A vital question that is often raised is: If one rejects a spiritualist-paranormal universe and/or the creationist drama of human salvation, can science and reason provide us with a significant body of ethical principles, and can these infuse sufficient commitment to replace the ancient systems of belief? Can they answer the basic existential questions: "What is the meaning of life?" and "How ought I to live?" Can they provide a moral framework for people longing for significance and direction? The Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Krishna, Muhammad still inspire countless millions by their moral pronouncements and spiritual guidelines-can naturalism provide equal role models that can inspire people, and yet not be rooted in spiritual mysticism? Is it possible today to move beyond these orthodox systems of dogma, based upon faith, custom, authority, and emotion? And can we develop empirical and normative principles which are based on science and which draw upon rationality?
If the naturalistic account of nature is warranted -- and we believe that it is -- then the classical prop for ethics falls by the wayside. If our ethical principles have evolved in human civilization over a long period of gestation, then human beings are responsible for the kinds of moral principles and values that they adopt and hence in some sense for their own destinies. Thus, the key questions emerge, "Is reason applicable to ethics?" and "Are values amenable to scientific treatment?" Interestingly, the first question has been the central issue in philosophy from Plato and Aristotle through Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, and John Rawls to the present, and the consensus of the philosophical debate is in the affirmative, i.e., that ethics is amenable to reason. To simply dismiss rationality in ethics is to ignore this extensive literature. In the 20th century, the effort to develop a science of value and valuation has also been a central problem for philosophers. This approach, which seeks to relate ethical theories to factual knowledge, is known as naturalistic ethics. Unfortunately, the public has not been invited to participate in the vital intellectual enterprise of reconciling our values with the scientific worldview.
In sum, society needs some general understanding of the common methods of rational scientific inquiry and the standards used by scientists to validate and corroborate their findings. It also needs some comprehension of what the sciences tell us about the universe at large and the place of the human species within it. The cosmic world view of the modern sciences is naturalistic, in that it involves a rejection of both the spiritual-paranormal paradigm and the subjective postmodernist forms of skepticism. Isaac Asimov, Stephen Jay Gould, and Carl Sagan, who were stalwart supporters of the Center for Inquiry, were able to popularize and interpret the sciences for the public at large, and to convey some of the awe and excitement implicit in modern scientific discoveries. The purpose of the Center for Inquiry in part is to continue in this grand tradition.
