I get tired of the attitude that somehow God and science are mutually exclusive. That if/since one believe in God, science is irrelevant, untrue, unimportant, or even evil. I don't know how we forget that at one time Christians believed that the world was flat, the sky was held up by four pillars, the Sun went around the Earth and the ocean was prowled by a sea monster. And somehow we have come to accept more scientific views of all of those things without it annihilating the existence of belief in God. We have come to accept the existence of cells, bacteria, atoms and that didn't somehow disprove God. I truly believe that some of the things we find most controversial now (like the church and Galileo) will eventually be accepted in the same way we accept that matter is made of atoms and that the Earth goes around the Sun. There are still people who don't think those things are true, but very few.
I also get tired of the attitude that science and scientific discoveries are unimportant and we should somehow be using that time better. Usually this attitude is help by people who actively benefit from previous scientific discoveries without even realizing it. Many of the things we find so important (even your basic Scotch tape) were originally looked at as silly and useless ("You mean I'm going to take this little piece of clear plastic with sticky stuff on one side and fix things with it? That's ridiculous...")
Of course I get just as tired of scientific people being dismissive of a belief in God, but that will have to wait for another day.
Monday, December 8, 2008
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I think that the reason some people feel like they must, essentially, choose between religion or science and then dismiss the other is because most people can't or don't want to live with paradox. It is very difficult to accept that humans are both divine (or Spiritial, I suppose, in Christian theology, since only one "person" was divine, but you get the idea) in nature as well as being sort of a really interesting biology experiment. People prefer solid answers, direct yes-s and no-s, this is right this is wrong. Gray is hard, ambiguity is hard, and even for people who do accept gray areas struggle to accept out-right paradox. Why does truth need to be absolute?
ReplyDeleteI also happen to like a quote by Lisa Simpson: "some philosophers believe that nobody is born with a soul,that you have to earn one
through suffering and thought and prayer."
I believe a person has to actually think about things, for themselves, and not accept the easy answers. If the answers were meant to be simple bianaries... well, what would the point even be? So, moral of the story, I guess, anyone who says an individual must pick between religion and science it just too small mind, or more charitably: not spiritually ready, to wrestle with the issue of paradox.