Last week, I wrote about seeing with instruments. That got me wondering again about what science shares with religion.
Well,…”Jackson Pollock on the Mount” – the graying paint-spattered priest in As It Is On Earth – wonders as well. Sermonizing on the rationale of Science’s Method, he asks the question: “Is Faith in Reason a Reasonable Faith?”
Taylor Thatcher, our woeful protagonist, is ready with an answer…and pounces:
“Science and Religion? Dopplegangers. Same coin, different sides. Always have been. Starting with the Garden…Pick your Apple. Eve’s or Issac Newton’s…It was all Faith to me. Faith in a Triune God or Faith in the Holy Trinity of Science, little difference – they’re just chasing the same tail, trying to make the implausible…plausible.”
“…I believe in one Physics, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible…And in our lord Chemistry, begotten son of Physics before all worlds and whose Kingdom shall have no end…And in Holy Biology the Lord and Giver of life, which proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified…until The Unified Field Theory Come. Amen.”
“…I would look deep into the eyes of my scientist colleagues and could not see a trace of irony, no hint of what had been left out of their equations. Their pupils were Black Holes and they hadn’t noticed. Piss holes in a snowbank.”
(Chapters 1 and 3, As It Is On Earth)
