"Most of us do science to satisfy our own curiosity." This is a good thing. Curiosity is what makes scientific progress possible. In Chicago (where I used to live) there were some speeches about reality and science. Jerry Coyne was there and wrote about it. As usual I recommend visiting Jerry Coyne's website which is many times better than this blog.

Jerry Coyne's website - The Atheist/Science event last night

Lawrence’s discussion of how science gets done, describing the discovery of gravitational waves, was animated and most absorbing. I’d heard it before—in Vancouver—but it was nice to experience the infectious enthusiasm when he discusses science. At one point he was asked how we can get kids more interested in science. Krauss said that we need to stop thinking of education as “stuffing people’s brains with facts and making them regurgitate them”, and teach critical thinking: the tools we must use to find out what is true about the world. I agree—with some caveats. Critical-thinking courses are hard, especially for young children (I taught one at the University of Maryland), and, after all, we need some facts, especially if you want to learn science. You simply cannot do science without acquiring a background of what is known. Further, the critical-thinking method as applied to science would differ from that applied to something like literature or philosophy, where the problem is clear thinking and not so much the use of empirical evidence. (Still, one can be critical about evidence when analyzing, say, what a work of literature was intended to convey.)

Krauss broached the idea—one that I’ve often emphasized but is not popular with the public—that most of us do science not to help humanity, but to satisfy our own curiosity. And government should fund that curiosity for two reasons. First, there is often a long-term and unpredictable practical payoff of such research (but that’s still a practical benefit). More important, the findings of science resemble in some ways the outcome of the humanities: they change us as people. I’ve often thought of evolutionary biology, which has few practical applications, as resembling the fine arts of biology, with the difference being that evolutionary biology can also tell us what is true about nature. But both pure science and the humanities can fill us with awe and wonder, and change our outlook on the world.

One further question was posed to the group: How can one best get rid of religion? Sam was the first to field that one, saying that he didn’t conceive of his task as destroying religion so much as teaching people how to think clearly and critically about evidence, and with that would come, he hoped, the End of Faith. He asserted unequivocally that religion was a bad thing, though of course we don’t have a balance sheet for that. For me, as for Sam, it seems pretty obvious, but we can’t “prove” it. As for his own two daughters, Sam said he’d never lied to them about religion, and tells them that different people believe different things and celebrate their faith in different ways. But he added that both of his daughters think it’s weird that anybody would believe in gods. Sam added, “But of course, having been properly socialized, they’re not assholes.”

That same person asked Sam how one could replace the benefits of religion with secular activities. Sam replied that yes, we’ve failed in our task of helping people get the perks of religion without the superstition. I disagree: it’s not our job to do that, and, as we can see in secularized countries like those of Europe, the lacuna that forms when faith disappears is, like a deep well, filled naturally with other things. There was some discussion of how one can find meaning and purpose without faith, and the answer from the stage was that “you have to find your meaning and purpose from within, for there’s no external source of that.” Well, so much is obvious. I would have added that “meaning and purpose” are simply post facto reifications of “what someone likes to do”, and those concepts aren’t particularly useful.

The final remark came from Lawrence, who said that every time he stays in a hotel, his own gesture to diminish faith was to take the Gideon Bible, wrap it in a piece of paper, and throw it in the trash. Sam remarked dryly, “And that’s why atheists have such a good public image.”

And so the audience, heads filled with Deep Thoughts, spilled out onto the snowy Chicago streets. It was a very big audience, and it’s heartening that so many would come to “a celebration of science and reason.”