Saturday, November 13, 2010

Science is Gospel

I don’t watch much news. It isn’t that I don’t care. It’s just depressing. It makes me feel powerless. I have no power to change any of the awful things that are happening in the world and I know it. Furthermore it’s nearly completely one sided - only the awful, the apocalyptic, the disastrous, the crises. They hardly cover any of the beautiful, the inspiring, the moving, the touching. That doesn’t sell. It doesn’t titillate.

Except.

One genre of news - science and technology. I read that quite closely. Why? Because there’s always something exciting, new, innovative, revolutionary. It’s a perpetual dawn! You can read the science/tech section of the news and come away saying, “YES!”



Science is gospel.

As many of you from a Christian background may know, ‘gospel’ means ‘good news’ (In Greek it’s euangelion. We get the word ‘angel’ from the same root as the last part of that word. So, I always see a glorious angel trumpeting good news when I think of that word.).  The fact of the matter is that there is great, glorious, good news happening in the sciences everyday - the Large Hadron Collider, genetic mapping and engineering, clean energy, steps closer to fusion, new species constantly being found, stretches of the universe seen for the first time, new fossils exposing our and our relative's past, medical breakthroughs, computer innovations, technological advancements...The list goes on!!!




Bottom line, read more science and technology news. It’s gospel and it’s good for your soul.





3 comments:

  1. Interesting concept. I like the vision of perpetual dawn. But I see it only as a balance to the perpetual sunset. If we are only focused on dawn (metaphorically) how do we learn to understand sufferring and gain empathy for those who suffer. I read the news (online, no more papers for me) I want to always be reminded why I do what I do, and so as not to isolate myself from the rest of existence. Just thinking here, no hypothesis. J

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  2. You're absolutely right, Jay. It's a bad, bad idea to struthiously stick our head in the sand. I do often check the headlines from the BBC for international news. But, if I hear the word 'recession' one more time, though, I'm going to go bananas.

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  3. I think I originally jotted this blog's idea down a couple weeks ago when a guest preacher at church was talking about how we read/watch/gawk at the news far too much and that its one sided nature gives us a negatively skewed view of reality. No, the world isn't all bad. Some things are extremely positive!!!

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