Pearlie on the Radio

Theologians; I have just listened to my first ever batch of them, courtesy of Radio National.

Well, what do you know, they are just like historians. That is, anti-scientists.

Scientists works from the unknown to the known.

For example, a new observation is discovered. Everyone argues what it means. Experiments are performed, models proposed and eventually agreement is reached and everyone moves on to more interesting things; the next unknown.

Historians and theologians go the other way; from the known to the unknown.

Starting with some actual real live events, such as the life and works of Jesus, these practitioners wait until most of the real data has been lost or mutated, and some new data has been fabricated, and then start arguing about the gaps.

Worse still, they start using their hallucinations to support much bigger hypotheses, such as the existence of a benevolent creator, comforted by the fact that new and uncomfortable data isn’t going to suddenly appear.

The further the events drift into past history the more disagreement you will find amongst historians or theologians. Hence my label of anti-science.

I just listened to two theologians politely loathe each other. Their point of difference seemed somewhat semantic. They will never resolve their dispute because it is entirely opinion based. They need to agree to disagree. I suspect that these personality types, the ones that will spend their lives cogitating such banalities, can never just let it go

I reckon that if you are wired this way you are better off writing novels. Unconstrained by surviving data, novelists can do what the hell they want, and they will not be tormented by their own hypocrisy.

Other things maybe.