Inspired by an awesome photo of the Earth and Moon… from Mars posted by ***Dave, I was reminded of this monologue by Carl Sagan on a picture of the Earth from a space probe out beyond the rings of Saturn. Our world appeared as a single pixel, a pale blue dot in the frozen vastness. And yet…
See, this is what I miss in the shout-a-logue between science and religion that today dominates the blogosphere and the surrounding culture wars. Who’s filling this role now? Is poetic language obsolete? Is it buried forever beneath our anger?
Update: a nifty quote
“Science arose from poetry—when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Science and religion, can one exist without the other?
Sure they can. Religion has existed without science pretty much from day one. Religious leaders thought stuff up and told people, without checking to see if that’s really how things were.
Science can exist without religion – atheism is common among scientists – but the sense of poetic interpretation of our existence is a human need that in the past has mostly found expression in religion. Now it’s branching out and science lends itself to secular poetic expression.
To me this is the wrong question to ask. Rather it should be:
Neither is going away anytime soon so I recommend that both sides figure out how to co-exist. We have Atheists touting religion as the worst thing in this world (when Bush is still in office) and calling Christians Jesus-tards, lumping the fundamentalists and the assholes in the same category of good Christians that don’t care if you’re atheist or not. And we have Religious people calling Atheists the lowest form of human being, under the murdering rapist that prays to a deity. Both are poor forms of communication that direct our society in the wrong direction and further hurts the cause of either side.
I know I still have a lot to learn in this world, but my guess is that calling a religious person a tard doesn’t get your message very far.