Science as Reverence

I have often thought that science, at its best, is one of the most reverent things human beings do.

Not reverent in the ceremonial sense, but in the sense of taking reality seriously enough to study it honestly.

To look closely. To ask carefully. To admit when we do not understand. To follow evidence where it leads, even when it unsettles us.

That has always seemed to me like a form of respect.

Because if the universe is real, then it deserves more than slogans. It deserves attention.

Science does not begin by declaring mystery solved. It begins by acknowledging mystery and refusing to cover it too quickly.

That is one of the reasons I find it so difficult to understand the hostility some forms of religion have toward inquiry.

If there is no God, then science is simply our best effort to understand the world as it is.

But if there is a God, then science still seems meaningful. In that case, it becomes the study of creation - the effort to understand the structure, complexity, and beauty of what has been made.

Under either possibility, inquiry has dignity.

What does not make sense to me is the insistence that praise without understanding is somehow higher than understanding itself.

That a creator would be more pleased by flattery than by discovery. More honored by repetition than by attention.

That has never seemed plausible to me.

A mindless reverence that fears knowledge does not feel sacred. It feels insecure.

And insecurity is not what I would expect from anything worthy of the word divine.

So I have come to think that there is something strangely spiritual about the honest use of the mind.

Not because science answers everything, but because it accepts the responsibility to keep looking.

And that, to me, is closer to reverence than certainty without inquiry.

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When the Same God Is Not Enough

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Morals Without Permission

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A Map of the Questions for Civilization -- Table of Contents