| Lewis Wolpert's crit. (Times 22.10.98) of Richard Dawkin's Unweaving
the Rainbow mentions Dawkins being "puzzled by the almost unlimited
appetite for superstitions like astrology . . "
Wolpert suggests that "to believe in phenomena that can, like religion, help people to make sense of the world without having to learn science". So the purpose to which we put whatever phenomena we believe in is to enable those who want its protection and apparent security to make sense of their world. Now I can understand the compulsive believer. When I was one it seemed to make sense and from it I created my (albeit flawed) sense of identity. I was a little big fish in several small fishbowls, yet at the time it was all I knew. |
| The extent of such phenomena is vast. Fanatics and high priests
of every sort of magic are, by default, competing for adherents and fearful
of losing influence. So certain are they of their speculation that it seems
heretical to doubt or even question their beliefs.
Once seduced we are further excited by a media which flourishes by finding new notables qualifying as the good and the great, each of which feeds on the acclamation of those who want to believe -- so as to make sense of their world. |
| Yet we can see through the qualified nature
of the security that believers in various phenomena seem to enjoy. Such
beliefs
1. are inevitably private languages 2. and are received wisdom 3. and marvellously elaborate and beautifully obscure ideas 4. and uneconomic and wasteful, a tax on our resourcefulness and antithetical to our innate adaptability, insisting we can do nothing about it since 'that's how God made the world' 5. and indicate a fundamental lack of confidence and drives their fearful and insatiable appetite for more of the same elixers. |
| However by realising the potential of our fundamental needs we fend for ourselves to become essential humane. |