There is a fatal flaw in science. It is the fact that the best that a scientific approach can accomplish is to rule out hypotheses, one after another. The flaw is that you can think up another 100 or 1,000 possible explanations for any given phenomenon. There is no way to test them all.
You can never truly be certain that your theory is absolutely the best fit for the evidence, even after extensive testing, as long as a multitude of hypotheses remain untested and in theory.
On the other hand, I believe that revelation knowledge, as received by the ancient prophets and holy men, is truly the highest and most reliable form of knowledge.
Science can never deliver the certainty that a metaphysical revelation can, and what you see as science’s greatest asset, is also its greatest weakness– that any idea can be invalidated by new information. For example, it is common today to find people using science to expose science. They are working within the margins of that uncertainty, planting their ideas there, fortifying their positions with research, and standing their ground. Two men argue a point, and both have surveys and studies to back up their arguments. They bonk each over the head with opposing studies and cite from journals and research projects. They invalidate the studies that their opponent cites from by critically examining it for errors and missed hypotheticals. They both often succeed at this purpose, and no winner is declared.
And so what is the answer?
Wisdom through personal revelation. Which should be sought after through meditation on ancient scripture.
Even great scientific achievements start with a remarkable idea. An idea that seems to explain everything at once. All of the pieces fall into place, and it seems to answer all of the objections and challenges.
This is revelation.
Revelation is a windfall of understanding. It is the sudden reception of a grand, unifying idea that has great explanatory power and reach. It is like the arrival, whole cloth, of a complete body of knowledge. It feels as if the truth has been deposited into you from on high.
It seems to come out of the ether, but it really doesn’t. It often comes out the other end of a long train of thinking deeply about certain problems and unanswered questions. It comes from a commitment to truth, to what is right, no matter where that might lead.
Because once you marry yourself to truth, you open yourself up to personal revelation. This happens because you are seeing all of the contributing environmental factors with perfect clarity, and not through the warped lens of the ego, or through the glazed screen of emotions. You have left yourself exposed to the harsh and brutal elements, and only in this dangerous world can you find dangerous truths. Truths that Christ discovered, that made men who lived in their world of uncertainty and lies to seek to kill him, to censor him, to shut him up for good.
This kind of revelation comes when you only seek what is right. When you focus on morality, you are really focusing on truth. Whatever is true is right. True-ness is rightness. And so you are left wide open, as it were, to undiluted injections of truth, because you aren’t predisposed toward anything but the pursuit of truth. There are no blockades, political– emotional or moral, even.
Revelations are experiences, in fact. They come out of an accumulation of thousands of previous meditation points. They are, in fact, the end-result of a kind of large-scale experiential survey of various intellectual experiences. They are published, more so than received. Through the spirit and into the mind.
But you have to believe, at bottom, that the pursuit of philosophy is a more noble and enriching pursuit than that of science. You have to believe that it is better to be wise than smart. You have to believe that applied knowledge is better than knowledge for knowledge’s sake.
In the end, you cannot just remove the human influence from the scientific ideal and deify it, as many do today. Science is and always will be poisoned by the human influence until we can hand it over to AI.
To ignore wisdom is stupid. Thinkers, metaphysicians, priests, scholars and prophets have laid a groundwork of two thousand plus years of revelation, epiphany and spiritual and philosophical insight. The moral guidelines they have patiently and carefully constructed and worked out have served humanity well for millennia. In fact, you can make a strong case that we would not have survived as a species without them.
And finally, religion is more important than science to society itself. Because in order for a society to survive and succeed, they must find common ground in similar and shared morals. Science is great for engineering, for aerodynamics, for moving about large stones or building large structures or developing medicines. But there is a dark, blind spot, and this spot can be found at the intersection between faith and fear. Because there are some bridges that scientific thought cannot cross.
The fact is that religion becomes most valuable at the exact moment when the cost for doing right starts to become unreasonable. And without men willing to go the extra mile for what is right and good, society would devolve and collapse without religion’s essential superstructure.
The thing with science, also, is that if you are willing to hold an idea until new evidence comes along, then it is pretty obvious that the nature of your thought process isn’t to ‘find truth.’ Because truth is truth. It is not open to dismissal or being changed through a presentation of new evidence.
Also, I’ve noticed, that every time someone gives an example of ‘science proving truth,’ it amounts to something equivalent to common sense, not something that necessarily deserves scientific scrutiny.
A revelation, on the other hand, takes a mystery, solves it, and makes it as if it was always there, right in your face, just common sense, but for whatever reason, you couldn’t see it. But aha! Why couldn’t I see this before? It explains EVERYTHING.
I think many today have married metaphysical ideas with scientific ones. And so you see the inaccurate language, where science ‘leads to truth.’ But I believe that this marriage cannot work. Philosophy and science are not friendly bedfellows, but are sworn enemies.
I have said it before, but the only hope for mankind is a great falling away from science, and a re-commitment to the natural art of thinking and doing philosophy, which is accessible to every man. Science is, and has been an occupation for elitists. The scientific establishment has long been hostile to the common man and the wisdom he has accumulated from philosophy, metaphysics, and personal revelation.
Without the hostile takeover of the man of ruler and beaker, we might have continued on our natural progression of accumulating wisdom. Maybe by now, a singularity would have been reached, or a tipping point in the spiritual struggle between good and evil. But instead, we are on the verge of annihilation, under the threat of extinction at every passing moment.
Lockdowns. Political extremism. Mystery viruses. The threat of nuclear annihilation.
Maybe it is time we stop pretending that philosophy is science in other words. It is not. Only one can give us wisdom, which is what the world really needs more than anything right now.
And anyway, science today is vulnerable. It is vulnerable because we are now presented with the opinions of scientists and sold these opinions as science itself, by the media and political mouthpieces. Their opinions may or may not be informed, but they are still opinions, and they are not scientific results.
And of course, I am not completely dismissing science. Science is a useful tool for getting stuff done, and in more efficient ways than we previously could. It is a great utility. But if we are to survive the self-destructive rage of our own nature, we need something more valuable, and that is moral revelation.
Maybe, we should take our minds off the training wheels.
Personal revelation, or epiphany, is what we should be seeking. It is a windfall of knowledge that connects all of the dots.
It is when an idea takes a saltational leap and suddenly becomes apparent, and as clear as something considered to be common sense.
To me, this all seems like common sense.