Sunday, March 25, 2007

Waxing Scientific

OK, my last post was about how I'm cheating on this blog by writing another blog about my eye surgery. That blog is meant to be informative. But here I feel I have more freedom. And for a moment I want to talk about science. Being a discussion about science, this may wander into religion, because of course the two are inextricably connected. Feel free to stop now if this makes you uncomfortable.

Friday night I had dinner with my dad, his wife McGennis, her friend Pat, and my lovely wife, Sharon. As my eye surgery was the biggest news, we spent a considerable amount of time discussing it, including describing the procedure to Pat, who had previously had cataract surgery (she is 80, but you'd never guess). This led me to think about how science has advanced. A scant 250 years ago, Ben Franklin put some glass in a frame and could see better. Today, we are inserting lenses into the eye, and you can get up and walk out 15 minutes later. This, to me, is truly science fiction stuff. All of us who have bad vision were, only a few years ago, convinced that we were to mess with glasses or contacts our whole lives. Now, Lasik is achievable by the everyman (thank you Lasik factories) and those who shouldn't have Lasik can become a cyborg like me.

The advances in science are amazing. Modern medicine has allowed people to continue playing golf well past the time when 1,000 years ago they would have been eaten by lions or fallen off a cliff. In the 1970s, scientists were convinced the world was cooling. Now they are convinced the world is warming (not that I disagree). What will be achieved next? What will be proved next? I equate my eye surgery to buying a high-definition television: the technology keeps getting better and better, but at some point you just have to do it. If you keep waiting and waiting for the next best thing, you'll be waiting forever. And I'm sure that, even though I am having this surgery, if something better comes along 20 years from now, they'll be able to take out these lenses and do something else. I have faith in science.

The other thing we discussed on Friday night at dinner was religion. McGennis and Sharon, and I believe Pat at one point in her life, attend the same church. It is an extremely liberal Episcopalian church, where dissenting opinions are welcomed and McGennis' Jewish friend teaches Sunday School with his Christian wife. Sharon had been "church shopping" for a while, having been raised Catholic but having grown away from that faith. Through this discussion of a class Sharon is taking to join the church, I was asked why I'm not attending with her. The answer is that I was not raised with spirituality (read: faith) and that religion makes me uncomfortable. From my dad, I finally heard the explanation for why I was raised without a church. My mom didn't want to raise my brother and me Catholic, and neither my mom nor my dad knew of a better alternative. What was instilled in me, however, was education. And through education, and a mother who has a PhD in psychology and basic behavioral science, I discovered what I found to be truth: the empirical method.

Now I am not a scientist. I was a political science major in college, and now work in a career that is much closer to art than science. But even when drawing analytical conclusions, I want facts. If I can't see it, then I can't state that it's happening. If a human source says that drugs are being moved, I need corroboration from another method, because people's recollections and understandings are inherently fallible (just ask any criminal lawyer about the value of eyewitness testimony).

So when it comes to science and my eyes, I trust and have faith. The FDA did a clinical trial and there are the results- you can go read them on the internet. When it comes to God, unfortunately I can't see it, and can't prove it. I gained my faith in science through its process. How can you gain faith in God when there's nothing to guide you but a conflicting text written by men with a mission? Faith in God is funny- there seem to be two ways to get it: as a child it is fed to you by parents or church, or you find it along the way, usually through some sort of intense enlightening experience. I'm told that having children can cause that enlightenment, because something that couldn't have been you created this magical creature.

I've always wished that I had faith in God. It would give me some peace of mind that where we are is not all there is. But it doesn't jive with my faith in science. And what I will always have faith in, is that there will always be a bigger and better TV out there. I guess that's some small consolation for the lack of eternal grace. Oh well.

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