A Quote by Lisa Randall
There is real confusion about what it means to be right and wrong - the difference between what spiritual beliefs are and what science is.
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The real voice is stiller and smaller and seems to know, without confusion, the difference between right and wrong and the subtle delineation between the beautiful and profane. It's not an agitated voice, but ever patient as though it approves a million false starts. The voice I am talking about is a deep water of calming wisdom.
If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.
Some people are worried about the difference between right and wrong. I'm worried about the difference between wrong and fun.
I'm comfortable reading science and dissecting it and discerning the difference between junk science and real science.
In the forefront of science, there is not much difference between religion and science. People harbor beliefs. That's what happens when people believe something religiously.
Discernment is not a matter of telling the difference between right and wrong; rather it is telling the difference between right and almost right.
You know the difference between a real science and a pseudoscience? A real science recognizes and accepts its own history without feeling attacked. When you tell a psychiatrist his mental institution came from a lazar house, he becomes infuriated.
Mothers know the difference between a broth and a consommé. And the difference between damask and chintz. And the difference between vinyl and Naugahyde. And the difference between a house and a home. And the difference between a romantic and a stalker. And the difference between a rock and a hard place.
He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death.
There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority.
I believe that the real difference in the American church is not between conservatives and liberals, fundamentalists and charismatics, nor between Republicans and Democrats. The real difference is between the aware and the unaware.
What you need to learn, children, is the difference between right and wrong in every area of life. And once you learn the difference, you must always choose the right.
A fool is a person who knows the difference between right and wrong, and chooses to do wrong.
A person of character knows the difference between right and wrong and always tries to do the right thing for the right reason.
I also talk a lot in Deeper Reading about the importance that confusion plays. When my students come to me, they think confusion is bad. They are wrong. Confusion is the place where learning occurs.
I agree that science is the best way of understanding the natural world, and therefore that we have reason to believe what the best science tells us about the objects in that world and the relations between them. But this does not mean that the natural world is the only thing we can have true beliefs about. The status of material objects as things that are "real" is a matter of their having physical properties, such as weight, solidity, and spatio-temporal location. In order to be real, such things need not have, in addition to these properties, some further kind of metaphysical existence.
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