Education

Hello World!

I’m using my daily thoughts and encounters to discover as many things as possible which bring together, rather than divide, our various belief systems and cultures.

"I wish I could have that belief system. But I went to school soooo.... DAMN YOU LOGIC!!!"

This quote comes from a stand-up routine delivered by the young comedian Daniel Sloss. He is, I must stress, very funny, and the above line is his response to the idea of God and religion in general.

As a Christian you may think I might take immediate offence at such a comment. I don’t, as I believe this to be a throwaway line designed just for getting a laugh, rather than a method of communicating a controversial point of view. He is a comedian after all, so such an assumption is not too far-fetched.

So I am not here to badmouth Daniel. Why then have I highlighted this particular quote? Well, maybe I am not giving the world enough credit, but it seems to me this is a popular view. Education, I often hear, teaches us that religion can only be irrational and improvable, therefore should not be indulged, and consequently God cannot exist.

But wait a moment. I am certainly educated – I have a University degree, four A-levels and I write as a hobby. Here are some more people who were educated: Galileo, Pascal, Kepler, Faraday, Pasteur. All religious men.

So what exactly is the problem here? No atheist can seriously back up a claim that theists are all stupid. But has religion done enough to reconcile itself with the apparent juxtaposition of scientific knowledge? These questions set me in a slight quandary in terms of what this blog is setting out to do. I could rattle off example after example of how science can go hand-in-hand with Christian beliefs. But I cannot speak for every religion, and convincing you all to become Christians is not what I’m trying to do; I am, after all, not much of a preacher.

However, I am trying to find the common ground we can share in harmony. In education and science we do have this. We could debate religion endlessly, but we all know what 2+2 makes. My point here is that all of us, including the religious amongst us, have experienced the same education, give or take a few particular subjects our individual talents lean us towards or away from. If one of my atheist friends tells me the Universe began with a big bang, and was not set in motion by God, fine. In response my belief would be that God said, “Let there be light”, and (BANG!) there was light. Two opposing beliefs, yet neither of them refuting the scientific evidence we know about the origin of the Universe.

So let us not ridicule each other for our different beliefs, and certainly not base such ridicule on what we have learned. For each one of us on this planet, whether we are called Einstein or the class dunce, knows less than 1% of the world’s total knowledge. What evidence and information we all have yet to discover!

Reconciling one’s religious beliefs with scientific fact is a wonderfully exciting challenge, which I am enjoying immensely. But reconciliation should be happening between all of us, no matter what we believe. We know what we know, and should not assume our neighbour is uneducated simply because they follow a different religion, or football team, or method of cooking rice.

Instead of ridicule, I vote we show each other interest, and who knows what benefit we each might gain from a simple but regular exchange of ideas.

Thanks for listening, and take care.