The debate between science and religion rages on. We can argue about which one is right all day long, however we look at the world there is clear evidence for both. What we of course don't see is evidence of the deities in their material form, and many sciences only deal in material form. This is where the rift is created, just because a group of people find great benefit and personal enlightenment from religious practice, without a tangible connection to divinity there is no science to behold. Science on the other hand does have tangible concepts which when applied with mathematics and reason, correlate to evidence and proof. We could say that mathematics is simply a creation of humanity which is designed to put the universe into neat little boxes of number, so it's no wonder that when we apply this framework we only see things as a factor of that framework. We cannot see beyond it and we see everything as evidence for the framework. By forgetting that we invented the framework and created a mental construct of it we can be led to believe that the universe is a truly mathematical object. Only a mathematician could have such thoughts. Much like a painter saying the universe is a canvas, we have tendencies to put things into perspectives we are used to.
Where does this leave us? It leaves us with the option of using more than one method of looking at the world around us. Thinking about the likelihood of life in the universe, the odds of you being here and aware at this moment in time, it leaves me personally with little doubt something more is going on than we are aware of. The exact balance of laws and material that is required to bring about functioning matter, space, time, chemistry, biology, and consciousness is incredible. Some physicists have said that in a multiverse situation, all is possible so the fact that we exist is a simple product of infinite possibility. In the world of infinite possibility, it is callous and blind to discredit any form of deity. Surely if all is possible then there has to be everything possible. The two arguments seem to end up with the same conclusion, we either are the result of careful and considered balancing of laws which just happen to allow us to be here or we are in a universe that contains every possible eventuality which when we consider the limits of our imagination, it must be considerably richer and more diverse than that. After-all even the new forms of life we discover on Earth seem to boggle us from time to time.
It's been said that the equilibrium of the universe is actually zero, and all the energy, laws, matter, space, and time actually is nothing at all and only because of uncertainty occurring at the speed of light on a quantum level does anything happen at all. This is an ancient idea which redresses itself from time to time with each new level of understanding. We must accept that without being aware of the entire picture we can only sum a small amount from what we have. Anyone with any sense will know that they are here and their skin, bones, teeth, and the chair they are sitting in are all real. They are not only here because of a mathematical law which says things can happen if only for a brief period of time and it borrows energy from the cosmos just for a moment until the cosmos notices. Really, it is so much like the Emperor's New Clothes it makes me smile. However, I do not know the answer to the universe or life, and it doesn't bother me either. I know that there are more than a few ways of looking at the universe, and the life we have, and they all need to be taken seriously. We are alive, we do exist, our conscious experience matters, and we have rights. That I am sure of.
Rowan Blair Colver