Scientists today think they’ve got a pretty good handle on the way the universe works. I’m not so sure. I think there are a number of things that we have established about the way this particular corner of the universe works but by the very nature of science all we can do is take what we have observed and try to generalize from it and make predictions based upon what we have observed.
Everyone has experienced things that defy rational explanation. Scientists choose to ignore them as outliers that aren’t worthy of systematic study. They dismiss anything that doesn’t fit the standard model of the universe as coincidence or some kind of mistake.
I pride myself on being a skeptic. I don’t believe there is anything that is supernatural. I do believe that we are far from a comprehensive understanding of the natural though. All science was initially dismissed as nonsense until someone persisted at studying the phenomena in question until they understood it and could generate reproducible results.
It may be true that we have harvested a lot of the low hanging fruit of scientific knowledge. That doesn’t mean that subtle, more difficult to reproduce phenomena doesn’t exit.
I do think it is wrong to deliberately con people into believing in things by trickery and lies. I am an agnostic myself. I don’t believe or disbelieve in a deity, rather I admit that I don’t know and have no way of finding out. I don’t believe that people can speak for god. That is how charlatans and hypocrites dupe gullible people into doing things contrary to their best interests.
We must continually test our theories and pay attention to the evidence of our own eyes. But just because a phenomenon can be produced by trickery doesn’t mean that there isn’t a valid phenomena that is not the result of tricks. When trickery is discovered it becomes part of our arsenal of techniques to determine whether a phenomena is real or not.
We also have to be on constant guard against our desire to believe something is so without clear evidence to support it. The hardest thing to realize is that you can’t prove that something doesn’t exist. That is the Achilles’ heel of the scientific method. You can verify that every time you measure something you come up with the same answer but you can’t say absolutely whether it will turn out the same the next time you measure it.
In the final analysis, science is just another faith. It is the belief that things will continue to work the way they’ve always worked. And while that is a pretty good bet in general, we have to hold the door open a crack for that which we haven’t adequately explained yet.
There is no absolute truth. Neither religions nor science can offer absolute truth. The universe is too big a place for that.
Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.