What's Your Dangerous Idea - Essay Example

“What’s Your Dangerous Idea?” The earliest scientists and modern thinkers have always formulated theories and discovered things that have challenged almost everything that the society values that range from ideas that have both negative and positive consequences. Most of the thoughts that echo in the modern world are dangerous not only because they are believed to be false, but because they may become true. It is a provocative question to ask “what is your dangerous idea?” John Brockman edited this anthology of essays from a number of the best thinkers. The edge foundation inspired this effort and it had the consent to endorse inquiry and discussion of literary, artistic, philosophical and intellectual issues and also work with the social and intellectual achievement of society. I will mention several ideas that may evoke dangers in the society, but I will dwell mostly on the issue of religion and science. There are some dangerous ideas that exist in the society. For example reducing the population of the human race globally to approximately one billion and maintaining it at that number. Another dangerous idea is taking the biological yearning of people to play fathers and mothers and redirecting it to responsible stewardship of the world. These ideas sound quite draconian. Another dangerous idea is imposing taxes on mosques and churches. Another is idea is decriminalizing the use of street drug. None of the esteemed contributors of John Brockman raised anything that seemed risky, perhaps because the risk of such ideas occurs instantly to the person who applies the ideas. Psychiatrist Randolph offers some direction on why those ideas are not being tackled in the book. For example when an individual’s business is attempting to handle a savvy competitor, it may mean that they may have a superior product because they are smarter. David Lykken believes that parents ought to acquire licenses for parenting their children and also act as proof that they are over twenty one years old and married. Jordan Pollack encourages people to embrace that are based on faith. He argues that physics may sing the songs that continuous motion may solve the energy calamity. He also adds that scientists ought to put God on their side to revoke the second thermodynamics law. One of the ideas that may turn out to be extremely dangerous is the idea of religion versus science. Religion believes that science tries to destroy it or to eliminate it. Science is also against religion because in science there is nothing like belief in a spirit. Science only gets answers through experiments that produce real results and not things that require belief in something (Coon and John 23). For example scientists have theories that attempt to explain the origin of the universe. Theories like big bang argue that the beginning of the universe came up after the big bang. However, this theory does not make sense at some point in explaining how living things came to exist within the universe. It fails to explain how animals, plants, human race, the skies and other natural occurrences came to existence. Charles Darwin also gives the theory of evolution that attempts to explain how human beings evolved from being primitive to being the intelligent modern man. All these science theories have their weaknesses because they fail to convince people at some point. Religion also has its theories of the origin of the universe and the human race. The popular religious explanation of the origin of the universe comes from the Christian Bible. The Bible states that God created everything in the universe with his own hands within seven days. After creating everything in the universe, he made man in his own image and the first man that he made was Adam whom he later created his partner, Eve. This theory also has its weakness because it fails to convince people the origin of God (Coon and John 31). It plainly states that God (whose origin is withheld) came from nowhere and designed the universe. Christians insist that no one is to questions this. The only thing that people should do is believe. It may be quite difficult for a scientist to believe this because scientists have no faith in spiritual matters. Scientists only believe in what they have researched on and not something that has no proof. This explains why scientists conduct several experiments and researches before they come to a conclusion. This makes it impossible for scientists to concur with religion because both parties have different ways of thinking and conducting themselves. All these examples are dangerous ideas that if people may start to argue for or against may evoke conflict and eventually war. Science and religion have always been in conflict since the days of Galileo Galilee, the first modern scientists to discover that the earth was spherical as opposed to the Roman Catholic Church that claimed the earth was flat. This made the Catholic Church arrest Galileo. While Galileo was under arrest, he used his telescope to sturdy the skies at night and made several sketches of the moon. These sketches made him acquire more proof of the spherical shape of the planet. This conflict of Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church proves that indeed religion and science will never agree and may also result to war. The issue of religion and science is too sensitive such that mentioning it in public may even evoke chaos. Therefore, people should always be careful when they mention such things as origin of the universe and God especially in public because other people may have their own beliefs and understanding of such issues. The fact still remains that the human mind will never understand where they came from and how the universe came into existence. Both the scientists and religious groups only have theories about how the universe came into being. Religious groups argue that people should leave everything to God because he can take care of everything. While religious groups believe in the existence of God, scientists are trying to discover who this God may be and what or how he may look like. Science fiction movies also attempt to express their fantasy and crave of space travel. These science fiction films that are shot in space only try to fulfill the scientist’s fantasies of the existence of life in space (Coon and John 56). Scientists fantasize that there exists a life that is more advanced and complex beyond the normal skies. Films such as transformers and avatar have tried to bring this into the minds of their audience. For example the story of transformers states that there exist alien robots in a universe far from planet earth. These alien robots are extremely advanced such that they can transform into anything electronic and take its shape. These alien robots also have a more advanced technology compared to what humans have on planet earth. These are quite interesting stories and while they may only be meant for entertainment, they also pass powerful messages from the minds of scientists. Religious groups rebuke these scientific fantasies and even argue that they are demonic. Works Cited Coon, Dennis, and John O. Mitterer. Psychology: A Journey. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2014. Print. Read More