Finally a dialogue on faith and belief, doubt and science. Considering what this books protagonist is I am surprised it did not come about sooner. These excerpts are actually both from Van Helsing but on two different occasions to two different people. They fit nicely though I think:
“I have learned not to think little of any one’s belief, no matter how strange it be. I have tried to keep an open mind; and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things. The things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.”
It is always so easy to believe something when it can be proven to us or when every day we interact with it but that is not hard to do, you could even argue that it is not belief but simply our own reality. Something we never really question.
“You reason well, and your wit is bold; but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men’s eyes, because they know – or think they know – some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young – like the fine ladies at the opera.”
I like this second quote I think best. Both of these men are men of science, doctors, raised in a humanistic world, and yet, Van Helsing is willing to question rather than always accept what another man tells him, what ‘science’ tells him. Whether it be ‘mad or sane’ his open mindedness allows him to explore more possibilities and in this sense to see the truth when others blame giant bats and dogs or the pricking of a pin.
“I have learned not to think little of any one’s belief, no matter how strange it be. I have tried to keep an open mind; and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things. The things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.”
It is always so easy to believe something when it can be proven to us or when every day we interact with it but that is not hard to do, you could even argue that it is not belief but simply our own reality. Something we never really question.
“You reason well, and your wit is bold; but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men’s eyes, because they know – or think they know – some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young – like the fine ladies at the opera.”
I like this second quote I think best. Both of these men are men of science, doctors, raised in a humanistic world, and yet, Van Helsing is willing to question rather than always accept what another man tells him, what ‘science’ tells him. Whether it be ‘mad or sane’ his open mindedness allows him to explore more possibilities and in this sense to see the truth when others blame giant bats and dogs or the pricking of a pin.
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