Bombs and the Absolute Certainty of Ideology

After a relatively long hiatus, I am back to try to sustain some bogging momentum.

The recent London bombings have reiterated the danger of any ideology that is not coupled to rational thought and empiricism. I'm often tempted to use the phrase "religious ideology" since that is often the most prevalent example of zealots so entrenched in their own certainty as to justify the senseless murder of hundreds, thousands or even millions.

But, as history reveals, murderous ideology in the name of good is not limited to religion, but any movement that develops dogmatic features. Witness the death and tragedy left in the wake of Fascism and revolutionary Marxism. Interestingly, I also think that certain people are pre-disposed to becoming zealots -- and it doesn't matter what the ideology is. Like moths to a flame, they are drawn to whatever random movement they are exposed to and easily seduced to its extremes.

Which again points out the necessity for instilling the ideas of critical thinking and rational perspective into our youth.

Finally, I am reminded of a passage from the wonderful Jacob Brownoski book "Ascent of Man" where he discusses the dangers of Absolute Certainty:

All knowledge--all information between human beings--can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance [by "tolerance" he refers to knowledge within the bounds of certain limits of error]. And that is true whether the exchange is in science, or in literature, or in religion, or in politics, or in any form of thought that aspires to dogma.

It's a major tragedy of my lifetime and yours that [while] scientists were refining, to the most exquisite precision, the Principle of Tolerance [i.e. The Uncertainty Principle].... that all around them, tolerance was crashing to the ground beyond repair.

The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty.

It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false: tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance.

When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality--this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken." We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power....

Indeed, it would behoove people of all idealogical stripes to heed such warnings.