The following is a collection of my thoughts in probably not the best chronological order. These really aren't "new" thoughts, they are just straightforward sentiments.
How can this be? asks one person, God did it replies another. God has always been invoked as the answer when we don’t quite know what to make of something and how it works. But with so many real scientific discoveries in front of us there’s less and less room for God as an explanation for why known phenomena are occurring or have occurred. Plenty of people still believe that there’s enough room for God — and it could be that there still is if you want there to be, at least for now.
Here comes what might be a very unsettling surprise for many: All scientific progress in the history of humanity has only ever started by questioning whether or not God had something to do with it. It started with a curiosity that challenged the notion that only the divine could explain why something was the way that it was. This was the birth of science. What is science? It’s simply an ongoing quest to discover the truth, not a supposed truth that we say is real or want to be real.
Perhaps the journey of scientific discovery started by someone wondering if an illness was really a judgment of God or just a natural unfortunate turn of events that occurs in nature, outside of whether or not there is a prayer for divine intervention involved .
Think about this: if you know that God is responsible for something, then why bother exploring how it works independent of the deity? You already know the truth and why it’s happening and how it fits into your believed scheme of things. But is it the truth?
All of the progress and scientific knowledge we have today would simply not exist if someone somewhere along the line hadn’t wondered for that first split second whether or not God had something to do with whatever it is they were trying to find answers for. And yet, why is it that God gets so much more credit than He deserves?
If all of us never asked ourselves the honest questions and found our religion too comfortable to question, we’d still believe that lightning is caused by Zeus (or whatever other God you would attribute lightning to), that the earth is flat and that deformities and disease are punishment for disobedience towards God. The Aztecs had such a strong faith in their God(s) that they were willing to perform hundreds of thousands of human sacrifices so that the gods did not end the world. That’s dedication! It was also a sad unavoidable fact in their world.
Of course, the Christian looks at something like human sacrifices in horror and also exclaims how deluded and misled the Aztecs were. A Christian might also feel sadness that those poor heathen peoples were never able to hear the real truth and will now have to probably face hell on top of being sacrificed already. But what is the truth? The truth doesn’t inherit truthfulness based on your acknowledgement of it, it just is. It can’t be changed into what you want it to be. Wanting to believe something is true with every fiber of your being won’t make it so, it either is or it isn’t. Interestingly enough, the truth is usually never what we want it to be.
When one objectively looks at religion as a whole, it all starts looking like one story but with different plots and ending versions each with a dedicated following to its own version of the story, insisting that their version is unquestionably correct. To the person observing a theological debate between different religious sects, it looks quite similar to watching a couple of people put time and energy debating the innermost truths of The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter . What a colossal waste of time and energy and life!
So why do so many people waste their time with a bunch of made up teachings and rules of a deity that they have no verification for whatsoever? Because somewhere along the line they never questioned their beliefs by asking Do I absolutely one hundred percent know that this is the truth?, they simply believed what they were told, or found ways to make it all work in their head. If a religious person is faced with the question do you know for certain?, they will then either continue to delude themselves that they do absolutely know for certain that their belief system is fact or they will come to the honest realization that they can’t exactly know for sure. This is usually where the process of enlightenment starts to creep in, because it’s ultimately about humility and asking Why do I believe this?
Acknowledging you don’t have all the answers for something is probably the most humble position there is. But thinking we really know the unknown makes us feel self-important, it places us above the person who doesn’t know.
But why do we naturally want to be clouded by false certainties? Because religion gives people an enormous amount of comfort, false comfort. Facing inconvenient truths may not be easy for many, but is it worse than living a lie?
The discovery of gravity and evolution and every other scientific advancement was not because someone wanted that to be the way it is, but because they were willing to look at the evidence (without a preconceived dogmatic certainty) and form an idea that they could test with scientific rigor to find out if indeed that is how things work.
The scientific process always starts with an idea and asks itself: Is this the truth? and then it begins the process of finding out if the evidence matches up, making it either the most likely truth or inevitably resulting in ruling it out. It’s the only process that has ever yielded truthful, practical answers for us. It’s not a perfect process, but it’s a process that has historically been shown to work, and clearly it has when you look at how far we’ve come. The fact that we can now, at least to some extent, predict certain weather patterns is a result of science working.
In ancient times the weather was amazing proof that the gods were busy at work, but they aren’t proof of that anymore because we actually know the truth. Invoking an answer where a future real answer exists is simply telling yourself something you want to hear, not what actually is. God has always been the answer before the answer, and in the back of your mind you really already know that. Unless God is deliberately playing hide and seek with science, this trend doesn’t seem likely to change.
As others have put it, a non-believer just believes in one less god than a believer in only one God. Non-believers and Christians (or insert any other religion here) also have more in common than you’d think. They have a shared disbelief in the flying spaghetti monster and Santa Claus as well as the unicorn and astrology. But why? Because on these points the Christian and the non-believer alike look at the evidence (or lack thereof) objectively and then form their conclusion (of course those things can’t be disproven either). Not believing in those things clearly doesn’t conflict with science and neither does it conflict with Christianity — I suppose this makes it easy for the Christian to acknowledge the lack of evidence since the scrutiny process is not being applied to their preciously esteemed beliefs. Little does the Christian know, however, that it is on this very same scientific rational basis by which the non-believer concludes that there probably is no traditional god figure either (and certainly not a bunch of gods).
The only way that the Christian (or follower of any religion or spiritualism for that matter) can continue to believe in their religion in spite of scientific realities is because they want it to be true regardless of what science ends up discovering. Nothing can change that or disturb their made-up reality unless the individual chooses to be honest and ask real questions rather than believing they have answers for things they do not. If you ask the average Christian if they believe in purple dragons, it’s very likely that they will say no. The non-believer has the very same reaction when asked about God because there’s simply no reason to adhere to any religion when they offer no evidence for their being real. Evidence for purple dragons? None. Evidence for a particular deity such as Yahweh or Allah? None.
So really, it just all starts with honesty. The religious person may retort with a well, you think you have all the answers too! but that’s not the case and at worst it’s just a copout so that the religious person does not have to notice how vacuous the evidence is for their own belief system. Science has revealed some answers and quite a bit of more than likely truths. There are many more answers to come and there will be mistakes made along the way to truth, but that’s why it’s such a beautiful, humble, and powerful thing.
Any individual who embraced the existence of a religious deity in times long ago was on the apparently winning side of any argument because, well, how do you explain lightning then if there is no God? Rain? Fire? Animals? Human existence? The unbeliever had no answer and so, God did it for a while. But now we do have a plethora of workable answers about our earth and the universe. So much scientific discovery has forced the believer to retreat to arguments such as so what caused the existence of something rather than nothing then if not a God?. The question itself may still be thought of as formidable for a person wanting to desperately hang on to a belief in their version of God, but it isn’t a real answer for the honest mind unwilling to just stop trying to find out the truth.
So is it just a question that science has not fully answered and has perhaps almost answered?
Science is a process that yields explanations about how things work, so if you invoke a God then it only complicates matters because the origin or existence of God would itself have to be explained via some kind sensible process, necessitating explanations about endless creator gods creating the creator God ad infinitum. It’s an inferior argument than just admitting we don’t have all the answers yet, that we don’t really know.
It could be that something just is and has been forever and there is really no such thing as nothing (after all, air and space and even things we can’t see are still something even if they seem to be nothing).
Inserting a god into the equation accomplishes nothing in terms of finding the answers because we don’t even know how a God is supposed to be defined? Is it supposed to be a giant human-looking white bearded male-esque figure sitting on a throne somewhere in the Universe (or outside of the universe)?
All of the creationist/intelligent design arguments such as but God is the first cause beyond the laws of physics and not subject to time or space don’t add any more to the argument than if you were to replace that word God with Zeus or any other deity name you wish and present it as evidence for that particular thing that’s being referenced as existing. Saying God did it has no more weight as a sound answer than saying The LaLa did it. What is a The LaLa?
As we observe the universe and witness the complete chaotic disorder happening in billions of galaxies simultaneously, the idea of a god becomes even more unconvincing. Our planet, including life, starts to look like an accident that was waiting to happen considering the billions of different planet to star ratios and almost endless varieties of chance outcomes. What would be the purpose of those planets and billions of other suns just like ours? If humanity is truly the focus of some deity that will one day take us to a wonderful heaven far away, why are there so many random natural sets of phenomena occurring everywhere else at this moment with no relation whatsoever to the purposes contained in any religion?
As we are busy worrying if gay marriage will end civilization there are asteroids flying and hitting random planets causing violent destruction, black holes, supernovas, planets in upheaval from forces within, water, lava, volcanos, galaxies and planets being born constantly — where is God’s plan in all of this unrevealed randomness?
We may very soon even find life on a distant planet, within years. It all makes our destiny look pretty out of our control when you just look at it for what it’s worth. I often hear people talk about the improbability of life just springing up, believing simultaneously that if God did it that the whole thing will make sense. If we’re talking about probability, ask yourself, what was the probability for my existence? Imagine the billions of sperms out there and the odds of you being born? The odds certainly weren’t in your favor but here you are!
There may be and most likely will be a profound , what some might term godlike, discovery on origins coming our way but there is still going to be an understandable scientific explanation, not a too mysterious to understand bearded daddy in the sky wearing a robe and punishing his creations for petty mistakes with a giant lake of fire.
I believe that religion is purely sinister at its core. Why? Because religion tells someone that they have the answer without really having one, and that can’t be good for human progress. The good news is that something called self-honesty annihilates superstitious thought and the grand delusion shared by all religious people alike which is: the ignorance of certainty. Being certain about something and still being wrong is a pretty daunting thought, but don’t worry, some people will simply take that certainty to the grave and not have to worry about facing up to the fact that they were wrong. Science questions the certainty of things and provides the best explanations based on evidence, religion never does and cannot do that — it just assumes the answer regardless of whether or not that answer holds any true merit.
A Christian rejects Islam and Hinduism and Buddah and the Greek and Egyptian Pantheons and every other God except for Yaweh of the Biblical manuscripts, which colloquially they refer to as God. Religions in general tend to believe that anyone who believes in something that isn’t their own is deluded about the real truth, because they actually know the truth. The Christian knows for a fact that Jesus is the truth the way and the life and that followers of every other religion are doomed to damnation by not accepting Him into their hearts. It even makes such privileged truth-bearing individuals terribly sad knowing that so few will be saved and that the non-believer will never share eternal life with them because of their refusal to see the light. But those of us who still possess some rational thinking know all too well how we humans mock the truth.
If you look at it without a preferred shade, religion has only ever hindered human progress. Religious figures and institutions have always tried to suppress any scientific discovery that might run counter to what they believe is the truth based on their holy book — while, of course, having no problem with certain scientific revelations that can be rationalized not to conflict or even fit. Galileo’s work of progress in discovering that the earth orbits the sun and not vice versa was met with the Clergy locking him up. The reality is that no god has ever done humanity the favor of helping us to learn the truth about anything useful in this world. It has all come from humans themselves asking questions in the face of acknowledged ignorance. Perhaps we have found the real identity of the devil: religion itself.
When you really stop and contemplate it, religion is the antithesis of truth, it is the very opposite of honesty, it is simply self-delusion. Religion lies to those who serve it, it is a machine of control that was invented by humans to mentally enslave others too ignorant to think for themselves outside of the box. It is a method of control bringing with it manipulation, manufactured guilt (you’re doubting because you want to protect your love of sin!. Sound familiar?), mental torture and self-castigation while simultaneously giving its followers the false excitement of being the few or the many who actually know the truth in their hearts and have a special connection with their deity. Of course, anyone who questions this realty is trying to dupe and deceive and lead astray and take you away from the blessed hope that you just know for sure is waiting for you on the other side! And how sad would it be to be eternally lost by not accepting that truth that you just know is fact because God has spoken to you?
One positive thought in all of this is that once a deluded believer in religion has passed away they won’t have to face the devastating reality of how much time and effort they wasted and taught others to waste on pure fantasy — they won’t have to regret it. When a living person gets duped into a Ponzi scheme or some other scam that is too good to be true they are usually given the opportunity of having to acknowledge that they were duped and realize that they wasted money and time on it. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is rings as such a rational piece of thought (and rightfully so) for so many people who are yet still mentally clinging on with faith believing in the biggest too good to be true scam ever perpetrated by mankind: religion.
I often hear religious people talk about how there can be perfect harmony between their religion and science but it’s just not true, and I’ll explain why. The only way science and religion would be able to be compatible is for religion to cease being religion. One who holds religious belief would need to be willing to put certain beliefs aside in the event that they are shown wrong through scientific discovery and in that case religion would just revert to being a fill-in belief based on lack of evidence to believe otherwise — inherently not religion, after all, no religious person goes about trying to convert others to their way of thinking if they aren’t already under the premise that the main tenets of their belief system are true/fact/reality. The reason science and religion are therefore incompatible is because religion assumes to know a certain set of answers through beliefs that are assumed to be true no matter what science may eventually show. If science calls into question the truthfulness of a portion of that religion, that religion will continue to believe the conclusions that the religion started with and that inevitably puts it at odds with science and reality and the truth. That is why they not only don’t work together, they can’t work together.
Science is not arrogant and self-important like religion. Science is a mechanism for yielding real answers and accumulating facts, not made up ones.
Science works, it has worked in the past and will continue to work going forward. No matter how strong your faith is in your particular deity or religion, it will not stand the test of time like science will because science is simply an honest exploration in search of the truth. That is why science will win.
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