…
D: My motivation comes from my natural instincts. I try to live a scientific life by consciously directing the pressures of natural selection.
Y: Spare me the evolutionary rhetoric. Science isn’t foundational; it doesn’t prescribe norms. What you’re saying isn’t scientific.
D: It’s the only genuinely scientific position. It’s just another way of saying, I don’t know—I simply investigate.
Y: Then where did that decision come from?
D: From myself, of course. I made a conscious choice. I dared to think, and I made that decision.
Y: Just admit that God gave it to you. How can you claim I did it when you didn’t even choose to enter this life? Realize that you’re a servant.
D: I won’t silence my thoughts by saying “God.” I refuse every escape that would make me think I already know.
Y: Fine. What are you doing today?
D: I’m staying home with you guys. I don’t have any other plans.
Y: Did you decide to have this conversation?
D: Do you think there’s another will making that decision?
Y: No. We were brought into existence here exactly as we are. We had no part in it.
D: Do you really think this God of yours is controlling our student apartment?
Y: He controls everything.
D: So the Creator of the entire universe also comes down to supervise our little conversation?
Y: That’s a dimension beyond your comprehension.
M: Actually, both of you are partly right—and yet neither of you is truly right. Words are reductive. Whatever we express through language is only a flattened image of reality. Science becomes myth through language, while religion becomes immorality.
Y: How can that be? Religion is expressed through language.
M: The moment it is expressed, it begins to decay. Every attempt to glorify it corrupts it even further. Eventually, it turns into immorality.
D: Explain how science becomes myth.
M: Scientific methodology is remarkably successful at measuring the universe’s past and discovering patterns. But trying to apply that same method to human society—which has never reached equilibrium—is itself mythological. Humanity is not as self-organizing as nature. Once science is used to establish norms, it ceases to be science and becomes myth: a narrative without sufficient justification.
D: Don’t forget there isn’t a better alternative. Aren’t you always saying we should ask, What’s the alternative?
M: A better alternative certainly isn’t religion. The better alternative is to take both—and everything else—into account. To resist intellectual shortcuts. To stop imagining you’ve found simple answers.
D: Aren’t you the one who says dialectics is inevitable?
M: I said dialectic, not antinomy or rhetoric.
D: What’s the difference?
M: In dialectics, you don’t win. The subject wins.
D: And what exactly am I supposed to get out of that?
M: Nothing. That’s precisely the point. Once you realize that you yourself are the product of a larger whole, you begin producing for that larger whole. Personal ambition starts to look like a child’s game.
Y: Oh, spare us this performance of egoless altruism. Aren’t you the one who’s always obsessed with enlightenment, constantly starting new book manuscripts?
M: You’re right. Our desires keep us alive. Without them we wouldn’t be human. Isn’t that what existence is?
D: Not scientifically. Scientifically, you’re an animal—an organism that survives by maintaining its internal systems against external forces. Looking after your own interests is normal. Claiming otherwise is what’s abnormal.
M: I don’t see myself as an isolated human individual. I think I belong to a higher structure, just as my cells belong to my organs, and my organs belong to my body.
D: But you’re the one controlling your cells.
M: And how can you say with certainty that there isn’t a higher structure controlling us?
D: That’s not philosophy. That’s faith.
M: Isn’t it possible that, like a cell, we exist within a higher organism that lies beyond the limits of our capacity to know?
D: It’s possible. But it’s equally possible that no such thing exists—and that thousands of other stories could be invented as well.
M: Do you think humanity’s countless beliefs about higher realities have all been meaningless?
D: They spend most of their time denying one another.
M: Perhaps it’s merely a problem of naming. They grew up inside language just as you did. They’re haunted by words. In other words, they believe in ghosts. Don’t you believe in one as well—the ghost of science?
D: No philosopher could call science a ghost. What’s ghostly about it?
M: A savior is a ghost. There is no salvation without a price. Labels are ghosts because a dynamic world cannot truly be labeled. Any projection, ideal, or pattern imposed upon the future is a ghost, because the future is a dynamic function. The fantasy of innocent science is a ghost as well. Like religion, it is simply another name for humanity’s desire to control the world.
D: You keep following religion, then. We’ll keep following science. Let’s see who’s more successful.
M: If success is all that matters, then a football player is successful. But successful at what? It depends entirely on the standard you’re using.
D: Success is survival. Ending up beside the thousands of forgotten religions in history’s graveyard is failure.
M: Are you really convinced that science itself will never one day be condemned?
D: Yes. Everything else may disappear, but true knowledge remains.
M: Everything decays. Every word is eventually abused. That’s not a problem with science; it’s a problem with the way humanity assimilates and domesticates the world.
D: Then philosophy too.
M: Of course. That’s why philosophy has already declared its own death.
D: What happened?
M: Science emerged as a newer word and gradually took philosophy’s place.
D: Now you’re talking. Welcome to my side.
M: And yet, to claim that we’ve arrived at the final destination would be just another illusion.
…
