Sunday 12 August 2007

The Difference Between Religious and Scientific Thinking When Solving Problems

We had a problem with our gas cylinder earlier on today. Every time I tried to start cooking something, the burner flames would die out on me after a few seconds. Although I am usually described as a very patient person, this event was extremely successful at challenging my ability to remain calm in the face of trouble. The fact that I was incredibly hungry did not help the situation!

After trying my hand at a number of possible solutions, I drew the conclusion that the connector was no longer working. I, therefore, replaced it with the one that we had inside our gas heater. The result? The gas flowed once again and the cooker worked perfectly!!

This event made me ponder the difference between religious and scientific thinking when we are confronted with one of life's undesirable situations. I noticed that while a religious person might have blamed the gas incident on Satan or on some other unseen entity, a scientific person would have probably immediately set about making a list of the possible origins of the problem. Using the scientific mindset, it becomes much easier to attempt various techniques until the correct solution is found.

I do not wish to say that religious thinking is bad. I would only like to say that if God created us as scientific creatures, we ought to use science as a problem-solving and life-improving tool rather than resorting to other methods which have been shown to be less successful throughout history.

3 comments:

La delirante said...

"making a list of the possible origins of the problem" well, that's not exactly what we really did :) espcially someone I know started nagging about it :) lol

David Cuschieri said...

LOL

Unknown said...

LOL at the whole story - Hunger is a great motivator ain't it!

Blaming it on the Devil, however, ain't quite religious! I would say t is more of a fanatical view! Nah, a religious person would go on his knees and pray to his favourite saint to have the gas line restored!!

Well done on the scientific method!!
:-))