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by Charles Carreon
05/11/08:
Since I listen to NPR, I often hear a
gentle, liberal voice posing a question from The Templeton Foundation,
established by Sir John Templeton, retired millionaire fund manager.
Templeton, pictured above, bailed out of the market after a solid career
that netted him a final $900 Million payday, and at the age of 95, he's
playing philanthropist from his Bahamas-based Templeton Institute, in
the operation of which he is assisted by his born-again Christian son,
Jack. So Templeton's question, sounding warm and inviting when presented
in the voice of an NPR liberal, was something like: “Has science made
religion obsolete?”
Well, I said to myself, that's a stupid
question for Templeton to ask! Surely he, a man made of cash, should
know that it has always been money, not science, that has made religion
irrelevant to men. People have been turning arrogantly away from threats
of hell when presented with wads of cash ever since the stuff was
invented. It is money that turns bankers into con men, boys into
killers, and politicians into hypocrites who profess virtue on Sunday,
and lie the rest of the week, as well.
Science, making religion obsolete? How
could science replace religion? They aren't even used for the same
thing. Science is used to satisfy the hunger for truth, the desire to
dispel ignorance and illuminate reality, as the Roman natural
philosopher Lucretius expressed it so well. Religion is used to blockade
the search for truth, to confirm conventional beliefs with the testimony
of saints. Religion is used to fill gaps that knowledge never could, and
never will.
For example, religions have answered the
question, “What happens to us after death?” Science will never tackle
this question, since there is no evidence on which to even fashion a
hypothesis, much less any way to test your hypothesis if you manage to
originate one. And certainly, despite Christ's having reportedly
demonstrated his ability to “resurrect” his body after death, the
experiment has never been replicated.
Money, on the other hand, serves the
primary purpose of religion very well, which is to relieve anxiety about
the future. A clergyman who has sexually molested children may fear
hell, but he fears a sentence of ten years a great deal more. With
enough money, he may cheat judgment by hiring a good lawyer, or fleeing
out of the jurisdiction, perhaps back to the sovereign nation of the
Vatican, from whence sexual molesters are not extradited. Once safely in
Rome, even a monster who has sodomized the little lambs he was sent to
protect can obtain absolution. Some prayers, some donations, some
crocodile tears, and the matter is accomplished. God is so much easier
to bribe than man, but then again, his agents are very understanding
about the foibles of men.
Money buys security in this life.
Religion buys security in the next. To illustrate how they are put to
the identical use, imagine two young nobles, enjoying their wine while
the serfs labor outside in the fields. One brother is a secular noble
who, under the King's authority, rules with edicts and soldiers over a
population of serfs he was free to terrorize, tax and conscript as
suited his will. The other brother is a bishop, who rules the same
domain with spiritual authority drawn from the Pope and the threat of
excommunication, a curse in this life and the next. Lifting a glass of
good vin rouge, and looking out the window at the serfs tilling the soil
below, the nobleman says to his brother the bishop, “A toast to the two
us, my brother, for I rule these people from the cradle to the grave,
and you rule them for all eternity.”
Money has always known its place in the
scheme of things. You will rarely find a banker having a serious
disagreement with a clergyman, and usually they get along as well as the
noble brothers in my little vignette. At the worst of times, you find
money-changers right in the temple, something that Jesus found
offensive, but the bankers found that temples draw the right kind of
crowd for financial action, and still build their money-fortresses to
resemble Greek and Roman temples.
Money and religion are great reinforcers
of hierarchy. Although the Pope may not be saintly, still he commands
absolutely reverence, and those without a feel for science may agree
that the Pope's official declarations are infallible, despite the
obvious errors enunciated with great authority by past and present
Popes. The existence of witches, the flatness of the earth, and the
virgin birth have all received Papal approval due to hierarchical
authority, and not by any means that common sense would call reliable.
Similarly, if a man is rich enough and has lots of rich people backing
him, he will not be contradicted when he lies, or reprimanded for his
poor manners when he is boorish, like the incumbent president, whose
lies and churlish remarks are legion, and never has to bear a cross word
from anyone.
Science, on the other hand, gives no
regard to hierarchy. Let the Pope, the President, or Deepak Chopra say
it – it will not be true in the book of science unless it can be proven
true by repeatable experiment. Science is an intellectual process that
makes it possible to see objects billions of light years away, objects
that religion did not prophecy the existence of, and for which money had
no need. Science is the beak with which we break the eggshell of
ignorance, and that shell is composed illusions solidified by the
accretion of centuries of ignorance supported by religion. What will
keep us from cracking that illusion is money.
Oh, but you say, without money there is
no research. Without research no discovery, without discovery no
science. But you are simply wrong. Archimedes made his physics
discoveries with the most rudimentary laboratory. Pythagoras measured
the distance to the sun with a stick, a shadow, and a map. Newton found
inspiration when his lunch hit him on the head. Einstein unraveled the
mystery of nuclear energy while daydreaming.
Frankly, the flood of money is leading to
the death of Science, and the birth of Expert Witnessing as its
replacement. Example: the cause and effect relationship between
countless industrial chemicals and cancer is still “not proven,” because
the chemical companies will not fund the research, nor will government,
enslaved to industry, that is, money. Global warming is similarly the
plaything of experts, as if the atmosphere were not a closed container
and smoke something that is certain to accumulate and obstruct the
passage of light, leading to the retention of heat. Expert Witnesses,
acting at the behest of shortsighted industrial money, will delay
pronouncing “Science's verdict” on innumerable facts found inconvenient
by the state.
Money and religion are not interested in
truth, but in convenience. Whenever you ask yourself why the religious
and the worldly so often find their interests aligned, remember my
little tableaux of the nobleman and the bishop – the cooperation between
them will always be tight. The world revealed to the eyes of science may
square with some religious notions, but as the Southerners say, even a
blind pig finds an acorn sometimes. Attempts to make science religious
or religion scientific, are blatantly absurd, for their goals do not
support each other. Religion will always preserve vested interests in
false beliefs, for the good of the devout, who would otherwise be
confused. Likewise, money is always ready to bribe those who cannot be
bamboozled with sanctimonious words. The world revealed by money is a
phantasmagoria of deceptions that can turn a child into Jon Benet, a
Nazi into a man of God, an ordinary woman into Pamela Anderson. The
illusionists in this world are the priests and the bankers, who distort
our existence to suit the needs of the powerful. Science ends the
illusions, regardless of whose position is damaged. That is why it is so
unpopular with the powerful, and remains the favorite scapegoat of
religion, working hand in glove with money, to keep us all in the dark.
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