Science vs.

Before you read any further, please accept my apologies in advance if anything I write offends you. maybe I shouldn’t write that because if you are like me, you have to now read on to see if you would be… Sorry about that 🙂

The other day I saw this article on the AOL site concerning an significant increase in the US with not only a basic understanding of science but the belief in what they called pseudoscience. By the latter, they meant horiscopes, psychics, etc. This was based on a recent study at MIT. I’d be interested to see the actual report since like most AOL articles, this one was very light weight and short. In fact, under almost any other circumstances, i would have probably ignored it entirely.

So why didn’t I? I have this friend I’ve known for almost 7 years. I’ve always known she has been interested with various religions, etc. but never knew much of what she believed until recently. She’s had some recent health issues and recently lost a family member and while we talked about it, she went on a tangent about this all being planned well in advance of her life. This caught me off guard so I asked her to explain. She went on to talk about the charting of lives before we are born, life themes, and a number of other things. I guess much of this comes from someone named Sylvia Brown who I had never heard of before but i guess is quite mainstream. She also went into a lot of other things too.

This study seemed to be far more accurate than I would ever guess. One of the reasons they gave, and in my friend’s case I can see this, is that while science can explain things around us, it does little to deal with relationship and life sorts of things. The pseudo stuff does. It is what is at the core of them. It also gives hope. I didn’t try to disagree with my friend; I simply listened. And what she believed made her feel better. That is what got me thinking. Being a science geek sort of person, I have a hard time believing a bit of what she does. I cannot swallow that everything has been planned out for us. If it were, what is the point of going through the motions? Instead I like Heath Ledger’s view from A Knight’s Tale: We can change our stars. Even though we also feel the ripple of the actions of others, we can choose how it affects us or at a minimum, how we respond to it.

I am not sure why this has been rolling around my head the past few days. Perhaps I am envious. It seems so much easier to believe that these things control our lives and that external bodies help provide answers to our emotional requests. Maybe I deep down prefer the struggle to find my own way in this world and not accept the easier path. I just know that I cannot.

Sorry for the ramble.