|
There is a balance between having an
open mind and common sense.
Just as using addictive drugs can close options for our future,
there are things best avoided
when filling our mind. Specifically, I believe it is appropriate to
avoid pornography (from some
magazines, the internet, movies, and other media sources), violence
(my filter has been to avoid R-rated movies, yet
violence, gratuitous language, and promiscuity in PG-13 movies means
this filter needs review), obviously biased data and presentations
(communist, John Birch Society, Ku Klux Klan, Nazi, or similar elitist philosophies), mindless
chatter (television sitcoms and soap operas), and the like. While avoiding the biased and the
addictive, thinking people still recognize the need to be open to new ideas and different ways
to look at our world.
The words in this book are intended to provide a framework within
which those open to faith can add a scientific basis to their belief. Also these words are
intended to provide a framework wherein those with a scientific bias can use the same hypothesis
testing approach used in their professional life to find faith.
We all have filters. To emphasize the power of filters, the
remainder of this book is presented in four colors:
red for science,
green for religion,
blue for my personal experiences,
and black for paradoxes.
With the hardcopy version are colored cellophane sheets which can be
placed over the pages to filter out words about science,
or religion,
or my experiences.
Note the paradoxes can not be filtered out. Hopefully within
those words you don't choose to filter out, you will find a framework for continuous improvement,
a means by which we all can reach the perfect day. Or at the very least until those of us who
are willing to be, and who strive to be, intellectually honest with ourselves can better learn
to appreciate the different views of others. And while appreciating these views, allowing and
encouraging the same type of personal integrity in others which we cherish in regards to our own
most personal beliefs.
Anthropologists have defined four artificial classifications of human
history: the hunter / gatherer age; the agricultural age; the industrial age; and the information
age. In the hunter / gatherer age - the time of Adam, Enoch, and Noah - individuals and families
focused on daily survival. The agricultural era - the time of Moses and Abraham, Confucius and
Buddha, the Greeks and the Romans, as well as Jesus Christ and the Prophet Mohammed - resulted in the
establishment of communities and the evolution of specialization. The industrial age - the
time of Martin Luther, Henry the Eight, Columbus, Shakespeare, Newton, George Washington, Henry
Thoreau, Joseph Smith, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Mahatmas Ghandi, Adolph Hitler, and Albert
Einstein - brought social order and disorder to communities. The information age - the time of
Martin Luther King, Pope John Paul II, Bill Gates, Stephen Jobs, George Lucas, Yassar Arafat, Stephen
Spielberg, Gordon B. Hinckley, and Stephen Hawkings - finds times of hope and despair, personal
triumph and failure, and an expansion of the assault on faith or on anything spiritual and
outside of direct access to our physical senses.
|
paradoxes