In my point of view, there was really nothing bad about the age of science and reason taking over from the age of magic and superstition, and human beings are always better off when they have knowledge and understanding of the way the universe works around them rather than letting ignorance and superstition guide their actions.
The battle between these to extremes points of view has been a long and bloody one and in some cases certainly doesn’t look like anyone is likely to want to give up any time soon. After all, as I’ve always believed, a great deal of argument is pretty pointless when it comes down to it. Very view people are going to change an ingrained point of view to the complete opposite just on the say so of someone else, and it takes a very big person to look at an overwhelming weight of evidence and accept that they could have been wrong about something.
Recently I was lurking around in a bookshop, which despite all you may have heard, do still exist. At least I believe they do, and the young shop assistant I paid for the rather tangible books I bought there seemed to believe it too. This is probably not the moment for us to fall into a discussion on the quantum state of hypothetical bookshops, however.
Meanwhile, I was mooching around the shelves and stacks looking for some bargains whilst the steady drone of the noises of a busy shopping centre drifted through the open doors on a hot summer’s afternoon. One voice seemed to be coming across more distinctly than most as a soapbox evangelist was lecturing anyone who would listen about his own beliefs. Suddenly however, things took a more sinister turn as his audience started to disagree with him and began throwing back different opinions at a similar volume and pretty soon a full blown row was brewing up on a public high street on a hot afternoon, loud enough to stop many shoppers in their tracks and cause bored shop assistants to stick their noses out of thie shop doorways and have a look what was going on.
The air was tense with anticipation. Would the mob turn on the hapless orator? Would the hot sticky afternoon bubble over into scenes of chaos and tragedy and riot? Would the heretic be carried off by the mob and lynched?
Well of course not. We live in an age of science and reason, and the days of mob vengeance are far behind us and the best we can hope for is that we will agree to disagree. The fierce debate was still raging as I headed off towards the bank with my carrier bag of purchases in my hand. No fist fights had yet broken out, and none probably would, although I did find myself suppressing a slight “Tsssk!” to myself as I passed the perimeter of the now quite sizeable crowd when someone started on about famine and flood being “God’s fault…” but I decided to let that particular one go rather than add my own two-penneth of fuel to an already burning fire.
It did make me think though. I like the fact that I live in an age of reason, but sometimes I do miss the old days of magic and wonder. Oh, I’m not saying that I would ever want us to return to the dark ages where people got burnt alive for looking at you funny on a day when your cow died, or where victims would be thrown into volcanoes to appease the gods, but the more spiritual beliefs of the kind that Tolkien built a world from, wizards and elves and ancient magic and forest spirits, and some of the more mystical, earth-centric folklore just sometimes seems rather more appealing than the trappings of modern day life. Of course I’d rather deal with a doctor who understands that blood flows around the body and that pain can be controlled by little white pills rather than one that decided to punch holes in my skull to let the demons out, but in many ways those simpler times do have their temptations, even when you know that life back in those times was nasty, brutish and short.
Meanwhile, I went into the garden yesterday and found one particular weed that had punched its way through the grass and around its flower heads were clustered so many different sizes of the same kind of caterpillar that it looked like it was a caterpillar plant. There were no others to be seen on any of the other plants all around it, just this one plant where they were all clustered. A medieval version of me might very well have believed that caterpillars came from plants if he’d seen that, and the evidence would have been very convincing if you didn’t know any better, which is why, in the end, even though the people of the future may very well look back on these times we are living in as being full of ignorance and stupidity, I’m rather glad I live in an era of knowledge and enlightenment.
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