A headline caught my eye, recently: "Consciousness and the End of the War Between Science and Religion". I tried to read the article, but it wore me out.
I suppose one might call the difference between science and religion a "war", but that would be misleading. The difference is ways of understanding the world, not a battlefield. There are no territories or trade routes at stake; just minds. Understanding. Fistfights change few minds. One cannot be forced to think in certain ways, although one can be trained. Brainwashed. Coerced by kind folk. But even then, the truce is fragile. Thought continues.
Given time to think, we usually follow our brains.
All religions that I can think of at the moment--my experience is almost entirely western--are built on a way of seeing the world. Religious worlds are filled with invisible critters. There are gods, angels, demons, imps, and sometimes spirits of trees, rocks, grizzlies, fish, winds, and things that go bump in the night. A bit more fancifully, there might be gremlins, leprachauns, tooth fairies, and little people who make toys up at the north pole.
Those invisible critters, who might or might not occasionally show themselves, do things. They create the stars, lead us astray, or down the paths of righteousness. They soothe us, or torture us. They hurl lightning at us, shake the earth, and leave money in place of baby teeth. Some want to torture us forever if we are bad, or to have us in the heavenly choir if we are good, and can read music. The invisible critters seem to agree that women are second-class citizens, and might even tolerate female genital mutilation.
That is how, for a long time, people understood the world.
Science is a much less dramatic, and more cautious way of understanding the world. It is to really look at things, and see what is there. It is to ask how things work. Science is to hypothesize, to test the hypothesis, to discard what does not work, and to ask better questions the next time. It is to think, and to test, and to look and think again. It is evidence. The evidence shows that we are part of a multi-billion year evolution of everything. It is to want to know what is really there.
There is no evidence for tooth fairies, or leprachauns, or hell, or heaven, or demons or gods. None. All of those invisible critters are just the way people thought before we began to think carefully, scientifically, rationally about what we see, and understand. Even people who think there are invisible critters gradually discard some of them; the easy ones first.
It isn't a war, or a contest between comparable and competing forces. If you think there really are invisible critters, you are probably religious or, at least, superstitious.
I suppose one might call the difference between science and religion a "war", but that would be misleading. The difference is ways of understanding the world, not a battlefield. There are no territories or trade routes at stake; just minds. Understanding. Fistfights change few minds. One cannot be forced to think in certain ways, although one can be trained. Brainwashed. Coerced by kind folk. But even then, the truce is fragile. Thought continues.
Given time to think, we usually follow our brains.
All religions that I can think of at the moment--my experience is almost entirely western--are built on a way of seeing the world. Religious worlds are filled with invisible critters. There are gods, angels, demons, imps, and sometimes spirits of trees, rocks, grizzlies, fish, winds, and things that go bump in the night. A bit more fancifully, there might be gremlins, leprachauns, tooth fairies, and little people who make toys up at the north pole.
Those invisible critters, who might or might not occasionally show themselves, do things. They create the stars, lead us astray, or down the paths of righteousness. They soothe us, or torture us. They hurl lightning at us, shake the earth, and leave money in place of baby teeth. Some want to torture us forever if we are bad, or to have us in the heavenly choir if we are good, and can read music. The invisible critters seem to agree that women are second-class citizens, and might even tolerate female genital mutilation.
That is how, for a long time, people understood the world.
Science is a much less dramatic, and more cautious way of understanding the world. It is to really look at things, and see what is there. It is to ask how things work. Science is to hypothesize, to test the hypothesis, to discard what does not work, and to ask better questions the next time. It is to think, and to test, and to look and think again. It is evidence. The evidence shows that we are part of a multi-billion year evolution of everything. It is to want to know what is really there.
There is no evidence for tooth fairies, or leprachauns, or hell, or heaven, or demons or gods. None. All of those invisible critters are just the way people thought before we began to think carefully, scientifically, rationally about what we see, and understand. Even people who think there are invisible critters gradually discard some of them; the easy ones first.
It isn't a war, or a contest between comparable and competing forces. If you think there really are invisible critters, you are probably religious or, at least, superstitious.
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