How Knowledge Serves Ethics

There are any number of people on the religious Right who see science as unethical or immoral. Having known any number of real scientists, I found in them exceptional integrity. But there are much deeper issues here involved.

In truth, scientific knowledge leads to more ethical conduct. The greater the knowledge, the less the room for error and conmanship, the greater the integrity of the arrangement. By its own nature, acquisition of knowledge leads to more ethical conduct as it finds ways to realize what is error and scamming. And that makes science not only ethical but also essential for the ethics of the world.

My lifetime project has been to make sense of the world. My search took me to everything from world history to the esoteric. Probably the most ridiculous commentary I've faced on this matter is that I was after knowledge because I was after power. In fact, knowledge serves liberty; and there is much more freedom in Sweden and France, that value knowledge, than in Afghanistan, that does not.

When denied in science – such as by those movements in materialist fundamentalism that aggressively deny the reality of spiritual experience – the search for truth moves to religion, where the standards of integrity are much lower and which allows an unlimited opportunity for deception. And this does not begin to serve ethics. It serves the conmen and liars of the world.

The more real knowledge, the less the room for error and conmanship, the greater the ethics. And this means that the pursuit of knowledge – including knowledge of the esoteric – is not only ethical in itself but serves greater ethics in the world.