It’s not that we think we know everything. It’s that we think we’re right about everything we believe. In our highly polarized society, almost everyone believes that they have the facts, know what truth is, and anyone thinking otherwise is wrong. Political parties have their “base”, a segment of the population who are similarly aligned on the issues and who are definitely opposed to the base of the other party. So certain are they of their rightness that they are tone deaf to facts that challenge their belief system, just as they are equally susceptible to the ploys of those who would lead that self-certainty into deeper blindness and even violence.

But it’s not only politics. Religious belief is equally polarized and polarizing, and the line of demarcation is not one belief system versus another, but rather the progressive/conservative divide that exists within each system. Progressive liberals within Christianity, for example, accept the validity and relevance of Islam or Judaism or Buddhism, but fundamentalists in any one of those belief systems will not accept the validity of any other.

The myopia is compounded when these systems look at science. For example, a Christian fundamentalist, taking the bible literally, cannot accept evolution, despite incontrovertible evidence in support thereof. I mean, we have proof that dinosaurs existed.

Political, religious, and scientific orientation generally go together. You’re either a conservative in all three, or a progressive. Not absolutely, but usually. I’m quite certain that I would be labeled a liberal in all three categories. My purpose here, however, is not to berate fundamentalists but rather to understand or at least acknowledge that each of us, one and all, thinks that we are right about everything we believe. One could argue that this divisiveness presents the greatest challenge to the survival of democracy, civility, and mutual respect in the world today. Failure to deal with this issue would be catastrophic.

Avoiding catastrophe includes our realization that when it comes to the big issues of life, the grand context of who we are, we are all totally and equally ignorant. Our lives are set on a stage of unsolved mysteries, both scientific and theological. For today, let’s focus on that. Starting with science:

1. It’s pretty much settled that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago in an event wherein the tiniest speck that contained all the matter and energy that exists today exploded in what we call the Big Bang. What caused that?, what was before the Big Bang, if anything? Why was there a BB in the first place?

2. We have discovered through the effects of gravity that 76% of our universe is made up of matter and energy about which we know absolutely nothing other than the fact that it exists. Nothing! And so we call them “dark”. Mystery number two.

3. Beginning with the BB the universe has been expanding “outward”. It was believed not too long ago that there was sufficient matter in the universe exerting the force of gravity such that the expansion would slow, stop, and then perhaps reverse. Not so. We have discovered that not only is the universe expanding, but that expansion is accelerating. Why do we have acceleration? Is something pushing the universe apart? Perhaps dark energy?

4. Given this expanding and accelerating cosmos, where is it all headed? At least two options present themselves. Perhaps whatever is pushing us apart will change and start pulling us together. A Big Crunch, if you will. There is no evidence whatsoever for this, but it is one logical option. Another is that the cosmos will increasingly disperse and, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, all mass/energy will become equally distributed and the universe will be nothing more than isolated particles of energy flying around. No galaxies, no stars, no me and no you. A new suggestion has come along: that the Higgs boson, which gives mass to particles, could be unstable, and the universe could disappear in a flash. Mystery number four: what is the destiny of the universe?

5. Although the universe is big, it is comprised of tiny building blocks. How tiny is tiny?What is the smallest building block? A relatively new theory in physics, called string theory, postulates that invisible vibrating strings are the smallest units out of which everything is made. Essential to this theory is the idea that beyond the three dimensions plus time, familiar to everyone, there are more dimensions, perhaps a total of 10 or 11 or 26. Unfortunately, neither these strings nor the attendant dimensions can ever be proven to exist, so the questions remain: what is the nature of the stuff out of which all matter is made? and correspondingly, are there other dimensions?

6. One of the great puzzles of quantum mechanics is entanglement. Start with a particle and blast it into two particles. The crazy thing is, if you separate the two, regardless of the distance- it can be the width of the universe- if you change one, you automatically and inescapably and immediately change the other. How is this possible? Nobody knows, but experiments prove that it happens.

The list goes on, but by now we should realize that the pretense of omniscience that we all share is a fool’s game.

The same is true when we try to think about god.

1. The primal question most likely is the simplest: is there a god? There is no way to answer that question.

2. Suppose that there is a god. Where is s/he? Any place in this cosmos? Beyond? Perhaps before the Big Bang, as the creator? Or perhaps in one of those extra dimensions? No answer is definitive, so the question remains: where is this god?

3. Again, assuming that god is real, most religious perspectives assert that god cares for us, loves us, relates to us, that god in some sense is “personal”. Given the galactic extent of the universe as photographed by Hubble, how is it possible to bring together the notion of a cosmic god who is also personal? How are we to think about who/what god is?

4. We can also ask: how is this god tied in to the ultimate destiny of the universe? The universe may end in a Second Law whimper, or in a contraction that results in a Big Crunch and perhaps a second round of Big Bang. Right now it looks like we should put our money on the whimper. But how does god fit into any of this? Inevitable evolution toward higher levels of being, ultimately becoming god? A growing self-consciousness of the cosmos that in fact is identical with god?

The point of all this is that we need to be humble. We do not know the answers to the most basic of questions, and some of these answers are by nature unknowable. There are three takeaways. First, seek knowledge and learn. Talk with others. Be critical of your own logic as well as the logic of others. Be socratic in dialogue.

The second point is to realize that no one should ever assume that they have the answer. This involves a dialectic. When convinced, assert your belief, but always be genuinely open to correction. The statements go hand in hand. We live in a world where we must take stands and make affirmations. We have to act, and we should act on the best evidence available.

But we must also realize that our perception is limited and subject to distortion. And so we must say: Do not be dogmatic. Do not be a fundamentalist, whether in science or in theology or in politics. Realize that time changes all, and that what we think now is most likely not what we thought in the past, and not what we will think in the future. With this attitude, we can all learn from one another and not be threatened by one another, becoming a little more enlightened in the process. Humility and not arrogant certainty is integral to love and peace, and also a bit more fun.