Why ask why?

The empirically testable idea that the here and now is all there is and that life begins at birth and ends at death is so dangerous that it has cost the lives of millions and threatens the future of civilization. The danger comes not from the idea itself, but from its opponents, those religious leaders and followers who ruthlessly advocate and defend their empirically improbable afterlife and man-in-the-sky cosmological perspectives.

Robert R. Provine
Full essay can be found here.

At the risk of beating an inanimate mass of purposeless protoplasm once used for human transport, here we go again...

Let us assume for a moment that Professor Provine is correct. It begs the question: What danger? Why do we care about "future civilization"? If "the here and now is all there is", then what is future? For that matter, what is civilization? If I exist in an atomistic nightmare a la early Wittgenstein, where each moment bears no causality with the previous moment, only an empirically verifiable association, then why should I care about a future which does not objectively exist? In fact, I have not delved deeply enough into this deconstruction of reality. An even more pertinent question is: what does it mean to "care"?

The most ironic aspect of radical empiricism is that it bleeds the value out of all values. All that remains are the words, like placeholders. The empiricist lives his life, uses the words, feels the emotions, but he must do so in brackets. He must live inconsistently with his intellectual belief, and he must not be aware that he is doing so.

Francis Schaeffer discusses this at length in his work "Escape from Reason" when he describes the upper and lower storeys of our existence. Those who live in the lower storey (empiricists for example) must constantly borrow meaning from the upper storey while simultaneously rejecting the validity of the upper storey altogether.

Here is a thought experiment. Let us assume that a belief in God is simply wishful, perhaps even dangerous thinking. Let us agree with the Professor that it is the religious nuts who threaten to usher in a third millenium Dark Age. Suppose that I am a brilliant scientist (just pretend) and that I have made two radical and secret discoveries. First, I have discovered a way to be immortal. Second, in order to be immortal, I must destroy all other human beings. Would I be wrong to implement my secret discoveries? Who then would be the arbiter of my decision after I carry it out?

Fortunately for humanity, my cerebral deficiency not only prevents me from discovering such a doomsday device, but it also lulls me into peaceful mediocrity with an imaginary belief in God and a false hope of eternal life beyond the grave.