Nature is an anarchist

Why Science & Religion don’t have the answers

I’ve been having an ongoing discussion with my girlfriend about the usefulness of science.

She is a big believer in the power of science and in fact attributes the whole of human progress to science. To me that makes her a big B believer rather than just a believer.

I’ve been told by others that I am just plain wrong, Science is different/better/distinct from religion because Religion seeks to confine people with a rule set while Science seeks to set people free with a knowledge of all things.

Here’s the thing — I’m an atheist — in the Big A sense. I do not believe in a god or God or Gods. Whether that God happens to be Science or a friendly “Santa like guy” in the sky. I do believe that the “natural order” of things is chaos. As the title of this post says, Nature is an anarchist. It despises order, at least in the sense that Human beings define order.

It is my position that Religion and Science are simply the same thing with different points of focus. Both seek to impose order on chaos because their disciples cannot stand the thought of chaos. That there must be answers to every question otherwise there is no sense in existence.

To me this is like saying all journey’s must have a destination. To which I reply the best journeys have no destination at least not when they are begun and the destination is not the point of the journey, the journey is the point.

I ride a motorcycle. I ride with different groups of people. Some of them like to set agendas, they want to be at this town by this time for this reason (usually something to do with food or beer or both). So off they set, taking the highway, riding at 70 — 80 mph to ensure that they make their deadline. All the while they are missing out on the real purpose of traveling, at least for me. To see things differently.

I’d rather just ride than ride with a “purpose”. I tend to view life the same way.

I recently, at the age of 50, had a heart attack. This reinforced my view that life is a journey, that it has no specified destination and that the purpose of life is to appreciate the journey not seek to arrive at the destination, which for all living things is, after all, death.

So back to the scientists and their church of “Facts”. As much as I appreciate chaos I studied Logic at the masters level. That is where I approach “Facts” from. On what premise is your fact based and does that premise hold true? Here is the flaw in science. The rigor that science claims to put theories to is that any new revelations must be repeatible by others replicating the circumstances.

Ok, that seems reasonable. So we go from hey I have this idea, to I’ve tested the heck out of my idea (so now it’s a theory) so a bunch of others will now test it and see if they get the same results/draw the same conclusions and when they do it must be true and therefore it’s a fact.

Except it isn’t, it’s only a fact until someone comes along with a different perspective and proves that while my theory was tested and held true for most cases here are a few where it doesn’t oh and by the way your Facts aren’t facts anymore.

Those who support science call this “progress”. I call it false advertising. If your premise is faulty to begin with — and clearly the whole idea-test-theory-test-fact premise is, then you don’t have rigor. Without rigor science is about as useful as throwing bones and guessing what they mean or about as useful as Faith.

Which clearly shows, through testing, that science is a Faith based worldview or a Religion. Religions exist to make sense of the chaos in which we live to provide those who have a tendency to freak out at the randomness of things a sense that all is as it should be and that at some point in the future everything will be revealed to human beings.