The importance of having a scientific mind

If you have been good enough so far to have made your way through my musings on each blog, you will have got a sense so far for how much faith I put in the importance of scientific rigour. You will also know I moved from my position believing in an all powerful Catholic God to one where I have abandoned all things religious and now believe only in the virtue of a scientific mind set.

I have always been of rational and logical mind (except when I’m playing indoor football), and have always sought to make sense of things, and so I was always destined to leave behind my religious roots which I put down to the influence of my parents, and my desire to be a good son in my tender years.

One question that has dogged philosophers for millennia has been the purpose of our existence. I don’t really put much thought into that question which of course is purely subjective and even the greatest philosophical minds haven’t been able to agree.

Humanity as we exist now, didn’t just roll up one day, knock on the door and shout ‘ta-dah we’re here’ of course, and so the question of our purpose is somewhat irrespective for me. We have evolved over a few billions years and our exact starting point (at least in our current form) doesn’t therefore hold much relevance, at least not in my estimation. The more important question (for me) is what do we do with ourselves whilst we are here.

We of course choose not to be born. We arrive and then through the support of our parent(s) or at least our carers, and extended family (whatever that might look like) and other various ‘actors’ in our life, teachers among them, find our way through the challenge of childhood and the ‘trauma’ of adolescence before being unleashed into the uncompromising tenure of adulthood. We then come out the other end as middle-aged wishing it would slow down before making our way into our later years trying to remember how we got here and why we didn’t make more of it when we were younger.

One of the answers I believe (and I am also of the opinion that it should be an obligation of ours) is that we should strive continuously to learn. Now I do appreciate that if you are a rough sleeper with addiction issues and just trying to get food before you bed down for the night, the mission of continuing to learn is way down the list of priorities – learning to survive on a daily basis is certainly a mission in itself. But where and when possible we should endeavour to learn, and I’m not necessarily talking about back in the classroom kind of thing, but rather reading books, articles, watching documentaries, debating with your friends, colleagues, acquaintances and ‘the others’ – those whom we need to know most about but we choose not too!

One of the problems I have with religion (as you might have picked up on in some of my previous musings) is that it is (by and large) already written and therefore there’s not much to learn but rather, like school, you show your observance by demonstrating your ability to memorise and recite. Of course you live a good life, or at least that’s the essence of your spiritual values instilled in you.

Ultimately though, you learn the prayers, you consume the stories, you take the sacraments and vows, you attend the services, you follow the rituals, but if truth be told, nothing much changes. You listen to the priest, or the rabbi, or the Imam, your confess your sins, you offer up praise, you recite verses from the holy book, you ask for forgiveness, you pray for strength, you show your humility, you share peace and you ‘break bread’ with others, (in this case are your brethren), you leave, and you come back the next day, or week, or month, and you do it all again. And where there are those among your midst that harbour questions, criticisms or exhibit discontent or flout the laws, room for them is limited and exclusion is often an option exercised.

With science, and more importantly a scientific mind set, it is obligatory and expected (of you) that you question a theory or a hypothesis even if it has been proven to be correct - it is viewed as your duty to question. You ask or can expect colleagues to re-run your tests in the same or under differing conditions, and when you write the result, your publish in various outlets and journals and invite your peers to critique, question, or condemn.

This process continues to be repeated, and reassuring among all of this is the underlying principle, at least where most things are concerned (across the various disciplines in the scientific field) that there are no absolutes. There is an expectation that new answers will continue to reveal themselves in due course, and beliefs established up to that point will be reviewed, rewritten and then ‘we go again.’ There are of course many examples where experiments and results have been wrong, even falsified, but that’s the beauty of science, it tends to uncover these. Quite simply, the same cannot be said for religion.

As we discover and uncover more about the universe we live in which, has only been made possible by scientific advance and/or technological invention, you will of course have those of a religious hue who will say that each discovery is part of ‘His plan for us’ (and that’s another issue, it’s always his plan, never her plan). This in turn, gives licence for people like the pastor from Northern Ireland that recently claimed that Coronavirus was God’s revenge for the recent introduction of both Equal Marriage legislation and the extension of UK abortion laws into Northern Ireland in 2020. In a recent interview however, God denied all knowledge or responsibility for such and confirmed that he had never met the pastor in question!

For us to progress, it is imperative that we continue to seek answers to various questions yet unanswered. For us to progress, it’s vital that we accept answers to questions that have been subject to full scientific rigour. For us to progress, we need to be prepared to accept uncomfortable truths and if not abandon, at least put the side for the time being, deeply held beliefs that in the face of research, study and experiment have been resolved, debunked or discredited.

I appreciate that this requires our being willing to be laid bare as it were as we begin to unpick those things that make up (or form part of) our identity but do we not wish to grow and learn, do we not wish to know as much as we can whilst we are here? Are we not truly in pursuit of reality and truth? We all subscribe to notions of truth and justice yet when so often confronted with them we ‘revert to type.’

The only way to really achieve growth, maturity and progress is to adopt a scientific mind set. You don’t have to be a scientist to at least think like one. That said if you can come up with another way that is as rigorous you have my undivided attention. And with it the cycle begins again.