Does Science Explain All Essay Research Paper

Does Science Explain All. Essay, Research Paper

Does Science Explain All.

In the beginning there was darkness. Then there was light. Then there

was consciousness. Then there were questions and then there was religion.

Religions sprouted up all over the world as a response to some of humanity’s

most troubling questions and fears. Why are we here. Where do we come from.

Why does the world and nature act as it does. What happens when you die.

Religions tended to answer all these questions with stories of gods and

goddesses and other supernatural forces that were beyond the understanding of

humans. Magic, in it’s essence, were the powers wielded by these superior

beings that caused the unexplainable to happen.

Fast forward a few thousand years to the present. In our age and time

there is little left unexplained. Science seems able to explain everything with

mathematical logic and concrete evidence right before our very eyes. The

subject of science is taught in almost every school on Earth. Gone are the days

of magic and wonder. The magic of so-called magicians like David Copperfield

are a jest. When people attend a magic show everyone looks for the invisible

wires and hidden projectors. No one really believes the magician has

supernatural powers, except for maybe a handful of children in the audience who

still have faith in Santa Clause.

Science does seem to explain all. It has enabled humans to fly, cure

incurable diseases, explore the depths of the oceans, stave off death, walk on

the moon and wipe out entire civilizations with the push of a button. It is

becoming more and more widespread in that people are putting their faith in

science above that in the gods. What parent wouldn’t rather bring their sick

child to a doctor than have faith in the healing power of some mystical entity

that may or may not exist.

However strong and almost perfect the view of science is in today’s

society it cannot and does not cover the entire spectrum of the human experience.

Nor does it explain some of the striking similarities present in the various

religions of Earth. These similarities occur in civilizations not only far from

each other but also in cultures separated by seemingly impossible to traverse

oceans of water. Many of these similarities occur in the cosmological or

creation myths of the various religions.

In the Bible and other in other comparable ancient literatures, creation

is a theme expressed in parables or stories to account for the world. In almost

every ancient culture the universe was thought of as darkness, nothing and chaos

until order is induced by the divine creative hand. The type of order

envisioned varied from culture to culture. In the Biblical perspective, it was

envisioned that light should be separated from dark, day from night; and that

the various forms of plant and animal life be properly categorized. Although

the figure differ from myth to myth, all the ancient stories intend to give a

poetic accounting for cosmic origins. When viewed in terms of creational motifs,

the stories tend to be similar.

Some myths of creation include myths of emergence, as from a

childbearing woman, or creation by the marriage of two beings representing the

heavens and earth. A common feature of some Hindu, African and Chinese myths is

that of a cosmic egg from which the first humans are “hatched” from. In other

cultures, it must be brought up from primordial waters by a diver, or is formed

from the dismembered body of a preexisting being. Whether the deity uses

preexisting materials, whether he leaves his creation once it is finished, how

perfect the creation is, and how the creator and the created interact vary among

the myths. The creation story also attempts to explain the origins of evil and

the nature of god and humanity.

An example of two different religions containing various aspects of each

other could be that of the creation myth of Christianity and aspects of

creationism found in African religion. The creator god in the African religion

is Nyambi. Nyambi creates a man, Kamonu, and the man does exactly as his god

does in every way; Similar to the way the god of Christianity creates man in his

own image. Also Nyambi creates for Kamonu a garden to live in, the same way the

Garden of Eden was created. Another motif repeated between these two religions

is that of the Bible’s Tower of Babel. Kamonu, after his god left him behind,

tried to build a tower to reach his god but like The Tower of Babel it collapsed

and the humans failed to reach heaven.

In Mesopotamian culture the epic tale Gilgamesh is almost totally

identical to the Biblical story of Noah and the ark. In the tale of Gilgamesh,

Gilgamesh is warned by Enki that a divine judgment has been passed and the world

is to be destroyed by a giant flood. Gilgamesh is instructed build a boat

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