Bad Dogma! "Your karma ran over my dogma."
We are all guilty of our own dogmas in certain rights. We take on faith what our teachers (spiritual or academic) tell us and what we read in our respective texts. Most scientists and academics are just as guilty of this as anyone else. I take it on "faith" that the earth is round and revolves around the sun- cuz I "learned" it in school and read it in books, not because I've sat there with a telescope and personally made the observations and calculations that would corroborate this. I "know" evolution to be true, not because I've personally perused the fossil record but because that's what most biologists supposedly agree on.
Are we the believers of science not also guilty of our own dogmas as well, then? In this life, what we know to be true is limited to what we have experienced, and everything else is, in a sense, "faith," no? But it's the things that contradict that which we have seen and heard and know of life; sometimes our firm hold to dogma keeps us from interpreting these things for what they really are. Whereas the religious are too apt to believe in miracles; science is too hesitant to admit that often miracles (, or random anomalies if you prefer,) DO occur to which logic cannot always lend a reasonable explanation. (Though, whether or not you wanna attribute these to divine intervention is another question altogether.) Open your eyes (& mind) to what the world throws at you and try not to be blinded by your faith, whatever it may be.
Loosen your hold to dogma. (The Devil is in the details.) It is not now, nor do I think it will ever be, within the power of scientists to definitively disprove the existence of a god. It IS, however, within science's power to disprove the events, details, and minutiae claimed by scripture. The weakness of religion's armor is in the element which would interpret, believe, and adhere to the scriptures literally. In the end, it's just stories. Isn't religion supposed to be more about how to live a meaningful and "purpose-driven" life? Why is evolution such an enemy to religion? Cuz it goes against the idea of an all-powerful God that did everything EXACTLY as it's said in some book written by human hands? Is a 40 day boat ride with animals really that significant to the overall message of your religion?
Religion is a vehicle by which lessons of ethics and morality are more easily conveyed to the public. But people so easily miss the point and focus on the inconsequential details or follow orders long after their context is no longer relevant. It's like if you heard that fable about the ant and the grasshopper (the one about how the ant spends his fall gathering & storing food but the grasshopper doesn't; then come winter, one of them starves) and concluded from it that grasshoppers are lazy and contemptible, and that come their time of need, we should abandon them because they were too stupid to help themselves. You'd be missing the point entirely. And yet it seems that's what happens with literal interprations of religion everywhere. For instance, Jews & Muslims not eating pork. This supposedly had its origins in health & public sanitation. Pigs hang out with poop; don't wanna eat any residual poop, so don't eat pigs- simple. Or alternately, the original Muslims were a desert people, and meat from pigs slaughtered in the desert (without proper refridgeration, etc.) is prone to spoilage like within the hour- not healthy, so don't eat pork. Given the advances in food sanitation and the like, the original purpose no longer applies. Yet people of faith will do as their religion commands, despite how utterly delicious pork can be. People remember the orders they are given, long after they cease to remember the reason they were ordered to carry them out.
I dunno, I guess in life, you ultimately have to decide who/what you place your [faith] in. Life's too complicated to have to go through verifying every little fact for yourself. We all choose things/people to believe without question. I suppose ultimately, we can only hope for the openness of mind to recognize any possible contradictions between what we experience and what we've "learned."
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference."
~Reinhold Niebuhr, Serenity Prayer
We are all guilty of our own dogmas in certain rights. We take on faith what our teachers (spiritual or academic) tell us and what we read in our respective texts. Most scientists and academics are just as guilty of this as anyone else. I take it on "faith" that the earth is round and revolves around the sun- cuz I "learned" it in school and read it in books, not because I've sat there with a telescope and personally made the observations and calculations that would corroborate this. I "know" evolution to be true, not because I've personally perused the fossil record but because that's what most biologists supposedly agree on.
Are we the believers of science not also guilty of our own dogmas as well, then? In this life, what we know to be true is limited to what we have experienced, and everything else is, in a sense, "faith," no? But it's the things that contradict that which we have seen and heard and know of life; sometimes our firm hold to dogma keeps us from interpreting these things for what they really are. Whereas the religious are too apt to believe in miracles; science is too hesitant to admit that often miracles (, or random anomalies if you prefer,) DO occur to which logic cannot always lend a reasonable explanation. (Though, whether or not you wanna attribute these to divine intervention is another question altogether.) Open your eyes (& mind) to what the world throws at you and try not to be blinded by your faith, whatever it may be.
Loosen your hold to dogma. (The Devil is in the details.) It is not now, nor do I think it will ever be, within the power of scientists to definitively disprove the existence of a god. It IS, however, within science's power to disprove the events, details, and minutiae claimed by scripture. The weakness of religion's armor is in the element which would interpret, believe, and adhere to the scriptures literally. In the end, it's just stories. Isn't religion supposed to be more about how to live a meaningful and "purpose-driven" life? Why is evolution such an enemy to religion? Cuz it goes against the idea of an all-powerful God that did everything EXACTLY as it's said in some book written by human hands? Is a 40 day boat ride with animals really that significant to the overall message of your religion?
Religion is a vehicle by which lessons of ethics and morality are more easily conveyed to the public. But people so easily miss the point and focus on the inconsequential details or follow orders long after their context is no longer relevant. It's like if you heard that fable about the ant and the grasshopper (the one about how the ant spends his fall gathering & storing food but the grasshopper doesn't; then come winter, one of them starves) and concluded from it that grasshoppers are lazy and contemptible, and that come their time of need, we should abandon them because they were too stupid to help themselves. You'd be missing the point entirely. And yet it seems that's what happens with literal interprations of religion everywhere. For instance, Jews & Muslims not eating pork. This supposedly had its origins in health & public sanitation. Pigs hang out with poop; don't wanna eat any residual poop, so don't eat pigs- simple. Or alternately, the original Muslims were a desert people, and meat from pigs slaughtered in the desert (without proper refridgeration, etc.) is prone to spoilage like within the hour- not healthy, so don't eat pork. Given the advances in food sanitation and the like, the original purpose no longer applies. Yet people of faith will do as their religion commands, despite how utterly delicious pork can be. People remember the orders they are given, long after they cease to remember the reason they were ordered to carry them out.
I dunno, I guess in life, you ultimately have to decide who/what you place your [faith] in. Life's too complicated to have to go through verifying every little fact for yourself. We all choose things/people to believe without question. I suppose ultimately, we can only hope for the openness of mind to recognize any possible contradictions between what we experience and what we've "learned."
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference."
~Reinhold Niebuhr, Serenity Prayer
posted by Dear Daniel at 2:08 AM
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