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    SKINNER - What Religion Means To Me

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    Pedro Sampaio
    B.F. Skinner grew up in a moderately religious household but lost his faith in his youth. As an 82-year-old, he leads a secular but spiritual life through daily walks where he puts his thoughts in order and afternoon music sessions where he gains new ideas. Science, not religion, has taught him values like intellectual honesty. He finds scientific explanations for the origin of life and evolution of humans more plausible than religious accounts involving a creator. While nature amazes him, he sees it as the product of natural laws rather than miracles.

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    SKINNER - What Religion Means To Me

    Uploaded by

    Pedro Sampaio
    24 views2 pages
    B.F. Skinner grew up in a moderately religious household but lost his faith in his youth. As an 82-year-old, he leads a secular but spiritual life through daily walks where he puts his thoughts in order and afternoon music sessions where he gains new ideas. Science, not religion, has taught him values like intellectual honesty. He finds scientific explanations for the origin of life and evolution of humans more plausible than religious accounts involving a creator. While nature amazes him, he sees it as the product of natural laws rather than miracles.

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    SKINNER.What_Religion_Means_to_Me

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    B.F. Skinner grew up in a moderately religious household but lost his faith in his youth. As an 82-year-old, he leads a secular but spiritual life through daily walks where he puts his thoughts in order and afternoon music sessions where he gains new ideas. Science, not religion, has taught him values like intellectual honesty. He finds scientific explanations for the origin of life and evolution of humans more plausible than religious accounts involving a creator. While nature amazes him, he sees it as the product of natural laws rather than miracles.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    24 views2 pages

    SKINNER - What Religion Means To Me

    Uploaded by

    Pedro Sampaio
    B.F. Skinner grew up in a moderately religious household but lost his faith in his youth. As an 82-year-old, he leads a secular but spiritual life through daily walks where he puts his thoughts in order and afternoon music sessions where he gains new ideas. Science, not religion, has taught him values like intellectual honesty. He finds scientific explanations for the origin of life and evolution of humans more plausible than religious accounts involving a creator. While nature amazes him, he sees it as the product of natural laws rather than miracles.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    What Religion Means to Me

    B. F. Skinner

    I grew up in a moderately religious culture. For many years I went to a Presbyterian Sunday
    school, where a sympathetic and liberal teacher took six of us boys through lessons supplied by the
    church, most of them, as I remember it, on the Pentateuch. When I was in high school, a watch I had lost
    was returned to me in what seemed a miraculous way, and I thought God had spoken to me. I soon lost my
    faith, however, though I was rather troubled about it for a number of years. In college I attended
    compulsory morning Chapel, where our professors took turns reading passages from the Bible, especially
    the Parables. Possibly that explains why, at 82, I lead a kind of religious life.
    Everyday I take communion -- not in a church with God but with myself in a Thoreauvian
    community of one. I do so for 40 minutes while walking to my office. I used to carry a pocket edition of
    Shakespeare's Sonnets, and I memorized some of them as I walked. Occasionally I still recite one to
    myself, always astonished at how hard they are to remember. Usually, as I walk, I put the business of the
    day into some kind of order.
    I commune with myself again in the afternoon while listening to music -- the four Bs (Bach,
    Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner), Mahler, Wagner -- in a word the Romantics. I do not read while
    listening, but I think about my work, and I always have a notebook at hand, because that is when fresh
    ideas most often make their appearance. When I am at my desk I practice a kind of Zen, as I understand it,
    putting myself into the best possible condition for saying things. Writing is a process of discovery. The
    paper I complete has almost no resemblance to the paper I start to write. I learn what I have to say.
    Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is
    better to go without answers than to accept those which merely resolve puzzlement. I like Bertrand
    Russell's reply to Pascal's wager. Pascal argued that the consequences of believing in God were so
    immense that only a fool would not believe, but, said Russell, suppose God values intellectual honesty
    above all else. He has given us shoddy evidence of His existence and is planning to damn to hell all those
    who believe in Him on the strength of it for the sake of the glittering prize.
    Like many people, I wonder about things. How did the world begin? We are not in a very good
    position to say. We live on one of the smaller planets of a small sun in one of the smaller of millions of
    galaxies. It is remarkable that we have made as much sense of the available facts as we have. It is not
    much of an answer, but I find it more credible than that the world is the handiwork of a creator. How did
    the creator begin?
    How did living things come into existence? Here we are on better ground. Current molecular
    theories of the origin of life seem to me more plausible than any of those said to have been revealed by a
    god. It is possible that scientists will someday construct groups of molecules that will reproduce
    themselves. If the molecules do so after undergoing variation, they could evolve as living things.
    What is man? Here, closer to my own field, I am less likely to agree with scholarly or scientific
    accounts. I believe the human species is distinguished by one thing: through an extraordinary step in
    evolution its vocal musculature came under operant control. How that led to language, self-observation,
    and self-management is too long a story to be told here, and it is not a fully satisfying answer, but I think it
    is better than saying that man was created in the image of a creating God.
    I often wish I could pray. I want to help people, especially those I love. When I myself cannot
    help, I wish it were possible to call upon someone who could. As a child I called upon my parents, but I
    no longer believe that I can call upon a god as father (or mother).
    I often wish I could say thank you for good fortune, as I was taught to do as a child, but I do not
    believe that good fortune is a sign of grace. What happens happens, and we should accept it, no matter
    how inscrutable the reasons. (Nor do I curse God when I have suffered, or ask God to curse others for
    me.1
    I marvel at the intricacy of nature. I look at a tall tree and try to imagine how one cell at the tip of
    the topmost leaf could have found its place there. I see the orioles in our garden returning from a round
    trip of thousands of miles and wonder how they can have found their way. Nature is marvelous but not, I
    think, miraculous. We began to learn more about it as soon as we stopped regarding it as the work of a
    god.
    Religious faiths have been responsible for beautiful architecture, music, painting, sculpture, prose,
    and poetry. They have held people together in durable communities. At times they have helped people
    behave well toward each other and ,manage their own lives more successfully. But the claimed power to
    intervene in supernatural rewards and punishments is the kind of power that corrupts, and it is no accident
    that religion today is so often associated with terrorism and repression. Even in relatively peaceful
    America, religious organizations are trying to suppress knowledge in our schools, encourage the birth of
    unwanted children, impose their beliefs upon others through political action, and in many other ways
    interfere in peaceful, informed living.
    I accept the fact that like all living things I shall soon cease to exist. For a time, some of the genes I
    have carried will be replicated in my children, and something of me will survive in the books I have
    written and in the help I have given other people. Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of
    supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left
    to do, the task of living having been accomplished.

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