The human brain - despite its many shortcomings - is one of the marvels of the known universe. So why not use it to fashion a better world? That, in a nutshell, is what Saved by Science is about.
I want to help foster an environment in which we collectively use our highly evolved, cognitive abilities to make our earthly environment more congenial not just to a privileged few, but to the mass of humanity. Maybe even a few other sentient species.
How do we get there?
For one, we need to stop focusing on trivialities. By and large, our society seems to have the attention span of a five year old and the intellectual curiosity of a plate of spaghetti. That is not conducive to the maintenance of a functional democracy.
We also need to stop paying homage to those who dedicate their lives to the accrual of wealth and power, which they then leverage to secure additional wealth and power frequently at great cost to those about them.
Finally, we need to stop giving deference to religionists and ideologues whose reverence for unsubstantiated 'higher truths' and 'sacred laws' leaves them in flat denial of reality.
That latter point is key. Because it turns out reality actually matters. And that means if we're going to make wise decisions about how we govern ourselves, we need to embrace a system that helps us align our beliefs with what is real, rather than aligning them with whatever one sector of society may find appealing, empowering, or otherwise lucrative.
For anyone who slept through history and missed the Inquisitions and Witch Burnings . . . or who is in the process of sleeping through modern times, where a nascent fusion of Church and State is threatening to turn America into a fascist theocracy and march us back to the Dark Ages - let's just say faith isn't the answer. Indeed, faith is the very antithesis of the scientific skepticism we need in order to understand the world around us and plan accordingly.
If rebuking faith strikes you as harsh, ask yourself what the difference is between faith and blind faith. I'm not being tricky here. I'm just pointing out a false dichotomy that some people use to skirt some pretty obvious facts: believing things without evidence didn't land us on the moon, eradicate smallpox, or build the world wide web. And unfounded beliefs simply aren't going to get you very far if your goal is to understand how things actually work.
That's why some people who self-identify as 'faithful' feel compelled to distinguish between regular faith (which they hold as a great virtue) and blind faith (which only a fool would believe). But is this anything more than a semantic slight of tongue in which regular faith is being redefined as 'blind faith' plus 'evidence'? Enough on that for now.
My goal at Saved by Science is to create a platform that will help activists and educators in the secular, skeptical, atheist, scientific, and Humanist communities reach as broad an audience as possible as they strive to make this a kinder, more rational world.
That's why some people who self-identify as 'faithful' feel compelled to distinguish between regular faith (which they hold as a great virtue) and blind faith (which only a fool would believe). But is this anything more than a semantic slight of tongue in which faith is being redefined as blind faith + evidence? Enough on that for now.
My goal at Saved by Science is to create a platform that will help activists and educators in the secular, skeptical, atheist, scientific, and Humanist communities reach as broad an audience as possible as they strive to make this a kinder, more rational world.