Letters to the Editor
AnOptomist
Published Letters: 54 Editor's Choice: 1
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Everyone Believes in Something
[Read the article: What's wrong with science as religion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Everyone, from the bum on the street to the president of the United States, to a child in Chile to know-it-alls like you, has a viewpoint.
Everyone believes in something.... even when it's nothing. Some people believe in the Bible, some the Koran, and some believe what people in white coats say and print in science books.
What's odd to me, especially in these letters on Salon, is that the people who wholeheartedly believe in science don't see that as a belief system!
If you do not recognize the simple fact that you believe what you believe, and that you believe you are right, and the reasons you believe you are right are backed up by what you read and think about and talk about... if you don't see this simple fact, well, you should.
Be proud of your belief system! A religion, really, is just a gathering of beliefs. That's all. A religion does not require audible prayer or churches... most Quakers have neither... a religion does not require blind faith... it only requires a fervent adherence to a belief system.
You there, on the computer, frowning at these words, sneering at the very idea that your hallowed Science could be "lowered" to the level of a religion... yes, I'm talking to you.
You think you are sooooo superior. Like I'm an idiot with my head stuck in the Bible and never coming up for air. Like I don't get Nova, or read Joseph Campbell, or understand quantum physics or don't understand the concept (not fact) of the mythology you call Evolution... you are not as brilliant as you think.
What you do have, like me, is faith. In fact, like me, you have Faith. Faith that is unshakable.
Sure, I could explain how the age of any object can not be verified by carbon 14 dating beyond 14 thousand years... but that will not shake your belief system. I could explain that even in the lowly stink bug, it would be rather improbable for it to form, on it's own, separate bags for the noxious gas and the propellent, since it needs both to protect itself and they could not function apart from one another.... or that evolution presuposes a world where blind fish, for millions of years, crawl up on the shore ever higher so that they could "evolve" legs and that these millions of stumpy psuedo-fish could not survive... but this does not deter your fervent belief in Science.
I could mention that virtually every major portion of Evolution is rooted in fine art that supports the fantasy, the Cro-Magnon man was not a Monkey-Man but in fact, a short, ugly Man... that the very idea that birds, over millions of years of flopping around in the jungle, could not very easily and "suddenly" grow wings... that in fact, the math proves that for a speciees to really evolve into another form, you need a population of four quadrillion and a gestation period of less than 50 days, and that the only organisms that fit this model are viruses...
That Pasteur proved more than 150 years ago that it is IMPOSSIBLE for life to spontaneously form from non-life, as Aristotle taught... and that he also taught the earth was flat...
But no.
You buy all that, hook line and sinker. Even though "science" changes its mind about the age of the universe, the reason that everything else has happened, science has created revisions on revisions on revisions... and you buy all of that.
And the idea that there could be a loving God in the Universe? Poppycock! Right?
So, since I've read your books, since I understand fully your beliefs and since I just happen to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and loves you and all that... I'm crazy... right?
And you? What are you? You, who blindly believe in whatever the guys in the white coats deal out to you.
Are you not, as well, a True Believer?
Really?
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Yo, Larry David D- Observe this
[Read the article: What's wrong with science as religion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You said
"Science: the use of observable physical evidence of natural phenomena to collect data, and analyze this information to explain what and how things work."
Lovely. Show me where I can watch a monkey evolve into a man. Show me where I can watch rocks grow organisms. Show me where I can read about how our brilliant scientists watch the universe being created.
Tell me again how none of the above requires a bit of faith... since, honestly, you and I know that science has and never will be able to show any of that.
Oh, and please do blather on how I'm so dumb that I don't understand that evolution is all incremental and that us being a few inches taller or birds changing color over time is easily extrapolatable into pure, obvious proof that inorganic slime, waaaaay wayyyy long time ago used to propogate life but that... oddly, it can't be done in an lab no more...
Yes.... I see. Thank you for clearing that up for me.
You believe in what you can see... and you can see electricity running through the cords in your home, you can see the internal combustion going on under the hood of your car.
You see all that. And more.
Funny. I guess you are simply superior. I guess that's what you mean by the survival of the fittest...
By the way, the infirm and the disabled are not "fit" so really, they should not be able to have kids, right David? Since they are not "fit?" Or again, did I miss something? Was I out that day in science class when they explained that evolution has an escape clause or some kind of Affirmitive Action Program.
You are just so brilliant. Thanks again for clearing everything up for me.
Oh yes, maybe you could clear up one more thing... since no scientist has every travelled to all the corners of the universe, explain how mere observation can explain God away?
Help me, oh brainy one. I await your Science.