To the Editor:
Another writer writes on the difference between science and belief systems, averring that, “Each maintains a different standard for truth,” and here I thought truth was its own standard; either something is true or it’s not.
Well, there are a lot of discussions about the compatibility of beliefs with science, but just as many about their incompatibility, and these by learned individuals, and admittedly, beyond the reach of most of the populace. Truth is very hard to find, but I’d like to take a stab at the subject, using my father as an example.
My dad was a practical man, as well as a believer. More than being a self-taught electrician and plumber, through reading up on those subjects, his career was famous for finding solutions to problems. He didn’t have much use for the speculations that led nowhere.
If he were alive today, he’d embrace evolution and adaptations, reject creationism, because, after all, evolutionary discoveries are practical, and are the foundation of modern medicine; very practical, and what could you do with creationism, but believe something no one could ever prove?
My dad, though a religious man, would dismiss the wranglings about the divinely-inspired texts off all faiths, for, of what practical value is the Koran or books like Leviticus, Numbers, even Genesis, because they wouldn’t put food on the table nor be verified, because nobody, unlike the example of Sputnik he showed me going overhead, was there to witness the beginning of the universe. (He would have rejoiced to see men land on the moon, though.)
Being practical has a lot to do with science, if not everything in its methods to find where we are and how the world of reality is. As an appeal to reason and discovery, science finds out why, whereas beliefs, not being standard to truth verification, are all over the map. You can believe anything you want, and people believe just about anything, but belief doesn’t add up to reality; beliefs create their own reality, hence so many of them in contradiction to each other.
If you are seriously seeking the facts, be prepared to have beliefs challenged. Some things you accepted on faith are not true, such as believing homosexuality is a choice. It is not. Facts like that can be disappointing to some, but liberating for others, but they help us to accept each other as we are, not as many would think we should be.
This is a good example why science in its search for the facts as revealed, is far superior to beliefs without them.
As a matter of freedom of conscience, one is free to believe whatever one wants, and we all agree to that. What strikes me whenever talk of beliefs are mentioned, is the incuriosity of those who assert that their beliefs are of paramount importance in their lives because they limit themselves to a lean diet in understanding them.
We might consider that instead of believers trying to contort science to their beliefs or any other’s, they try the scientific/courtroom method to prove the truth or falsehood of their claims. Perhaps then we will arrive at the universally acceptable, verifiable truth. Surely, after thousands of years, they should have a better claim to respectability than “Just believe.” Until then, I fear that we will have diversities of faiths, each with their own “truths,” which will often clash to the point of persecution, over differences of opinion, both within and without.
I take science and faith very seriously, and feel that most people don’t, but I take science with very fine-tuned respect, also, skeptical of any faith’s claim to truth, completely unwilling to just believe “on faith.” Too much of that is going around in place of public discourse. Seriously impractical.
Carl Scheiman, Walpole
