How urgently the world needs a bright view

Some days ago i first met the Brights. RJHall visited my blog and mentioned them – i was glad to hear about, bewildered, however, by their vision:

Persons who have a naturalistic worldview should not be culturally stifled or civically marginalized due to society’s extensive supernaturalism. Rather, they ought to be accepted as fellow citizens and full participants in the cultural and political landscape.

Why bewildered? Because i wondered about being “culturally stifled or civically marginalized”. What – did i think – what? In times of quantum theory, moon flights, ISS and Darwin, naturalists should be forced to wish to be “accepted as fellow citizens”? Natural sciences move our world, invent the machines, TV, cinema and SUVs, invent computers and new weapons against cancer – even make people discuss the origin of the universe...

they are the engine, the heart of our civilization.

But...

but then i met my mother and watched myself being silent – silent about her catholicism, which burdened my childhood because first and foremost a (wo)man has to be a believer, has to obey. That simply means that (like a female muslim or Goebbels-like german) a woman has to be a willing servant of her “head”, her husband, forced to stay with him withouth the right to demand respect and care for her and her children. That is only the “right” of God, not of a mother. But i am silent because i don’t want to hurt her. The same with the Muhammad cartoons, where most politicians and bloggers actually say, that free speech ends where religion begins. Or worse: the “Honor Killing” by fathers and brothers. Instead of dismissing them in disgrace as betrayers of deepest trust (the needed trust of children in the protection of the own family), as the biggest sin a human can do, to sell out your own daughters and sons, these murders are praised by even the women of their society. Conclusion: As if by a miracle religion can metamorphose rape, torture and murder in “worthful culture”. Don’t care about your children – God does and when he spits on girls or foreigners, on disabled or poor, don't care about. What God does is well done.

Or...

but then i watch TV – they talk and talk about the new pope and how great he is and how great the previous one was. They don’t care about the Jews, the Muslim, the Pagan or my point of view, that by fighting against birth control these popes support vehemently poverty in the countries they control – not other than any Ayatollah. IMHO it’s just blind bias to laud and magnify men who willingly support death and starvation to promote their own cause. Oh yes, they demand from others (us!) to give money to help people getting out of a mess instead of educating them to avoid overpopulation and devastation, instead of educating them to care for the future of their children. (Certainly) against better judgment the popes demand from people to behave like rabbits in Australia. Don’t care about your children – God does and when he wants to have them piled up in huge heaps, don't care about. What God does is well done.

Or...

but then i discuss on my favorite Resistance blogs about justice and read that:

Neither societies nor human behavior follow the laws of physics, and so far as I can discern, I don’t see that they involve “high intelligence” other than in some science fiction...

never ask a physicist or a philosopher their opinion on anything because they both know every thing, but they have no common sense.

They discuss about moral, justice and “human behavior” – regularly – with believers, they talk about God and his rules and laws and love seriously and patiently without doubts and questions...

but they are able to state firmly, that “Neither societies nor human behavior follow the laws of physics”, they even mock people trying to understand the world (that’s exactly the common ground of physicists and philosophers).

Are they all Creationists, all promoting Intelligent Design? How can anybody with an average brain accept Darwin AND not see, that all our behavior must “follow the laws of physics”? How could evolution create “our society” otherwise? By the touch of a magic wand, by “God's breath”?

And do you know, what the most frustrating part of the above answer was – for me? That the guy sounds so reasonable, so pragmatic, really down to earth with both feet on stable ground. As if he would never prefer to accept “un-understandable” things to decide human fate without even trying to dig for the truth, never accept chains of causes and effects ending in the obscure realm of wishes and dreams of brains, ending there, totally cut off from the foundation on which the neurons and their strategy to gather and store information depends, the foundation offering the laws to be learned and used?

Justice, moral, right or wrong – just a “chimera”, “a standard ... shift[ing] from time to time and society to society” – how could it be that clear understanding of altruism (a very moral term, i guess) can be found in human infants and even monkeys may “show sense of fairness”? Oh, yes, i know: “By the touch of a magic wand, by God's breath” works fine, while experiment, proof and contradiction is forgettable.

Anyway, i often thought about the reason, why thousands and thousands of computer scientists are not able to understand information – it’s all about “stability” aka controllability, manageability.

Stable environments are the dream of every human brain – but they are also nothing more. As much as some people want to believe in stability, the stability of their wealth, their religions, their superpower-nations, their muscles, weapons and “superior genes”, stability is nothing else than a dream, created in our own brain.

And i guess, that’s the same reason why people prefer to believe that God himself put souls and society into the heads of the naked apes by the touch of a magic wand – without needing the omnipotent, omnipresent power of the everlasting infinity of the permanent change, called “physics”.

Since one of the most significant trends in religions over the eons was the trend towards determinism, Chronos proves the true task of gods, because he was the first to overcome “time” aka Chaos, Change, Unpredictability, Indeterminability...

Uncontrollability, Unmanageability...

the fear of the Unknown, the Future is so deep rooted, so overwhelming that they prefer to be slaves of a god stronger than time. Why? Because he – having started as Caring Mother, then mutating to a Stern Father – is primarily thought to behave like parents: If you obey and be a “good child”, daddy will protect you and fix all your broken things. And since it is enough that daddy knows all the complex, dangerous stuff – you don’t have to understand anything.

Actually, IF you would understand how the world works – you would have to accept, that the only daddy you have is your real daddy, just a person like you, that your dreams can’t create gods, that your wishes can’t stop time.

And then enters again: Uncontrollability, Unmanageability, Insecurity...

It takes bravery, real bravery to stand the gift of Mother Nature – the brain, allowing us to conquer the future, thereby showing us, how complex and in-deterministic it is, how “dangerous” life is. Bravery – simply that. It takes bravery to allow your brain to work as designed.

And since many people love heroes, Supermen and Lone Rangers, mostly because they themselves aren’t that brave – bright brains have to be not only brave enough to stand reality, they also have to be able to stand tall in a sea of wishful thinking...

to fight alone against the dragon...

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door - Bertrand Russell