Still Born Again
The other day a man came to the door, and a cursory inspection revealed that I did not know him. When someone comes to the door whom I don't know they're generally selling something, and I generally don't want it. This particular man apparently donates his time and his truck to drive to people like me soliciting items to drive to people not like me who could use them. God bless him, I took his info and he'll probably hear from me. But like I say, generally if people come to the door and you don't know them they're trying to sell you something that you were not previously aware you had need of. We've had people here selling everything - hot water heaters, lottery tickets for hospitals, magazines, you name it. I find no matter what they're selling, a good rule of thumb is that if they came to me then it means I didn't go to them. I think it's safe for everyone involved to assume I'm not interested, or else I would have sought them out and gone to their door. Sometimes the people who come to the door are selling religion.
Those selling religion door-to-door are easy to spot. They look clean. And there's usually two of them. They used to come armed with cheaply printed pamphlets. Now they come armed with cheaply printed pamphlets and a smart-phone app. Of course that depends on exactly which sect it is that has graced you with a house call. You could also get someone who shows up in a buggy and takes your information with a quill pen, I suppose, but that particular sect tends to not proselytize so much. I think if I were a free agent I would consider playing for their team for that very reason. Except I'm fond of technology so maybe not. In any event, if someone comes to the door selling religion they don't seem to take the hint when you tell them you already have one and won't need another until the current one breaks or gets misplaced. They must think everyone needs two religions. At least the last people weren't snake handlers. It's forever cleaning up the front door after a visit from those guys and their spitting cobras.
Now any discussion of religion involving me needs a big disclaimer up front; all I know anything about and therefore all I can talk about in any meaningful way is Christianity. I do not embrace any other faith in much the same way as I do not embrace my Finnish ancestry; I have never been to Finland and so far as I know neither have any of my genes. I cannot talk meaningfully about Finland and so I tend to not. But nonetheless I support their contention that they are a country. Mostly to humour them. There can only be one true country, and that is Canada. But I digress. We were talking about door-to-door religion salespeople.
Religion peddlers used to show up with the most amazing little pamphlets. Small picture books that presented weighty issues such as the Gay Militia that threatens our very souls, deathbed conversion to the very far right of conservative Christianity (just in time) and my all-time favourite, one with a cartoon gorilla that finally put all that evolution nonsense to bed. These pamphlets were so delightfully hateful and homophobic, chock full of misinformation and veritable how-tos of logical fallacies. Incredibly, you can still purchase these online in bulk lots. But it's probably illegal to actually hand them out these days. Anyhow, the gorilla one in particular highlighted the never ending clash between religion and science. I myself don't think there should be any friction between the two; something is either provable or it is not. No friction. Take the case of the Mars Observer, which went silent on August 21, 1993 just three days shy of its goal. NASA maintains that it blew up during a routine course correction due to a fuel leak. Well I say, prove it . Of course they can't. As we all know, the real reason the spacecraft went silent is that it crashed into the crystal sphere that holds Mars in its perfectly circular orbit around Earth.
Another point of friction between the religion of science and the science of religion is faith healing. Again, no need for any friction. Something either is, or is not, correct. There is an overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence supporting the effectiveness of the laying on of hands; all we need is some empirical evidence to silence the nay sayers. The solution is simple. A clinical trial. We just take a large number of people all with the same ailment, and split them into two groups. Group A gets prayed at by people praying for a miraculous recovery. Group B gets prayed at by people praying things like "Nice weather today" or "I think I'll wash the car when I get home". Over time the truth will come to light. The problem will be in making it a truly double-blind study, such that neither the prayors nor the prayees know whether they are getting the real deal or merely a placebo prayer. I'm sure it can be worked out somehow.
Of course, the trouble with prayer is that even if someone's prayers are answered there is no guarantee they will notice. I have a few friends who subscribe to the straight and narrow view of things. Or the narrow view at least. If they are sufficiently ill, they will pray and be prayed at like it was an old timey revival meeting. But if the answer comes to them in the form of a doctor with some good advice they'll thumb their noses and keep on praying, waiting for the right sort of miracle. I don't get that. Another thing I don't get is how religion and evolution seem to be mutually exclusive. To date no one has explained to me why they forbid God from using evolution to keep things on track, or what they plan to do about it if He persists in using it anyway. I think the reasoning goes something like, "Evolution cannot work in a ten thousand year timeframe and that is all you have to play with.". Granted, in a ten thousand year timeframe all evolution is likely to do is turn a wolf into a toy poodle but what if the world actually is 4.543 billion years old? A quick walk around somewhere like Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta will make you wonder what it must have been like 6,000 years ago walking around with these critters and why no reference of that made it into the bible. It should have been really big news. Some will maintain that God "planted" these fossils so as to mess with the paleontologists with whom He has always had a bone to pick. A paleontologist would likely counter that He has done a damn fine job and since there is no human way of determining the difference then can't we just proceed as if the fossils are in fact millions of years old? And then by extension the earth is at least millions of years old as far as there would be any way of telling. In fact, I don't believe there is anything in the Bible that specifically refers to the age of the earth (admittedly, the last thing anyone would acuse me of being is a biblical scholar) although there are countless interpretations of scripture that all agree to a six to ten thousand year range for the creation event. Myself, I don't subscribe to the various interpretations, I prefer to go to the source. Look around you; the world surrounds you. The world is bigger and spans more time than a human can grasp. Unless you're Carl Sagan. That doesn't mean it is ok to take the little chunk of the world that you can grasp and try to impose it on others. Others will see their own little chunk of the world and they're leaving you alone. And speaking of Carl Sagan, I believe it was he who pointed out that creationist timelines coincide nicely with the end of the last ice age. Game of Thrones aside there is little evidence for any kind of advanced society prior to the last ice age so in a very real sense people started up around then. And the first thing they did was start looking for God. Actually, the first thing they did was kill all the dinosaurs and turn them into rock somehow. But after that it was definitely a search for God.
So really, the big bone of contention, apart from all of the faked 6,000 year old dinosaur fossils, between Religion and Science, is simply the flow of logic. A scientist will collect the facts and go looking for a conclusion. A religious person will derive a conclusion and then go looking for facts. A simple example is in order. Let's take two acountants; one works at Secular Inc. and the other at TV Religion.org. Accountant A will write down line items in the ledger and add them up into totals which go into a sub-ledger. If a new line item comes in, let's say a late payment, then it is recorded and the total is recalculated to take in this new information. Accountant B, on the other hand, will consult the Book of Sums to find an approved total and enter that into the sub-ledger. Then they will choose line items that will add up to The Sum. If a new line comes in it will be declared to be blasphemy. Simple.
If I've learned one thing about religion over the years, it's that a lot of people seem to have found God. I find that amazing. The cosmos is as close to infinite as makes no odds and covers a vast sweep of time (at least 10,000 years, as previously noted). To have found God implies to me that one has taken in the immensity of the cosmos and the immensity of time and has nothing further to learn. It stands to reason then that they should quit looking. They are essentially gods themselves.
If I've learned two things about religion, then the second would surely be that lots of people want to save my soul. Sadly, it's not mine in the first place; it's kind of on loan and I'm just taking care of it for the real owner. Also, if people want the job of saving souls they should take it up with the Boss. But he'd likely say he already has a guy.
If I've learned a third thing about religion it would have to be that everyone is right and everyone else is wrong. The more firmly someone believes in something, the more firmly they don't believe in everything else. That's fine, in fact I think it may be a definition of insanity to believe in something you don't believe in. The problem is when someone believes in something so much that they believe everyone else should believe in it too. If someone believes they are Napoleon that is fine by me, but if they believe that I believe they are Napoleon then one of us is crazy. Many people have beliefs that can be thought of as a lamp on a stand, giving light to all who enter, but they're careful to keep a basket nearby to cover the lamp in case the light bothers somebody. Others have the theological equivalent of laser pointers; not much actual light but they keep shining it in your eyes and it really hurts. Unfortunately it is this latter group that seems to have a divine duty to be 100% right to the exclusion of everyone else. This can lead to some obvious dilemmas.
Let's take the case of two God fearing football teams. Before the match both quarterbacks pray for a successful game. They both believe they will be victorious. One of them loses. The losing quarterback has demonstrated that he is unworthy; should he not be burned at the stake? If the game seems to be hopeless early on it would make an unusual half time show. Or take the case of the family picnic. Before lunch someone says grace, praying the good weather will hold up for the rest of the day. But the farmers in the surrounding countryside are fervently praying for rain. It will either rain or it will not. Whose belief system is flawed?
I have put much thought to this and I believe I have come up with the Grand Unified Theory of belief systems. It is this: Your belief system is valid if you concede that other people's belief systems are equally valid. If you believe that your belief system is valid and that everyone else's is invalid, then your beliefs are flawed and you are destined for hell along with those who scoop up after their dog but then leave the bag. And the people who chuck burning cigarette butts out of their cars. Maybe they're the same people. I hope not, because if so then sooner or later they will start chucking burning bags of dog doo-doo out of their car windows and they will no longer be welcome even in hell.