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>From www.secularhumanism.org
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> God, Science, and Delusion
>
> A Chat With Arthur C. Clarke
>
> by Matt Cherry
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> The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 19, Number
> 2.
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> Arthur C. Clarke is known across the world for his books, television
> programs, and movies. Free Inquiry Deputy Editor Matt Cherry visited
> the science fiction author, who is a member of the International
> Academy of Humanism, in Sri Lanka, the beautiful tropical island that
> has been Clarke's home for nearly four decades. His house, in the
> capitol of Columbo, is filled with spectacular wall-sized NASA photos,
> reminiscent of some of the shots in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In
> the personal study where he was interviewed, Clarke was surrounded by
> books and signed photos-ranging from actress Elizabeth Taylor to
> astronaut Buzz Aldrin-that reflect Clarke's prominent roles in the
> very different worlds of science and entertainment. He talked to Free
> Inquiry about mankind, morality, and religion.
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> Free Inquiry: This is a rare opportunity. Thanks for talking with us.
>
> Arthur C. Clarke: Rare indeed. My agent will probably shoot me for
> granting this interview. I turn down interviews all the time, but for
> Free Inquiry, I'm happy to make an exception.
>
> FI: Our readers have some familiarity with your views and in
> particular your very strong emphasis on the use of science in
> understanding the natural world. But could you say something about
> your views on moral issues?
>
> Clarke: One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has
> been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and
> morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is
> really very simple and doesn't require religion at all. It's this:
> "Don't do unto anybody else what you wouldn't like to be done to you."
> It seems to me that that's all there is to it.
>
> The other issue is, why can't humans live up to this principle? Why is
> it that people can't act as human beings should? I'm appalled by what
> we all see on the news every day-massacres, atrocities, injustices,
> outrages of all kinds. When I see what's happening, I sometimes wonder
> if the human race deserves to survive.
>
> FI: In recent years a lot of ethical issues have arisen from advances
> in technology, as they have, for example, in cloning.
>
> Clarke: Yes, and such issues will continue to arise at an increasing
> pace. They will challenge all of us - but especially those who hold
> rigid moral outlooks like those found in most religions.
>
> By the way, I was - in a strange way - involved in a cloning project.
> There was a project afoot to send me into outer space along with a lot
> of other people. Not the whole me, though - just a hair from my head,
> while I still had some. It was quite a serious project by a company
> that launched a lot of spacecraft. The idea was that maybe in a
> hundred million years or so, an advanced civilization would find this
> little space capsule containing my hair, an Arthur C. Clarke would be
> cloned from it, and I would thus pop up in another galaxy in the
> distant future. Interesting thought.
>
> FI: Yes, but perhaps a little disturbing.
>
> Clarke: Well, it's better than the Celestes Project, in which you have
> to be dead before your ashes are sent into space.
>
> FI: You have written a great deal about possible technologies of the
> future. For example, you're well known for thinking up the idea of
> geostationary orbit. But as we look into the next century or even the
> next millennium, what do you see as the big technological changes that
> are likely to alter the direction of the human species or will present
> major new dilemmas or problems to the human race?
>
> Clarke: I think most of the major changes will be biological,
> involving advances in DNA research and technologies, among other
> things. But there's also potentially revolutionary research going on
> in the physical sciences. The thing that I'm most interested in at the
> moment is the so-called Infinite Energy solution - the possibility of
> finding new ways of tapping into virtually limitless sources of
> energy. It's been about ten years since cold fusion was touted and
> then laughed at. But since then there's been a groundswell of
> scientific opinion and lots of experimentation suggesting that maybe
> there's something important going on, that maybe we can solve our
> energy needs once and for all. This field is subject to hype and
> disappointment, yet I'm seeing evidence now that hints that we may be
> on the verge of an energy breakthrough.
>
> This would cause a total transformation of our society, an end of the
> fossil-fuel age and all the geopolitical implications of that. No more
> worry about global warming; now we start worrying about global
> cooling. So an energy revolution is the biggest joker in the pack at
> the moment.
>
> FI: Do you think that the breakthrough will be in cold fusion or
> something different?
>
> Clarke: I don't know whether it will come in cold fusion or warm
> fission or something else. I suspect it might be something totally
> unexpected-perhaps a way of tapping into quantum fluctuations of
> space-zero-point energy, as it's sometimes called. Now, this new
> finding may turn out to be an experimental laboratory curiosity that
> can't be scaled up. But remember, nuclear power started as a small
> laboratory curiosity.
>
> FI: But what about that giant leap into the future that you foresaw so
> many years ago-space travel?
>
> Clarke: Yes, I'm still intensely interested in that, of course. And
> the whole field is very exciting now - with all these fleets of robot
> explorers to come, the new space station going to be assembled, new
> forms of space propulsion. There will be a big space conference
> involving all the top people at the National Aeronautics and Space
> Administration this spring. I'm recording a video address to them
> soon.
>
> FI: Have you been disappointed by the lack of progress in the space
> program since the 1960s?
>
> Clarke: Good heavens no! I've seen far more than I ever imagined would
> happen. I mean, I never dreamed we would have explored the solar
> system as we have. It's the most exciting time. Of course, I'm sorry
> for the youngsters who thought they'd be flying into space by now, and
> you know that manned - or womanned - space flight has been rather
> limited, but efforts are still being made and will continue in the
> next century.
>
> I'm astonished by what we've seen. I've got this beautiful panoramic
> three-dimensional painting of Mars based on Martian photos. It's 30
> feet wide. You can pick out every pebble on the Martian landscape. And
> who'd have dreamed you could do that?
>
> FI: What are your thoughts regarding the future development of
> something else you've often written about - religion?
>
> Clarke: Well, I suspect that religion is a necessary evil in the
> childhood of our particular species. And that's one of the interesting
> things about contact with other intelligences: we could see what role,
> if any, religion plays in their development. I think that religion may
> be some random by-product of mammalian reproduction. If that's true,
> would non-mammalian aliens have a religion? Anyway, that's one of the
> nice things about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)
> project; if it is successful, we could perhaps answer such questions
> one day. I've just seen Contact, by my late friend Carl Sagan. It's
> quite an impressive film that offers hints on this subject.
>
> FI: If religion does indeed represent an immature stage of humanity,
> do you see any prospects for humanity growing up?
>
> Clarke: Yes, there is the possibility that humankind can outgrown its
> infantile tendencies, as I suggested in Childhood's End. But it is
> amazing how childishly gullible humans are. There are, for example, so
> many different religions - each of them claiming to have the truth,
> each saying that their truths are clearly superior to the truths of
> others - how can someone possibly take any of them seriously? I mean,
> that's insane. And such insanity concerns me, especially now that
> waves of lunacy are washing over the United States and the world in
> the form of millennial cults. Time magazine recently reported on them.
> The crazy thing is, according to traditional Christian dogma, the real
> millennium was four years ago, for Jesus was supposedly born circa 5
> B.C.E. - so it's already 2004! Apparently some millennial nuts are
> blithely ignoring their own dogma.
>
> FI: Do you see any value at all in the various religions?
>
> Clarke: Though I sometimes call myself a crypto-Buddhist, Buddhism is
> not a religion. Of those around at the moment, Islam is the only one
> that has any appeal to me. But, of course, Islam has been tainted by
> other influences. The Muslims are behaving like Christians, I'm
> afraid.
>
> FI: What appeals to you in Islam?
>
> Clarke: Historically, Islam had a great deal of tolerance for other
> views and offered the world its priceless wisdom in the form of
> astronomy and algebra. And, as you know, Islam helped rescue Western
> civilization from the Dark Ages by preserving classical texts and
> transmitting them to the West. We, on the other hand, burned the
> library at Alexandria. If Islam hadn't fallen into internecine warfare
> and had gone on to conquer the rest of Europe, we'd have avoided a
> thousand years of Christian barbarism.
>
> FI: Your television series, The Mysterious World of Arthur C. Clarke,
> is still a classic. It appeals to the human yearning for mystery but
> also shows how to apply some scientific principles to get answers. Do
> you feel that the human yearning for unexplained mysteries will always
> be greater than the need for scientific explanation? That is, will
> people always reject scientific explanations if they can have an
> inspiring mystery or wonder?
>
> Clarke: There does seem to be a tendency to do that. People get very
> exasperated when people like James Randi show how some trick is done
> or reveal the true, naturalistic explanation. They say, "No, the trick
> is really paranormal." How can you argue with people who want so badly
> to believe?
>
> Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle had a friendly argument about
> that. Conan Doyle was convinced - and tried to convince Houdini - that
> Houdini did his tricks with supernatural powers. Somewhere I have my
> door key bent by Uri Geller. I don't rule out the possibility of all
> sorts of remarkable mental powers - there are even things like
> telekinesis and so forth. And I'm sure that there are many things we
> don't know about. But they've got to be examined skeptically before
> they're accepted.
>
> An example is reincarnation, which everyone in Sri Lanka believes in.
> An American, Dr. Stevenson, has done a lot of papers on that, and has
> produced studies of about 50 cases that are hard to explain. But the
> problem with reincarnation is that it's hard to imagine what the
> storage medium for past lives would be. Not to mention the
> input-output device. I hesitate to rule it out completely, but I'd
> need pretty definite proof.
>
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> -- <Picture: [HOME]>Monday, 26 April 1999, 00:00:00 GMT David Noelle /
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A<>E<>R
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