Post #156 "Ultimate Power II"

Now to science's quest. Science, as religion, is also concerned with Ultimate Power and that is why there is a power struggle. So how does science's quest for creating power compare to religion's authority and ownership over power...over the Ultimate power of its God? If science's quest differed there should be no controversy as there would be no threat. No one's territory would be threatened. There is, however, an enormous controversy which suggests that religion and science are basically defining and claiming the same turf and competing for the same goal....a struggle for Ultimate Power. As religion claims ownership to the Ultimate power of its God, science's challenge is not to ownership of religion's Power....religion's God, but to a redefining of Ultimate Power, a redefining of who or what is God. Science is challenging religion's God....for a new kind of Ultimate Power. The main kick to religion from science is that science is challenging not only religion's claim to Ultimate Power but to the very existence of religion's God. Do the elemental questions of 'Who are We?', 'Where Have We Come From?', and 'What is Our Purpose?', define for science, as for religion, its purpose and quest? As science must continue its opposition and disagreement with Faith and Tradition, it must appear to be presenting itself as the opposition to, or contrary to, religion. Would science even allow itself to address the same basic questions of existence? It would seemingly be unthinkable and unspeakable, as the formation of science was based on doubt and on questioning or on whatever was perceived to be in opposition to religion with its faith based teachings and tradition.

Science questions everything until a bed-rock of fact is reached. Religion does not appreciate being challenged, questioned, or being asked to be a bed-rock of fact. Religion resents being asked to prove itself. This intellectual approach of science is certainly contrary to the faith-based methods of religion. The birth of science, based on Reason, based on the human intellect, was in particular a rebellion to authority, and in particular to the very established authority of religion. Where religion has no questions that cannot be answered through Faith, science, on the other hand, has many unanswered questions about the natural world.

Cosmologist and physicist, Evalyn Gates, in her book Einstein's Telescope, pp1-5, notes that the world of science has been tipped upside down when bigger and better telescopes revealed a world that did not act at all the way it was supposed to act. Gates says that "in a sense, science has fallen through a rabbit hole, and the world in which we find ourselves is far more preposterous that any Carrollian adventure." (p.4) Gates continues, "Before we can look for answers, we first have to understand the the question." But does science think to consider the questions humanity most needs answers to, those basic questions to existence, or does it seek to form its own questions, thereby confusing the issue of what is Real and basic to existence.