Adulting

I realize that it's been a while since I've posted anything here, because, in part, I've been lazy and writing takes energy, but mostly, I think, it's because I've had a pretty good summer, and I have found that I have less of a compulsion to write when I'm doing well and feeling good. For the most part, this summer was good, one of the best summers I've had in a long time in fact. Both [Totally a Cat] and [Keeper of All Knowledge] were in town for the majority of the summer, so I had people to do things with, and I had positions in two labs which gave me something to do during the day. Even if it was annoying to have to get up early, walk a mile to the bus stop, and then take the bus to campus every day, it was worth it, because more than anything, I need something productive to do with my time, or I get restless and depressed sitting at home doing nothing all day.

That's the trap I often find myself in during the summer, and I was glad to mostly avoid it this year. But that doesn't mean that I haven't had things on my mind, which now, with the semester fast approaching and more and more people leaving to go abroad, combined with some recent events that have brought some stuff I thought I had dealt with back up, are starting to trigger that old anxiety that eats away at me during those quiet, boring times. More so than anything, I've been thinking a lot about my life goals and such, what I actually want to do with my life, and who I want to be. I'm old enough to be considered an adult by pretty much every culture in the world, despite the fact that my government doesn't yet trust me to buy or consume alcohol for some reason. But I don't really feel like an adult. I've always thought that  I would have things figured out by the time I was 20, but I'm starting to realize that I may never really have things fully figured out.

I realized recently that I have no end goals. The innocuos enough question of what my dream job is left me stumped. I've never been much of a planner, dreaming of who I would be. I was never the kid who dreamed of her wedding or anything like that, because I can't really picture a future that is any different than the present, and the few times that I have allowed myself to picture things farther out than a couple of weeks, I've built up hopes that only came crashing down around me. I don't know if it's because I lack a sense of whimsey or creativity like people often tell me ("you're just too science minded to understand this art/feeling/existential thought") which I don't really believe (I am fully capable of understanding art and philosophy, I just think that a lot of it is dumb, and I get frustrated by people who deny reality in favor of fantasy; I have a hard time truly suspending disbelief) or if it's because I have learned to embrace the status quo as a defense mechanism (if things are fine the way they are, why risk getting hurt on only the off chance that things might get better?). I'm generally a fairly conservative person when it comes to my words and actions. It takes me a long time to get comfortable with people or situations, and even with my closest friends, I still often go over things in my head several times before saying them, particularly anything with any emotional weight, because I don't want to offend or be misunderstood, which is not to say that I'm articulate or at all a successful communicator. Why upset the status quo when things are going fine?

Regardless of the reason, I realized that I don't know where I want to be in ten years, or what I want to do with my life. I know I want to go to grad school and get a PhD and I know that I want to be interviewed on NPR, which is my person metric of success, but I don't know what I want to get a PhD in, or what I want to do with that degree, and as I was so kindly reminded, that is not an actual end goal. That is a stepping stone to something else eventually. It is a way of insulating myself in school, where I'm confortable, embracing the bubble, and avoiding the real world for five to seven more years. I mean, what other reasons do I have for wanting to go to grad school, when I really think about it? Outside of the fact that I can't let myself not pursue the highest degree available in my field, or that I need to prove to myself that I can do it, to banish the gnawing fear that I'm not actually as intelligent as I seem, but just am good at memorizing and parroting back random, somewhat useless trivia that sometimes overlaps with course requirements. But that's probably just my insecurities talking.

When I really think about it, despite a few brief forays into wanting to be a writer or an artist, I spent most of my childhood wanting to do something that related to science. When other kids were busy wanting to be giraffes when they grew up, I wanted to break the laws of physics, whatever that meant. On career day, I would go as an inventor or a superhero/villan when everybody else was busy dressing up as the president. I watched the PBS science show Nova for fun, and once forced my parents to take me home early from some event because I wanted to watch the special on the Human Genome Project. I duct taped a lawn chair to a skate board and used the handles of croquet mallets to propel myself around the neighborhood, because I was inventing things, dammit, never mind practicality!

I'm happy with my major, and I do want to go to grad school truly, but sometimes I wonder if I should have more of a plan for myself. If I can't picture myself in a situation that is at all different from my current one, will I ever be able to change where I'm at? Will I ever be able to see and take the opportunities that are in front of me? Or will I only be able to maintain the status quo, for better or for worse?

Geeking Out

I know I've been bad about posting things lately, Imaginary Readers, and I don't really have an excuse, other than a week in the North Woods without internet access, but I'm okay with that. Frankly, as I'm sure you've noticed, I tend to use this space as an outlet for my angst, which works, but means that I post more when I'm not doing so well, and, almost surprisingly, I've been feeling pretty good so far this summer. Having something productive to do every day (lab work) is good for me, as it keeps me from wallowing in self-pity at home all day, and when you add in having [Keeper Of All Knowledge] and [Totally a Cat] in town for the summer and hanging out with them, it makes for what is probably the best summer I've had in a long time, so far at least. Don't worry, Imaginary Readers, I am trying to still post things here, but I just haven't had much to say lately that isn't super repetitive of my previous meanderings, and I think it is better for now to only say things when I have something to share, rather than to force something more frequently. Anyways, on the the main event of this post.

Us with Tamora Pierce (middle)

This past weekend, [Keeper of All Knowledge], [Totally a Cat], and I went to CONvergence, a local sci-fi/fantasy convention here in the Twin Cities that serves pretty much the entire upper mid-west outside of Chicago, and it was awesome! While we had thrown around the idea of going when we were idly planning stuff to do this summer, we decided that we had to go when we found out that Tamora Pierce was one of the guests of honor this year. Sometime last year we all discovered that we had a mutual love of her books, to the point that we had a Tamora Pierce reading group last summer lovingly named "Ladies of the Knight" because we are just that cool, although I only made it through Song of the Lioness, the first quartet, and the first two books of the Wild Magic quartet before giving up on my reread. One thing that was quite apparent from the panels that we went to on her work and just our experience with it in general, is that she seems to have the quietest fandom ever. Over and over, people said that they thought that they were the only ones who liked her books, and they were pleasantly surprised to find that they had a decent sized following. This is unfortunate, because it's always better to have people to talk to about the stuff that you love, but understandable to me, in that, although she is one of my favorite authors, and the Tortall books were an important force in my adolescence, I rarely talk about them when discussing things like favorite books and fantasy series. I'm not sure why this is, other than an inherent assumption that no one else has heard of them, which perpetuates the problem. Her books are awesome, particularly for young girls who are into fantasy, because they are populated with strong female characters, who are sorely lacking in YA books, and I strongly recommend them to anyone who hasn't read them before.

Two Caps and a bunch of War Bond girls

Also, Tamora Pierce is hilarious to listen too. She's a great speaker, and can only be described as feisty. She never shies away from controversial topics, and makes her opinion quite clear. We were super excited to meet her, and managed to be the first ones in line for the book signing, without getting their ridiculously early or anything. I got one of [SisterBot]'s books signed, as well as one of my own, which pretty much means that she can never be mad at me again. We also got our picture taken with her after a panel on her characters, which was equally cool, and had the mystery of how to pronounce her name cleared up: the emphasis is on the first syllable, not on the 'o.'

Just some of the many Avengers present

While all the Tamora Pierce stuff was super awesome, the rest of the weekend was pretty amazing too. We went in costume, because it's more fun that way, with [Totally a Cat] going as first the Eleventh Doctor then as Liz X from that one episode of Doctor Who, [Keeper of All Knowledge] going as Zoe from Firefly, and me as Kel from Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small series. People really get into the costumes, and there were some amazing ones, like the Madam Vastra costume that definitely made [Totally a Cat] and I squeal for about 30 seconds, and the super awesome Captain America who looked strikingly like Chris Evans, and spent the entire time in character as Cap, telling people to buy War Bonds and saluting people when he left. The main thing that struck me about the costumes was the sheer abundance of boobs. I really shouldn't have been surprised, given the types of things that female characters tend to wear in comics and other media, but the sheer number of corsets and what can only be described as bikinis on display was quite impressive, if somewhat distracting. There were some truly impressive displays of boobs defying gravity itself, as well as many other examples of somewhat questionable costumes, where I was left wondering if they were really a character from something or had just elected to wear bondage gear. Also, furries. This isn't to say that I have any particular problem with bondage gear or furries or any of the other somewhat strange things that people did, as CON is a safe place to let all of your particular geek flags fly, including some of the kinkier ones, and geeky and kinky do tend to go hand in hand, but there were times when I was left wondering about whether people had just used something like bondage gear to approximate the leather straps on a particular character's outfit, or if they had just decided to eschew costumes for their leather codpieces, because sometimes it was confusing.

The aforementioned squeal worthy Madam Vastra (from Doctor Who)

We also ran into [Nice Vest] and [The Cool CA] there, and we hung out with them a bunch, because we really haven't seen them much this year, and they're pretty cool. They had come with a whole group of people, and had at least three different costumes each, so they didn't repeat day to day. The panels and events were fun, and [Nice Vest] directed us towards an unscheduled sing-a-long screening of Once More With Feeling, the musical episode from Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, which was awesome, and at night the place basically turned into one giant party, with sketchy bottles of what was presumable mostly alcohol being passed around freely, although we didn't end up staying all that late. It was totally worth the ticket price ($60 because we bought them early enough) and the price of the hotel room we split, and they provided enough real food that outside of the ticket and the hotel, there was no need to spend more money unless you wanted to buy something in the merch room, where the wares were both high quality and reasonably priced. It was a super fun weekend, and we have already begun to come up with ideas for costumes for next year, because planning is necessary. Everybody was super nice, because when you put geeks in Minnesota you can't really have a nicer group en masse, which definitely enhanced the experience. I can't believe that I haven't gone before, and I'm super excited to go again. Really, if you haven't already, you should definitely check CONvergence out if you're in the Twin Cities area, because it is super awesome. Okay, I'll stop gushing now.

Re-Writing

I hope this is legible. Click to enlarge.

Many Happy Returns

First up this post we have a little bit of business to take care of: I now have a tumblr blog because I was literally so bored on the internet that I needed yet another black hole of procrastination to be spagettified by, and also, I do quite enjoy funny pictures and gifs and so it was tumblr or pinterest, and I just couldn't bring myself to tacitly approve of a pin board themed social networking site by using it, so that left tumblr.  If you are interested, Imaginary Readers, in a pictorial depiction of my psyche, or are just so inclined, you can view/follow it at blackholesyposium.tumblr.com. And yes, it does have the same name as this blog, because I am nothing if not creative, and I am attempting to cultivate a vast online empire in ten to fifteen years, so I need to sow the seeds now by keeping things consistant.

Anyways, it was my twentieth birthday this past week, which means that my age is no longer a prime number, but rather a nice and round one. I generally enjoy birthdays, except for the way that everybody tries to force me to decide what I want to do, and this one was pleasant, but I find the whole getting older thing kind of weird. It's probably that whole gradual change thing, but I never feel any older, just the same as always, yet whenever I picture myself at a given age that is greater than my current age, I always assume that I'll be different somehow than I am now, but, inevitably when I reach said age I end up feeling the same. That's not to say that I haven't changed at all, because a lot happened in the last year, and I know that I have changed quite a bit just in the last twelve months and even more in the last two years since I started college, but I feel somewhat static. It can probably just be chalked up to the fact that my base personality that makes up who I am hasn't really changed, as I don't think most people's do substantially over the course of their lifetime, but it is something that has always struck me.

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I've started to really feel the rhythm of the summer the past week or so, and despite the fact that I've established a decent routine for myself of going to campus into one of the two labs I work in each week day, I have started to feel the listlessness of the summer sneaking up on me already. I know that a decent part of it right now has to do with the sheer boredom that comes with these dead couple of weeks before summer classes bring people back to campus and the cities. This week in particular has let the lonely boredom turn into lonely sadness as it is wont to do when I'm at home, because [Totally a Cat] is in DC for the week, [Keeper of All Knowledge] has yet to return to the cities from her time at home for her brother's graduation, and [Львица] just left for Russia for the summer, leaving me with minimal options for people to use as a distraction. [Totally a Cat] and [Keeper of All Knowledge] will both be back by the end of this week and we will hopefully start actually checking things off our list of things to do this summer, and then I will have somewhere to go when I need to get away from my family for a while, but I'm really going to miss [Львица] this summer. Especially since she's also going to be in Russia all of next year, leaving only August for me to see her at all for the next year. One of the best parts of last summer for me, Berlin notwithstanding, was hanging out with her, and I'm going to miss that. She's probably tied with [Keeper of All Knowledge] for my closest friend, and I'm going to miss her.

It doesn't help that because I am insecure about my ability to make and maintain friends, particularly close friends, I am paranoid that when people leave for decently long periods of time I'm not going to be able to stay in touch with them and will ultimately lose them. I know that I can stay in touch with people when they go abroad, particularly because of the wonders of the internet, but because I already feel weird about simple things like texting people for no other reason than I want to talk to them, doing things like sending someone an email makes me more uncomfortable than I care to admit. It's something I am aware of, and need to get over, but that doesn't make it any easier. I guess I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because all of my close friends are going abroad next year, which makes me anxious because in my head my relationships are a lot more fragile than they probably actually are. As previously mentioned, [Львица] is going to be in Russia for the better part of the next year, and I am going to miss her a ton, and [Keeper of All Knowledge] is going to be in Argentine in the Spring, which is going to be difficult because I've gotten really close to her over the past year and she is one of the few people I feel totally comfortable with and with whom there has never been any weirdness, and finally [Totally a Cat] is going to be in Copenhagen in the fall which means I won't have anyone to stay up pointlessly late and snuggle with.

Everybody's talk of going abroad also makes me wish that I hadn't wasted a year and a half on engineering so that I would have time to go abroad for a semester, but because I didn't make plans soon enough, because I didn't think I would have time, I missed that boat. Maybe I'll look at grad programs abroad or something. I just need to spend some time away from Minnesota eventually. I can't go to grad school here, because I'll be in grad school for the better part of five years, and wherever I go is going to impact where I end up living and working after school, and I can't stay here forever, always within ten miles of where I grew up and where my parents live. I need to get out of the midwest for a decent amount of time, even if, like all of my cousins who move away, I end up coming back eventually. The world is too big to stay in Minneapolis for my entire life.

May Days

The semester ended a little over a week ago, and I've been home since then, as the dorms closed eight hours after I finished my last final. Finals were stressful, as always, but I did finally manage a 4.0 semester, which I was happy about because it means that the trendline of my GPA has a statistically significant R^2 value. I made a graph of my GPA since I started college, not including summer term or the CIS German classes I took in high school, to illustrate this point, because I don't think people have really understood exactly what I mean when I say that my grades were trending towards a 4.0 this semester, although I'm not totally sure what this observed trend means with regards to my remaining 4 semesters. I'd like to think that my GPA will max out and achieve steady state at 4.0, but I highly doubt that as all of my Chemistry electives from here on in will be courses designed for graduate students that they allow undergrads to enroll in for major credit. Also, advanced labs.

So far, being home for the summer hasn't been as bad as I expected, but it's only been a week and the [SiblingBots] have yet to finish school, so it's been quiet around the house on the days I'm home. I have also successfully managed to be out of the house most days, as I have been going to campus nearly every week day to work in the lab, which is nice because it gives me something productive to do, and gets me out of the house at a reasonable hour. I like being on campus during the summer, because it's quiet and it's possible to enjoy the mall without there being several thousand people around, which also makes it significantly easier to find seating in Coffman. Campus during the summer is green and peaceful, and so far the weather has been nice enough to sit outside and enjoy the sun without significant amounts of wind or exorbitant heat.

This pretty much sums up how I feel when I'm at home (via)

It has been kind of weird being home though, because, to a certain extent, it feels exactly like last summer, when I was going to campus for summer classes and wandering around feeling sorry for myself when I wasn't in class. A couple of times now I've been driving and a song will come on (yes, I do listen to music when I drive, Imaginary Readers, as crazy as that seems, I just don't listen to the radio) and I'll have this flash of feeling, like absolutely nothing has changed in the past year and I'm exactly where I was last summer, which always leaves me kind of thrown. I know that it's just that I'm at home, and I spent all of last summer having lots of strong feelings about some things, so I'm bound to associate some of the patterns I have fallen back into with those feelings, but I don't really like it, because, in fact, a whole lot has happened in the past year and I don't feel the same way now that I did then, despite the fact that I'm having (different) feelings about some of the same stuff/people. It's weird to all of the sudden be experiencing old emotions, especially ones that aren't all that great, because for the most part, I've been feeling pretty decent lately, and when that happens, it brings up a lot of old insecurities and issues that I don't really want to be dealing with right now, because they aren't actually relevant to my current situation, and are generally bringing my down.

Despite all of my whining, there are some nice things about being home, including getting to spend time with [SisterBot] who I've gotten fairly close to recently. It's nice to talk to her, particularly since we both have the same issues with the [ParentalUnits] and [BrotherBorg], and it's nice to be able to talk to her about stuff that other people don't get because they didn't grow up in my family. Like about how [MaternalUnit] saw the Marvel comics shot glass set [Львица] gave me for my birthday and automatically assumed I would be using them for storage, because I don't ever do shots or drink when I'm not at home with my parents (which I totally don't if you're reading this [MaternalUnit]).

Anyways, this summer has started out okay, and I hope that it continues that way. Mostly, right now I want [Keeper of All Knowledge] to get back from Wisconsin so I don't feel so pushy about asking [Totally a Cat] to hang out, but there is a strong possibility that any weirdness between [Totally a Cat] and I recently is completely in my head. I should probably also stop reading books about fundamentalist Christianity, because that just doesn't seem healthy, and several people now have thought that I meant I was thinking about converting when I told them about said books. (Rest assured, Imaginary Readers, I am not going to convert to fundamentalist evangelical Christianity because that just wouldn't end well for anybody involved, and if I ever do, I give you permission to kidnap and deprogram me because it really would be for the best).

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Stressing Out

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Not sure which I like more...(via)

Yesterday was the first day of finals, which meant I had my calc test Monday afternoon as all the calc finals are always from 1:30-4:30 on the first day of finals. It's kind of weird to think that I am now completely done with calc, after four semesters, given that I've always had a math class. I like math, especially calculus, but there's no more for me to take without it being scary math major classes that require proofs and other annoying bits of abstract thinking. Granted, I will eventually have to take Quantum Mechanics which is mostly math, and there will be plenty of math to do in my remaining classes, but none of them will be actual math classes, and that makes me kind of sad. But not sad enough to be a math major.

Anyways, finals always bring an inordinate amount of stress with them, and this iteration is no different.
I just want this week to be over so I can be done with what has increasingly become a very long year, but I also don't want it to be done, because being done means going home for the summer, which is something I'm not particularly looking forward to. It's not that I don't like my family or anything, it's just that I don't like being home, and the fact that every time I talk to [SisterBot] she tells me how much this summer is going to suck doesn't help. Apparently [MaternalUnit] and [BrotherBorg] have been at each other's throats lately, and when they fight, there's no where in the house where you can't hear then scream insults at each other, which is, needless to say, rather stressful, particularly because they then tend to both be in foul moods for the rest of the day, which they have no problem taking out on everyone else. That, and I just found out that my parents are in marriage counseling, which I know probably means nothing or is a good thing, but I would rather not find out about it via a text from [SisterBot], who figured it out because they kept going to 'appointments' together. I generally don't like to find out about such things from my 15 year old sister when she asks me if I know anything about it. Regardless, things have just been tense lately whenever I go home or see my family, and I am not looking forward to the better part of three months of tense when I'm home and guilt about not being home enough from [MaternalUnit] when I leave to avoid the tense.

All of that added to the fact that when I'm home for any extended period of time I tend to get restless, anxious, and a little bit depressed mostly from having a lack of anything productive/constructive to do, and I am not looking forward to spending this summer at home. In a effort to rectify the situation I'm trying to figure out a way to not be home much this summer, which seems like it will be feasible as I am working in two labs on campus and [Keeper of All Knowledge], [Totally a Cat], and [Who Needs Sleep?] are all going to be in town for at least part of the summer, so I'll actually have people to do things with. There is already a fairly largest list of things we are planning on doing this summer, but we'll see if any of them actually get accomplished. They range from the fairly easy to accomplish like bra shopping and going to various restaurants around the cities that we have been talking about for a while, to the more ambitious, such as going to a strip club, to the oddly specific, such as getting drunk on champagne and jumping off relatively high things with umbrellas (I think this is refering to something that happened on Gilmore Girls, but I'm not sure).

More relevant to a previous post, but rather perfect (via)

Anyways, the last two weeks have been fairly stressful, what with the standard end of the semester fair such as exams, papers, and finals, but also because of some interpersonal things that have happened lately which are far beyond my control but still rather unpleasant and not helping. And stress, I have found, is highly correlated with my mood and how I am feeling in general. The more stressed I am, the more ground my insecurities gain, and the more I have to struggle to not hate myself constantly. It's a vicious cycle wherein the more stress I feel, the less I sleep, and the less I sleep the more tired I am, which makes me more stressed because I can't focus on the work I need to get done, and the more stressed and sleep deprived I am, the harder it is to quiet that part of my brain that is constantly spinning down the rabbit hole of my various insecurities. And it doesn't help that stress makes my face break out continually until well after the stress has ended, and my somewhat persistant acne is one of my big body issues along with my weight.

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For a variety of reasons, I was feeling rather bad the other day, worse than I've felt in a while, and I had to remind myself that it was mostly because I had two finals that I hadn't really studied for coming up. Stress has a tendency to sneak up on me and manifest itself as really insecure days and insomnia rather than as the sinking feeling of dread or twitchy nervous energy that I generally associate it with. Sometimes I don't even really realize just how stressed out I am about something until I can't sleep for several nights and/or hate myself for a day or two, but generally once I identify what it is that is causing me stress, or just that it is stress rather than genuine self hatred that I am feeling, it abets to the point where I can deal with it normally, usually by studying if it's about exams, or doing whatever it is that I've been putting off. It's one of the few emotional things that I am able to really handle in a healthy way and suppressing it isn't my default setting, so I guess I've got that going for me. I've taken two of my three finals already, both of which went well, and I'm not worried about the third given I actually study for it at some point, but I would like to actually be done, because like I said before, this has been a long year, and I am so sick of dorm food that I may just live off pretzels and hummus for the rest of the week.

The Science of Religion

At the risk of accidentally making this into a Catholic blog, I am going to once again explore themes relevant to today through the lens of the Catholic Church. I know I've been writing about the Church a lot lately, and it seems to have become April's theme, but this will probably be the last post on that topic for a while, Imaginary Readers, and I will return to exploring my neuroses and insecurities shortly. But for now, I think it's important to talk about the Church, because I have a deep and abiding reverence for it as an historical and cultural force in the West, and am a total nerd about it for some reason, despite the fact that I completely and utterly disagree with it's social policies and don't really believe in the whole Our Risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ thing. In fact, sometimes I worry that someday I'll have some sort of religious experience tied to my reverence for the Church and end up back in the fold totally against my will, which may be the most truly neurotic and weird of my anxieties, but whatever happens happens I guess.

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Anyways, what I was intending to discuss today is the relationship between religion and science, because I currently doing research for a paper about the Church and evolution and so I've been reading lots of things various Popes have written about evolution and science in general. The Church had a rough start with the whole science thing, what with Galileo and all, but in the past century, it has been one of the most progressive religious institutions when it comes to integrating scientific discoveries and theology, and the way that it expresses this integration and the reservation it has about it, are some of the most poignant reflections about science that I've read in a long time.

Let's start with the "Letter of his Holiness John Paul II to Reverend George V. Coyne, S.J. Director of the Vatican Observatory" (1987), (and no, Imaginary Readers, I don't expect any of you to actually read this, although it is really interesting if you enjoy Papal writings about science). The letter stresses the need for a new era of critical openness and exchange between science and religion, as it consideres both crucial to the understanding and appreciating "our universe as a whole." It touches on some really important concepts when dealing with the relationship of science and religion in ways that are much more open and understanding than you would necessarily expect the Church to be. For example, it stresses that "[t]he Church does not propose that science should become religion or religion science" something that I think people in the pro-science camp sometimes forget is an option. They seem to think that any religious involvement or discourse with science means that religion is trying to take it over and impose it's own pre-conceived notions upon science, which some do, particularly Christian fundamentalists, but, as demonstrated here, that is not the only way to interact with religion, because "religion is not founded on science nor is science an extension of religion...Christianity possesses the source of its justification within itself and does not expect science to constitute its primary apologetic." Religion should not expect to find any justification for its existence within science, because religious tenets are outside of the purview of the natural; any divinity is by its very nature supernatural, and thus, no direct evidence for it occurs in nature, which is exactly what the Pope is saying here. Religion is free to interpret scientific findings to suit its theological tenants, but it cannot expect science to prove or disprove those tenants. This is again something that people on both sides misunderstand I think. Science is in itself not an argument for atheism, because you cannot prove a negative, thus you can never prove that God doesn't exist, nor can science be twisted to prove pre-conceived religious notions as the Young Earth Creationists like to do. The important thing to take away from this discussion is that "science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purity science from false absolutes." I do believe that an honest dialog between the two camps is needed to do just that, so people can see that they aren't mutually exclusive and not all religious people are science deniers or pseudo-scientists nor are all science advocates rabid atheists who believe any sort of faith is stupid.

I think it says a lot about the theological maturity of the Church that it recognizes the need for honest dialog between science and religion, and that science is the medium through which we understand the world around us. It means something that one of the largest organized religious bodies in the world, one which is notoriously resistant to change, recognizes scientific truths such as human evolution and quantum physics, and that religion itself is not infallible. Here the Church is willing to meet science half-way, without compromising its belief system, so long as the scientific community is willing to do the same. This is not to say that religious beliefs should inform scientific inquiry, rather that while they occupy separate sphere, as it should be, they should be in dialog with each other, because both can grow from attempting to understand where the other is coming from and what values inform each.

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I know that many people don't think that religion has anything to offer science, but I think that John Paul II makes a good point when he claims that religion can help science to "not become an unconscious theology."The reason, I think, many people see science and religion as incompatible (the actually incompatible Young Earth views notwithstanding) is that I think there are some within the scientific community who propagate the idea that they are mutually exclusive, such as the hard core atheists. I want to clarify here that I'm not talking about those people who just don't believe there is a god for reasons of their own, but I am specifically referring to those who yell really loudly about how science makes a god impossible and how atheism is the only logical, reasonable conclusion, and that if you aren't an atheist you are stupid, gullible, and deluded. Those people can stand to benefit from the realization that they are using science as a justification for their own system of beliefs, which is as valid as any, but not inherently better or more reasonable than any other. They have turned science into a basis for their own brand of theology, because they are using it to make claims that it in itself cannot make. Like I said, you can't prove a negative. Absence of proof is not proof of absence, no matter what anyone claims. A dialog between science and religion wouldn't force anyone to believe or disbelieve in God, and might in fact help to open minds on both sides, which I think would be a good thing all round.