Sunday, July 16, 2006

Cosmic Religious Feeling

We were sitting out of doors on the balcony at our local brewery enjoying dinner. My girlfriend and her friend excused themselves to use the restroom, leaving me alone with her friend’s boy friend, a stranger. He had said he was a high school biology teacher. That’s interesting, I thought. I couldn’t resist, “So being a biology teacher, tell me, do you have any doubts about evolution?”

He looked at me for a moment, studying my expression and began, “It is a theory and there are questions still to be answered but no, I think the theory is a solid one. Why do you?”

Oh man, here it came.

“Yes, I guess I do. I have a hard time swallowing the idea.”

He threw his huge bearded head back and started laughing from his gut. “I’m sorry. Really, I’m not laughing at you. I just didn’t think people like you existed anymore. What gives you trouble?”

“I’m not going to pretend to be an expert. It’s just that it seems so far fetched, I mean first there’s nothing and then the nothing turns into something and after enough time passes there are single-cell organisms and then after more time passes there are mult-cellular organisms and now here we are eating dinner in a beer garden discussing it. It seems a little far fetched to me.”

He nodded and began about proteins. I nodded but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was sitting in a small desk in a high school class room. He knew his text book very well. And as he told me about this stuff called DNA, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. I gazed off at the pink and violet clouds and the band of orange on the horizon as the sun sank behind the bay. I wanted to fly away to a different world. A magical world.

Someone asked me what happiness is. It’s hard to define. But so is that feeling I get when I watch the sunset in summer at the park while kids play catch with their fathers and young lovers walk together with their arms wrapped around each other. Maybe that is happiness.

Ask anyone what makes them happy and they’ll probably describe something like a park or a pet or something big and colorful like love. I’ve never heard anyone say that science makes them happy because science is a different kind of thing than a sunset or the buzz of restaurant. It’s a tool to describe the world not the world itself. Science and technology are wonderful things but they aren't happiness itself only a vehicle. It isn’t the internet that will bring joy to a poor child in Africa but the poetry he reads on it.

People do not need to be “educated” which to often these days means indoctrinated. They only need to be watered and nurtured and their curiosity encouraged. I think we are creatures created to experience happiness like flowers are creatures created to bloom.

4 comments:

Michael said...

I'm not going to start an evolution vs. creation discussion with you. Both ideologies involve a lot of faith, but in much different sources.

My comment is on science bringing happiness.

Going back to the days of grammar school, we had that once a week trip to the library. Like any grade school, the library itself was small. One wall was fiction, the other wall was non-fiction.

Every week when our class had its library hour, you would see a horde of kids on the non-fiction side, clamoring around, looking for their book to read.

Then in total contrast, the other side of the room was vacant, with the exception of one student. Reading about science, from Astronomy to Biology to Physics interested him, and learning as much as he could about something brought him joy... made him happy.

That was part of my childhood. Learning and dissecting new concepts and ideas made me happy.

Matt said...

I've tried for the last hour to write a thoughtful response back and have realized that I am in a very big mess. I think I could only explain myself accuratly through a vulcan mind meld. But in an attempt with language let me say that I was that one kid looking through the science books, reading about the stars and dinosaurs reveling in how big and far away these things were compared to me.

I'd also say that for scientist and engeers etc. the process of discovery and construction might be the source of thier happiness. I'd have to ask them.

Let me start again. If things are randomly happening then would it not be silly to feel happy about a random movement. Perhaps contemplating chaos could be satisfying...... ah bolacs.

Maybe some people are happy about being the product of random chance who knows. I can only write about myself.

I guess i could rewrite this post as such: I'd like to live in Lothlorien. I day dream about fairy land. People who laugh at me and believe only in the ideas of writers of news paper articles and text books, frustrate me to no end.

Matt said...

Ann, a mutant...ha ha. You've made me smile. Thanks for your encouragement.

Anonymous said...

i appreciated your response to the science teacher. i don't know if the "argument" went further, but I appreciate that you were questioning and not arguing.

i think i know the bar/restaurant as well... great view.