At first glance, the seemingly evident order in our world can easily lead someone to false assumptions and conclusions. Some of which are often associated with the existence of an intelligent supernatural being, that designed the world with a purpose in mind. However, things that appeared obvious to us were often proven wrong when we get into further investigation. For instance, in the past, ancient civilizations had perceived the Sun as a deity, without knowing that it's really just a giant ball of plasma converting hydrogen into helium and that it obviously had no interest in us at all. No one today in their right mind would make up superstitious stories about the Sun to try and explain it, and actually believe them. Why is that? Because we now have an understanding of the Sun based on evidence and no longer require such explanations. And as science has taught us, the Sun is nothing special. Its just another star among an unimaginable number of other stars in the known universe. But it was seen as something special and maybe even caring for people, because no real knowledge about it was present. As you can imagine, looking at the Sun rising every morning to shine upon the seemingly "flat" Earth that people were living on, without the scientific explanations of the Sun that we have today, it must have been quite hard not to think that this illuminating source of light was not concerned with our survival. And so sun worship I think, is just one of many good examples of how the apparent everyday reality can deceive us and create an illusion when we do not have scientific explanations.
Primitive people just had this inevitable illusion of knowledge, that was based on first impressions and imagination, which resulted in the creation of myths to explain the unexplainable. Though, the fact remains - the Sun is not a god, and the Earth is most definitely NOT flat.
But blame ourselves we cannot... For it is clear that you cannot not have a critically thinking mind from the very beginning of its development, without going through some more primitive attempts to understand. As our civilization gained more knowledge about the world, through time we got better at understanding it. History is being made constantly and we have to preserve it if we are to learn from our past mistakes. New things are learned and they are passed on to the newer generations, so that we can keep moving forward. That is how humanity progresses. And this process of progression can be compared with the development of an individual human being - born into this world as an infant that matures through life. Just like a child is naive, our past understandings of the world were also naive. But as the child grows into an adult, it learns new things about the world and becomes more aware and mature. Similarly, in the cosmological plan, our civilization also matures in the same way, and becomes more aware when we expand our scientific knowledge about the Universe, leaving our naivety behind.
So instead of just fixating on what might look apparent to us in our everyday reality, and make conclusions based on those observations, we should realize that the more objective reality is not limited to what we can observe here on Earth. And if we are to look for that objective reality, we must go beyond the safe bubble of our existence that is our planet and try to understand how our own everyday subjective reality was made possible in the first place. In other words, take a step back from staring into a minor detail of the picture, and try to look at it as a whole, where more will be revealed to us.
This is where science comes in.
During the course of our history and the development of science, we have debunked many of the superstitious ideas about phenomena that we did not understand well. But some of those ideas have survived and evolved to this very day. Naturally, the ones that are more ludicrous like the existence of a solar deity are long abandoned, only to be replaced with what may seem to many people, as less ludicrous and more believable ones. So while we now have a scientific explanation of the Sun as being a giant plasma ball in which nuclear reaction occurs, (as opposed to being a god) the question of a divine creator is far from answered. It is the complex nature of this question that makes it so hard to find an answer. We should in fact, accept the possibility that we might even never answer it. But should an unanswerable question be a reason to adopt beliefs that will give us answers to things that we cannot at this time answer? No, of course not! For if we do that, we will be repeating the same mistakes that we did before in history. Which is believing in things with no evidence just for the sake of having an understanding, regardless of its validity and truthfulness in nature. Such a thing could discourage people to find real answers based on facts and evidence that only science can give us.
I invite you for a moment, to imagine yourself living in a world with no scientific knowledge, where absurd non-evidential ideas are accepted as being true. Why we would be living in a delusional world, believing in the geocentric model and the flat Earth theory. Natural occurring phenomena in nature will be thought of as divine interventions from supernatural beings. Viruses and diseases would still be blamed on demons instead of bacteria. The world without science will be such a dark place to live in, where superstition thrives instead of logic.
That's why science is important to us!
It has uncovered a sharp contrast between ancient beliefs about the Universe and its true nature as opposed to those beliefs. Investigating the things that we do not understand through the scientific method has been proven helpful in escaping this dark delusional world of the past, and has opened the door to a majestic Universe filled with wonders beyond our imagination that begs us for exploration.
An appeal to science and its rational ways of approaching the big questions in our lives is a must, if we are to seek an objective view on reality, free from the apparent illusions of our own earthly, subjective reality.
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| Egyptian Sun God RA by GENZOMAN@DA & The Sun (SDO) |
Primitive people just had this inevitable illusion of knowledge, that was based on first impressions and imagination, which resulted in the creation of myths to explain the unexplainable. Though, the fact remains - the Sun is not a god, and the Earth is most definitely NOT flat.
But blame ourselves we cannot... For it is clear that you cannot not have a critically thinking mind from the very beginning of its development, without going through some more primitive attempts to understand. As our civilization gained more knowledge about the world, through time we got better at understanding it. History is being made constantly and we have to preserve it if we are to learn from our past mistakes. New things are learned and they are passed on to the newer generations, so that we can keep moving forward. That is how humanity progresses. And this process of progression can be compared with the development of an individual human being - born into this world as an infant that matures through life. Just like a child is naive, our past understandings of the world were also naive. But as the child grows into an adult, it learns new things about the world and becomes more aware and mature. Similarly, in the cosmological plan, our civilization also matures in the same way, and becomes more aware when we expand our scientific knowledge about the Universe, leaving our naivety behind.
So instead of just fixating on what might look apparent to us in our everyday reality, and make conclusions based on those observations, we should realize that the more objective reality is not limited to what we can observe here on Earth. And if we are to look for that objective reality, we must go beyond the safe bubble of our existence that is our planet and try to understand how our own everyday subjective reality was made possible in the first place. In other words, take a step back from staring into a minor detail of the picture, and try to look at it as a whole, where more will be revealed to us.
This is where science comes in.
During the course of our history and the development of science, we have debunked many of the superstitious ideas about phenomena that we did not understand well. But some of those ideas have survived and evolved to this very day. Naturally, the ones that are more ludicrous like the existence of a solar deity are long abandoned, only to be replaced with what may seem to many people, as less ludicrous and more believable ones. So while we now have a scientific explanation of the Sun as being a giant plasma ball in which nuclear reaction occurs, (as opposed to being a god) the question of a divine creator is far from answered. It is the complex nature of this question that makes it so hard to find an answer. We should in fact, accept the possibility that we might even never answer it. But should an unanswerable question be a reason to adopt beliefs that will give us answers to things that we cannot at this time answer? No, of course not! For if we do that, we will be repeating the same mistakes that we did before in history. Which is believing in things with no evidence just for the sake of having an understanding, regardless of its validity and truthfulness in nature. Such a thing could discourage people to find real answers based on facts and evidence that only science can give us.
 |
| Flat Earth by Si2@DA |
That's why science is important to us!
It has uncovered a sharp contrast between ancient beliefs about the Universe and its true nature as opposed to those beliefs. Investigating the things that we do not understand through the scientific method has been proven helpful in escaping this dark delusional world of the past, and has opened the door to a majestic Universe filled with wonders beyond our imagination that begs us for exploration.
An appeal to science and its rational ways of approaching the big questions in our lives is a must, if we are to seek an objective view on reality, free from the apparent illusions of our own earthly, subjective reality.
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