by Robin Guard

I recently read an article about how those scientists who work in the fields of astronomy and high-energy physics and so on are about equally divided between those who believe that Life, the Universe and Everything are the result of chance evolution and those who see the hand of an Intelligence behind it all. The first group base their opinion on the well-known theory involving monkeys and typewriters and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, which says that if you keep trying long enough there is a statistical possibility of anything happening, including the formation of galaxies or the Plant Protection Institute.

The second group postulate a guiding hand, generally called a Creator. The nature of this Being is a subject on which opinion is divided, to put it mildly. There are at least a thousand theories on His/Her nature in the world today, called religions, and debates on the rightness of one or the other can range from simple wars to outright genocide.

When I was quite small the origin of humanity was explained to me, and it involved gardens and apple trees. (At another time I was introduced to the gooseberry bush, under which babies are found. Recent research, however, has cast doubt on this idea, and has postulated a much more improbable theory about where babies come from, one which you wouldn’t want to have to explain to a sensitive child.) But then as I grew older, I found that the theory involving gardens and apples was only one among many, and that many of the others were just as imaginative, if no less probable. To take an example at random, the creation stories of the Hopi Indians are breathtakingly beautiful. You can imagine yourself as a Hopi child sitting under the stars on a mesa in Arizona, listening spellbound to stories of how the Four Worlds were created, and how Tawa the Sun Spirit sent his messenger, the Spider Grandmother, down to Earth to perfect man. You learn the stories so that you can pass them on to your children in their turn. And this is only one among thousands of traditions, all over the world, that people are diligently teaching their children.

In this modern world, which grows smaller every day, we are slowly learning that the other fellow’s weird theory has to be respected. Moreover, he has to respect the faith that I have, if we are not to be forever at each other’s throats. It is taking humanity a long time to learn this.

The fact is that we all believe in things that we cannot prove or disprove directly. Everyone can see that the sun rotates around the earth, so why should we believe anything else? Climb any hill and you can see that the earth is not flat, and so on. It is even more difficult when powerful people have an interest in persuading you that black is white. There is ample evidence that humanity is quite capable of extinguishing itself by using up the earth’s limited resources, but that does not stop most of us wanting more today and to hell with tomorrow.

The line fishermen of Newfoundland pleaded for years that the use of even larger trawls would wipe out the cod. If you catch cod with a baited hook, you only catch mature fish and so it is impossible to harvest more than a sustainable amount. But using lines and hooks is old fashioned and not cost effective. So who wants to listen to ignorant fishermen, with only faith and no scientific studies to support them? And the easiest way to ensure that there are no scientific studies to support ideas you don’t want to hear is to avoid carrying out the studies.

I believe that the use of synthetic chemicals in agriculture is destroying the topsoil on which all human life depends, and that we are headed on a path towards world famine as a result. The reason is that chemicals enable man to take out of the land more crops than the land can sustainably yield, just as trawls take out too many fish. It is a faith I have, and there is little scientific evidence to support it. The people who tell us that food grown with these chemicals is just as nutritious, pure and sustainable as organic food generally have a direct interest in maintaining current agricultural practices. They do not want scientific studies that tell them otherwise, so such studies do not get funded. They do not make their claims as a matter of faith, but as a matter of self-interest, so I do not have to respect their views in the same way that I would respect a deeply held belief.