Our educational and moral crisis

Curiosity is the engine of discovery and innovation

Imagine you’re in a room full of educated people discussing the latest developments in the field of science. Encouraged by the polite nods, amiable smiles and the overall congeniality of your present company you suddenly decide to express your long suppressed doubts about the existence of gravity and proceed, animatedly, to propose your own alternative theory that refutes gravity and instead claims that our pull to the Earth’s surface is nothing but the impressive work of magical goblins in the our planet’s core. Such a radical statement is likely to prompt a wide range of reactions from the assembled lot, but a deafening chorus of approval is unlikely to be one of them.

Now change a few things in the said hypothetical, for instance swap educated with religious, gravity with evolution, and goblins with some creation myth and fewer people will doubt your sanity. In fact, based on recent poll data only 30 percent of people in Pakistan think humans have evolved. The majority believe that evolution never happened while some are still on the fence. Never mind the fact that we share our genome with other species, or that there is a mountain of fossil record and other findings that reveal predictable gene variation across time, all of which unequivocally points to a common ancestry of all living things.

This is because many religious people view science as a threat to their beliefs, especially when the two are in conflict.

A mindset that privileges uncritical conformity over curiosity, while leaving its victims vulnerable to high levels of groupthink, is, as we know all too well, dangerously regressive and divisive

In his renowned booked, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, Al-Ghazali — considered one the most influential Muslims of all time — expressed his scepticism towards philosophy and science. His treatises were received and circulated widely among his followers. The traditionalists who were already opposed to the rationalist (Mutazilite) school of thought were especially keen on such a worldview and lapped it up. So influential was Ghazali’s work that many consider it to be one of the most damaging blows to any attempt at reconciling Islam with science.

A mindset that privileges uncritical conformity over curiosity, while leaving its victims vulnerable to high levels of groupthink, is, as we know all too well, dangerously regressive and divisive.

Consider this: Two is the number of Muslims ever to have received the Nobel Prize in Science and 1.6 billion is the total number of Muslims in the world. One is mightily pressed to ask when it was that a Muslim country ever produced anything like the iPhone? Or the wireless tablet? Or a search engine that beats Google? What about space probes sampling extraterrestrial matter?

Interestingly, closer online casino to home in Pakistan, every year the Shawwal moon offers a divine spectacle when it marks the end of Ramadan – the month of fasting. It’s a two in one package because it comes accompanied with an equally arresting spectacle: a group of bearded elderly gentlemen from the elite Ruet-e-Hilal committee wielding ancient binoculars and staring frantically into the heavens to sight the moon. All this, incidentally, continues to go on while the Hubble telescope is busy scanning outer space for the cosmic background radiation from the big bang.

It must be recognised that science is not just about space technology and fancy gadgets, but is also radically changing how we view life’s deeper questions like consciousness, morality, etc

When confronted with this underwhelming reality many Muslims defensively point to the Golden period – a legitimate argument had the said period not occurred a thousand years ago. This begs the question: Instead of digging your own backyard looking for lost gold, why not explore new frontiers? When will this treasure hunt end?

The truth is that curiosity is the engine of discovery and innovation. All it took, after all, was a moment’s reflection – why does an apple fall downwards and not sideways — by a man (Isaac Newton) sitting under an apple tree that lead him to pioneer the laws upon which the whole edifice of Particle Physics stands today. Or when the physical differences in finches living on different islands caught the imagination of a young 22 year old (Charles Darwin) visiting the Galapagos Islands and who, so moved by this observation, wrote the Origin of Species – the bedrock of the theory of evolution.

More importantly, it must be recognised that science is not just about space technology and fancy gadgets, but is also radically changing how we view life’s deeper questions like consciousness, morality, etc.

Consider neuroscience. We now have a much clearer understanding of the relationship between our brain and behaviour. MRI scans of psychopaths reveal reduced activity in the amygdala – the part of the brain that controls emotions and empathy. We also understand that like any other organ the brain is vulnerable to heritability and other factors we don’t necessarily control. Such findings are radically challenging our conventional notions of free-will and moral accountability.

Without a robust understanding of such matters , we are left with troubling moral attitudes of the sort reflected in survey results like these: 90 percent people in Pakistan believe homosexuality is wrong and even more – 91 percent — think drinking alcohol is morally wrong but only 45 percent think that executing women accused of adultery is never justified. Such jaw-dropping trends and statistics should sound the alarm bells in our ears for the desperate need of aggressively confronting the educational and moral crisis that afflicts us in Pakistan today.