incessant in the pursuit of higher laws. Such laws, while initially established with a lower level of trust, may well succeed in subsuming older laws as observed evidence mounts. In religion, one finds a different approach. There, a higher trust may be ascribed to more abstract and arcane constructs based on ecstatic considerations. Subsequently, more detailed hypotheses may be developed while modifying interpretations, or even principles, depending on the existing religious theologies involved.

From the two examples, we see that both religion and science bring with them explanatory mechanisms. Religion starts from higher hypotheses and draws conclusions from them, using actual events in an attempt to validate the hypotheses. Science starts from lower hypotheses and builds a chain of reason transforming them into substantial conclusions. Both approaches provide guidance to subsequent actions. Effectiveness is dictated by empirical environmental factors. As a bit of anecdotal emphasis on this point, we draw your attention to the 1979 movie of Peter Sellers titled Being There.

In the movie, Peter Sellers plays a rather enigmatic character known only by his first name, Chance. For years, Chance, a very slow-witted, some might say simpleton individual, has lived in a cloistered home in Washington, D.C. owned by The Old Man who has allowed Chance to live in the home and to tend the small, walled garden in the back of the house. When The Old Man dies, Chance is turned out onto the street by the attorney overseeing the liquidation of the estate. As he wanders the streets of Washington, a limousine bumps into him, belonging to the wife of an extremely wealthy industrialist and political power broker. To avoid legal entanglements, she suggests that Chance return to her home to allow her husband Ben’s physician to check his minor injury. In the process, Chance rather mangles his name when asked, and for the rest of the movie he becomes “Chauncey Gardner” as opposed to his intended “Chance, the gardener.” The remainder of the movie is a recurring series of Chauncey’s apparently simple-minded remarks being interpreted by various members of the power elite, to whom he is introduced through his virtually instantaneous friendship with Ben, as being statements of profound import. This rather farcical comedy of misinterpretations and misconceptions culminates in the possibility that Chauncey might be suggested for the presidency at the next election. While all of this makes for entertaining theater, the most enticing point of the movie is the final scene; that is, the very final moment in which observable action is happening in the background while the end-of-the-movie credits are rolling in the foreground.

Here, following the funeral of Ben, Chauncey walks across the grounds of the grand estate. At the edge of a pond, something out in the water attracts his attention. Without hesitation, Chauncey proceeds to walk out into (onto) the pond. Perhaps 20 meters from the shore, he peers down at the water and then proceeds to insert his umbrella into the pond. He’s able to push the umbrella a good meter or more into the water, apparently indicating that the water he’s standing on has significant depth. At this point the movie ends and the interpretation of the final scene, for those who actually noticed it, begins.

On reading a variety of compilations of moviegoer reviews of Being There, it would appear that this final scene is generally interpreted in one of two ways. First, in what we might characterize as the scientific and pragmatic interpretation, the view is that this a bit of almost slapstick comedy in which Chauncey is obviously walking out on some very slightly submerged pier in the water. That is, it is just another instance, physical this time, in which a rather simple minded gesture on the part of Chauncey is misinterpreted as having profound significance. The other interpretation is that, for all his appearances of a simple person, in fact Chauncey could walk on water. This would give credence to the interpretation that his apparently simple-minded actions and comments throughout the movie truly did have profound significance. This provides us with an interesting illustration of the two approaches (scientific and religious) to explaining unusual situations that

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