Rite and Reason: We can be confident in ruling out God and other mystical conceptions because of the fruitful results of scientific investigation, writes Antoine Mac Diarmada
John Moriarty (Rite and Reason, August 25th, 2003) addresses a fundamental aspect of the human condition, namely, that we can never know everything. Enveloping this in a fog of mystification, he denigrates science, implying that it is debilitatingly limited and must move toward religion.
However, with science gone, all we have is religion; and if science goes, then art must go also, leaving only obscurantism and superstition. For, if science investigates objectivity, then art engages with subjectivity, presenting important truths about experience.
As the English philosopher Christopher Caudwell said, "Art is the science of feeling, science the art of knowing. We must know to be able to do, but we must feel to know what to do" (Illusion and Reality, 1937).
Science is not something formed out of nothing, having a permanent existence, separate from magic, religion, philosophy or art. It has a gradual historical development through the ages. Our distant ancestors first distinguished themselves from the world, and soon personalised the things they saw, giving rise to pantheism and religion.
Over time, thought progressed with mastery of nature; thinking improved the mastery, and the improved mastery gave rise to new things to think about. There, in embryo, is the essence of the scientific method: theory and practice.
The growing accumulation of knowledge constituted the primitive religion. Karl Marx summed it up thus: "Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement and its universal basis of consolation and justification" (A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1844).
Early humans, conscious of their emotions within themselves, must have located their causes within those objects that stimulated the emotions. The emotion, because of its vividness, must have seemed like the soul, the essence, of the thing. It was thus a short step for primitive people to imagine they could dominate reality by generating the emotions proper to the desired effect, through charms, ceremonies and magic.
Magic gives birth to science, for magic commands reality to conform to laws, and when reality refuses to do so, its stubborn nature is impressed upon the magician. Magicians do not try to walk on water with spells, or if they do they fail. Rainmakers are only found in places where it rains now and again.
With the passing of time, the absurd beliefs of the magicians were modified as humanity set itself ever more elaborate tasks. Magic succeeded only when it read nature correctly, and when it failed, it was defeated by the inexorable determinism of things. Gradually, mystical beliefs gave way to consciousness of determinism, and magic gave way to science.
As the means of providing the requirements of life improved, social organisation changed to accommodate the new circumstances. Class societies developed; religion ceased to embody all hitherto accumulated knowledge; and certain aspects of it were turned into an instrument of control by the authorities.
Philosophy and art separated out from religion. Eventually the modern, complex, capitalist society of today evolved, with its innumerable economic, scientific and cultural dimensions.
All these things emerged slowly from the struggle of humanity to change the world. They are as much the result of action as of contemplation. In every sphere action gives rise to thought, which in turn gives rise to further action. Hence arose the scientific method, which is most effective in the physical sciences, where great possibilities exist for controlled experiment.
Though such possibilities are less in other areas of human activity, still the method holds. The basic way of advance is the same: observe what is going on, work out what is causing it, imagine how things could be changed, try it out and see the result.
Finally, in response to John Moriarty, mystification only sows confusion and hopelessness. Science may never know everything, but it enhances knowledge day by day. It gives us the possibility of exploring the universe gradually, growing in our secure understanding of it and changing it to suit our purposes.
And they are our purposes, not God's. It was Charles Darwin who sounded the death knell of the argument from design, by showing how chance mutation, and anything-but-chance natural selection, could account for the complexity and information contained within natural processes.
Furthermore, we are confident in ruling out God and other mystical conceptions because of the fruitful results of scientific investigation of the world, and because of our growing scientific understanding of our historical social experience.
Science cuts through obscurantism and despair, laying a foundation upon which to construct a project consonant with human dignity.
Only humans can create and give purpose to that; there is no teleology in nature.
Antoine MacDiarmada works in business and is a student of philosophy, especially the philosophy of science. The article is influenced by the work of Christopher Caudwell who died in 1937 at the young age of 30, fighting for the republican cause, during the Spanish Civil War