience. A most untruthful account of a supposed 'moral world order' in which the natural concept of 'cause and effect' was turned on its head.

Having falsified the concepts of God and morality, the Jewish priesthood did not stop there. They produced that masterpiece of falsification known to us as the Bible. With contempt for every historical truth, they translated their entire national history into religious terms. They simplified the psychology of every great event into the idiotic formula of obedience or disobedience to God.

Out of this false soil grew Christianity - a form of mortal hostility to reality in which neither morality nor religion have anything to do with the real world. Nothing but imaginary causes, like free will and sin, and imaginary effects, like redemption and forgiveness. An imaginary explanation of our existence with a complete lack of scientific understandings, and an imaginary psychology of nothing but self-delusions. This entirely fictional world has its roots in hatred of the real world.

Christianity is a religion of charity and compassion. But such expressions of pity work against our natural instincts intended to preserve and enhance the value of life. They oppose the law of evolution by preserving what is ripe for destruction, by defending the homeless and the condemned. Under Christianity, compassion is called a virtue, it is the foundation of all virtues. Nothing in our unhealthy modern world is more unhealthy than Christian compassion.

Like most men who have studied history, I am largely tolerant when I look back at the madness of more than a thousand years of Christianity. But my feelings suddenly change when I consider our modern age. What was once tragic now becomes disturbing and offensive. It is a crime against nature to be a Christian today. All of the concepts of the Church are recognized for what they are, the most malicious fabrication for the purpose of denying nature and opposing natural values. The priest himself is recognized for what he is, a parasitic kind of human being who prospers only at the expense of every healthy form of life.

Everyone knows this and yet everyone remains unchanged. Where have the last feelings of decency and self-respect gone, when even our statesmen still call themselves Christians? When every proud, patriotic, and self-preserving instinct in modern man is clearly anti-Christian, what magnitude of self-deception must he be living under that he is still not ashamed to be called Christian!

Months after writing these words, Nietzsche mysteriously fell ill and gradually lost the ability to communicate. He spent the last ten years of his life being cared for by his mother and sister.

To raise money, his sister devoted herself to editing and promoting his books. She later assembled his unpublished notes into new books. She was a fierce German nationalist and she presented his philosophy in ways that appealed to a growing nationalist movement.

The theory of evolution

After sailing around the world for five years on a British science expedition, and after more than twenty years of careful research and writing, in 1859, Charles Darwin published 'The Origin of Species' in which he explained that life on earth evolved through a slow process of random variation and natural selection.

Skeptics now had a natural account of how life's complexity arose without a creator, and the creation stories of the old scriptures began to look like ancient myths. But not everybody was convinced, and many feared that if people lost faith in religious myths then they might also lose interest in community and family values.

Darwin understood how much controversy his theory would provoke, and so he did not dare to discuss the evolution of humans or the philosophical implications that evolution might have on ideas about human purpose or morality. But as the theory of evolution slowly gained acceptance, other thinkers did begin to speculate.

The idea soon became popular that because evolution led to the rise of intelligent life, it was a process that generated something of value, and could therefore be equated with 'progress for the better'. It was believed that continued human evolution would lead to further progress, and so anything that aided this process could be thought of as 'good'.

It was believed that evolution would benefit from increased competition. The capitalist free market economy favored individual resourcefulness and was therefore considered to be good. Social welfare was seen as helping the unfit to survive and multiply, thereby working against natural selection and decreasing the future survivability of the entire species.

These kinds of ideas were promoted by some political commentators, not only as a way of justifying the inequalities between races, sexes, and classes, but also as a way of arguing for more aggressive economic policies that would favor the interests of the wealthy.

In some countries, health services interpreted evolution in a way that led to the sterilization of people born with disabilities. But the power to decide who should be sterilized was often abused.

Some people even argued that evolution justified the imperialistic competition for global resources, which often erupted into war between nations and the subjugation of defeated populations. They claimed that such conflict favored the survival of the fittest and was therefore an effective form of natural selection.

This way of thinking reached its devastating potential with the Nazi conquest of Europe and their policy of racial purification through extermination. After the Nazis were defeated and the European empires were dismembered, the idea that some people are more highly evolved than others and are therefore more valuable was universally condemned.

Agnosticism

In 1871, in an effort to counter any harmful misconceptions about his theory, Charles Darwin wrote a book called 'The Descent of Man' in which he expressed his own views about the moral implications of human evolution.

Darwin wrote that many animals have innate social instincts that guide their group behavior and help to strengthen their social cohesion. These instincts evolved because living in groups gave these animals an evolutionary advantage.

Human beings are social animals, and we also evolved social instincts, some of which take the form of fond affections and sympathetic feelings. Our social instincts make group living more harmonious, but because we also possess higher intelligence and the ability to speak, these instincts work together with our intelligence to create something that Darwin called our 'moral sense'.

The way we care for and understand each other helps us cooperate, and cooperation helps us survive. So our moral sense kept evolving and growing stronger to the extent that we now generally see ourselves as contributors to a family and a community, rather than as separate selfish individuals.

Darwin wrote that our ability to reflect on the things we do and our reasons for doing them, and our inclination to approve or disapprove of others as well as ourselves, forms something beyond our 'moral sense' that he called our 'moral conscience'. He described that as the "supreme judge and monitor" of every action.

Darwin never suggested that we should do anything to influence the course of human evolution. One of his closest friends and supporters, Thomas Huxley, played a major role in helping to promote and defend the theory of evolution.

Huxley argued that science was morally neutral and he vigorously attacked anyone who claimed that evolution should be used to justify discrimination or war. He was later given the nickname "Darwin's bulldog". Huxley invented the term 'agnostic' to describe the belief that there is no conclusive evidence to either prove or disprove the existence of God.

Some people see atheism as the scientific viewpoint, but atheism requires the unproven belief that no form of god exists. An agnostic would say there is no way we can be certain about whether or not there is some kind of creative force behind our existence. It can be argued that agnosticism is the only scientifically valid position.

Huxley wrote...

When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; or a Christian or a free-thinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had nothing in common with any of these denominations except the last.

So I took thought and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. It came into my head as being the opposite of the 'Gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant.

Throughout his early years, Darwin followed the traditions of his society and regularly attended church. But his feelings slowly changed until he eventually lost faith in Christianity. Later in life, when explaining his religious views, he wrote that he had never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a god. He said...

An agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind. The whole subject of God is beyond the scope of man's intellect.

Science vs faith

By the early 1900s, science was answering many of the great mysteries of nature. From the creation of the world to the workings of the mind, everything was gradually being explained without referring to God. Science seemed to be successfully replacing religion as the final authority for truth.

Many people still believed in God, but no longer believed traditional religion offered the best way to understand God. Others could see no reason to believe in God at all. Religion was seen as a hindrance to the progress of mankind, and there was widespread hope that it would slowly wither away.

People who embrace the scientific view of reality see the universe as working like a mindless cosmic machine. Every component in the machine, from the smallest subatomic particle to the largest galaxy, is constrained to follow the laws of nature, and these laws can never be broken.

However, science by itself has nothing inspiring to say about important human values like love, justice, compassion, or goodness. According to a purely scientific view of the world, our loved ones are little more than sacks of protein, and our love for them is just an electro-chemical impulse in our brain.

Science can demonstrate the relative advantage of some kinds of behavior, but it cannot judge any behavior to be either right or wrong. If our lives are just complex interactions between atoms and molecules, and if there is no ultimate goal for these interactions, then any attempt to judge behavior as either right or wrong would be like saying, "this chemical reaction is good, and this one is bad".

It is easy to make bold statements about right and wrong, but impossible to prove them to be true. If we depended only on science to guide our thoughts and actions, then we would have no reason to be caring, sharing, or honest unless we had something to gain.

And so despite being seen as stubborn and outdated as they remain committed to failing mythologies, traditional religions continue to be supported by many governments around the world. They remain central to community life, especially in rural areas. They provide meeting places where people share views, talk business, and find partners. And they reinforce values like commitment, generosity, sacrifice, and restraint.

In a world where our instincts can lead us to overvalue sexuality, and where the pressures of daily survival can drive us to become selfish, aggressive, and uncaring, traditional religions continue to be upheld as one of society's most reputable moral authorities.

But as progressive priesthoods compromise with science, the interpretation of religious scripture can only be stretched so far before people begin losing faith and start looking for new beliefs.

Conservative priesthoods, with their intellectual credibility and moral authority under question, are often hostile to those who refuse to conform.

Existentialism

Looking at the harsh reality of life in this universe from a purely scientific point of view, animals like us could be described as self-preserving, self-replicating, biological machines, responding to stimulus and adapting to change.

It might even be said that people are just clever apes, struggling to survive on a piece of space rock, floating near the edge of a galaxy, several billion years after the dawn of time. We have only just emerged from the forests and caves, confused and disorganized, chattering amongst ourselves and squabbling over trivialities, blissfully unaware of our impending fate.

We come from nothingness, each of us being born by mere chance. And at the end of our short and often miserable lives, our bodies decay and our minds dissolve away and become nothing. We return to nothingness, and forever we shall be as though we had never been. Our possessions will be dispersed, and in time, our names will be forgotten and nothing will remain of the world we once knew. Finally, at the end of time, the universe will grow cold and die.

Our instincts and emotions might make us think our lives have significance, but it would not make much difference in the grand scheme of things if our entire planet was wiped out by some unfortunate event. The stars would continue to shine and the galaxies would continue to drift through space, oblivious to our passing. We are alone in an immense and unfeeling universe.

This way of thinking has led many to the agonizing realization that our lives are totally meaningless. But rather than surrender to feelings of despair and depression, existentialist philosophers tell us that our mission is to find a way to give our lives meaning by embracing those activities that generate a sense of value in our lives. While some people find their reason for living through hard work and achievement, others find comfort in their family and friends, or in the enjoyment of life's many pleasures.

Existentialist philosophers say that we are all free to decide what is right and wrong for ourselves. They say personal experience is the most reliable guide for our actions. But they also warn of the risks and responsibilities that come from being free to make our own choices. We define ourselves through our actions, and we all have to live with wherever our decisions lead us.

The vast majority of people, however, may never accept that we have no true purpose in nature. Most people instinctually want to believe that their lives have cosmic significance. They want to believe that humans have some special relationship to the forces that created the universe.

For some people, like those who suffer through pain, and those who have no hope of happiness, the only reason to keep living, other than for the love of their family and friends, is for the hope of playing some small part in a meaningful greater scheme.

Humanism

Although some people desired complete freedom from morality, others anticipated the rise of a new moral order based on a rational belief in the common good. As the democratic world embraced political freedom, a new foundation for morality did emerge. Widely known as 'humanism', it can be described as faith in the inherent value of every human life and belief in the fundamental rights of every person.

Humanism promotes all of the positive caring and sharing values that civilized society has developed over the centuries through the lessons of experience and the power of reason. Humanist values can easily be justified as being in the best long-term interests of both the individual and the wider community by enhancing the quality of relationships and reducing the risk of conflict.

For many people today, 'secular humanism' offers an agreeable alternative to traditional religion. While rejecting religious superstition, secular humanists embrace the compassionate and caring values once preached by religion.

In reaction to accusations by some religious groups that non-believers can have no real faith in universal goodness, secular humanists point out that virtues like kindness, justice, and generosity often work better when they are not associated with religious beliefs.

The secular humanist tradition has grown steadily over the centuries. It has its own set of inspired writings, with its own version of history, and its own collection of myths and heroes.

But despite its huge following, secular humanism still depends on faith in an ideal of universal goodness, and that faith is not underpinned by scientific understandings.

So it could be said that human life only has value if we choose to believe it does.

However, there are some who consider human life to be a cheap commodity that can be thrown away like worthless trash when it no longer appears to be useful.

And there are some who proclaim themselves to be followers of humanist values, while they act without restraint in their pursuit of power and wealth.

© Cosmic Nexus