Faith + Reason = Truth

"REALLY?  WOW, that's cool!"  This is frequently my reaction to someone telling me something I didn't know and that I find interesting.  However, tell me something that's going to happen, or what scientists predict will happen, or even what the weather is supposed to be tomorrow, and you will likely receive a response from me along the lines of "whatever," or "they only occasionally get it right out of dumb luck," or "that's what they predicted for last year too, and look what ACTUALLY happened."  Yes, I am both a skeptic and true believer, going way overboard with each folly.  Much too quick to accept what someone has presented as factual information on something that's transpired or been discovered, and much too dismissive of any predictive effort on the part of humanity.  But even though I wish I could tone it down a bit in each case, it is actually a dual state of mind that has served me well, for it represents an open mind as related to the seemingly boundless achievement of man, yet it casts a suspicious eye toward our self-perceived abilities to discern what the future holds.  In my opinion, we can achieve virtually anything our minds can conceive, yet we cannot know what will or will not happen transpire at a given time or on a given day or even over a given length of duration:  for instance, a North Atlantic Hurricane Season.  This is the second summer in a row that a prediction of a particularly destructive and disastrous hurricane season would befall the U.S., and after last summer's hurricane-free status survived intact for the entire season, we are now almost a quarter of the way into this one and have yet to catch so much as a whiff of swirling tropical breezes between Africa and the Caribbean.

Weather galls me in particular, as we have so much data and applicable scientific advancement at our fingertips, but stock market and housing predictions are other perpetual offenders.  As for political predictions, those are literally useless, as they are solely based on people, their actions, their states of mind, their opinions, and all of the everyday events and affairs that shape them from minute to minute.  It is quite literally impossible to make any reliable predictions or to believe any polls taken in advance of elections, as the entire outcome could be turned upside down a month, week, or even day before the vote takes place.

When it comes to predictions, why bother?  Far better to choose a desirable outcome and proceed to cause it (which we have demonstrated ourselves quite capable of doing throughout history) than to guess what might happen and then try to plan and act according to what that outcome is supposedly going to be, though it will likely never actually transpire.  What a colossal and utter waste of our talents and efforts.