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Like a rock. . . .

One of the great virtues and strengths of the way science works is its willingness--no, its demand, its expectation--everything will be questioned.  It is to ask, whatever seems to be the case, what would show the idea to be false.  And if you can think of any possibility that the idea might be false, you give it a try.  Only when nothing seems to call the idea into question, might one call it "true", and even then, one never, never bars the possibility that there might be a better idea.  It is called, "falsifiability".  If it can be shown to be false, let it go!

No other enterprise is so open to the possibility that what seems to be true might be false, as is science.  People turn to religion with the conviction that one will find truth there, absolute truth.  Doubt is scorned in religious thinking.  In science, doubting is the way one moves forward to a better idea.  In religion, doubting might get you tossed out of the community, out of the clergy, out of eternal bliss.  "Doubting Thomas."  You have heard of him.

Thomas got a job in a science lab.  Maybe teaching an entry-level class in the scientific method.  Maybe just double-checking the test procedures.  Making sure that some other Thomas could doubt, so that what seemed to be true could have been tested, and tested, for durability.

Long ago and far away, I remember reading the theology of Karl Barth, who said that "The Word of God drops down like a stone from heaven!"  I recall sitting there, staring at that line, understanding why Karl Barth was the darling of theologians who wanted to believe that truth was given, given!, and that all one had to do was to discover it; happen upon it.  "It says in the Bible . . .", people say, and that is that!  Just today, two people showed up at our door with the truth in hand.  They are not to be dismissed just because Catholics or Lutherans or Methodists do not usually bother to go door-to-door.  Catholics and Lutherans and Methodists share their belief that the word of god drops like a stone from heaven--Kawhump!--and there you are!  Sometimes the stone-holders believe that the word is written in a fine, old book; sometimes they believe that somebody in a long line of priests is the conduit to stone-cold truth, and sometimes they believe that if you sit very still and empty your head of thought, the truth will collide with your heart strings or your yearnings, and you will have it:  the stone-cold truth.

Then you will become a very dangerous person.  You will have a stone in your hand.

That is not how we know much of what we know.  There are no stones in science, in rational thinking.  There is only the best we can figure out, and however good we think it is, we know that there is, very likely, a better way to understand it.


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