Monday, March 17, 2008

Logic vs. Belief

Contact can sum this up a lot neater that I ever will and in fact probably shaped what I think and my views. But I'll still bother who ever reads this with my own thought on the subject. Personally, the most important belief you really should have is in the belief of logic that allows you to comprehend two objects with two other objects gives you four objects; or that a three-sided polygon is different from a four-sided polygon. I'm not at all implying that it should be your only belief, but it that it should be your foundation. An example in what I mean by this is that if your current religion asks you to drink arsenic at your 21st birthday, that belief shouldn't outweigh your logic (more accurately your common-sense), unless you don't value your life so much. But your free to have a religious belief system to help you live your life so you can put more thought energy on other things (or allow you to think less with certain religions).

That vein however, the one to help you interact with the world around you and fellow species, is probably the line that should be drawn in belief systems. It shouldn't be something use to explain the world anymore, we as a species have gone past the needs of archaic ways to explain natural phenomena. Now we've created the tools that we can understand the world around us down the fundamental particles and forces; to the point if we could, we could create an entirely different universe from scratch. We're able to go from 2+2=4, that .9 repeating equals one, to being able to determine the age of our earth, the universe, to being able to know what temperature a distant star is or how much energy it'd require to push a rock up a hill. There is no need to relay on any novel or narrative on giving an explanation on why the sun shines yellow. We have the tools at our hands to give us the natural explanation from such things.

But just as tool-making and curiosity is a strong point for humanity, so is tradition and stubbornness. While a gained attribute after the rise of civility due to agriculture, it's still a strong one felt everywhere. Even the most open-minded person has their initial limitation to new ideas. And this unwillingness to let go of having a beliefs system harms science in itself. Because the majority doesn't view science as logic and as being able to tell you quite literally that a 3-sided polygon isn't 4-sided, it views it as another system that you must believe in. That you somehow have to believe that things evolve over time, instead of grasping the concept of observation, deduction, experimentation or testing. Most will gladly argue that it is just a theory but fail to realize even science still views gravity as a theory yet it's quite obvious it's there. A theory doesn't mean we doubt it's existence or it's possibility, but that we know it's there but lack the comprehension we desire. One of the famous theories that has been enough to stated that desire enough to become Laws is Newton Laws. Though if you search around and research, not many subjects such as physics have had the luxury of being able to quench that need to understand.

The majority that can't let go of old ways isn't the only problem. As previously mentioned, individuals also hold that tradition. To the point where even science falters into nothing more than belief. A good example is the dinosaur extension theory; no other theory has changed into so many flavors and has had so many proponents. The longest standing theory is the most common one to thought, that a big comet/rock smacked the earth and killing most of everything in one shot. Eventually we came to understand that it wasn't the only reason most of life died out; that it was a combination of different environmental changes that occurred, the comet hitting being just one of the bigger piece of the puzzle. Sadly the proponents and discovers of the comet theory became so passionate with their explanation that the science stopped and belief reign, with the idea of the comet being the sole contributor only started to lose it's grip now. Another classic example of this happening that was quicker and more recent was Pluto. A stark difference from what happened to Ceres but the same fate nonetheless. Ceres was considered a planet for a bit until the discovery of the Asteroid belt which it was a part of; so logically it was reclassified to fit it's family. Pluto, was then discovered past Neptune and just like Ceres, so was the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt. The discovery of Pluto's family however came alot later than Ceres' so tradition had time to set in to the point where when we finally accepted the existence of the Kuiper Belt, there was actual resistance to reclassifying Pluto; solely on it's seniority as being under the label of a planet. Ignoring that it's orbit was starkly different than the 8 other planets, that it shared it's orbit with a second asteroid belt called the Kuiper belt and that it was more than likely just a large dead/not yet ignited comet.

But that's why I mentioned Contact. The movie does a nice job showing the fallibility and strengths of both Science and Religion. (Logic and Belief.)

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