The Blackberry Walk

Calling science a religion has become banal, in truth. You tell someone "science is like a religion" and they nod as if you've spoken a truism or pleasantry. But today I'd like to introduce a more nuanced understanding of this truism, re-imagining what a religion is. Religion is a worldview: it's the model by which the seeming chaos of the world can be understood. Think of it like an operating system - we can only access the genius of the machine through its operating system, since it converts the biology of my computer (the hardware) into something a human can understand and navigate. But what we're taught in school which shapes our operating system to be understandable and 'in tune' with the rest of society stretches beyond the realm of science. I've heard many argue that we should learn more down to earth practical skills in school, but this, I believe, is a misunderstanding of the purpose of school. Schooling is the institution which passes down our civilisation's mythic corpus to the next generation. First, there are the languages school teaches us: English, perhaps another foreign language, and maths. Maths is a crucial language we learn in school, helping us understand sciences and the statistics which root a variety of subjects. Primary school focuses on teaching literacy and maths since they are the trunk from which greater truths, greater myths, can branch off from. Once the basics of our two languages are understood, we can move on to bigger fish. Take science and humanities, for example - these form the mythos explaining of 1. the world's nature, and 2. the narrative of our culture. And we mustn't forget the arts: the study of basic literacy metamorphosises into garnering an appreciation of the arts through poetry and novels; learning to draw and paint is to engage with the skills to produce art; and learning to appreciate and play music also puts us in touch with our culture. Our mythic corpus is truly massive. Even after fifteen years, through primary school, through secondary school, we only learn the essentials. Many go on to university to study for another three to four years as a theologian in their chosen myth. Even upon completion of this further training, you aren't an expert yet. The great theologians further specialise, often dedicating their lives to ever more niche mythic ideas. We've created through the written word a mythic corpus like the world has never seen. So what's the point of this? Aren't I just explaining everything with the word myth? Correct, but my point is that we are no different. We are no different from civilisations passed who, just like us, made mythic corpuses of their own to explain the world and the soul. We are just like them, creating myths and legends, writing histories, researching sciences. Were those who invented fire scientists? or to be a scientist do you need the scientific method? Most great scientific breakthroughs, like Teflon and Viagra, were discovered by accident. Other than the suit, how different are they from the man who made the first wheel? There's a trajectory from their time to ours. The techniques have always been there, we've just been refining them, improving the efficacy of discovery. We are the same as our hunter-gatherer brothers. So yes, science is a religion. But there's far more that fits under the umbrella of religion. The humanities are religion - along with any other academic pursuit. The arts are religion too. Aren't music festivals and nightclubs where densely packed inebriated youths chant popular prayer the closest thing the young have to religious experience? The difference is that our religion is one of internal dissonance. Most disagree on fundamental theological understandings, splitting into camps arguing over whose theological interpretation of the scientific literature, contemporary history, art, etc, is correct. Yet most things move along swimmingly. Our religion of dissonance will stay afloat, so long as the waves of popular opinion, of belief in what binds us, don't get too choppy and capsize our culture.