In the world of Science, Faith, and Religion, we can find ourselves facing the monumental task of determining what the real “Truth” is. To take a real objective view of the question, “what is the truth,” we need to identify what we understand each stands for.
Question one: What is Religion?
It is the belief in God, a god, or in a group of gods. It is the organization of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship God, a god or group of gods. It is an interest, belief, or activity that is very important to a person or a group of people.
Question Two: What is Faith?
It is a strong belief or Trust in someone or something. It is a belief in the existence of God or a strong religious feeling of our beliefs. It is a system of religious beliefs.
Question three: What is Science?
It is knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observations. It is a particular area of study, such as biology, physics, chemistry, or any particular branch of science. It is a subject that is formally studied in school, college, and universities.
Breaking down the key three elements that play such a significant role in who we are, what we become, how we believe, and how we react to situations in life, we find that they all cross what we might call “boundaries of life.” Science plays such a critical role in our lives. It has advanced the medical world to levels one sometimes stands in amazement of. The automation world, and most important to most of us, the communications world. The advancement of the phones, smartphones, computers, including the internet, has changed lives. We google a location and trust that we will arrive at that place if we follow the map provided. We choose to place our faith in that search we initiated. If you have had happened to you what I have, it has sometimes been misguided, and I ended up someplace different than planned. However, as these applications advance, they get better at guiding us where they believe you are planning to go based on what you were searching for.
We have defined a simple way of how science and faith work together, but how does religion fit into this. If religion is a form of interest, belief, or activity that is important to us, then science and faith become a religion by definition. If one believes that a specific area of science is factual, or that a specific application is perfect, then by placing our faith in it, it becomes a form of religious belief. I’m not trying to push the envelope here, I’m just using how each of the three elements of life is defined.
What is most interesting is that we have so many “Religious” beliefs in this world, it becomes hard to define which of them hold the “Truth.” We have so many advancements, findings (both supporting and negating), and discoveries in the science world, especially in the areas of who we are and how everything began, which of them do we hold as “Truth.” This put’s “Religion” as defined right in the middle. This brings us back to the question, what is “TRUTH?”
Where do we place our faith? Is it in God, or some other defined definition of god, or in our science’s and how they are defined and taught? It takes faith to believe in God, or any god, just as it takes faith to believe in only what is proven by science.
If we look at little deeper at science, we find that it is a process of defining a theory and then using scientific experimentation to prove the theory wrong. It is not an attempt to prove it correct. If it cannot be proven wrong, it can then be seen as true with no proof behind it until someone comes along and proves it wrong. Faith now becomes a strong ingredient in science. With “Faith” as an ingredient in science, it becomes a way of believing and becomes a “Religion.”
What is more important, is the foundation of this short discussion. How do we know what to believe, where to place our faith, what religious belief we will follow? Just what is true, what can we hang our hat on, what can we stake our life’s beliefs on?
“What is Truth”
I hope you will follow me down this road of discovery as we attempt to utilize science to evaluate and define who we are and how this all could have begun.
“To be continued.”