Extra Credit Assignment

Response to Beyond Belief Conference: Sir Harold Kroto’s Talk

While Sir Harold Kroto is not a particularly engaging speaker, he did have a few interesting bits of information (and strong opinions) which made up for this lack of enthusiasm. Overall, it seemed that the goal of his presentation was to encourage the audience to take a negative view of religion in general, and more specifically of the Templeton society; as well as presenting the merits of using the internet to teach science worldwide to children. Kroto strongly believes that religious dogma can be easily hard-wired in childhood, which is an opinion that Richard Dawkins also shares, and the best way to prevent this hard-wiring is to have children learn to think critically by teaching science at an early age. He describes the efforts of Global Education Outreach, an organization founded and run by him, to reach both young people and teachers through the internet. Primarily, he focuses on the supposed attempts of the Templeton society to blur the line between science and religion and claims that the Templeton foundation bribes scientists to lend credibility to their organization. The most interesting part of the talk is during the question and answer session during which a number of scientists get into practically a yelling match over the credibility of the Templeton society. I think it’s interesting that despite the fact that Kroto posted the following quote from Thomas Paine during his presentation, “He who denies to another this right (his own opinion) makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it”, Kroto in fact is strongly opinionated and one might even say a “slave” of this opinion. To be fair, Kroto admits that he might not be entirely right about the Templeton Society, but then seems to take back this statement several times. One member of the audience brings up the point that the Templeton society has published a study refuting the power of prayer in healing and Kroto seems unable to address this fact. At least we know that Kroto follows the advice of Dante, which he also quoted during the presentation, “The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who, faced with a moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” The scientists will certainly not be described as neutral in their opinions.