Trichotomy... a new kid on the block

Today I'm going to tell you about a trichotomy.  In most cases we can think of things in terms of opposites...'what is it? and what is it not?'  And that approach to philosophical thought has worked for millennia and still does work even to this day.  For instance, take black and white ... these are opposite concepts.  But they can't describe everything,  especially in this modern,
 high-tech, fast-paced world we live in today.  The third element would be a synthesis of the two concepts and it results in gray.

The opposites I'm going to touch on now are the concepts of Science and Religion.  Both of these begin with a thought or an idea.  In Science, the thought  or idea must be developed by an experiment or a reduction to some practical demonstration and preferably it must be measureable.  The demonstration must be reproducible anywhere at any time and it must produce the same results.  This is the so-called scientific method.  In Religion, all of reality was created by a Supreme Being and the understanding of that creation was provided by the spokesmen of the various churches around the world.  The authenticity of the particular doctrine most always was by divine revelation and ritualization was the means by which the revelation was encouraged.

So then Science required provable demonstration and Religion accepted events and outcomes on the basis of faith.  For example, the doctrine that the earth was the center of the universe was a carryover from the millennia when astrology was the only scientific procedure.  And it wasn't until Gallileo and Newton and others showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Sun was the center of our solar system and there was even more beyond that.  This left us with a cosmology that started with a Big Bang but Science could not say what there was before the Big Bang and Religion could only say that the Big Bang was the work of God.

The time was ripe for the introduction of the Trichotomy.  The Trichotomy represents a synthesis of both Science and Religion.  And this is what I will speak about in next Thursday's Blog.