Monkey_Face
Lit guru
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2008
- Posts
- 2,299
I think that far too much of human culture and beliefs are based on a simple misunderstanding of cause and effect. A good modern day anthropological example of this is the formation of "cargo cults" after WWII.
During WWII the U.S. built a series of bases and air strips on remote islands in the Pacific. They would often trade the cargo delivered by the planes to the native peoples. When the war ended, the military abandoned its bases and the influx of cargo stopped. The tribes wanted their cargo back, so they started building their own landing strips in the hopes that that would cause planes to land and deliver them cargo. When that didn't work, they developed a whole mythos about how the cargo that was rightfully theirs was being stolen by an evil god.
The point is, if this could happen today, there's no reason it couldn't happen a thousand years ago. We'll never know how many of our own religions are based on such simple misunderstanding of cause and effect. When you think about it, building air strips in the hopes that planes will magically appear isn't such a bad idea, at least from the view point of someone who has no idea what a plane is and that a person has to pilot it. The problem is that when it doesn't work, people fill in the blanks with their own story.
As much as it may seem like I'm harping on religion, I'm not. I have no problem with religion. My problem is with faith. The simple blind belief that things will work simply because it's too hard to come up with an answer for how they work and too frightening to simply admit that you may not know. I think that's the difference between science and faith; science will eventually shrug its shoulders and just say "fuck, man, I don't know," while faith keeps on talking out of its ass. When I say faith you have to understand that I am talking about people who have "faith" in science too. Ask the common atheist how life came into being and he'll simply say, "evolution." But does he understand mutation, natural selection, sexual selection, random genetic drift, and gene flow? Can he even explain how life first came into being and not just how it developed along the way? Probably not. As a rule of thumb, I think that if you can replace any word in a sentence with "magic" and your sentence still makes sense, you have far too much faith and far too little knowledge. Ask your average person how their plasma T.V. works. Hell, as far as I know it may as well be magic.
I think this applies equally to religion and science. I think that to really be scientific you just have to have the balls to say, "I don't fucking know." But that's just what I think.
During WWII the U.S. built a series of bases and air strips on remote islands in the Pacific. They would often trade the cargo delivered by the planes to the native peoples. When the war ended, the military abandoned its bases and the influx of cargo stopped. The tribes wanted their cargo back, so they started building their own landing strips in the hopes that that would cause planes to land and deliver them cargo. When that didn't work, they developed a whole mythos about how the cargo that was rightfully theirs was being stolen by an evil god.
The point is, if this could happen today, there's no reason it couldn't happen a thousand years ago. We'll never know how many of our own religions are based on such simple misunderstanding of cause and effect. When you think about it, building air strips in the hopes that planes will magically appear isn't such a bad idea, at least from the view point of someone who has no idea what a plane is and that a person has to pilot it. The problem is that when it doesn't work, people fill in the blanks with their own story.
As much as it may seem like I'm harping on religion, I'm not. I have no problem with religion. My problem is with faith. The simple blind belief that things will work simply because it's too hard to come up with an answer for how they work and too frightening to simply admit that you may not know. I think that's the difference between science and faith; science will eventually shrug its shoulders and just say "fuck, man, I don't know," while faith keeps on talking out of its ass. When I say faith you have to understand that I am talking about people who have "faith" in science too. Ask the common atheist how life came into being and he'll simply say, "evolution." But does he understand mutation, natural selection, sexual selection, random genetic drift, and gene flow? Can he even explain how life first came into being and not just how it developed along the way? Probably not. As a rule of thumb, I think that if you can replace any word in a sentence with "magic" and your sentence still makes sense, you have far too much faith and far too little knowledge. Ask your average person how their plasma T.V. works. Hell, as far as I know it may as well be magic.
I think this applies equally to religion and science. I think that to really be scientific you just have to have the balls to say, "I don't fucking know." But that's just what I think.
