Like the ancient Babylonians, modern scientists admirably seek to build grand towers of truth. The question for those of us watching from down below -- are today's towers beginning to crash like theirs did? Have the builders reached too high, ironically leaving the rest of us in the confusion of their collapsed efforts...?
To put it simply -- science is truth-by-testing. And so modern scientists doggedly test every hypothesis from apples to zebras, from our brains to our barbarity. Often they arrive at great summits of truth in the forms of better tools, newer understandings, broader vistas of cosmic knowledge. But now, you see, this is where the Biblical story has relevance, for in these tireless efforts to soar ever higher, scientists begin speaking in different tongues. They test, they question, they re-test and very soon their different conclusions trigger academic arguments among themselves that leave the rest of us in a Babel of confusion.
Just listen....!
In the latest examples we have highly qualified experts giving us a learned conundrum of conclusions about mammograms.... a bustle of theories about climate change....a clash of opinions about the psychology of the mind and the pharmacology of cures....a bazaar of choices about how to lose weight....a hundred-and-one conflicting ways to decipher the archaeology of the Bible...second opinions about second opinions about medical procedures.... all enthusiastically mis-reported by a lay press whose goal is more titillation than information.
I ask you -- what's a poor Babylonian to do....?
Well, here are some un-scholastic murmurings from my over-whelmed psyche. Without holding a grudge about our dedicated, but Babel-ling scientific investigators, my best informed instincts beckon me to a few of the time-tested truths with which you and I have grown up. None of which are scientifically valid, you understand, but gosh they just feel so damn good.
Like the comfort of fat foods....good wines....taking naps instead of exercising....drinking too much coffee and eating too many sweets...reading the Bible as coming from God and not skeptical archaeologists ...finding a doc I trust and just turning off the Babel of on-line doctoring that disagrees with him/her....voting for leaders to whom I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt rather than always doubting their benefits.
So okay my self- indulgence makes me a little primitive. But in world of too many differing towers of truth, sometimes I need the comfort of belief. Belief in what I know even more than what I read!
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God I'm glad someone has the balls to admit this. Me too...!!
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