Finding solace in knowledge
There were queries from my reader friends on my last month’s article on Near Death Experiences. On the morning it was published I received a concerned phone call from a good friend Dr. Anil Goonetilleke. He told me that he absolutely disagreed with my article. After all, he said, it is important to give people hope and to say there is no after life would be to take away that hope.
Another friend from the UK, Dr. Nirmalan wrote, “Raveen, thanks an enjoyable read. My view on the matter is a bit mixed. Human beings – as individuals, are driven by survival and self-gratification. Biologically that is what we are programmed to do. In this context, society had to evolve some ‘social constructs’ that were essential for the survival of ‘us’ as a collective being. Faith, religion, traditions, customs and perhaps even God are examples of such ‘social constructs’.
They may be ‘social constructs’ (therefore delusional in nature) but nevertheless important for the survival of this ‘collective being’….beyond the individual self. In dealing with such issues, their validity does not need ‘Scientific proof’ in a traditional sense. To me Science and Faith are like the two rails that form the railway track. They run parallel to each other and never touch or cross one another. But they both need each – in perfect alignment for the train to run smoothly. The lack of ‘scientific proof’ or a ‘P-value’ doesn’t necessarily invalidate some of these constructs.
I would even argue that these ‘social constructs’ are evolutionary imperatives created by a finely developed brain trying to find an ideal environment to express its full potential – art, music, photography etc. In the absence of a social order achieved through these ‘social constructs’ the human brain cannot reach its full potential. Therefore these social constructs were an expression of the brain …….a sort of next logical step in our biological evolution. Hope this makes sense.”
Dr. Sherva Cooray, another of my friends based in the UK, and a consultant psychiatrist wrote, “A very thought provoking read and an excellent overview of the status quo. However NDEs neither prove nor disprove evidence of Life after Death. As the Bard so eloquently sums up “Death the undiscovered country from whose bourn …No traveller returns” is a far cry from NDEs.”
I will take up Sherva’s point first. NDEs have been offered as proof that there is an existence after death. What I wrote was that there is a valid physiological explanation for NDEs and we need not invoke a supernatural reason to explain the phenomenon. I also said that, “I am afraid there is no evidence that there is life after death or a part of our body continues beyond death”. I did not say there is good evidence that there is no life after death. Russell’s teapot, is an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell to illustrate that the burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to others. Russell remarked that if he claims that a tea pot orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, it is nonsensical for him to expect others to believe him on the grounds that they cannot prove him wrong. This what he wrote for the Illustrated magazine in 1952, but was never published.
“Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.”
Carl Sagan too uses this analogy in his book The Demon Haunted World. In a chapter titled ‘A Dragon in My Garage’ he writes, “A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage.’ ‘Show me,’ you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle – but no dragon. ‘Where’s the dragon?’ you ask. ‘Oh, she’s right here,’ I reply, waving vaguely. ‘I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.’ You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints. ‘Good idea,’ I say, ‘but this dragon floats in the air.’ Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. ‘Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.’ You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible. ‘Good idea, except she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint….”
Considering Nirmalan’s comments, a perceptive reader once wrote to the editor of a newspaper on the subject of science, “There are questions of faith, such as ‘Does God exist?’ There are questions of opinion, such as ‘Who is the greatest baseball player of all time?’ There are debatable questions, such as ‘Should abortion be legal’, And then there are questions that can be answered to a degree of certainty by the application of the scientific method, which are called empirical questions in other words, those that can be largely settled by the evidence.” I agree with Dr. Nirmalan that faith and science are two different entities and ‘never the twain shall meet.’ If we demand proof for what we believe in faith, it would cease to be faith.
Finally what about hope? By confronting people’s unsubstantiated beliefs in supernatural events are we taking away their hope? I can do no better than quote from a great little book, The Belief Book by David McAfee and Chuck Harrison. It is written for the younger audience hence the simple language. “You see for a lot of people all over the world, religion makes them feel better when they face what we don’t really understand about the world, the universe, and pretty much everything. For a believer, their religion is like a nightlight that keeps the monster in the closet or under the bed away. It makes them feel safe and secure. But when we search for answers to our questions, we gain something called knowledge. Knowledge is everything that we know and understand about the world. It is all the facts and information we get from living or education. Knowledge is like a super nightlight! It makes sure that there is a whole lot less of the world that we don’t understand, so we see there are no monsters to be afraid of.”