"Faith is a reason to become stupid"

Robert Anton Wilson | Santa Cruz Metro Article:

"'Faith-based organizations say we don't need any more research, we know enough now, we can be dogmatic, whereas researchers say we don't know enough now, investigate, research,' argues Wilson. 'Faith is a reason to become stupid: 'From this point forward, I will remain stupid.' To me, faith-based organizations are responsible for everything I see wrong with this planet. Research-based organizations are responsible for everything I like about it. Before the French Revolution, the average life expectancy was 37 years. Now it's 78 years. All due to research-based organizations. Not at all due to faith-based organizations. All faith-based organizations give you is George Bush. Research-based organizations give you cures for disease.'

At age 17, Wilson was planning a career in electrical engineering when he came across a copy of Alfred Korzybski's Science and Sanity while perusing the library bookshelves at Brooklyn Technical High School. Korzbyski -- who will be featured in the 'Tale of the Tribe' class along with other seminal thinkers like Giordano Bruno, Giambatista Vico, Friederich Nietzsche, Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Buckminster Fuller, Claude Shannon and Marshall McLuhan had as profound an influence on Wilson's young mind as his work would have on that of later generations.

Wilson was particularly taken with the Polish semanticist's critique of newer European languages. 'Korzybski suggested dozens of reforms in our speech and our writings, most of which I try to follow. One of them is if people said 'maybe' more often, the world would suddenly become stark, staring sane. Can you see Jerry Falwell saying: 'Maybe God hates gay people. Maybe Jesus is the son of God.' Every muezzin in Islam resounding at night in booming voices: 'There is no God except maybe Allah. And maybe Mohammed is his papa. Think about how sane the world would become after a while.'

Maybe it would.

'Well, yeah,' says Wilson. 'Maybe. "