In the years since I wrote the "Why Are We Here" and "Alpha and Omega" essays, there has been a certain amount of feedback from readers. Usually, this has been the result of some remark on a message board reminding me of the essay(s), which provide a ready-written answer to the poster's question. I would then give a "here's one I prepared earlier" statement and link to the essay.
Occasionally, I have had emails via my contact page (be sure to select "My Essays" from the subjects list!). One such email recently arrived, with a well-written, civil message - a rarity when you mostly use message boards. The email address given looks suspiciously like a fake address - which is understandable, given that many websites use contact forms to harvest email addresses to spam.
So, rather than reply to a possibly non-existant address, I thought I would post the message and my reply here. One drawback of this is that I am now speaking of my respondant in the third person, instead of talking to him in the second person, and this means I can't use the gender-neutral "you." So I have to assign a gender-specific pronoun, with a 50% chance of picking the wrong gender. I am choosing to use masculine pronouns - "he," "him," etc - because it's conventional, traditional and un-PC. But I apologise in advance if he's a she.
On to business. First, the email in full (reformatted for the web by me), then my point-by-point response:
I just read your essay on why we are here and here are some of my thoughts. You say the notion of a higher purpose in life is false and that in the court of law they would not accept this... nor would a scientist. I ask that you elaborate as you do not specify which scientist or group of scientists. Perhaps you are not aware of this quote:"Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble."- This was Albert Einstein. Where is his hard evidence? In his experience. Might I add that he was a scientist? Perhaps he is the type that would agree with the notion of a higher purpose. What about this quote?"True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness."- Also Einstien. But you stated that there is no such thing as a soul or- if there be one, that it would die with the body as well. Perhaps there is a plane of which unnatured to our body's that a soul would feel home? Perhaps it is true that they do not die but our body's do. I would like you to come up with some hard evidence for your theory that there is no soul. Can you prove it? Well then, you'd say, have you proof for a soul? And I'd say no. But it is a possible part of this universe that is accepted or not based upon human experience. And, I suppose- the Bible."The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero."- Ilya Prigogine (Chemist-Physicist) Recipient of two Nobel Prizes in chemistry I. Prigogine, N. Gregair, A. Babbyabtz, Physics Today 25, pp. 23-28 Well she's a scientist. Perhaps she belives that the earth came to be not by some cosmic burp. Who's to say she's wrong? "I do." You might say. Science proves that she's wrong. But maybe science is more religion than your willing to realize. ...I know a fellow, who is offering something like $250 000 to someone with proof for evolution- I guess he just doesn't know much. Go to www.drdino.com and find out more about this free money. All you gotta do is email him with your proof and he will give you money! Isn't that awesome. Oh well. I am not very educated and I am un experienced in many things in life due to my age. But this man seems to know more. Thank you for your time. -Spenny
Firstly, Sperry's message is dominated by three short quotes from two scientists who are not discussing the specifics of their work. This is quote-mining - though far from the most egregious examples I've seen.
Einstein is a favourite of quote-miners, because as well as being one of history's most famous scientists, he said a lot of quotable things. He also had a habit of making figurative references to religious motifs.
But he also said some very unambiguous things about his religious beliefs:
"I get hundreds and hundreds of letters but seldom one so interesting as yours. I believe that your opinions about our society are quite reasonable.
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
I have no possibility to bring the money you sent me to the appropriate receiver. I return it therefore in recognition of your good heart and intention. Your letter shows me also that wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it."
And:
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."
And:
"From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being."
Last time I saw Sperry's "spirit vastly superior to that of man" quote, its source was described as a reply to a letter from "a young girl." Since it contradicts the more strongly-worded statements above, could it be that he was making a diplomatic reply rather than telling the girl what he really thought?
I should point out before going further than Sperry has mis-read my original essay. He says: "You say the notion of a higher purpose in life is false and that in the court of law they would not accept this... nor would a scientist."
But this is not what I actually wrote in the essay. The "court of law" comment there is specifically about the admissability of subjective feelings - if a witness in a court claimed to a feeling of a higher purpose to his life, the court should not accept this as objective evidence for the existance of that higher purpose. But refusing to accept such "evidence" for a higher purpose does not constitute evidence against it.
So even if it were the case that Einstein himself has such feelings, it is not the case that any scientist regards them as objective evidence.
After the first quote, Sperry asks: "Where is his hard evidence? In his experience."
But in the quote, Einstein makes no claim to "hard evidence."
Moving on the quote number two, where Einstein says what he understands the term "true religion" to mean. Sperry follows up this quote by pointing out that I "stated that there is no such thing as a soul or- if there be one, that it would die with the body as well."
I don't really know what this remark has to do with the Einstein quote. Einstein is clearly using the word "soul" in the colloquial, ill-defined sense that I criticise in my essay. Einstein did not believe in a soul that out-lives the human body (but I'll leave tracking down the evidence as an exercise for the reader: I found it in one of the numerous Einstein-quoting websites I checked in looking for a proper citation for Sperry's quote).
After some unsupportable speculation about the post-death fate of the soul, Sperry says: "I would like you to come up with some hard evidence for your theory that there is no soul. Can you prove it?"
I can't prove it, of course, for two very good reasons. Firstly, you can't prove a negative. That's a basic logical fallacy. Secondly, I have no such theory, due to the lack of a sensible, analyse-able definition of the soul.
He then acknowledges: "Well then, you'd say, have you proof for a soul? And I'd say no."
This is quite true. The reason the soul's existance can't be proven is twofold. Firstly, the definition problem, and secondly those who believe it exists tend to regard it as being in some way supernatural, which puts it beyond the scope of naturalistic evidence. Unless, of course, having a soul - as distinct from merely believing you have one - changes you in some way. This is why, in my essay, I listed the ways in which humans are wrongly thought to differ from other animals: if animals do not have souls and we do, then there should be something about humans that no animals species can claim. Shouldn't there?
Sperry then offers a quote from Ilya Prigogine. This quote is a favourite of creationists, because Prigogine is apparently unequivocally stating that life is not a chance-based phenomenon.
The mistake that creationists are making is that they think the theory of evolution is one of chance, and that Prigogine is therefore arguing agaist it. But it isn't: natural selection is not a random process.
Furthermore, it seems that, in one of the quote-miners' favourite tricks, the quote is actually Prigogine's statement of the position he opposes. Here's what he really thinks:
The probability that at ordinary temperatures a macroscopic number of molecules is assembled to give rise to the highly ordered structures and to the coordinated functions characterizing living organisms is vanishingly small. The idea of spontaneous genesis of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable, even on the scale of the billions of years during which prebiotic evolution occurred.
The conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that the apparent contradiction between biological order and the laws of physics–in particular the second law of thermodynamics–cannot be resolved as long as we try to understand living systems by the methods of the familiar equilibrium statistical mechanics and equally familar thermodynamics. One of our main points here shall be that an increase in dissipation is possible for nonlinear systems driven far from equilibrium. Such systems may be subject to a succession of un stable transitions that lead to spatial order and to increasing entropy production.
(The article from which this excerpt and Sperry's quote originate is apparently online, but the link is, as I write, dead. Hopefully this is temporary.)
Referring to Prigogine (who is male), Sperry asks: "Who's to say she's wrong?", and suggests that I might answer "I do." But I do not. I do say, however, that quote-mining is wrong.
Finally, Sperry refers me to drdino.com and the phony $250,000 challenge. "Dr Dino" is of course Kent Hovind, creationist, fraud, tax evader and jailbird. There are countless websites out there on Hovind, and links to several of them on my links page, so I won't repeat what they say.
Sperry concludes with a comment on his age and education. This could be sarcasm or false humility, but I see no reason not to take it at face value. I can therefore hope that Sperry has been misled by the likes of Hovind, and that he'll learn to check his sources, and maybe bookmark some of the more honest websites out there.