Turning Away from Death

Our class discussion on science reminded me of a very similar idea in sociology. We discussed that science, as a whole, can never be 100% proven. Scientists can only work from what they can observe and although the can make assumptions based on those observations there are always factors that will be unknown. Even so, people tend to take up these theories and ideas and hold them as the absolute truth. When evidence is presented to them that could possibly prove them wrong they try to ignore them or give reason that it is invalid. This act of turning away from anything that could disprove your believes is something parts of humanity have perfected. In sociology it has been observed that almost every culture or religion was based off a way of dealing with death. Being the only species that can not only reflect on our past, but also idealize our future, we forever have the knowledge that we will eventually die, at the same time we don't know what happens next. To help us deal with this we build up ideas and methods to deal with this unknown. As a society, when these ideas of ours are challenged in any way we commonly feel threatened and do anything to defend out ideas. Our first reaction is to simply ignore them, dismiss the challenger as 'crazy' or hopeless and turn away from them. If that doesn't work we try to covert them, convince them that we are right. As a last result we  resort to violence, we see no other option but than to eliminate those who are opposing us. I'm am certain that if you look deeply  into the history of many wars you will find  that the sides fighting had different ideals and cultures in one way or another. Perhaps it is in part our nature to stubbornly stand by our ideals, no matter what evidence is there to prove us wrong.