*Incoherent Thoughts: Here*

The following text is a wholesome opinion on the phrase ignorance. Not empirical data has been collected by the author (me) that can prove or disprove the following claims.

Ignorance is a funny word. People flaunt it around to make themselves sound smart (cough Michael Jackson cough) but in reality I don't think it is often properly used. You see, ignorance is not knowing something. It is being unaware of a current state or situation. An important thing to note is that this is not the same as not relating to a current situation or circumstance. For example, if I say that rap music sucks, and a person calls me ignorant for saying that, because I just "don't get it", then they are wrong. I simply have disparate tastes of music.

Enough of semantics, though. What I really want to get in to is the impact of human ignorance. Let's face it, humans always assume things before they actually know them. It is the basis of science - making predictions and testing them. We must assume something before we set out to find it, in order to guide our methodology of discovering it. Humans assumed that the world was flat, and it wasn't. Long ago humans assumed that the sun rose and fell due to mystical powers of Gods, when it didn't. People used to think the Earth was the center of the universe, and once again, it really wasn't. I can understand making simple mistakes, but mistakes like these are enormous.

Human advancement and the acquiring of knowledge stems from ignorance. If humans don't know something then they will quickly try to identify it and explain it. Space exploration is a good example of this. In a little under a century we have gone from thinking about sending an unmanned space craft in to space, to landing men on the moon, sending probes to Mars, and launching spacecraft on a seven year journey to Pluto.

One of the more interesting concepts of science is that it is constantly proving things, but at the same time disproving things. A man's thirst for knowledge is slaked through science, and this can consequently cause the discovering of information labelled as "Blasphemy" and whatnot. Take Darwin for example. His theory of Natural Selection and Descent with Modification suggests that all beings transcend from one ancestral being, and that the most well-adapted organisms in an environment will thrive by bearing the most offspring. My, oh my. Kind of puts a dent in the whole "God created all" theory, doesn't it?

A simple fact is that science has been disproving many religious beliefs for years. What were once miracles are now paragraphs of explanations in science textbooks. The facts in these books can be seen as the "truth" to a certain extent. Getting back to ignorance for a moment; We as humans are born in to the world ignorant. We are then educated of the workings of the world and our surroundings. This acquiring of a basic life template is what shapes our beliefs and values. People will always be ignorant of certain things in life. The important thing to remember is that you should always try and discover the truth for yourself. Maybe more to come later....