I often hear it said that religion is about belief and science is about knowledge.
To my thinking, the reverse of that seems to be a more useful paradigm.
Scientists are the first to tell us not to get too attached to any scientific idea, because those ideas are always changing as new data come in. And that’s exactly as it should be.
How can we call something “knowledge” when it is forever subject to change? Is the “knowledge” that we “knew” fifty years ago which has now been superseded by new discoveries still “knowledge”? Was it ever? Is the new information now knowledge? Will it be fifty years from now?
Was the Recapitulation Theory – “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” – ever really knowledge when it was considered “science” in the 19th century? Did it just stop being knowledge when it was superseded by better evolutionary biology in the 20th century? Can we be certain the better knowledge won’t be superseded yet again in the 21st century?
How about Scientific Racism? Was it really ever “knowledge”?
It certainly was belief at one time.
In order to function in life we need to believe something. I can think of no better source for our beliefs than current, well-established science. And the minute the science changes, we would do well to let our beliefs follow – always keeping in mind that they are just the best beliefs we have.
So can we ever really “know” anything?
Certainly!
We know full well when we are suffering.
We know beyond doubt when we are filled with joy.
We know when we are fearful or angry.
We know when we are tired or hungry, and who is qualified to dispute it?
We can know love.
Knowledge of feelings, while susceptible, as anything, to misinterpretation, is capable of being apprehended with reliable certainty. When I have a kidney stone, I trust science to tell me what to believe about how it came to be or what I should do about it, but I am the world’s foremost authority on how it makes me feel.
The feeling of satisfaction from a job well done, or from a charitable act, is a truth that can never be replaced by any new theory.
And this realm of feelings falls squarely in the domain of religion. It was religion’s job, long before science was invented, to help us deal with our sufferings, and to reconnect us to our “spiritual” equilibrium, to our human social order, and to our changing world.
We may never “know” if the Big Bang is the final word on how the universe began, though it can serve, for now, as a useful belief. But human beings usually know whether they have found deep contentment in life.
And their quest for it is the stuff religions have always been made of.