The How and the Why

First of all, I'd like to take a moment to say you have no idea how fun it is for me to actually have somewhat of an audience for my many random musings. In the past they just bounced around, lonely in my brain, forgotten before I could really give them shape.  But now I get to inflict them liberally on any poor soul who follows my link! Mwahaha.

Anyways... what brings me to the keyboard today is thoughts on the tension between "religion" and "science". ( I use quotes, because those are both very broad, overarching terms.) Those two entities, supposedly standing in stark opposition to one another. You must ignore one to really believe in the other, or so the common logic now goes.  I, however, think this tension is somewhat unwarranted. 

Why? I'm so glad you asked.  Because I think the two exist to answer two different questions.  Science is about the how, about process.  Religion (and philosophy) is about the why, about meaning.  Often it seems the two get mixed up and start trying to answer each others Question, making things much more confusing then maybe they need to be.

Let's think about an analogy for a moment.  Say there is a married couple who loves each other so much, and now want to share that love with a child, made in the image of the two of them.  So they plan, and they prepare, and they come together and make a baby.  Years pass and this child gets older, and starts wondering about things.  He comes to his mom or dad and asks 'How did I get here?" "Well, dear" the parent replies, "we desired you and planned for you and wanted to share our love with you, so we came together and made you."  Later on this child gets into school and starts learning the scientific mechanics behind how human beings come about. The sperm and the egg and cell division and what not, and concludes that his parents are ignorant liars.

But both scenarios are true.  When the parents where questioned, they were answering the why question, and they answered truthfully.  If they had not planned, and desired, and come together that child would not have existed.  But of course the school books were correct too, only they were answering the question of process, not purpose.

No analogy is perfect, of course, so only take it for what it's worth.  But what I'm trying to highlight is that there are two questions that consume a lot of the human races' thoughts, books, struggles, and quests. And that is why are we here, and how does it all happen? And they are not mutually exclusive questions. Just because we get really good at describing how a process works, doesn't mean we need to throw out the Intention that brought it about in the first place.

The why question of course is much more abstract, which is why it sometimes gets the boot.  But just because something is abstract doesn't mean its unanswerable. Or that there isn't an answer that is actually real.  Perhaps that's why were were given the gift of logic (abstract thing that it is).  After all, if you take away the why, and leave only the how, subtract meaning from process, you take away everything that makes life as we know it truly, intrinsically worthwhile.