Questions answered, Answers questioned

The cartoon at left that was in our paper this past Saturday and had me saying, “Huh?” But it also got me to think a little more about what the little guy has on his shirt.

It is true that science has questions that may never be answered. But that’s the beauty of science! As long as there are questions that need to be answered, science will continue to probe, test, and learn. Knowledge is what it’s all about!

To think that science will have all the answers all the time is to fool ourselves. Science continually updates and correct it’s self. That doesn’t make it bad or wrong.That’s the way it should work. We would like to have pat answers to most things but that will never happen. One minute coffee is bad for you and the next it’s good. That’s because we are continually learning. And just because science doesn’t get it just quite right at times is no reason to toss it all out. The consequences could be deadly as in the anti-vaccination movement recently that was promoted by people that didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.

In this very technological and complex age, where we need a sound understanding of science, we are drifting back to the Middle Ages where the churches were looked to for answers. Remember there was a reason that time was called the Dark Ages.

The second line on the shirt about religion having answers that may never be questioned is true. Religion continually claims to have “the truth” and tries to provide answers about how life came to be and how the heavens move, for example. Those answers from the church turned out be ultimately wrong as one Galileo Galilei could attest.

You see the push for answers that shouldn’t be questioned in the Intelligent Design movement. No amount of evidence will move them off their high horse of ID. All this science stuff about evolution to them is nonsense despite the 150 years of solid evidence around the world. One shouldn’t question the Bible because it’s inerrant!

I still don’t know exactly what the cartoon is trying to say but maybe it is that we must always question and no answer is so sacred it shouldn’t be questioned. Remember science books are always updated and revised. The Bible isn’t. Think about it.