The more we learn about the universe...

I was watching this video today



And while watching it, I have watched it a few times before, my mind wandered a little. It's very easy for  this scientist to go to work and see the Hand of God  through his work, so I thought to myself, "Why don't I realize God's handiwork in my couch? (and you might reply: because it's so ugly) " I thought , "I know it once was all raw materials which came from nature which originates from God, but something in the fact that the the hand of man came in and manufactured my couch removes the context by which I more readily see Heavenly Father's impact on it. I wonder at the life of Adam and Eve and those generations that lived so primitively and the civilizations that followed them and wonder if they didn't have an easier time believing in a Divine Creator because they lived in a world more dictated by the ebb and flow of nature.
Someone was once said something to the effect that: we criticize people who lived 500 years ago for being so gullible that all a priest had to do was say "Thus saith the Lord" and they believed it. However we don't recognize that we are just as gullible because all a news anchor has to do is say "Thus saith Science" and we believe it
And I wonder if the reason so many people believe less in God and more into science has to do more with lifestyle shift than any advance in human intelligence. We now live in a very mechanical and material world whereas before people lived in a more natural one. You don't see the hand of God as readily in a rocking chair you purchased from Anthropologie as you do a rocking chair you fashioned and built from the tree you yourself chopped down in the forest. The context of ones daily life 3 or more steps removed from God and that was not always so.

I think most of us take for granted our own ignorance of the bigger picture of things--and I'm not just talking about in terms of spirituality or religion, I'm talking about science, here. When Dr. Lewis, in the video, talks about the immensity of the universe and how incapable we are of comprehending all of it, I'm led to compare it to the human mind. Psychology gets a lot of grief for not being a "hard science" but that is because the field is still in its infancy and because just one persons brain is as immense in its variables and possibilities as the universe is.

The general public most often doesn't get beyond a surface level understanding of science and psychology. It's what we vaguely remember from our classes in high school or college, or what see on msn.com or some trendy book we find at Barnes and Noble and is therefore on skin deep or superficial and we don't really question it or think it through. Hundreds of years ago everyone believed that the earth was flat and the body was ruled by the balance of four liquids or humours because it made sense to them, but since then we have learned otherwise. However, people still buy into what "makes sense" to them especially if it is explained to them by an authoritative figure. A lot of people believe in theories like "The Color Code" or "5 Love Languages" but these are only skin deep observations of the human personality and they are very limiting in their understanding.

The more I learn about the human mind the more I come to understand the impossibility of defining it in such narrow and concrete terms. How much do I only dwell on the skin of my thoughts and mind and how little do I actually get down to the bones of who I am and truly understanding myself--and it is in recognizing that incompetency on my part that leads me to believe that there is a High Power, there is a Heavenly Father that created me and there is veil between my puny powers of mortal recognition and the eternal perspective. Just as the more we learn about the universe we realize more both 1) how limitless are the number of things we don't know and 2) how impossible it is for us to understand them, so it goes with the mind and we gain a sense of the eternal. It is these moments that I recognize my own ignorance that persuade me to trust more in Heavenly Father's understanding of who I am, what I am capable of doing, what I need to go through to get there than what I think I know.

That's why I believe that we shouldn't rely so heavily on therapists, or friends, or Doctors, or Bishops, or parents, or popular books, or medications, or chocolate to solve the all these problems we think we have--because they don't have all the answers. They can help but too often we lean on that rather than rely on prayer and revelation--that personal relationship with Heavenly Father. We deprive ourselves of that experience and growth in faith because it's so much easier to physically talk to another human being than to search out within ourselves by the guidance of the Holy Ghost.

A person might go to a therapist/friend/Doctor/etc... and lament "I'm just not happy right now, can you make me life pleasant, because it's not right now and I don't like that". But a simple study of the doctrines of the gospel, with the personal witness of the Holy Ghost would testify to that person that life is not meant to always be pleasant, and it is through the balance of easy and hard times in our lives that we grow and find true joy and happiness. Then as a person exercises faith in this doctrine and trusts in Heavenly Father that doctrine is then proven to them by experience.

The more "learned" I become the more I realize that the answers to life's questions are all answered through those "primary answers" of scripture study, prayer, personal revelation, and attending Sacrament Meeting.