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SCIENCE > < RELIGION

Without science where would we be,
still eating grubs and a stray berry
while seeking shelter in a tree
owning just what we can carry?

But thinking in a rational way
has advanced us with its myriad answers
to the place we are today
a world in which we seem the masters.

Those facts which pointed the direction
what were they they answering for us
Who or what supplied the question
how is it we became us?

Thousands of long years ago
when we looked up to the starry sky
beside a cook fire's subdued glow
It was religion which asked "Why?"

Style / type: 
Structured: Western
Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Editing stage: 

Comments

This summer I had some time and re-read Will Durants' masterpiece, "The Story of Philosophy" and you would get a different answer from Plato to Spinoza to Kant to Jung to Satre, and it would be a quiet mouthful.
In your poem the first line is a question, or part of a question, and I think needs a question mark.
I think of science as being that discipline first conceived by Bacon as a way of proving laws of the knowable universe by the "scientific method" .We did get a little further without it in the ancient millennia cultures after we left the caves and tree tops.
In the last stanza we have the image of the fire, but the image of "camp fire" is very strong for me as a fun group event in modern times, not imagining the early homo sapiens in that mode.
And the word religion..was it "religion that asked why?" Is not religion a group response to a belief in some deity?
Whatever our beliefs or non beliefs in a higher power or a faith is for each of us to respect. I respect the idea of the poem, but for me it handles a very serious issue at the core of our beings, which the great philosophers have struggled to suggest answers to in volumes of work, a bit lightly, without other than rhetorical consideration.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

It might well be that this needs to be a bit longer. And i think the mystical questions of why we're here and are we alone probably lead at least indirectly to science trying to answer them. I'll give your ideas consideration in eventual edit which I Know is needed. I just threw this together before the bones of the poem wore away lol........stan

author comment

Your title drew me in, lol. Were you
missing me lol???
You do know religion didn't really ask
"why", they claimed to know lol, but it
is all in the perceptions ... nice little poem,
love the content, follow them both.

Doesn't one have to know the question before knowing the answer though? lol. I hope the title using >< shows that neither is greater than the other. And I Had been wondering if you were still around lol......stan

author comment

in a tree
may be ''under'' a tree
monkeys only trapeze

and
haven't you ever thought
all inventions of science came in
after 17th century

Religion lay
like clay
on human minds
as there were only to be
two professions
one
PROSTITUTION
second
RELIGION

Stan do some more home work
Science could have come first
Ask Pythagoras and Plato too
so many others
Google will you
those who lived over 2500 years
Buddha was such a one
Thanks for your rendition
I have searched since 1957

Uggh. Let um us try to start fire by rubbing two sticks together. Ugh, ugh It work. Now let's see if it work again........scientific method applied to a question lol. But I appreciate your input. This is a poem which in edit will need a Lot of input.......stan

author comment

can you help
EDIT
this scientific
tumour VS UR HUMOUR

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