"...people are willing to imagine almost anything in a story: that wolves can blow down houses; that a man can become a vile cockroach in his sleep (Franz Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis'); that donkeys can fly, speak, and sing R&B songs (Shrek); that a 'dead-but-living fatherless god-man [Jesus] has the super powers to grant utopian immorality'; that a white whale might really be evil incarnate; that time travelers can visit the past, kill a butterfly, and lay the future waste (Ray Bradbury's 'A Sound of Thunder')."
However, just because something can be described in a way that makes it sound silly doesn't mean that it can't also be true. Consider the way some technological advances like "radio" or "television" or "the internet" or "smart phones" might have sounded if someone had been describing them a generation before they were actually invented. The same might be said of scientific accounts of the way the universe operates.
Might it be said that the scientific community also asks people to imagine things that seem to contradict common sense? Without years of study and a high degree of expertise, aren't laypersons asked to trust the scientific community's claims on faith? How is that different from believing other things "on faith"?
I didn't really think that it made the thought of religion seem silly, I just thought it was comparing it to the suspension to disbelief. Just because that applies to children's stories as well as possibly religious ones doesn't necessarily make it silly. The scientific community asking us to believe things is something I thought about earlier when answering the question "is science killing magic?" My response then also applies to this question. Scientists theories are nothing more than stories with a bit of fact. I don't believe that any of that is technically different or silly, they just rely on the willing suspension of disbelief.
ReplyDeleteSome scientists have faced the same ridicule as religious teachers. Great thinkers, like Copernicus or Galileo proposed thoughts that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe. Their theory was, to some scientists, a joke. After years of research and furtherance of technology, their hypothesis was proved to be true. Oftentimes, the scientific community asks people to invest their faith in a theory before it is ever proved. Religion is not silly in any way, shape, form, or matter; it is just a "theory" that has yet to be proved 100% true.
ReplyDeleteThe underlying difference between (modern) science and religion is: that claims made in the world of science are able to be tested. Through observation, experimentation, and review an assertion can be validated or proven wrong with observable results. When stepping into the world of faith that isn’t always possible. That doesn’t mean that religion has no credence or those of faith are suddenly more gullible than those who aren’t religious. To deem religion simply as “silly” is to assume that you know with a 100% certainty it is wrong-which would require some tangible proof. Science is self-correcting. Researchers are constantly making new discoveries only to find out those discoveries aren’t new. Theories are proposed and validated only to be proven wrong by a new one. Certainly to a person who has never experienced viewing bacteria through a microscope the notion that tiny beings are in and out of bodies and can even harm us is absurd to say the least. More complex scientific subjects require more faith out of those who are not educated in that field. Why should I subscribe to String Theory? Because Stephen Hawking has determined it’s the most useful and probable model? Hawking is a colossal figure in the worlds of cosmology and physics and is obviously much better versed on the subject than I am. My education in many of the science fields is limited at best, and most of the time I am compelled to take those experts, Hawking in this case, at their word-which I consider requiring quite a bit of faith on my part. My ignorance could serve as a possible means of exploitation (in any area, not only concerning science), ergo it serves as motivation to be less ignorant and more informed.
ReplyDeleteI think if we're honest, we'll realize that it takes faith to do anything. It takes faith to believe that God exists, and it takes faith to believe that He doesn't. It takes faith to believe that He created the world, and it takes faith to believe that it all happened by random chance. Scientists definitely ask us to accept crazy things on faith, the same as any religion or any other belief. Sydney, I loved your reference to Galileo and Copernicus because it's so true. There are many times the scientist is proven right, and there are many other times that they are proven wrong. When you look at it this way, religion is no more silly than science. They both ask us to trust crazy things on faith, so we have to decide what we want to put our faith in: Modern science as we know it, or science as backed by a credible religion. We all have faith that has to be put somewhere, so may we choose its placement wisely.
ReplyDelete--Brittany Jolly
I think that we are reaching the age where the majority of the population are placing their trust, in fact most of their lives, in the hands of electronic and scientific breakthroughs. Most of us do, all save for the 1 or 2 percent of paranoid conspiracy theorists, and they may be the smart ones, because technology is so crucial to our everyday lives that most people cannot walk to the end of their driveway without having their phone on them. The reason most of us take this at face value is that the ones who have been coming out with it have experience and should normally know what they are doing and we know, normally, that it will work. This is why most of us believe that science and technology deal in the regions of “fact” and not “faith”. Religion is a completely different story, a non-believer will normally not take any particular religion at face value because the ones leading it typically do not have specialized degrees in their field, and they only have the word of others to go on. This is harder because there is no tangible evidence for you to convince them with. There are also many different branches of religions, this makes things even more difficult. The simple reason is that “going on faith” is much harder for some people than it is for others.
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