Religion and Science

We all know that Christmas is more than presents (tell that to a 5 year old, bombarded since October by TV ads)... I know that it is a Christian holiday, but I believe that in many cases it's more a time to spend together with family than anything else. (Also in Mexico we don't have Thanksgiving, and New Year is celebrated sometimes more with friends than with family).

OK, I don't have a religion, and many countries in theory don't have an official one either. (e.g. Mexico is a laic state, but December 25th is one of the five official holidays of the year) But I don't think that even if religions change, Christmas would be declared useless... Well, the same goes for religions. Scientific evidence against many strongly held religious beliefs demands a change in them: shape of the Earth, origin of life, origin of human species... (read Christian De Duve's "Life Evolving" (he's a catholic)). But the moral function of religions is not provided by any other institution, so that should be somehow kept, or provided by an alternative institution.

In the early days of religions (and philosophies), the way of convincing people was saying that their word was the absolute truth, unquestionable, and unequivocal (and then burning those who weren't convinced enough). But then came Science, questioning its own beliefs (at least in theory). It turns out that nowadays, with all the diversity of ideas we have access to, holding to absolute truths is simply blinding oneself. Religions need to admit changes within their beliefs, if they are to adapt to our current world. I respect religions, and I am not saying that people shouldn't believe. I am saying that absolute truths lead to intolerance to other people's beliefs. And we had enough holy wars in history, I feel...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Past, Present and Future of Cybernetics and Systems Research

Summary of "The Past, Present and Future of Cybernetics and Systems Research" Symposium M at  European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research (EMCSR), Vienna, Austria, April 12, 2012. Organizer: Carlos Gershenson This guided reflection on the challenges and opportunities of cybernetics and systems research (CSR) included initial interventions by panelists Peter Erdi, Helena Knyazeva, Stefan Thurner, Peter Csermely, and Alexander Lazlo. Afterwards, the floor was opened to interventions from the general public and further interventions by panelists. Commentaries were made from a broad variety of perspectives, but several general ideas can be distilled from the discussion. CSR have strongly influenced all scientific disciplines. As an example, the term "system" is used commonly in daily language. One of the breakthroughs of CSR lies in the search of commonalities across disciplines. Even when this was achieved to a certain degree, there is still a lack of
Read more

flocking memes...

Some ideas just came up, after a talk I had with Klaas , who is making a PhD on memetics... In cultural transmission of fads and so on, I've heard that there are models in which the majority imitates an elite, and the elite tries to go away from the crowd, and that gives you the dynamics... The idea is that maybe another way of looking at this phenomenon is to take the analogy of flocking: birds try to keep together (safety, direction, whatever reason), but also keep average distance to their neighbours (not to crash). If we take this mechanism into the memetic space, people will imitate many aspects surrounding them, just because of mirron neurons and the evolutionary advantage of imitation. But the separation is also important, for people assert their individuality with it... This could be seen as taking the inverse of a meme... starting to sounds like dialectics... (who would have thought that Hegel and starlings had lots in common...) Of course in the social context there are m
Read more

PhD thesis: "final" version online

After making several minor corrections, I have a "final" version of my thesis, which you can download here . I should defend it privately on April 20th, and if everything goes well, the public defense would be on May 2nd. Everybody's welcome! Design and Control of Self-organizing Systems PhD Dissertation presented by Carlos Gershenson Promoters: Prof. Dr. Bart D’Hooghe and Prof. Dr. Francis Heylighen Advisors: Prof. Dr. Bruce Edmonds Prof. Dr. Bernard Manderick Prof. Dr. Peter McBurney Prof. Dr. Ann Nowé Abstract Complex systems are usually difficult to design and control. There are several particular methods for coping with complexity, but there is no general approach to build complex systems. In this thesis I propose a methodology to aid engineers in the design and control of complex systems. This is based on the description of systems as self-organizing . Starting from the agent metaphor, the methodology proposes a conceptual framework and a se
Read more