The great thing about the virtual world is that it connects people of like and differing minds all over the planet. I visited the site of a blogger who liked one of my posts. He wrote about science and religion. He said that he values science exclusive of religion. Science will teach truth, he writes, religion is made up. I would like to respectfully dissent from this view. A few definitions need to be made. Science doesn’t teach truth. It teaches fact. Religion teaches truth. Facts are verifiable, but they are meaningless. Truth may be disputed, but only truth has meaning.
There may be proof for the existence of quarks. I don’t know; I’m not a scientist. But as I watch television news programming about racial injustice in the US, a quark doesn’t matter all that much to me. But the words of the Hebrew prophet Amos do, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (5:24). The Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago. Fact. But it doesn’t tell me how to treat my fellows like Jesus does, “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31). Chemical salts are made by ionic bonds. Fact and provable. But that won’t tell me the nature of my own consciousness as do the Upanishads. ” Whoever knows the self as “I am Brahman,” becomes all this universe” (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10).
I respect scientific inquiry and science explains the physical world–as far as it goes. But in the realm of human relations, and in the matters that matter to me, I prefer religion.
David Fekete 