I would like to make a few remarks on the topic of science and religion as it is being discussed by Peter Espeut et al.

Science is not based on faith. In science, there are competing theories and even competing paradigms. Where they don't exist, what we get is not science, but religion. The fact that a scientist often has to take what Soren Kierkergard called "a leap of faith", does not imply that his knowledge is faith-based in the same sense that theology is. Scientists do not join hands and sing "real, real, real, gravity is real to me!"

Man's apparent natural tendency towards faith-based knowledge is perhaps best explained by Darwinian natural selection as the biologist Richard Dawkins has pointed out in his excellent book, The God Delusion. The primitive child needed to have unquestioning faith, first in the parent, then in the group and ultimately in the tribe. Those who did not obey the commandment not to go too close to the river would probably be less likely to survive the hunger of the crocodile. A tendency to question authority would not have been advantageous in such societies.

Survival mechanism

The propensity to believe served as a survival mechanism for man's social evolution later on. It produced the warrior tribe which, as a group, was more successful when members believed that the ultimate sacrifice guaranteed them a place in Valhalla, Elysium or Heaven. The fact that there has been a close relationship between religious belief and ethnicity is evidence that it is natural and social rather than supernatural phenomena. Atheism itself becomes dangerous when it takes on the attitude of a religion, as is the case with Marxism.

My own view is that religion is a vestigial structure that, as Thomas Hardy said of Christianity, has served mankind well up to this point. But I suspect that, like the appendix, it no longer serves any useful purpose and is now a nuisance that can become inflamed and infected, endangering our very survival as a species. Witness the suicide bombers and stodgy Zionists in the Middle East. If they were all self-respecting atheists, they would have come to an agreement long ago. Instead, they continue to fight each other, like moths irrationally diving into artificial flames, compelled by instincts that served them well to navigate by the stars in pre-historic times before the invention of artificial light and fire.

I am etc.,

R. Howard Thompson

Munro College