Oh, I love this~
I agree, it is difficult to be sure if the shade-being is Satan instead of God. He certainly doesn't seem very benevolent, but in Ed's world God could simply be like that. I do, however, consider him to effectively be God. We have seen no being more powerful in the story, so if the shadow is Satan, then God is uninvolved in the story. If God is not involved, but Satan is, doesn't Satan get to play God?
To deal with the many variables in the deer example, blunt force could be used. Blunt force is really the most effective solution to human error besides taking the humans out of the process. Get fifty people, send one to count and recount the deer at a time. You wouldn't be able to count every single deer for certain, but if the process is repeated the same way every time and the results averaged out, you would gain a very good idea of whether the population is rising or falling.
Of course, as in everything, there will often be mistakes. I suppose the main reason that I hold science above religion is because one of the main goals of science is to uncover its own mistakes. Where challenging old theories isn't always loved in the scientific community, it's much more tolerated than in the religious community, where it has caused war. If we don't recheck ourselves, an error could turn into a way of life. As you touched on, religion and science both look for truth, but in different ways. In my mind, it seems that religion starts with several higher truth and builds down from that to find more basic things, such as how to live your live. Science is the opposite; it works from the basics, one plus one and the weight of water, and builds up to higher things. This means that religion will take you more directly to the more vital truths. However, it also means that if the higher truths the religion builds from is wrong, everything that comes after it is wrong; everything falls apart.
Oddly enough, this comes right back to our question: Was the shadow God, or Satan? Let's just say it was Satan. This would mean that my assumption was wrong, and a human error caused by Satan's deception. If Satan was clever enough, and powerful enough, could he not fool everyone? We are human, we make mistakes, what if we made the mistake to trust him two thousand years ago? There would be no way of checking. Frankly, this scares me. I'd rather play with more petty truths than follow the bigger ideas presented by religion to such an important conclusion that could be wrong. When religion remains abstract and science exact, everything works. The problem comes when scientists are holding lives and priests are making laws.
I also find it frustrating how people on both sides of the issue try to ostracize each other. If nothing else, we have to live with each other. There is a lot of reluctance amongst those who argue against religion to let the religious change their position on anything. Part of this is that being able to use past example makes things easier, but I expect it's also a reaction to some of the "untouchable" aspects of belief. Picking apart specific modern beliefs is often a taboo (unless it's a small minority; the media is having a field day with the Mormons) and going after older customs gets around this issue. These days, you can find online communities which violate these taboos just for shock value, but this only makes it more of a roadblock. Since violations are now associated with childish jokes, arguments that go directly against modern religious practices are discredited. It's much easier to pick apart Noah's Ark than it is to question legal rights of churches. |