I'm an analogy whore, but I think this one I came up with is pretty good and worth sharing. The analogy demonstrates the problem of the modern day faithful. Religion is the Titanic, modern day faithful are the crew, enthusiastic passengers, and admirers, and Science is the iceberg.

For years leading up to its first outing at sea people spoke of the unsinkable ship, the Titanic. Ooohs and Aaaahs, it was the greatest thing imaginable. An engineering masterpiece, another of humanity's milestones. The ship was touted as not only improbable of sinking but impossible of sinking. Enough engineers, mariners, captains, and sea-know-whos repeated this doe-eyed idea enough times until invariably everyone accepted it as gospel truth.

When the ship first hit the iceberg hardly any of the passengers knew what was happening, just as essentially nobody in the 1500s knew that Copernicus was happening. The news leaked slowly (pun intended); the widespread response - laughter. The ship is not sinking, this is an unsinkable ship. The sun is not the center of the universe, the Earth is, as we all know from repeating the Bible.

As water began to fill the lower compartments and the ship began to lean more people were convinced of the truth. This was a slow process. It took just under three hours for the ship to sink. That's a pretty healthy allotment of time to convince another human that the metallic structure they are standing on is in fact headed to the bottom of the ocean in the near future, especially if they have retained all five sensory modalities of which to accept and interpret empirical evidence. However, it is estimated that the hesitation, confusion, and general reluctance to act contributed to hundreds of the ensuing deaths.

Even so, there were still reports of crewmen and the enthusiastic onboard insisting that the ship was not sinking, as it was unsinkable, they tenaciously reminded all. That's when a frantic passenger pulled such a deranged person to the side of the ship, pointed to the crack in the hull, pointed to the angle the ship made with the water horizontal, pointed out the cries below, pointed to the water in the lower compartments, maybe even stuck their foot in it (in short, appealed to physics, not an idea, as insight to capital T, and readily pertinent, truth). And that's when the deranged person repeated, wide-eyed, "this is an unsinkable ship."

Science VS. Religion is wrong, and Science AND Religion is wrong. The correct format is Religion THEN Science. Science is not an alternative to Religion, nor an explanatory comrade. It is a successor. It doesn't facilitate, or help, or do anything in conjunction. It outdates, it nullifies, it is an entirely different approach to attaining truth altogether, period. It is a realization that repeated mantras and abstract, feel-good ideas give way to empirical, physical, inductive evidence.

It took about three hours to realize that the Titanic could, in fact, sink, and there were undoubtedly a few people drowning in the ocean after the ship had gone under, thinking bewilderdly, "that was an unsinkable ship." I think the transistion stage for Science to become fully accepted and Religion fully understood as backward will be somewhere on the order of 1,000 years. Copernicus was about 1550 so I'll give it till 2550. Of course Science's congregation is always growing, Religion's always dwindling, just as more and more people decide to scramble for a lifeboat when they discover water rising.

Ask yourself this question - what is the value of remaining on a sinking ship, once you realize it's sinking?

Now everyone have a very merry and un-delusional Christmas!