This I Believe

I have been thinking about what I would write to the "This I Believe" program on NPR for a long time. Listening to the essays on the radio and through podcasts, I've often considered going through the exercise of writing one myself, but what I would write has been an assorted variety of whatever is on my mind at the time.

I believe in a lot of things, but when I started thinking about how I would explain my beliefs to my new son when he gets older, I realized that I could sum it up to say that I believe that nothing is absolute.

I would normally dive into the topic of beliefs by explaining the difference between things we know and those that we just suspect without concrete evidence. In a classical science versus religion debate, you can separate beliefs as ideas you hold to be true in the absense of proof, versus ideas that are supported by observable facts and can often be recreated by an experimenter. Belief in religion, by definition cannot be proven.

Some people believe that religion and science are, by their nature and definition, opposed to one another. They believe they you can't be a scientist of faith or a true member of your religion and also accept science. While there are areas were science and faith directly contradict on another, the vast majority of the ideas that religion deals with and the tenets that make up science do not have anything to do with each other.

While I believe that science holds the best hope of answering questions and solving the great mysteries of life, it does not and cannot answer some of the important questions in life, from the simple to the profound. Should we treat each other nicely, is murder wrong, or is it wrong to benefit at the expense of someone else's suffering.

You can't prove or disprove a moral code.

By my definition, religion is not confined to matters of organized faiths. I've never liked the idea of a group of people persistantly proclaiming that they know the unprovable truth about the deepest mysteries of life and humanity and everyone else is deluded. Because faith has no prove, I believe it has to be approached as a tenative or possible thing. In fact, religion's best power is the ability to have people explore their path in life and make corrections when things are going off track. But beyond major religions, I believe there are many other mysteries in life that are worth exploring. Ghosts, reincarnation, telepathy, human energy, and precognition are all areas that are more like religion than science. That doesn't mean they aren't interesting or important, just that no one has written a book and organized a church around them.

Sometimes science is seen as a way of exploring religion. Experiments have been done to measure the weight of a human soul, for example. Other times, scientific discoveries have threatened religious doctrine, such as when Copernicus described how the earth goes around the sun. Religion and science survived the battle that arose from that new idea, but both were changed.

Not anchoring your beliefs, yet being certain of what you know and not adrift in confusion is a good way to live your life. I believe it's best not to deal in absolutes. Even science rewrites theories from time to time when new evidence arises. Keeping your mind open and not getting stuck in absolutes is the best way to greet the new things that you encounter in life.