Science Trumps Belief!

Mars from space.

November 26, 2018, should go down in history as the most dramatic metaphor for everything that is insane about the way Homo sapiens organizes itself.

Dramatically, an international team of scientists dropped the Mars Lander onto the surface of Mars, some 300 million miles away. The video stream from NASA showed this wonderfully dedicated team of men and women working together so intelligently and harmoniously to complete this amazingly sophisticated operation.

So for about 800 million dollars we now have this machine, about two-thirds the size of a London bus, designed to check out Mars, as part of a 6-billion-dollar effort to land 4 people there at some point in the future.

At almost exactly the same time a 1,556-page report in 26 chapters was published by 13 US Federal Agencies: “It’s the culmination of years of work from more than 300 researchers, who have combed through the published literature on climate change in the country.”

The New York Times summarized their findings clearly:

“But in direct language, the 1,656-page assessment lays out the devastating effects of a changing climate on the economy, health, and environment, including record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest, and crumbling infrastructure in the South. Going forward, American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultural yields could fall to 1980s levels by midcentury and fire season could spread to the Southeast, the report finds.”

Now we move from science to politics

Donald Trump was asked about the report and his reply, which will go down in the annals of human history as one of the dumbest things ever said: “I don’t believe it.”

Since when did “belief” or “ideology” have any bearing on reality? Have we learned nothing? Nearly four hundred years ago the then pope had the same conversation with Galileo who hypothesized, on good evidence, that the Earth went around the Sun. The pope, based on his Christian ideology, “believed” the sun went around the Earth. Neither the planets listened to the Pope, nor will the climate listen to Trump.

The major question for humanity is offered in the stark contrast between science and politics. Compare the way those scientists were working together at NASA with, say, the Kavanaugh hearings for his place on the US Supreme Court? Or the schoolboy brayings in London of the members of “the mother of parliaments.” Or the fistfights and worse often reported between politicians around the world.

To complete the picture: who decided to spend 6 billion dollars on dropping four people off on a dead rock a zillion miles away in the first place? Politicians!

And who is responsible for “regulating” world affairs in such a catastrophic way that there are about 4 billion humans down here right now who lack the necessities of life? Politicians.

And who else is failing abysmally to address climate change around the world? Politicians.

And when all deaths from climate change are estimated, who will then decide that the killings of all these people are not crimes against humanity? Politicians.

And who makes the rules that politicians should make the rules: politicians!

And who keeps buying into this childish game that everything is fine because we “the people” always have “the freedom” to choose “another politician”?

We do!

A radically new approach is needed. If these “beliefs” and “ideologies” are allowed to trump science, we are finished. If we keep giving power to politicians, we will be finished even sooner! There is no human problem that humans are not capable of understanding and resolving if competent people are given the room to operate. The alternative to this ancient battle between science and belief is so obvious, as Osho explains:

“If there is only one science, there can be only one religion. If one science is enough to explore the objective world, one religion is enough to explore the inner world of man. And that one religion need not have any adjective to it – Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism, or anything.

“Just as science is simply science, religion is simply religion. In fact, according to me, there is only one science with two dimensions: one dimension working on the outside world, the other dimension working on the inside world. We can even get rid of the word religion.

“This is a fundamental rule of science, that a minimum of hypotheses should be used. So why use two words? Just one word is enough. And science is a beautiful word, it means ‘knowing.’

“Knowing the other is one aspect, knowing one’s self is another aspect –  but knowing covers both.”

To continue reading and see all available formats of this talk:
Osho, The Transmission of the Lamp, Talk #31 – I Am an Adamant Optimist

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