(Published in Addicted to Placebos: Understanding Science and
Society by Alan Scott, Lulu.com/scotta, 2006)
In 1998, Pakistan and India initiated a nuclear arms race on the
Asian continent by detonating underground nuclear explosions. Their motives for starting this little "tit for tat" game seems to be political and military posturing. Besides the obvious dangers that a border dispute between these two countries could escalate into a nuclear war, there is another aspect to this conflict that is equally disturbing - especially from a philosophical viewpoint. Why has religion been used to rationalize and/or justify the actions taken by these nations?
How is it possible for the subject of nuclear weapons (together with their use) be twisted together with religious doctrines?
Pakistan is 97% Islamic and India is 80% Hindu (11% Islamic).
The people of these nations spiritedly endorse their nation's push to join the "prestigious" nuclear club. On May 11th and 13th, 1998,
Indian government announced the detonation of 5 underground nuclear explosions. The bomb scientists sent the coded message "Buddha is
Smiling" to indicate a successful test.
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India's Prime Minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee, when asked why India conducted the tests, responded
"… to address its (India's) national-security needs in an appropriate manner, consistent with the imperative to preserve regional and global peace ." 2 On May 28th and 30th, 1998, Pakistan announced it detonated a total of 6 nuclear tests in response to India's tests. (The actual number of tests were probably smaller.) Pakistan's Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif indicated he had no choice but to order nuclear tests because the Pakistani people demanded it. Shortly after these tests the nightly news showed some images on TV that will be forever etched on my mind. A parade of cheering Pakistani people were shown and some were towing a mock missile with the banner "Islamic
Bomb" draped over the side. Besides a puzzlement about it being written in English and Pakistan's main language is not English, this banner suggests some religious connotations or motivations for building the bomb. How can the people of these nations have the audacity to suggest their motives were in part religious? Probably in
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the same way the United States has invoked religion to build and use weapons of mass destruction.
For a specific case, let us look at the Manhatten project which built the world's first nuclear weapon. First, we need to understand the historical context in which the bomb was built. At the time the project began, Germany's military juggernaut, with the fascist and ruthless leader Adolf Hitler at the helm, was having a land grab festival in
Europe and practicing genocide on the Jews. Mussolini of Italy and
Hirohito of Japan were also engaging in horrific war-time activities.
Also at this time, scientists were becoming aware of a newly discovered process of nature called nuclear fission and its potential uses as a bomb. A letter signed by Albert Einstein and sent to
President Roosevelt expressed deep concern that Germany, who had many talented and competent scientists, was working toward building an atomic weapon! The day after President Roosevelt approved funding for the bomb project, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
The bomb project was successful and on August 6, 1945 the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Two days later, the second bomb leveled Nagasaki. Winston Churchill proclaimed " By God's mercy
British and American science outpaced all German efforts. The possession of atomic powers by the Germans at any time might have altered the result of the war ."
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After hearing about the successful bomb test in New Mexico, President Truman wrote in his diary " I fear machines (weapons technology) are ahead of morals by some centuries…maybe when morals caught up it would be too late
."
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But these feelings failed to dissuade him from using nuclear weapons.
Paul Fussel, a GI scheduled to invade Japan, had no doubts that using nuclear weapons was the right thing to do . After learning about the bomb he stated " For all the fake manliness of our facades, we cried with relief and joy. We were going to live. We were going to grow up to adulthood after all ."
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The bomb was a godsend for the soldiers fighting the Japanese in the South Pacific.
If you were a scientist at this time, would you have worked for the bomb project? Pauli Wolfgang was one scientist that refused to work on the bomb. Frederick Weisskopf made the following comment regarding Wolfgang's decision, "… Now the question is, was he right or wrong. Now in questions of morality, it's difficult to be so exact about right or wrong. I think his idea was fundamentally a very valuable one. He said science should not be used for anything that has to do with destruction and murder ." 6
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If we can build weapons of mass destruction, with the notion that it is not in stark contradiction to religious conviction, I can begin to see why Pakistan and India can also take this line of thinking. In the
Manhatten project, some scientists openly defended their work. In a book written by Alvin J. Kugelmass, entitled J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Story
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one of Oppenheimer's teachers said, "(The) scientists aren't responsible for the facts that are in nature. It's their job to find the facts. There is no sin connected with it, no morals. If anyone should have a sense of sin it's God. He put the facts there ."
I.I. Rabi, another scientist involved in the bomb project, stated " There was a sense of tremendous intellectual achievement…It (the bomb) was bound to come out unless you destroyed culture and civilization, first ."
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Ironically, the so-called Father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb,
Andrei Sakharov, was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1975 for his courageous and persistent battle for human rights, intellectual freedom and peace. But he never denounced his work on the Soviet hydrogen bomb. His bomb work was driven by a need to create, in the interest of peace, a balance to the American bomb. He once stated, " It was a tragedy that reflected the tragic state of the world that made it necessary, in order to maintain peace, to do such terrible things ."
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Using religion in time of war (or cold war) is nothing new.
Throughout history countries have painted their enemies as evil incarnate and, in a way, this makes war more palatable (if not even acceptable) to one's religious beliefs. I'm not suggesting religion is bad, in fact, religions have done a tremendous good for society. But I am posing an important question: why is it used many times to rationalize the building of weapons of mass destruction? A more fundamental question would be "How do the world religions view war and is there such a thing as a justifiable war (or cold war) that must be won by all necessary means? I don't believe there exists any easy answers.
The U.S. is moving into a new era of building weapons of mass destruction. The Department of Energy has already initiated work on the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative. It is a program that will cost in excess of one billion dollars and involves using supercomputers to " maintain the safety and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile without testing ." One aspect of this initiative is the potential of exploding new weapons via computer simulations. In fact,
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work has begun on eleven next-generation weapons simulation codes.
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This all sounds good…provided you live in the U.S. Now we'll have other nations, borrowing from the philosophy of Andrei
Sakharov, "… wanting to create, in the interest of peace, a balance to the 'American virtual bomb' ". And thus, begins the virtual arms race!
There are potential scientific gains in using this advanced technology to perform pure research, but the societal implications and dangers of a virtual arms race cannot be disregarded.
So this brings us back to the original question. Is any country morally justified in building virtual bombs? A justification made in the interest of peace, national security, safety, reliability, stockpile stewardship, etc.
?
I just recently visited the Highgrounds veteran's memorial near
Neillsville, Wisconsin. It occurred to me that all these statues, walkways, grassy knolls, and plagues were less a memorial to those who fought in wars as it was an edifice displaying the greatest sadness of all - humanities inability to use its intellect to avoid war.
The final chapter in the book of human history will have a narration that scorns and laments the philosophical coupling of religion, science, and weapons of mass destruction.
1 G. Vistica, S. Levine, K. Breslau, and S. McGuire, 1998 , Newsweek , May 25, p. 32
2 Staff , 1998, Newsweek , May 25, p. 32D
3 Kugelmass, A. J., 1958, J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Story (Julian
Messner Inc.), p. 144
4 Truman, H., 1984, Letters Home By Harry Truman , ed. Monte M. Poen (General
Publishing Co. 1984), p. 192
5 O’Neill, W. L., 1993, A Democracy at War, America's Fight at Home & Abroad in
World War II (Macmillan, Inc. 1993), p. 420
6 Nova Transcripts, 1984 , The World According to Weisskopf , WGBH Educational
Foundation, April 3, p. 10
7 Kugelmass, A. J.,1958, J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Story , Julian
Messner Inc., p. 26
8 PBS, 1984, A Walk Through the Twentieth Century With Bill Moyer: I.I. Rabi ,
August 20
9 Drell, S.; Okun, L., 1990, Physics Today , August, p. 34
10 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 1998, A ccelerated Strategic Computing
Initiative , document number SAND96-2659C, web document
http://www.llnl.gov/asci/sc96fliers/snl/ASCI.html, December 29
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