Hubris

            Science and Religion. Science vs Religion… I’m right, you’re wrong…frankly, I’m sick to death of the whole damn thing. Let’s get something straight – science can’t prove religion wrong, religion can’t condemn science to eternal damnation. The two sides aren’t in opposition, at least not in anything like a real sense. They don’t even talk the same language. Science deals almost exclusively in experimental proof: hypothesis, data, extrapolation, logic – fact. Religion sees no point in dwelling on the merely physical: revelation, vision, enlightenment, even dogma – truth. Science deals with the physical world, even if a huge share of it is unseen. Religion deals in the metaphysical, even when it encroaches on the physical. The trouble comes when people let their prejudices into the picture, and their pride. As humans we have a difficult time understanding, let alone giving credence to, any point of view we don’t share. Scientists are just as guilty of this as the most strident mullah. If you want to make a scientist angry, attack his pet hypothesis. If you want to make a priest angry, suggest there’s no proof for God. But the fact is, when a pastor tries to pass judgment on a scientific theory, or a physicist tries to tread on spiritual ground, they’re both out of their element.  They’re simply expressing their opinions – they’re philosophizing. And you can change your philosophy every time you change your mind – and with just as much effect.

            Fools – so busy puffing themselves up and trying to look like they have all the answers when they’re actually not much better off than an average dullard who can’t even frame the question. Wrap your head around this – for all our wisdom, for all our knowledge, as compared to all there is to know – WE KNOW NOTHING. Some perspective, here – Isaac Newton (not a guy known for his humility) said: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” He had it right, and frankly we haven’t advanced as much as we’d like to think we have since his time. The sum total of human knowledge hasn’t been able to get our feet wet in Newton’s ocean. Yeah, we know a lot of stuff – what about gravity? Newton measured it, figured out how it worked in certain cases, even wrote out a law or two. He still had no idea what gravity is. Turns out, no one else knows, either. Or how about this? 96% of the Universe appears to be missing. What?!? Talk about shoddy filing…

            And what about the religious side? We don’t want to leave them out. One of the really BIG questions – the nature and character of God; surely we have that down? Nope. Lots of guys big and small all through history have weighed in on this; some agree, others don’t, some just shake their heads. God ain’t sayin’. Mobs of mullahs, packs of prophets, the odd hermit – all talk about how great God is. Funny, though – most of the rest of what they have to say about the Creator is pretty murky stuff. Nothing you can really get a handle on. The only guy who had a genuine take on the subject didn’t talk about the Almighty nearly as much as he tried to get us to shut up and stop killing each other over words. He left too soon, in my thinking.

            What we need to do is learn that we really don’t know as much as we’d like to claim we do. It’s a great big universe – there’s plenty of room for everyone’s ideas. Only hubris is making us fight with each other. You know what hubris is? It’s pride – a really stubborn, unsupportable kind of pride. So, why the hell are we so full of pride about how much we know? Proud enough to go to war with each other over silly ass words. We don’t actually know anything. We all just think we do. And we get pissed at others who don’t use the same stupid words we do, even when we’re describing the same ideas. Madness.

            We’re like a group of children, huddled under the trees out in the Great Dark, trying to make sense of things – the dark shapes just outside the reach of the firelight, the strange noises and the cold. We don’t have much to go on, just what we can deduce from what we see and hear, and what we’ve been told by the other children that were here before us. Instead of fighting amongst ourselves, we need to care for each other and try to understand what the other children see. There are monsters out in the dark – some of them very real – and dawn is still far off.

            Be good to each other.

            TGC