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Dear Andrejs,

Your letter of the 18th was one of the most interesting, informative, and thought-provoking that I've seen for quite some time. Thanks very much for it. Thanks also for your critique of my proposed SKEPTICAL INQUIRER piece, "All You Could Ever Hope to Ask about the Universe but Were Too Damned Lazy to Do So," which is much appreciated and which I'll take to heart, particularly where I repeat myself or am longwinded or don't explain clearly, all very valid points that I recognize as part of my tergiversating tomfoolery.

I pretty much agree with a pretty good deal of what you say on the other things, too. But "Cogito ergo sum" has always bothered me as an explanation for one's existence. I've little doubt that I and the rest of the universe are here, but the notion that this fact is proven by my or anyone else's ability to think is very problematic and smacks of an irrelevant correlate, a kind of post-hoc-ergopropter-hoc attempt to show a cause-and-effect relationship between an electrochemical activity that's taking place within a brain and that brain's physical reality. I think this is logic going backwards. A brain has to exist first for it to have activity going on within it. The best that Cartesian logic can come up with is "I think I think, therefore I think I exist," and even that's putting Descartes before the horse. I favor leaving out the "thinking" bit entirely and sticking to objective, inherent physicality as a "given" that only solipsistically inclined philosophers worry about.

You mention the vital necessity of imagination in the making of hypotheses, and this is spot-on. But hypotheses, if they're to be any good even as hypotheses, need both imagination and observation of the physical data. That's where science differs from art (and insanity). Einstein said that "Reason takes you to one place, imagination takes you around the world." You're quite right; we must have imagination. The point is, it must not have us. As Humpty Dumpty says, it's just a question of who is to be master, that's all. I think Einstein would have agreed that we must start with imagination but not finish with it, if we're to get anywhere, around the world or around the block.

I agree with you that there's lots of imagination in religion; no one could deny that. What's in question is the plain hard thinking. Much of what we call religion is just ethical behavior, which can be quite satisfactorily explained on anthropological, sociological, cultural, and psychological foundations, without incorporating anything supernatural. Yes, there are unknowns; there are always unknowns. The point is to try to make them known while accepting the possibility that this may be impossible. But we must not assume that unknowns must remain forever unknown just because they're unknown now.

I seem to be stating a lot of banalities, a lot of things that are self-evident. So I apologize both for the ones I've made and the rest that I'm going to make.

Yes, as you say, because so much is not known, we need models, mental creations. They are pragmatic tools, and we need them for getting the job done. And, yes, we can stop with them and still get the job done. The trouble is that they don't explain why. Of course, we can get by without knowing why, but somehow that doesn't satisfy us, or some of us. Many people are content with just getting the job done, but our ape cousins can do that much and so can a number of other species. Humans have a rather high opinion of themselves, rightly or wrongly, and, if we're to maintain that high opinion, then we must do more than chimps or dolphins; we must do more than just "get the job done." This is where imagination and plain hard thinking come in.

Yes, misuse of religion doesn't invalidate its usefulness, but that's not the point. The point is rather to use its useful bits, its ethics, and ignore what's useless, the supernatural and paranormal bits, at least until some evidence for them is found. I use the term useless advisedly. The supernatural is very useful, in its way. It comes in handy as a sort of nontool for getting the job done, i.e., living through one's life without asking too many difficult questions, seeking too many hard-to-get answers. It certainly has its pragmatic side. But pragmatism, while useful in getting jobs done, isn't enough. It may be for chimps and dolphins but not for humans--well, some humans.

In the meantime, I await evidence that divine or what you call superior intelligences might be out there, somewhere. Superior intelligences are certainly a possibility that must be dealt with--I can't think of anything more dismal and depressing than the possibility that humans are the greatest intelligences in the whole universe--but I have severe doubts about divinities.

In any case, I think we should make use of what intelligence we have to think as reasonably as we can. The obvious fact that there are plenty of things that are unknown is no argument for non-thought, i.e., for allowing for possibilities that have nothing going for them except for wish-fulfillment. We can't prove beyond doubt that there is no Santa Claus, no Tooth Fairy, no fairies of any sort or description at the bottom of our or anybody else's garden, or unicorns, dragons, or a million and one other "possibilities," but I don't think this is cause to be "open-minded" and ambivalent about their existence. Reason is and always will be an imperfect tool for digging our realities, but it's the best tool we have and so we might just as well use it, at least until something better comes along and, at the moment, I can't think of anything that's better or even comes close. Not knowing something with absolute certainty doesn't compel us to enter into a strict neutrality when it comes to using our head as well as our head allows. And I can't get more banal than that.