Be willing to change your opinion
Ryan Scott
“God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance,” said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
This was not said in order to criticize religion, but to make a point.
The idea is that God has historically been used to explain the things that we do not understand.
As our knowledge has expanded over the course of history, the role of God has decreased.
At one point or another, people assumed that God was responsible for the sun rising everyday, but we now have a well accepted scientific explanation for that.
However, people are very precious about their beliefs, which is fair and understandable.
If you grow up believing in something, it can be anything really, it is hard to let go of it, it just so happens that religion is a prominent example.
The point that I am trying to make, using this as an example, is that people should not be so precious about their beliefs.
It is good to believe in things. I would argue that it is an essential part of what makes us human.
But also, as humans, we have the ability to understand information that is presented to us and to learn from it.
We know so much more than we did 100 years ago and who knows what we will know 100 years from now.
Being able to and being willing to change our beliefs based on information that we get is essential to our growth.
Be willing to waver. Don’t be pointlessly stubborn about accepting things that have been proved by math, science and logic.
Certain beliefs that people still continue to hold in modern society are astonishing.
How anyone can believe that the world is only 6,000 years old is beyond me or most people with a relative amount of education.
Again, I don’t mean this is a direct slight to religion as a whole, more of the literal interpritation of it.
As popular science educator Bill Nye recently pointed out in his debate with creationist Ken Ham, there are trees on earth that have been here for nearly 10,000 years.
“How could these trees be there if there was an enormous flood 4,000 years ago?” Nye said.
This is not just about religion and I am not trying to bash Christians.
Believe in God. Believe what you need to believe, but don’t let it get in the way of progress.
Don’t let it get in the way of logic.
Be willing to accept things that are known to be true.
I am no scientist, but I certainly trust the knowledge of those who are, not things that were written in a book thousands of years ago when we still believed the world was flat.
