Now, the invention of the scientific method is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that. It has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? — because you’re not!’ If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday,’ you say, ‘I respect that.’
The odd thing is, even as I am saying that, I am thinking ‘Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?’ But I wouldn’t have thought ‘Maybe there’s somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics,’ when I was making the other points. I just think ‘Fine, we have different opinions.’ But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody’s (I’m going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say ‘No, we don’t attack that; that’s an irrational belief but no, we respect it.’
Why should it be that it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labor party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows — but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe…no, that’s holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we’ve just got used to doing so? There’s no other reason at all, it’s just one of those things that crept into being and once that loop gets going it’s very, very powerful. So, we are used to not challenging religious ideas but it’s very interesting how much of a furor Richard creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you’re not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be.
— Douglas Adams
I found this quote from Douglas Adams (excerpted from an impromptu speech he gave in 1998), and — as is typical for Mr. Adams’ writing — liked it a lot. He was a highly intelligent man, and very gifted in his abilities to communicate both serious and whimsical notions.
However, the article that this quote was a lead-in for (Richard Dawkins on Sept. 11 Religious Terrorism) I found more than a little disturbing. Not because of the fact that Mr. Dawkins’ is a self-professed Atheist who seems to be doing what he can to spread what he believes to be the truth, but by the almost frighteningly vehement and almost venemous way he goes about it. I’ve never heard of Richard Dawkins before, but from this single article he seems to me to be what could best be described as an ‘Atheistic Fundamentalist,’ in that he is so convinced of the truth of his beliefs that he not only refuses to acknowledge other people’s right to hold their beliefs, but he actively attacks them (and in doing so, attacks all religion across the board). Is it really any better that he takes such an antagonistic attitude from an Atheistic standpoint rather than from a religious one?
I can’t say as how I think so. I need to go over the article a couple more times, then may come back with something else to say about it. We’ll see.
I still like the Douglas Adams quote, though.