The arrogance of science and gullibility of religion

We arrived to live in a conflicting time, especially at a time like this an opinion will get you a lot of attention. It is actually welcomed and almost requested. On the other hand, if you have a theory and it happens to be a theory for everything, then one should be able to provide an answer, or at the very least an approximate direction.

However, for the “requested” opinion to count with the climate, it needs to be a direct answer, it needs to say “do this now!” or “I am on this side”. Without an understanding; why are we here? What does the current predicament mean? To feed that crave because is a time of crisis, without knowing. That kind of answer is not the best approach.

To make sense, I have to explain a concept I have. I have to start my story with a discussion on the metaphor of Science and Religion. We find these two words in the same sentence usually to provide contrast, as some sort of opposites. What is the conflict?

To further highlight the difference, I called Science and Religion, metaphors. At the very root of the schism, we find not the acceptance or refusal of God, No. It is the perspective of reality, the fundamental understanding of how things come to be. More specifically the role of the imaginary. What is the role of the imaginary on our life, on this world? Does it really play any part on the outer reality?

I would like to describe this imaginary I am talking about, and come to some sort of definition, so we are on the same page. Imaginary is everything that does not “touch” any thing real. We do have our contemporary understanding of real, everything made by matter. So, once we apply these criteria, let’s check what remains outside. It should be easy to define the imaginary in this context. In a nutshell it has to do with our thinking, the cerebral functions or what we simply call “brain activity”.  We can divide this activity in two parts as conscious and unconscious activity. The unconscious part we can easily put it in the imaginary side, it is something we are not even aware, so how it can be connected to the outside matter? The conscious part is something we are aware and as such we have two choices to communicate it to the outer world, speak, write, draw, etch in stone, email, text, type etc. or not. The part that we send out to the world as soon as it “touches” the matter it is not imaginary anymore, it becomes real. While on the other hand the conscious thoughts we choose to keep or are unable to convey, remains still with the imaginary. So imaginary is something that is not real and cannot “touch” or even casually associate with anything real. I shrinked the realm of imaginary, further to the normal understanding (of that google search definition), to exclude legends, myths, education all that can be related with the real part. We are really talking about something that does not exist on the material plane, not even a trace.

While the contemporary scientific understanding is in agreement that it does not take any space or material the next question remains, does the imaginary serve any function? What is the role of the imaginary, as we defined it above, in relation to the real? The scientific approach will be to observe, build knowledge through systemic study and form testable explanations. Scientific method it is usually only applied to learn about the physical and natural world, but we can still use it and maybe it can help us with the imaginary as well. Let’s look at the role of the imaginary when we learn something, or observe anything in the natural world. The purpose of the observation, the initial step, is to create meaning in the personal imaginary space. Before anything can transpire or happen, it is within the imaginary that correlation with the real is created and this has to have meaning (awareness that leads to conscious). This personal meaning is the very root of science and it can only reside in the imaginary. It is this meaning that we can then transfer to the real world and materialize in the physical and natural world. This is not a game of words or an opinion of sorts, it is this exact process being repeated over and over everyday, from all. It is the scientists who find the correlation first and then the science it is applied by the myriad of professionals on different fields. What sets these people apart, what does education achieve? It would have been great if we could read something and know it and apply it just like that, but we know that’s not how it works. We have to create our own meaning for ourselves, once we get the information from the book, image, sound, email or text, we need to transfer it into our own imaginary space, only then it will mean something, only then it can be of use. The process of learning is not that easy, the betterment of the imaginary is what makes the professional, the lawyer, the doctor, the engineer, the technician, the tradesperson (really everyone), but especially the scientist. He relies on this imaginary, the understanding of theory.  However, it is very difficult to make this distinguishment this separation, because the imaginary is taken for granted because it does not exist. The imaginary gets called imagination and fantasy and written off. It is not the imagination and fantasy that I am trying to separate and recognize. The meaning is this imaginary, is the one we use everyday from the morning to the evening to work and then again and again through every second of our life. I would like to compare the imaginary with a “blueprint”. The blueprint analogy works well with the process we use everyday, there is an existing object in the outer physical and natural and we draw the blueprint into our imaginary, once we have this blueprint we can recognize and navigate the world.

So far so good, but Reality is dynamic and everchanging if there is any thing that is a constant, well that is change. Should we accept that everything is already built in the physical and natural world? While we never stop working, making changes, building and destroying, while nature never stops and the world still keeps turning?  If we look at the work of applying science, an engineer or architect, it is clear that the blueprint comes first and it is important to follow the blueprint to get the desired results. What about the imaginary “blueprint”, is that an only one-way street? From the physical and natural world to our imaginary blueprint. Nevertheless, for science to deny that the “imaginary blueprint” does not matter, it does not exist when it is the building block of its own structure and the main goal of the activity is to discover and enlarge this imaginary blueprint. That one can be summarized as; being disposed to exaggerate one's own worth or importance, and that’s the definition of arrogance.

I did not talk about religion or spirituality yet, (you can use any name) but the view can be reduced to; some external imaginary comes first. Let’s illustrate this viewpoint with our blueprint analogy. It will be the same to say, as once a house is built, I will add a window by drawing lines in a blueprint. This will sound gullible almost silly. Maybe the words I am using are not customary for this type of discussion but I believe that the imaginary being a “blueprint” and the real the actual object is a good analogy and I will expand on another post. I will need this analogy later to offer my opinion, as I said on the beginning.

But for now, I would like to conclude my thoughts. Let’s take a look at known topics and find another dispute of science and religion. While the root it is the view of the imaginary there is another topic that will get more attention. The answer to the question; What are we? What is human?

Science makes a clear stand on this. We are just another animal with a bag of tricks collected through time, the evolution. It goes further to say we are organic robots with the matter being primary and the sole ingredient, there is nothing else. In order to prove this ended up chasing the rabbit and looking at the smallest particle of matter if we understand what makes those tick, we can just sum them up generally speaking and we can explain everything from our thoughts to the stars in the sky. A gigantic amount of work but plausible. However, for the very smallest appearance of matter to exist, science found that it needs …. Get ready for this; the imaginary!? They have been doing the double slit experiment for 100 years now and the result it is still the same, without the imaginary there is no matter.

The religion on the other hand says we are specially created with a design like no other. While that feels good, we do function just like animals. If God created us, where can we find it? How come we are suffering? We still need an answer to the question, what makes us human?

In trying to understand the perspective of science and religion on the imaginary, it is clear that we have this additional function of getting information out from the imaginary into the real through various means speaking, writing, art, electronic gadgets and then we do the same the other way around with the same means from the real into our imaginary again, and the cycle never ends.

What is the very first thing that pierces from the imaginary realm breaks through and materialize into the real? What really lays at the boundary? Looks like all starts with a dig into our imaginary and as soon as we awake some awareness, we find a meaning and are able through consciousness to formulate a thought, clear enough to send vibrations and bring it to matter, materialize. At the beginning we find: “The Word”.