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Who's got the answers, when it comes to it?
If you want to be certain about something, it has to be Science, surely? Anything else is just your own opinion. Or is it?
Science says a lot about mechanisms and processes, about cause and effect. It observes things carefully, draws conclusions and makes theories. But what does it tell you about human relationships, about love, about beauty, about meaning and purpose? If science says that the smile in a friend's eyes is nothing but a physiological effect which gives me a pleasant hormonal reaction, wouldn't you say it had missed the point? A sunset may indeed be caused by light refracted by dust and water vapour, but there's more to it than just that! We've got used to thinking that if science says that's the way something has come about, then that's all it is. But haven't we mistaking two quite different things - how something works, and what it really means?
If you wanted to know how something worked, you might try and take it to bits yourself, but in the end, if you wanted an authoritative view, you'd probably ask a scientist. But if you wanted to know what it was for, and it wasn't just common sense, where would you look?
What about the really fundamental questions of life? What's the universe for? Why does anything exist at all? What are we humans here for? What happens when we die? And so on. Well, you wouldn't ask a scientist, would you? All she could tell you would be mechanisms and theories. If he tried to explain it in a mathematical equation, wouldn't you be left feeling dissatisfied, however clever the maths was? When it's on safe ground, Science is powerful and truly remarkable in what it can tell us about the universe. But ask it these sorts of questions and it's silent. They are outside what science can tell you.
Who does know the answer to these questions? Or is it just something gurus, sages and philosophers debate endlessly, but which nobody actually knows? A pretty depressing conclusion! Doesn't it strike you as just a bit odd, that despite how amazingly we've evolved, we don't seem to be able to answer the most basic questions that a child would ask? Is anyone in a position to know? God presumably would, if he existed. But then you don't want to get into religion, do you? .... or would you?
Just suppose, for a moment, that the universe around you isn't just a fluke of chance events over a very, very long period of time. Suppose it has a creator, who designed it, evolved it, cares for it and sustains it? Suppose he made it orderly and intelligible, so we could probe its laws and master its applications. Who left his own imprint on the product, but left it open for humans to mould and fashion, either for good or ill. And suppose we've made rather a mess of it. Suppose he came to earth, as a man, to show what he was like, and point humans to the root of our problems, and die in order to solve them? "All speculation!", you say. But no more so than any new scientific hypothesis. It's just that the stakes are rather higher. Either way, the truth is only arrived at by testing it out. Wouldn't it be worth beginning a few experiments to find out? If it was true, life would look a lot different, not to mention death.
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