Superstition and Science

The Hound of the Baskervilles

I was in the third grade the first time that I heard the story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. Our teacher took one hour every week – my favorite hour, for sure – when she would read to us various books of interest to kids of that age (around ten or eleven years old). I fondly remember listening to her read My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George), Hatchet (Gary Paulsen) and, of course, The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). Ever since that time, this has been my favorite of all of the Sherlock Holmes mystery stories that Doyle put into writing. (I later bought a set of various Sherlock Holmes stories and The Hound in a separate volume of its own, and it has certainly provided me with hours of entertainment and recollection.)

In this story, we hear of the death of Sir Charles Baskerville and a supposed curse that was put on his family. A naturalist scientist (Mr. Stapleton) found a way to promote a ghost story about a devilish hound called up from hell to haunt the family of the Baskervilles, the latest victim of which was Charles. Everyone in the area of the tragedy readily believed the story promoted about the hound, and their fear-supported superstitions directed at the beast allowed them to overlook the murderer that was freely walking around in their midst.

Right Thinking

When Dr. Mortimer turns to Sherlock Holmes for help in solving the case, everything turns around. Overwhelmed by the “evidence” for the hound, even Dr. Watson becomes persuaded of the curse and we read of him being terrified out on the moor at night. Sherlock applies his logic to the situation and deduces the truth of the matter with some investigation, eventually chasing Stapleton through Grimpen Mire to his (presumed) death.

What about those who simply accepted the story of Stapleton? Did they have any reason to believe in the hound? Sure they did! There were canine footprints around the dead body and around the entrance to the moor – the gate that led out from the Baskerville estate. There were howling noises, barks, a real hound that could be heard running around on the moor (and was really there). Then there was the death of Sir Charles, which was enough to validate the story of the hound. There was good reason for them to believe the lies that were being fed to them.

Yet, the tale of the hound was still a lie. It was still a distraction from the truth of the matter – that a murder had taken place and the manslayer was attempting to find a way out of trouble. Did it hurt anything that the people of the area believed in a ghostly hound? No. Could they have continued to believe in the monster, had Sherlock Holmes never have been summoned, without any harm being done to them? Of course they could have. What value was there in Holmes’s uncovering of the facts? Truth. That is the value of truth. It is simply an end in its own and has its own intrinsic value.

An Analogy

There is no real problem with people believing in gods, angels and demons. You should feel free, of course, to believe whatever you want. There is freedom of religion not just in the United States with its First Amendment protections, but most of the world today (excepting much of the Muslim world) has woken up to the fact that religious persecution is both a waste of time and a violation of basic human rights.

There was also nothing wrong with people believing in the curse of the Baskerville family, but it was a lie. Those who seek truth should not be content with the lies that they so often receive – just as Holmes was not content with the story he heard about the hound. We must dig further and look for the bigger picture that best explains all of the facts of the case.

We are told that the Bible is perfect, that it was given by inspiration of an omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent eternal deity who is absolutely perfect in every sense, that it is the ultimate and complete revelation of its (his?) message to the whole of humanity. There is no harm in maintaining this illusion, but when we investigate further, it becomes abundantly clear that this simply isn’t true. And those who would seek truth must be willing to go beyond the stories that they are told and look for the true happenings that led to the development of the story as it came to be.

This is what brought me to where I am. I was unsatisfied with the explanations that I received from preachers, rabbis, apologists and others. They feed us tales about God inspiring books and intervening in the history of mankind. The Bible, however, is full of contradictions, mistakes, fabrications and cover-up stories. As it turns out, much of the Bible was written as a justification for murder and for the promotion of religious intolerance. This might inspire anger and rejection from those who believe this book is perfect, but it is simply the truth.

I want to devote a lot of space on this blog to the exploration of these issues and what indications we have from the Bible that this is the case. This will require a certain basic vocabulary that we all share in order to understand the issues together and speak about the same things. I’ll try to establish some terms in my next post.