Monk

Science is the Poetry of Reality

Most of us don't really need this message, as I imagine that it is mostly directed to those American fundamentalists who, for instance, denounce evolution in favor of early earth creationism, but it's a cool number. And, of course, this is not to negate the possibility of God or the divine, notwithstanding Richard Dawkins's presence in the video. The plea, I imagine, is that we don't let our more natural sense of divine wonder negate scientific progress.

The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually 'grasps' reality ... All the various definitions of the universe have had ulterior motives, being concerned with the future rather than the present. Religion wants to assure the future beyond death, and science wants to assure it until death, and to postpone death. But tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live.

There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.

-- Alan W. Watts