We must grow up in our thinking. And in fact, we are growing up. It used to be commonplace to have slaves; the New Testament mentions them as though slavery were never going to go out of style. But here we are, instead, where one mark of civilized thinking is against the very concept of a slave. Time calls for change. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, but when I grew up, I put away childish things. There are those who are still holding their breath until they turn blue. Being a creationist, for instance, is a stunting of growth, spiritually. Believing in the literal truth of the Bible may be likened to the belief that planets traveled in perfect circles. It is a naïve way of thought, put charitably. Or, you know? you can say that it is plainly wrong, if it comes down to it. There was to be found a logic to the motions of the planets, but it was not so simplistic. This understanding is called science.
Even the fuller answers, what we understand now, are bound to be imprecise, but we can have that in mind when we deal with the calculations that we can use. In other words, your faith, based on tradition, is not as good as my science, based on observation and experimentation. You may say that your faith is where the buck stops, but there is a whole road of commerce that goes on outside those doors. So what room is there for faith, these days? Some to go the opposite way, extreme, that we cannot believe in anything anymore, that which is not solid, liquid, or gas. And that which faith holds as true often cannot be proved, else it might no longer be faith. We can think that with the means of science, everything we can know we will know, so all that faith is can be summed up as that which we do not understand yet. But aye, there’s the rub!
On one side, let us say that all things are comprehensible, everything is in logical harmony at some scale, and the why of that has a why, and the why of that. On the other side, let us say that there will always be something yet to be understood. Neither side are known to be true. We’re just saying, and as far as conjectures go, that these two thoughts are not bad ones. They could both be so, and the world does not have to be changed by them being so. If science is all we can know, everything is within its province. Yet if faith is to act in the absence of knowledge, faith is never priced out of that market. And what one religion in particular claims in its root, which happens to be my religion, “God is love,” it will await the infinite theory and song to capture not even a fraction of what that means.
We must grow up in our thinking, each side oversimplifying in what they say the other side is saying. To say that what science disproves of faith, we must hold to what science can itself prove. It is not “just a theory”—it is a rigorous theory, borne of intelligence. But it is the height of arrogance to think that such a world that has been given us has no more depth of purpose than what we can think to give it. Perhaps if we chose instead, to listen, one side to another, and they are not always opposing forces: what we could learn! And love, what both sides ultimately agree upon, we all know what that word means, don’t we? Do we? Can we? Should we? Where would we begin? How will it end? I wonder…
What is love? Only a fool knows. (Fools like you and me.)