Thought Theater

Richard Dawkins, the author of the recent book, The God Delusion, has unveiled his latest endeavor in a series just recently aired in the UK. The series tackles the many threats to reason found in our daily lives.

In two programs, Dawkins looks at astrology, psychic mediums, and the many other superstition based fields which he contends promote the degradation of rationality and an avoidance of reality...all of which threatens the many advances that have resulted from the scientific method and serve to undermine civilization.

During the program, Dawkins actually uses the scientific method to demonstrate that those who present themselves as practitioners in these various fields are little more than charlatans who have made a business out of praying upon the irrational thoughts and desires of people seeking easy answers to our complex human experience.

The topic is beginning to garner attention and those interested in knowing more about this growing trend may want to read an article found at Guardian Unlimited titled The Age Of Endarkenment. The piece is written by David Colquhoun.

From The Guardian:

The enlightenment was a beautiful thing. People cast aside dogma and authority. They started to think for themselves. Natural science flourished. Understanding of the real world increased. The hegemony of religion slowly declined. Real universities were created and eventually democracy took hold. The modern world was born. Until recently we were making good progress. So what went wrong?

The past 30 years or so have been an age of endarkenment. It has been a period in which truth ceased to matter very much, and dogma and irrationality became once more respectable. This matters when people delude themselves into believing that we could be endangered at 45 minutes' notice by non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

It matters when reputable accountants delude themselves into thinking that Enron-style accounting is acceptable. It matters when people are deluded into thinking that they will be rewarded in paradise for killing themselves and others. It matters when bishops attribute floods to a deity whose evident vengefulness and malevolence leave one reeling. And it matters when science teachers start to believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.

A minor aspect of the endarkenment has been a resurgence in magical and superstitious ideas about medicine. The existence of homeopaths on the high street won't usually do too much harm. Their sugar pills contain nothing and they won't poison your body. The greater danger is that they poison your mind.

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I highly recommend the article as well as the Dawkins series. Over the next few days, I will post the remaining video clips of the Dawkins program. The first video clip below is an interview with Dawkins which will provide the viewer with a basic understanding of Dawkins' views as well as primer on the content of the program. It is followed by the initial two clips from the first program.