Why We Need Science

Recently, I had several thoughts ranging from agnosticism to The Walking Dead and the role of science. The conclusion of the many thoughts was that besides luck, my species or descendant species best hope for continuation is the advancement and implementation of science and the creation of technologies that results from the advancement of science . Philosophy and religion got us to science in that they both started with wonder, for example, the questions of why are we here; why is there something rather than nothing, etc., were and still are important questions. Most Religions, especially Judeo-Christian based religions, stopped with a supernatural explanation or agent and didn't advanced from there, they hoped to somehow manipulate the supernatural agent, while Philosophy continued to become what is called Natural philosophy the precursor to science. I don’t think philosophy is dead, I think it has a role in science from asking pertinent questions to guiding the ethics around the result of scientific inquiry. The questions philosophy ask should lead to new avenues and falsifiable theories or explanations that describe who, what, when, where, why, and how of the empirical evidence and phenomena that science is trying to describe or observe. Religion at least in Western societies are stuck on a Judeo-Christian paradigm or model that is no longer relevant for the advancement of my species and its future species. In other words, the Judeo-Christian (and Islamic) model stopped at the supernatural explanation i.e. god did it model and has not advanced, this means it has only put forward a mystery to describe another mystery and this explains nothing. I am agnostic why we’re here and whether the universe has a meaning or point that is objective, this is unknowable or if it’s just a brute fact, it is what it is, and there is no objective meaning only subjective meaning, again this is unknowable without additional data. This line of thinking lead me into thinking about why do we as a species study nature in order to understand how the universe work unless there is a hope that we’re able to find a solution to the eventual heat death of the universe, whether it culminates in the Big Chill or the Big Rip, because of a repulsive force called Dark Energy, the place holder name for an unknown force that science doesn’t know what it is, it is the cosmological constant in Albert Einstein’s theory of Relativity. The better we understand the universe there is hope that we can use this knowledge to our advantage to perpetuate our survival as a species or whatever we evolve into. For example, when Sir Isaac Newton gave us a better understanding of gravity, we used that knowledge to develop technologies to overcome the force of gravity to the point that we used his laws to land on the moon, and still use them to land objects on Mars, and other space missions. Likewise, we hope that a better understanding through the scientific methods would lead to knowledge and this knowledge would lead to technologies that will help our descendants whether they’re an entirely different species overcome the heat death of the universe. For example, science with its track record so far for the betterment of life on our planet has done this, i.e. the advancement of science has developed genetically modified food to feed more people, it has developed pharmaceutical advancements to cure and treat biologically based disease and so science has and continue to get the job done, not religion. If our species or a descendant species of ours is going to survive science is our best hope with the guidance of ethics and other areas of philosophical ideas, not religion, for when you stop with a supernatural explanation that explains everything else, without the same time being explained, you explain nothing for you have not further our knowledge. Especially, if you don’t know if this supernatural entity is doing anything without some type of empirically based or falsifiable evidence. We don’t know if someone goes into remission if it is luck or a miracle, thus until direct evidence of a supernatural effect is known it does not add to our knowledge. With this thought I thought about the hit series The Walking Dead and why do they fight on even though everyone is infected, I think it is the evolutionary instinct that want to perpetuate itself in the gene, for life, consciousness, awareness, and existence itself is what Arthur Schopenhauer called the “will to Live”. It is this instinct that evolved in every living cell, when the first replicating molecule adapted to its environment and became alive and aware or conscious, this desire to survive that drive the survivors in The Walking Dead and (in each of us) to live with, within, and beyond their circumstances and my argument is if they are going to survive it will take science to figure out the cause and effect and the solution through some form of technology to a problem that is or will turn them into zombies, in other words, they currently don’t have an answer, but if they stop with a supernatural answer that cannot explain itself in a coherent way or advance a solution to create an immunization protocol then they are all destined to become zombies and this is no answer at all. Think about it....

Think for yourself?

On the way home, I was listening to George Hrab's Song entitled "Think for Yourself", the Beatles had a song with that title as well. It is a song, that I as a Free Thinking advocate agree, it is a song about learning how to be a critical, skeptical thinker, to don't accept what someone else say, believe, or sale you without asking who, what, when, where, how, and especially why. As I listened to the lyrics, I had an insight in which, I thought about evolution, especially Human Evolution. We primates emerged on the scene about 30 million years ago, then the hominids separated from Chimps and Bonobos about 6 to 8 million years ago. The most famous of our early ancestors is Lucy also known as Australopithecus afarensis who lived 3.2 million years ago in Ethiopia although she wasn't the first hominid, a recent fossil of Ardi (Ardipithecus Ramidus) pushes hominid evolution back to approximately 4.4 million years ago when, due to probably climate change some primates begin to walked on two feet. Being bipedal in an environment where the ancestors of lions, leopards, cheetahs, and hyenas where looking for their next meal was a tremendous risk but also gave them advantages it freed up their hands and allow them to see their predators in the changing environment, and this with many other variables led to higher development and evolution of the hominid brain, which eventually gave us an advantage on the East African plains and here I am writing about it,(isn't evolution da bomb!). In order to survive the early hominids had to cooperate and work together in order to survive. This led to us being a social species and it led to human primates having longer childhoods than our primate cousins. For example, a Daniel Dennett wrote in Breaking the Spell, Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, "Natural Selection build child brains with the tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them", it had survival benefits because it you were warned about going near the water hole because of crocodiles, if someone disobeyed and was eaten this reinforced the authority and social order of the clan or tribe. Another example, would be if someone was kicked out of the group and was later found dead or eaten by hyenas this reinforced the social order.Therefore, my argument is thinking individually or thinking for yourself is a recent phenomenon in our species way of thinking for a species who lived for millions of years who lived in social groups in order to survive, and propagate they had to think collectively therefore, I think group-thinking is the default position in our brains and to think for yourself take effort and practice and we don't do this well as a species, because for most of our evolutionary history we had to groupthink. What is Groupthink? Groupthink, "a term coined by social psychologist Irving Janis (1972), occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of "mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment" (p. 9). Groups affected by groupthink ignore alternatives and tend to take irrational actions that dehumanize other groups. A group is especially vulnerable to groupthink when its members are similar in background, when the group is insulated from outside opinions, and when there are no clear rules for decision making. source: (http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htm) This is why religion thrives because it's probably a byproduct of groupthinking. In Summary, I think groupthinking evolved out of our sociology need to survive, cooperate and pass-on our genes (DNA) and thinking as an individual is a new phenomena and we default to groupthinking because we evolved in social groups that banded together to survive on the East African plains. Think about it or think for yourself, but it will take practice to override our default towards groupthinking. John D. Socrates a.k.a. The African Socrates.