Sunday, June 10, 2007

Flat Faith - 1

I'm sure they sent me to school for no other reason than to define my faith systems. Perhaps refine them would be a better description.

For example, they told me that I believed the Earth was flat, but it was actually round. Well I didn't believe that the Earth was either flat or round. To me it was very bumpy and went either up or down.

Even at a very young age, my own observations entirely determined my belief system, particularly things that interested me, like cars, trucks, tractors and engines. Later I graduated to guns and electronics, and now more recently to computers. I was more interested in how they worked than in using them.

Now a flat Earth could mean squashed flat, like a flat tire. My Earth was nothing like a flat tyre. How about flat out, which was akin to 'foot flat'? These days they say 'peddle to the mettle', but my Earth was going nowhere, certainly not fast let alone flat out. These days they say, 'Stop the Earth I want to get off.' When I heard that, I laughed, and when I understood it, I cried. Perhaps flat could mean smooth or level, under other circumstances, but my Earth was never that. Even the sea had huge waves and moved up and down all the time, but I was always a good little boy and if I must believe that I previously thought the Earth flat and now should believe that the Earth was round, I would remember to say that if anyone asked.

What I did, was store the matter away for future exploration. I do this with many misleading ideas and so-called 'facts' that I hear. Questions that create difficulties I remember and not much else. If I understood something, I don't need to remember it. I can work it out. I am still working on the one that 'money doesn't grow on trees', which is a strange one because my aunt said it and as a farmer's wife, she surely knew that money does grow on trees.

Once I provisionally accepted that the Earth was round, it opened me up to making observations that supported that 'belief', such as ships that sailed over the horizon and a myriad other facts that confirmed the concept. I came to believe that the Earth is round. Later someone persuaded me that it is not perfectly round but slightly flattened by its rotation about its axis. Since logic or reasoning was the basis of my belief, it was easy to make the change.

It is important to understand that no facts were necessary in this case for me to change my mind. Facts would be unverifiable for me and therefore useless. The simple assertion was most reasonable and therefore readily acceptable.