Science and Religion -- The best answer ever.

The debate over the compatibility of science and religion, or faith is interminable. The efforts of each side to eradicate the other ebb and flow like the tides. But I think I have discerned a way in which both sides have been essential to where we are today.

Religion and a commitment to protecting unseen things, has been a powerful force for group action. Big things can be achieved by big groups. (So can horrible things, but let's stay focused.)

Science... the method for understanding how things actually work... while never claiming to be a complete or final ANSWER, provides the best method for technological advances and (if I dare use the word) progress.

Science does not tap into that human willingness to follow and act blindly. Data is mixed. Studies conflict. A proof one day is gone the next in the wake of new evidence.

Religion, sacred texts, blind faith provide nothing toward progress that could not be achieved by random chance. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.

The fact SEEMS to be that humans need motivation to act in large numbers, in cooperation, willing to die for a cause. Much human survival, and even progress, has been gained by this force. Religion provides that in spades. Science... not so much.

Nullius In Verba! Word!

Throughout my life, as I pursue knowledge, I occasionally think I've had an original thought. It is exciting. I'm driven to further research which, in each case to date, has revealed that someone else had the idea before me. Curses. Out thunk again!!
How close to original have I been? I once had an idea that had only been thought of 8 years previously. My worst example was an idea that I later "discovered" had been advocated by Aristotle 2500 years prior. I think if you look at those numbers like a standardized test, the former is 99th percentile stuff, while the latter might clear the mean.
What follows is not quite in the "original thought" category, but I thought the sentiment was fairly unique. Those who know me well have heard my motto, "Question every technical assertion." Little did I know that an entire Society of thinkers held this as their motto (roughly):
http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=6186
It's an interesting little tidbit of history, and yet another confirmation (to me) that I stand in good company as a skeptic, even if I "came up with" the motto 350 years too late. (In truth I can only be faulted for, say 23 of those years, as I wasn't alive for the first 307 and I had not broken the spell of Catholic indoctrination until age 21 or so.)

For sale: $125,000 plus two Novenas and an Our Father

I mean, sure... the Catholic Church is

returning to "Indulgences" but I thought they'd be a little more subtle about the sales effort.

Six Word Memoirs

The six word literary form is becoming quite the fad, and here's my entry:

"I can't believe I ever believed."

This may stand on its own, but it is written while looking down the 20 + year-long corridor since I finally admitted that I could no longer believe what I had been taught throughout childhood. Given that filter, given all the experience since then, I truly can't believe I was ever a devout Catholic... so devout I was in the Seminary on my way to becoming a priest!

How do we get trapped into those circular thinking patterns? How did I break out? Is it possible to plant the seeds of doubt in a person who doesn't have a critical-thinking nature? Or am I short-selling humanity... do we ALL have critical thinking nature?

I don't know, but in looking at the person that was me through age 22, I can't help but feel I'm reading someone elses biography.

We are not alone...

No.... no discovery of alien contact here. Just a simple addition of a valuable resource. Check out the scrolling "Reasonable Blogs" link to the right, and you will find that there are a LOT of people out there who question the value of blind faith; question the dismissal of reason and science as legitimate ways of understanding the world; question the value of self-perpetuating theocracies.

Dive in, get reading, and then. STAND UP and be counted!