Science, a modern religion

A friend of mine asked me recently how many books I’ve read on health, wellness, and psychology. With a brief moment of thought I told her, probably close to 1,000. That guess was… pretty off, but it felt accurate at the time! Consider this my correction. 

Upon further investigation and assessment, I would say that in the last 10 years I’ve read somewhere in the ballpark of 300-500+ books on nutrition, psychology, neuroscience, wellness, sociology, religion, and human behaviour, and that’s not including the thousands of studies I’ve read in between, or the mounds of philosophy and theology books I’ve consumed. I did this because I’m a deeply curious person, and no level of information ever feels sufficient to quench my thirst for knowledge, discovery, and understanding… and I find scientific books incredibly soothing. Or put another way, I read. a. lot. My whole life sometimes feels like it revolves around books and the things they teach me.

Which is all just a preface for me to explain how last year I opted out of socializing, and well, modern life, for all of November and December so that I could hole up and finish 21 books on nutrition, neuroscience, and biology. Many of those were textbooks, or highly technical manuals on how our bodies and brains operate, and what they need to operate smoothly. I didn’t end up completing the full list, because I found myself needing so much time to write, or research my questions that came up.

One thought that occurred to me, as I was reading through my list is that neuroscience may be my deepest obsession, but since it’s so relatively new I sometimes find it difficult to extrapolate hard evidence or facts from it’s wisdom; which is something that drove me mad when I first started reading it. As I was remembering that, I realized that I now find that to be the most exciting part of it. 

The possibilities are endless! There are still so many dots to connect, and since I’m not entrenched in the field I may be uniquely suited to look at it as a whole picture of human development and function rather than myopic rules pertaining to the human brain. In fact, I would have to say that the biggest thing I’ve come away with from all of this studying is that despite our best efforts, and our top fields of research we are unable to cleanly classify humans on really, any level at all; or put another way, the human condition comes with almost no rules at all despite our best efforts to manufacture all the rules.

That got me thinking a little deeper—even though there aren’t [m]any rules for being human, there are many truths, facts, and statistics that we use to measure our world and our experiences within it. 

• Here are just a few: Humans are complex, multi-faceted organisms that are colonized by at least 10x as many bacterium as human cells, which tends to complicates things, since these bacterium can alter our mind and body in ways we don’t yet understand.

• We have roughly 100 billion neurons, accounting for about 15,000 synapses, and the average cortical neuron fires about .16x a second, that’s a lot of information being processed.

• Our nervous systems, and the nerves contained therein can stretch 900,000 miles. Yes, MILES. For perspective, the moon is 225,623 miles away from the earth, roughly a third of the distance our nerves could stretch.

• Our coiled up intestines can reach about 25 feet if laid out straight, yet the tallest person in recorded history was a man who stood 8 feet 11.1 inches tall, and the global average height is currently only 5.21 feet for women, and 5.6 feet for men. While we know that humans can grow that tall, most of us don’t, but we’re not fully sure why.

So much complexity in such small packages, eh?

“The whole visible world is only and imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of natures. No idea approaches it.”
-Pascal’s Pensees [p. 29]

Of course, we don’t actually need science or statistics to tell us how complicated humans are, we all knew that already just by dealing with each other. However, I find the tiny bits of understanding highly compelling and wildly helpful in understanding the human condition, and I love the fact that rules are tough to come by [I don’t do well with authority, historically]. But after doing all of this reading, researching, and assimilating of information I’ve noticed, especially in the field of nutrition, that there is at least as much propaganda and opinion in these ‘scientific’ books, articles, and studies as there is cold, hard facts. Much of what is out there is speculation, assumptions, opinions, and presumptions. Before that had time to annoy me, it reminded me of an essential truth.

Science has never really been about cold hard facts at all, has it? Scientists have some of the most whimsical, creative, presumptuous minds out there— they’re largely what ‘regular’ folks would consider ‘crazy.’ I mean, just look at a photo of Albert Einstein, downright kooky, but a genius and a dreamer, nonetheless. So now, his is how I’ve come to see science as the art of hypothetical reasoning, experimentation, and conceptual reality. 

Scientific discoveries are intuitive as often as they are counter-intuitive, they are uncertain, abstract, and notional.

“But nature often deceives us, and does not subject herself to her own rules.”
-Pascal’s Pensees [p. 40]

Science is built on hypotheticals. It’s all about thinking outside of the box, and testing unsubstantiated hypothesis. 

It’s fluid, ever-evolving, changing, growing, building on and often tearing down previous knowledge. Science wasn’t designed to stagnate, or to collect stationary facts, it was designed to bring some amount of organization, and discernment to our very shaky, ambiguous existence. It’s never been about ultimate knowing, because it’s always been about uncovering nuances that offer more clarity to the incalculable, indeterminate essence of human actuality.

Psychology would suggest that humans love order, simplicity, and streamlined, efficient designs. I believe we love what serves us, and keeps us safe. Since the beginning of recorded history humans have been attempting to uncover the reason for our existence, the answer to our purpose, and the ultimate way of life. I believe that pursuit is itself our purpose.

“We never seek things for themselves, but for the search.”
-Pascal’s Pensees [p.49] 

Depending on who you ask we’ve been here, on planet Earth for billions, millions, or thousands of years. Yet, in all that time we have only been able to uncover a rudimentary understanding of our own bodies, minds, and spirits. Hell, we can’t even agree on whether we have spirits, or souls, or energetic dispositions. I believe that as humans we believe that we love simplicity, facts, rules, and efficiency, but we actually live for and in, great depths of nuance, uncertainty, and relative to the speed of light, a very slow bio-rhythm that our fragile flesh sacks are accustomed to.

Every human that has ever lived, or will ever live in the future is engaged in an endless search for absolute truth, standardized beauty, and understanding, whether they are aware of that fact or not is irrelevant. The search is endless, because those things don’t exist, not the way we want them to. If I have learned anything from life and study, it’s that the human condition is highly subjective, nuanced, and adaptable. 

We see it in our bodies with bioindividuality, in neuroscience with plasticity, in biology with how willingly our cells are able to regenerate until the day we die [if given the raw materials needed to do so, of course], with psychology through how therapy or a strong connection with another being can drastically alter an individual life, with sociology in how willingly we enter GroupThink, and on and on. What we find in every category is not stern, clean rules and regulations, but unimaginable depths of thought, complexity, and interrelation of truths and systems. We don’t find clean, straight lines from one point to the next, we find Jeremy Bearimy [a mythical timeline referenced in the sitcom The Good Place, that does not operate linearly as most people assume, but in a series of loops, droops, and swoops that move in a closed, and complicated loop, all parts existing simultaneously, and spelling out “Jeremy Bearimy” in cursive.].

I find that very few people—myself included— stop to consider, as they complain about their dissatisfaction with this colluded map of existence, how unimaginably dry, dull, and boring life would be if it were easily organized, understood and predictable, if science were the immoveable anvil of truth we fantasize that it is. 

I wager that life expectancy would be very low if that were the world we lived in, because if it was easy to piece together, and systematically file away every understanding of our world, minds, bodies, and spirits, there wouldn’t be anything left to live for. There wouldn’t be any surprises, foibles, or faux pas, because we would know exactly what to do in every situation, and exactly how to avoid every situation we didn’t want to deal with. Very little thinking would be required or needed in this scenario, communication would be empty because we would already know everything there is to say, and every response that could be had.

As humans, we think that we love certainty, but I believe that certainty is a fantasy. It looks attractive from far off, because we have no real means of grasping what absolute certainty, or inevitability looks like, since it rarely exists in this plain of existence. After all, in the world we live in there is an exception to every rule, right? 

I find, that’s what is so attractive about religion, or dogma— the firmness in stance, the definiteness in the conviction of belief in an identified something. We all know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no way we could possibly know the validity of our chosen religion, but we remain convinced regardless, and we call this foolhardy certitude, faith. It seems to me that humans don’t love certainty at all, but rather we love the quest of discovery, and the feeling of certainty that settling on our myopic view grants us. [I think we equate that feeling with peace.] We love feeling confident in our views. We are comforted by our manufactured delusions of steadiness in our ideologies. 

To me, the sciences resemble religion in many ways; they are a fantastical, highly polarized view of reality that seeks to externalize our existence, through our imaginations. Science is not a religion though, because it’s always in motion. Science is innovative, constantly seeking to disprove itself, truth is a moving target; religions are stalwart, they repudiate those that would deign to questions their preset stances, truth is set in stone [literally, with the 10 commandments]. 

Perhaps most importantly, we humans concocted both ideologies, and in many ways they are both illusions serving the same purpose— to distract us from our mortality and to lull us into the projected safety of indubitableness. Yet, the fact remains, that we are only able to throw ourselves into these quests with abandon because they are impossible. If it were possible to discover absolute truth, we would probably lock it up in Pandora’s Box and choose to live a life of ignorant bliss, because absolutes have never been our true focus. Safety, belonging, understanding, ease, purpose, those are more likely pursuits, if we’re honest about our intentions and desires.

“Since we cannot be universal and know all that is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about everthing. For it is far better to know something about everything than to know all about one things. This universality is the best. If we can have both, still better; but if we must choose, we ought to choose the former. And the world feels this and does so; for the world is often a good judge.”
-Pascal’s Pensees [p. 23]

I don’t believe we’ll ever have all the pieces to this great puzzle that is life, and I’m so relieved about that! Because as long as there are questions to be answered, to be analyzed, inspected, there is life. I believe that all life needs a purpose; we are slowly and systematically discovering that fact through our mindless destruction of this planet. As we wage war on various species and environments, choosing to take them for granted as we strip them of their life-force, we learn the roles they were designed to play in the bigger picture, often once it’s down to the wire, or too late to save them. Just as we learn how crucial animal foods are to our own life-force, only once we stop eating them, or start perverting them. Science is built on curiosity, and what is more curious than destruction, and adaptability?

If everything were perfect, if we truly knew it all, we would be devoid of purpose. I’m not even sure we would be human anymore. Because to me, being human is about long-suffering, searching, adapting, and innovation just as much as it is about pleasure, beauty, and understanding. In short, being human is about experiencing. That’s why we’ve categorized our sciences and subjects as experiences; biology, the experience of the organism; psychology, the experience of the mind; neuroscience, the experience of the brain; philosophy, the experience of the soul, etc. To be human is to experience the spectrum of emotions while sampling and savoring any experience life throws at you. The unpredictability of life, and the human condition is exactly what makes existence worthwhile.

“Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind.”
-Pascal’s Pensees [p. 33]

I’ve found the sciences to be immensely helpful in opening myself up to more experiences, to more curiosities, and therefore more life. I prefer to study the world with wide open interests, to take a little taste of every experience I am offered, and to discover how deep my inquisition can go. 

In that vein, I find that I cannot even dream of picking one single viewpoint because it would be too shortsighted and incomplete. I don’t adhere to any one dogma, because I see value in all of them. I possess great understanding of the necessity for structure, and distinction between points of view, and yet I also adhere to the reality that we will never get where we want to be if we are divided. 

We are social creatures, meant to operate in harmony, to intermingle and weave our lives together into the tapestry of the collective existence. A life lived alone would be a waste of life, it would be contrary to our most basic needs as humans to live without connection to something, or someone(s), that is why solitary confinement is used as one of the cruelest forms of punishment.

Science is often touted as the end all, be all of knowledge. It’s a trump word. You say, ‘well, I read a scientific study and…xyz is truth,’ then people feel like they can’t argue with you, or they feel that they have actually read the truth-bearing study, so they refute your ‘evidence.’ Both are operating on the principle that science is irrefutable. Except science very rarely claims to be irrefutable, because this belief system, [and it is a belief system] is predicated on the idea that every notion is to be challenged for as long as it takes. 

Even scientific language is intentionally vague, so as to not overstate anything. If science were irrefutable we wouldn’t need to replicate studies, we wouldn’t need to look for multiple versions of confirmation, and we wouldn’t need to check the funding. We could just read it and believe it. It would be unanimous, and there would be no need to double check— but that is the ultimate fantasy, a mirage that most hold tightly to, leveraging their sanity on the invention of utopia.

“Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind.”
-Pascal’s Pensees [p. 33]

Nothing in our world is certain, nor should it be. But that is what keeps me coming back [a little reincarnation humour for you], that is what drives me to seek truth, however subjective it may be. Our mental health depends almost entirely on our adaptability, on our ability to handle uncertainty and to find some semblance of stability anyways. We often talk about enlightenment as the goal of individual human existence, but what is enlightenment, if not the ability to seek and understand what we are capable of assimilating while also learning to let go of what we cannot ever know?

I have a background in studying religion, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, biology, and nutrition science. I’m endlessly fascinated by their intersections, overlaps, and complements to each other. It’s all too easy to get wrapped up in just one ideology, but I find that is too limited a frame of reference for my taste. 

I believe that if we are to move forward in understanding ourselves, we need to let go of the idea that truth is absolute, and we need to find the balance between perspectives. The study of these subjects contains unscrupulous wisdom, but each one falls short of the whole story. On some level, we all know that, yet we allow our illusory desires for certainty to cloud our judgement as we attempt to uncover the highest truth by putting all of our proverbial eggs in one basket.

Science is a disciplined study of the natural world that we exist in, but it can easily become a religion if we don’t check ourselves. We would do well to remember that at various points in history we believed the Earth was flat, or that women’s uterus’s would fall out at ‘high’ speeds [35-45mph]. We now know that the Earth is spherical, and women can travel at lightspeed to the moon, uterus intact. 

My point is that we should give scientific study the weight it merits, but we would do well to remember that no single discipline or area of study is ever going to give us the absolutes we think we crave. Also, that science is designed by humans, and as such it is faulty, flawed, inconsistent, and potentially biased, just as we are. Of course, we can find truth in these fields, but I believe we can find just as much truth through trusting ourselves, trusting our bodies, our guts, our intuition, by following our curiosity. After all, isn’t that what a scientist does?