Here’s a flickr photo titled The Need for Answers that’s been garnering a fair bit of attention lately:
The problem with this image is that it makes the classic mistake of mistaking science for religion or philosophy — essentially a sort of equally-bad inverse of the Creationist mindset. Science is for answering the “how” questions, while religion and philosophy are for tackling the “why”. The photo oversimplifies the nature of faith in that typical hip not-quite-done-rebelling-against-my-parents way that’s popular these days. The same people who often don’t quite buy into the notion of a creator will often talk about karma as if it were Newton’s Third Law for Morals.The silliness goes both ways, as well, if the study that reports that atheists are the least-trusted group in the US is accurate.
I personally believe that science and religion are not mutually incompatible, and as Wil Wheaton put in the comments for the photo, there’s a big grey area right down the middle that’s missing. Perhaps that’s why Einstein quipped that “science without religion is blind, and religion without science is lame,” and why he also observed: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle” (Reverend Victoria Weinstein does a much better job of covering this in a recent sermon).
Food for thought. Feel free to comment…
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To be fair, the concept of faith has been so denigrated by the people who speak loudest for it (and insist so thoroughly on it), that it shouldn't surprise us when so many others take a dim view of it.