I was with dear friends in a Cambridge restaurant, eating Shabu Shabu (a.k.a. awesome awesome Asian hot-pot). Our conversation was turned into the validity of organized religions in the modern world. One strong argument for religion was that logic and science cannot give hope. With science, it will be always the cold, brutal facts and nothing else. Hence, people, one way or the other, need faith, simply to have hope.
I thought about it for a while and I come to the conclusion that I disagree. There is one, amazing development emerging within science that makes me really hopeful about the future: the findings about the evolution of cooperation.
A little unrelated, but very recent article in BMJ highlights my line of thought. The authors, who happen to be across the street from my lab, argued in their paper "Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study" that "[p]eople who are surrounded by many happy people and those who are central in the network are more likely to become happy in the future."
This would suggest that happiness is not an individual emotion, but a shared one. It also fosters the idea that we really should make other people happy, simply because of the selfish desire to be happy.
It is a long shot, but I am hopeful that the day of scientifically based morality will emerge from the pitiful clashes between science and non-science.
‘Yaz’ olmalı idi ilk söylenen, ‘oku’ değil. Biz tanrısı değil miyiz bilincimizin? Bizim beynimiz değil mi her suçu unutan? Biz değil miyiz ki her düşünceyi çarpıtan? Yazmalıyız ki sözümüz kök salsın, yazmalıyız ki değişen anlamların geri dönebileceği, yeniden başlayabileceği bir evi olsun. Yazmalıyız ki, suçlarımız ve suçluluklarımız ve hatalarımız yüzümüze çarpılabilsin. Bu değil midir hayatımızın anlamı?
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