Believing Science or Religion is not so Easy!

The Gillian Gibbons teddy bear story is a lesson for us all. Her experience is much like those of Larry David in his comedy presentations where he forces us to think and see the absurd in much of what we experience. In particular he shows in a humorous way what it is to think about religion . Often, religious leaders and layity go to extreme measures and derive absurd results. Its often painful to see what extreme belief based on fear can do to those around us.

One sees from the Larry David stories that science is just like a religion, as well, as Larry confronts the science of doctors with the science of pharmacists. The fact is that doctors and pharmacists may only too easily have faith in different approaches. This assumption of a faith leads to very strange results. One caught in the middle has to choose between alternative faiths or approaches. The ongoing debate between cold and hot fusion are serious platforms for saving mankind. How do you choose? Generally, you choose on the basis of your faith and not on the facts. If you chose on your facts, then your behaviour would probably be entirely different. Just try it some day. Do nothing except that which is factually based. You will see how difficult it is to be rational and scientific and religious, all at the same time. The beauty of it is that our brains have a dominant area that works as a subconscious guide to our behaviour. We don't even think about what we do. We just do it.

The essence of sciences and religions is that that they try to be mutually exclusive. If you follow one, you are not to follow the other. Both claim that they are absolutely right. The reality is that both can be correct, and the problem is when they insist that this or that reality is not acceptable.

Another reality is that accidents do happen. These accidents can lead to unfortunate consequences. When the accidents are historical one is apt to get hysterical, as in the case of the death of Dag Hammarskjold, the UN leader who lost his life in a plane crash in Africa many years ago.

Eligibility for Discovery

I have often wondered what the ordinary person thought during the strange epoch when people thought the sun was revolving around the earth. Indeed, in my mind, I associate the idea of an earth centered universe as being particularly Roman in character.

This is because in Roman times there were human beings who seriously thought that they were a god and at the center of the universe. My hero is Emperor Vespasian because I understand that he was not carried away with such vanity. He probably held a very dim view of people who thought that he was like a Caesar, and as a Caesar, was a god. In his history of Appolonius, Philostratus gives us some insight into the nature of Vespasian as seen by someone close to his time. In many respects, the history of Appolonius and Jesus of Nazareth are connected. We see that there may have been wisdom of such Masters/Prophets/God passed on to Vespasian.

No! I think Vespasian realized that there is something around us that works in mysterious ways and may hold us to our fate, but that we cannot be gods. By his belief in fate, Vespasian, was acknowledging a much higher and more mysterious realm that went about determining outcomes. If he was like many of his period, Vespasian may have thought that his story had already been told and that he was just ignorant of what that story was. In a sense, this means that his ancient mind accepted that the past, present and future were as a whole already determined, and that he had very little control over outcomes.

This notion, nevertheless, flies in the face of what we see Vespasian accomplishing throughout his life.

Does Your View Point Matter if it is Not Humourous

My blog earlier this week discussed the Wuh Lax discovery that the universe was an inside out universe and that light was not moving and there was something to the idea of a cosmic lantern. The main point behind the blog was to get the reader to think, but at the same time there is an element of humour involved. The notion that all the many millions of scientific hours spent researching the movement of light when it is in fact standing still has to be funny.

The question is what do you think I, the author, believe. If you think my view point is one of humour and I am sitting back think how clever or witty I am having cracked a joke, then that is one thing. But, if you think I am deadly serious when I say that science may have got things wrong. That is a very different thing. In any event, does it really matter what I think or what my real point of view is?

What is really paradoxical is that I don't believe I am right nor that I am wrong in saying that science has got its view point incorrect. I can hold both viewpoints simultaneously. That has to be strange. I can believe two things at once that are diametrically opposed. This suggests, does it that I am a bit unlike a computer. A computer generally requires one answer, either this or that. Unless we were trying to build a world of uncertainty, we would not want a computer to dither or hold two opposing views. So I am not a computer, and if Professor Penrose is right, I may be linked in a very exact way to the world of quantum matter. What does that really mean?

For one thing, it suggests that my behaviour or belief may not be programmed. Wow! I could tell you either this or that in complete honesty and be wrong in both cases. I could change my mind from moment to moment. There is no predicting what I really believed because there is no section of me that I can find, or any one else, that contains the things that I believe. Does that make me in any sense abnormal.

I suspect that sitting on the fence in ones beliefs is pretty normal. If I said to you that I have a coin in my hand and it is a pound coin, what would you believe. You would probably not believe anything. You would say to yourself that you would not have an opinion on the matter because you did not have enough information. The question, I would ask you is whether you would have enough information if two people said that I had a pound coin in my hand. How many people would you need to have faith that what I was saying was the 'truth.'

The fact is that you would probably not believe what I am saying if a thousand people were to tell you that light is standing still and you are exploding at the speed of light along with all the other things around you. You might be willing to take a bet on it, but that would depend on whether you thought that you would win the bet, but that would in turn depend on who was judging the bet and determining what was true or untrue. Who would be this marvelous judge?

If the judge were a member of the scientific community, you would probably make the bet that I was full of nonsense in thinking that we were exploding. We can see the universe is exploding, but we don't see ourselves as exploding. Strange that? So do you hold one belief or two? Do you think that the scientific method would be adequate to determine that light was moving or standing still? What would you accept as a method of testing the 'truth'?