This past weekend I attended the Imagine No Religion 2
conference in Kamloops, BC, Canada. It
was an amazing event and there were many very interesting and important
messages in the presentations. But I
want to talk here about something I gleaned from tying together a few snippets
from a few of the presentations that rather struck me.
Seth Andrews of the Thinking Atheist reminded us of just how
recently it is that information was difficult to retrieve and often
inaccessible. Since I was born (in 1976)
we have gone from the strongest computer being the Vic 20 and the easiest way
to retrieve information being the card catalogue at your local library to
having millions of phones in the hands of average people with computing power
orders of magnitude greater than early generations of multi-million dollar
supercomputers, and with access to more information in a matter of milliseconds
than even existed for most of human civilization.
Dr. Andy Tompson pointed out that we are the first
generations to be able to look into our own brains with medical technology and
understand how our minds evolved and why we think the way we do.
Another presenter – I can’t remember which – pointed out
that in most fields of science there now exists a body of literature so vast
that no one scientist could even read all of it from just their own field even
if they spent their lifetime doing so.
PZ Myers spoke of the fundamental incompatibility of science
and religion and how religion hampers science.
David Eberth spoke about the political and social strength
of the creationist movement and how it seeks to move society away from science
and towards religion.
August Berkshire spoke of the inherent limitations and
failings of religious morality compared to rational secular morality.
Dr. Christopher DiCarlo spoke of the need to broaden our
scope when we look at problems and their solutions and gave examples of how
narrow a band of thinking goes into so many important decisions in everything
from education to hospital care.
Lawrence Krauss spoke eloquently of our growing
understanding of the universe and its workings, making the “God is the best
explanation for the existence of the universe” arguments of the theists from
the conference’s opening debate seem even more arrogant and ridiculous in their
childish certitude than they had when they were presented.
These stunning indications of human progress were starkly
contrasted with reminders of the simplistic and anti-scientific mindsets of the
religious and of the continuing bigotry and backwards thinking that shackles
much of humanity to a primitive past and a mind-bogglingly egocentric lack of
self-awareness from Maryam Namazie, Matt Dillahunty and others.
Representatives of the Centre for Inquiry, atheist Alliance
International and BC Humanists told us of the importance of getting involved
and the work they were doing, and Desiree Schell taught us how to be effective
activists for change.
It seems to me that, quite contrary to the naïve perception
I had as a child that all the cool stuff had already been discovered and
explored, we are actually living in a uniquely privileged moment in human
history. Humanity is reaching
adolescence. It is growing up, and
becoming more intelligent, but still retains much of the immaturity and childishness
of its more primitive infancy. Another
analogy that occurred to me is that humanity has built an incredible aircraft
that sits on the runway, ready to take us to new heights, but is prevented from
lifting off because of all the excess baggage we are carrying that weighs it
down. The heights we could achieve if we
could only rid ourselves of all the divisiveness, of all the historical
problems we have carried with us, of all the biased and intransigent ways of
thinking we have inherited from both our evolutionary and cultural forebears! The realization brings both immense hope and
crushing despair. Those heights are
attainable! They are within our grasp! But we are being prevented from reaching
them. Humanity is – as has always been
the case – its own worst enemy. But we
must not give into despair. We cannot
allow our goals to recede. We cannot
allow ourselves to be dragged back into the dark ages! We must fight against ignorance, divesting
ourselves of as much useless baggage as possible while helping improve the
aircraft of rational enlightenment and scientific inquiry that will eventually
lift us into realms we can now scarcely imagine!
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