I Love Science, Knowledge, Freedom, and This Country… and I Believe in God

I know this one is going to piss off people on both sides of the current political divide… does that make me a moderate?

I hear definitions bandied about by the opponents in the current fields of debate.

I also think education is a lifelong activity, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, our scientific knowledge is not sacrosanct, we are not the apex of intelligence in evolution considering the scales of geologic time.

You can’t be a __________ (fill in the blank for political, religious, philosophical worldview, or economic beliefs here) because if you were a REAL _____________ (repeat label here) you would believe _______________ (insert your favored doctrines displaying your list of extensively researched doctrines here).

What your worldview is, political, religious, or economic ideologies are, are not based upon what others think you believe in, but on what you yourself believe. Don’t let others quantify or qualify your beliefs by their presumptions or preconceptions of what you should or should not believe.

It is always the same. I indicate where I stand, they say the old tired crap:

oh, so you think _______________ and ____________ and ______________ .

And almost always it's the same stuff you hear being spewed, by both sides about the other side that sounds almost identical. You can’t possibly love this country because _____________________________ (accusatory misinformation here) You can’t possibly believe in freedom if you think ________________ and _____________ and _______________. (insert your ideas based on stereotypical behavior here) You’re not patriotic if you ________________. (Dissent is frequently seen as disloyalty instead of the reminder of work we still need to do as a nation.) How much you love this country is not based upon how other’s define patriotic displays.

You can’t possibly have a scientific mind or worldview if you claim to believe in god.

Have you forgotten who the first real scientists were? Churchmen. Galileo Galilei, the father of the experimental scientific method, astronomer, and physicist was also a devout Roman Catholic (Sharratt, M. (1994). Galileo: Decisive Innovator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978–0–521–56671–1.) That one is the biggest blunder I run into regularly.

Likewise, “you can’t possibly be a real believer (in God) if you believe in __________________.” (pick the current topic of debate in theologically oriented forums regarding scientific discoveries regarding the planet.) ***harsh klaxon sound here*** Wrong! All truth is God’s truth! I can’t help that you won’t listen to reason and the evidence.

The bottom line is this. Do not, for one moment think that your ignorance of a subject is equal to my well-studied knowledge of a subject. I have bitten my tongue so many times because someone said something that sounded “not right” because I hadn’t any interest in deeper study of that subject. I have been going well beyond what my educators presented since my second-grade teacher told me a barracuda is not a fish but a car. (Lots of chevy commercials that year.) Teachers are not perfect, they have their faults, and their own gaps in their bodies of knowledge according to what their true level of interest is in that subject.

And don’t attempt to argue from a standpoint of whatever side you’re on has always acted in educated, intelligent, compassionate ways. Science had its moments (cold fusion and Piltdown man) religion has it moments (The crusades, the inquisitions, theocratic societies like Iran, Calvin’s Geneva, the civil wars that followed the reformation), and American democracy have had their moments (WWII Internment of Japanese-Americans, German-Americans, Italian-Americans, The Trail of Tears, Manifest Destiny) capitalism seems to produce its own disasters on a regular basis (depressions, recessions, “corrections,” “panics,” sell-offs, declines, greed, envy, and murder) and yes there’s been plenty of debate surrounding these topics.

But my point is if you can’t live with embarrassments and real histories of these “ideologies,” don’t know about them, or just choose to ignore them, then don’t bother to condemn them based only on what you think you know or feel about them. Because there will always be someone out there, the nebulous “out there,” that will know more than you, and you’ll only embarrass yourself. And once upon a time, and we’ve somehow forgotten this, you’re entitled to believe or not believe in these ideologies, but civil discussion, seeking to understand why others hold these beliefs, is better than being nasty, and name-calling. Truth is truth and it is not tied to any one person. Otherwise, the argumentum ad hominem would not be a logical fallacy. It only serves to invalidate one’s argument.

We sometimes make fun of others by saying “can’t we all just get along?” But it’s a legitimate question. We’ve forgotten that one of the strengths of America is that when we work towards cooperation and unity, it makes this nation mighty, a powerhouse of democracy, intrepidus et invictus, fearless and invincible. Otherwise, we are just like children squabbling over sweets that do not exist.