stage two
Questioning Science
Stage Two is about questioning science. It is important to understand that in the same way that no organised religion can be true, it is also impossible that science can provide all the answers to life’s questions. Accepting this means letting go of science as a saviour stand in, for when your religious saviours are gone.
This is often as much a leap of faith as it is to let religion go sideways. However, in the same way that you don’t have to let go of God when you let go of religion, you don’t have to let go of science just because it doesn’t have all the answers. You just need to learn to embrace its uncertainties.
If you can embrace the uncertainty that science can ever provide all the answers to why things are as they are, this will free you to have a fun relationship with science, without depending on it to plug the hole in yourself left when organised religion was removed.
twin gods
We are simultaneously taught about two gods in school – a religious one and a scientific one, but they are really twins, each mirroring the others search for answers and security.
Science appealed to me when religion lost its shine. Science could provide explanations for why the world behaved as it did and, to an extent, why humans behave as they do. With enough science I reasoned, everything would make sense.
I moved quickly from religious to scientific worship and felt very secure there for many years. As an adult the rationality of atheism has its own beauty and grandeur and the idea of questioning science never occurred to me. Science offers an intellectual worship, which can give the atheist a sense of superiority over the purely religious, though neither provides any real answers or sense of peace.
No answers from science? I hear the cries! But science has explained the makeup and rotations of the sun and moon and stars – the heavens of old. We have discovered DNA – the language of life as well as evolution – the rule of life’s development. If we don’t want to go on faith, then what more do we need than facts such as these? With enough facts it feels like we will at some point have all the answers.
But, in pursuit of answers, following science, without questioning science, leads to the need for more answers, but not just any answers, now we want ultimate answers – we want truth. If we can find the truths to why the particle, atom, molecule, gene, human world, stars and universe is as it is, then that must be like finding a true God.
And, what’s more, there is no actual need to find this truth within your lifetime. To live and die a happy atheist all you need is the belief that science will, eventually, find a truth. Then with truth in hand the human race will conquer all ills, build worm-hole travelling spaceships to explore the stars, and live forever with our genes gaining immortality.
Except, science will never provide this truth. It is impossible. How do I know this, because science has discovered its own limitations! Beautiful isn’t it? I love science and questioning science is not about throwing out the scientific method, just not following it blindly in a search for ultimate truth.
Truth isn’t even what science tries to find. Any scientific theory, such as nothing travelling faster than the speed of light, is always open to be disproved. No matter how much evidence accumulates to support any theory, it is always open to being disproved.
As well as science not being about truth we have Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem. Godel showed that in Mathematics, there will always be true theories that we cannot prove. This applies across other systems as well, and essentially means there is no way science can ever find all the answers, it is a logical impossibility. See this video for a good explanation of Godel’s theorem.
What we have to learn when questioning science is that it is okay that science cannot provide all the answers, or stand in as a substitute for religion. A closer look at two scientific areas of inquiry – quantum physics & medicine will help us see this.
Quantum physics & The Uncertainty Principle
The quantum world is truly mind-bending. The reality we perceive is made up of ever smaller particles that behave in ways that can seem to make no sense at all. Especially nonsensical, at first discovery, is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.
The uncertainty principle is one of the key pillars upon which quantum physics rests. It refers to fundamental particles such as electrons, and in short it states that, in the example of the electron, there is no way to know the the exact position of such a particle, this is always uncertain. We can know the speed of an electron but not its position in space. Or, we can know its position in space at a given time, but not it’s speed at that time.
What this means is that, at a quantum level, it is impossible to make concrete predictions, we can only offer possibilities. Hence the uncertainty in the principle. Now, the leap to make here is that because, at a quantum level, reality is uncertain, don’t fight this or try to wish it away, instead embrace that there will never be an absolute explanation of reality.
Quantum Physics & Nothingness
There is no such thing as nothingness. This may sound like a spiritual espousal, but I am referring to current research which shows that even in the vacuum of space, at the quantum level, particles are continuously popping in and out of existence.
Stretch this idea out, and you’ll see that the idea that the universe has a start and end point, seems unlikely. A start and end point would mean that there was nothing before and after. However as there is quantum activity even in the “nothingness” of the vacuum of space this means there is always something. (1)
We will never see outside of our universe, and we’ll never know exactly how it came into existence, and how it will end, but if there is always something and “nothing” is really a human construction, based most likely on our narrow view of death, then what there could be is infinitely possible.
Here again the fact that we’ll never know the answers to such questions of what is possible is what questioning science is about. This is a key part of how we can learn acceptance of the fact of the limitations of human knowledge, through science, and that there is no need to find final true answers, even though it can be fun trying.
medicine & The mind body connection
Medicine, in our modern western world at least, is the application of science to the human body. It is also a good practical example of accepting the incompleteness of science and the importance of questioning science and the general orthodox views built up in any discipline.
The western medical model is long overdue a paradigm shift. We are brought up to believe that the mind and body are separate entities. Go to a medical doctor for your body problems, go to a psychotherapist for your mind problems. At a surface level these divisions can work. If you have a broken bone then you need it set and fixed with surgical intervention. If you are suffering from depression without any physical ailments then a psychotherapist is likely the best place to start.
However, more often than not there is a link between physical and mental symptoms. Illness, especially chronic illness and chronic pain, has a significant causal element related to the way we have learned to process emotions and our feelings. See the articles Mind Body Healing, ALIIGNED, and the book reviews of Healing Back Pain, Cured & When The Body Says No for more on this.
Questions & Answers
Science will always pose more questions than there are answers. There will always be open ended questions without answers. Stay alive to this and resist the urge to make it a substitute for religion to provide meaning to life.
While questioning science, continue to enjoy it as a wonderful tool to investigate the world and reveal knowledge, such as the something in nothing already discussed, and that we are living in a multiverse of infinite universes as discussed in the article Infinite Existence. Again, these ideas don’t need to be true in a religious sense but are great aids to feeling ourselves as part of an existence that extends far beyond our everyday lives.
Practicing The roadmap - Stage Two
As in Stage One with religion, if you find yourself overly attached to science providing all life’s answers then Get Into A Growth Mindset with this concept.
Continue to take time to yourself and spend time alone in nature as a way to help connect with the stillness inside yourself. Continue with the Loving Meditation & Oneness Meditation practices in Meditation – 3 Ways but don’t put any pressure on yourself to get this perfect in any way.
Read and start to apply the suggestions in ALIIGNED, remembering to stay open to the idea of who you are and what you want in this world and in your life.
Key Guides for this stage – Mindset, Healing Back Pain, Cured & When The Body Says No
are you ready for stage three?
Can you let go of science as the new world order and superior to religion? If this feels uncomfortable, stay with that feeling as you look around you for all the areas of life where science falls down, promises but doesn’t delivers or delivers, like in medicine, but not always with the right healing for long term health.
You don’t have to throw science away to move on to Stage Three, but you do have to stay alive to its flaws and fundamental uncertainties.
footnotes
(1) As Lawrence M. Krauss says in the excellent book, A Universe From Nothing, “we are all here today because of quantum fluctuations in what is essentially nothing….Quantum fluctuations, which otherwise would have been completely invisible, get frozen by inflation and emerge afterward as density fluctuations that produce everything we see! If we are all stardust, as I have written, it is also true, if inflation happened, that we all, literally, emerged from quantum nothingness.” Krauss, Lawrence. A Universe From Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing (p. 98). Simon & Schuster, paperback, 2012