Education, Science, and Religion.

 

Education, Science, and Religion.

When I was little and on the farm, I saw more animals than people. Animals lived life reacting to what the world did with them. Farm animals waited for humans to decide their fate and wild animals did some things instinctively to help themselves. It was in Israel and we had lots of sheep. Domestic sheep seemed to have very little initiative of their own. Years later I learned the Bible and in it, there was talk about lambs or “Peter, feed my sheep.” I realized that there are two kinds of people, shepherds, and sheep. Strangely, the shepherds are not always about taking care of the sheep. Many of them are living to compete with each other and only care about the sheep as a commodity.

The humans, who are sheep, learned over a long time to fend for themselves to some degree. First, it was by developing religions that competed against each other, and lately by using science, which is the learning of how the world works. In the last five hundred years or so, our present civilization decreased its interest in religions and reinvested it in science. Sadly, the vast knowledge of spirituality was lumped into one category and found itself competing against science. People either believed in religion, even the parts that made no sense to many, or science that now often is divided against itself, as religions used to be, and still are.

Religion and science became tools in the hands of the competing shepherds and both strove to keep the sheep busy working to stay alive, with no time or means to contemplate the big picture. However, necessity and increasing population brought some great advancement to the general population, the sheep. With that came easier life, to some, and exploitation of resources that should belong to all future generations. The competing shepherds or leaders only care about winning the game they are playing now. At the same time, the common people, now exposed to science, began to assess the ongoing situation and do what only religions used to do, considering where all this is leading us. Will we even have a future in the world?

Learned people banded together and began questioning what the leaders were doing. The religions for different reasons also entered the fray. Some wished to follow the examples told in the ancient books literally, while others joined science to preserve a future for humanity. They call it stewardship of God’s gift, the world.

Science, now treated as a new religion, became the target for the leaders of some industries and big businesses. They sought to devalue its influence upon the common people. Around 1995, a new theory was popularized, advocating living in one’s own reality. Around the year 2000, we saw people denying the thing we call reality and believing something else. First, a few boys believed they were girls and vice versa, (without biological justification) creating uproar and it expanded. Fake News became a legitimate industry propelling people to fame.

It pitted science against Alternate Reality. What used to be fiction became “other people’s reality.” The “truth” became an option resting on “beliefs.” Creationism, Intelligent design, Anti-vaccination, Holocaust revisionism, Police conspiracy, Alternative medicine, No Global Warming, Flat Earth movement, and thousands of other ideas became Skeptical Movements, according to Michael Shermer author of Heaven on Earth.

Margaret Atwood tells about a child that had a monster under the bed. Nothing could convince him otherwise. She told him that if you place a cabbage at exactly this spot, the monster can’t come out. He slept wonderfully.

Between March and September in 2020, 200,000 Americans died from COVID-19 and people were not vaccinating. In Canada, there was a shortage of vaccines, so a much higher rate accepted the vaccine, saving countless lives.

 Until a short time ago, people refused to believe that there is Global Warming especially here where we sell fossil fuels. When we saw the outcome and evidence, North Americans pretended that there is nothing we can do, therefore can’t change. Now when we realize the cost of not acting, and we begin to see that money can be made on changing to clean energy, options are changing.

We are left with a new thriving industry that makes people popular by producing and selling fake news and alternate realities. Reality shows make large profits and politicians win elections by fighting against science. Newspeople ride the wave by giving the imagined realities, what they call, equal time. Logic is no longer a decisive force, but another option. The scientists that we educate and employ must waste time arguing against irrational forces, while lives and property are being destroyed.

Any of us can get a thriving platform by selling falsehoods on Social Media. If the lie we tell is what people who hide from the truth want to hear, it goes viral. Yet, the universe is going as it should. Stars follow their paths, the weather follows atmospheric conditions, viruses mutate and evolve to increase their chance of survival, and the sheep….graze and give wool, meat, and milk. The shepherds only care about the growth of their business. The few who care are drowned in the crowd of those who don’t.

As a child, I watched the sheep milling around, getting organized by a dog, and heading to the mountain to graze. At night, they came home. They never questioned the shepherd. People study the world through science and religion, attempting to improve their situation. The leaders sometimes want to help and improve, or only want to compete with other leaders. At this point, there is only one option left. Let nature reduce the herd or take control, use knowledge, and direct action in the right way.

The right way is to care for all sheep and use their united power to gain a future. We took the knowledge and we have no choice but to use it.

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