It’s Time We Had a Little Talk About Religion…
by Arjun Sharma
It’s 2009, we can talk to people anywhere in the world instantaneously, fly through the air at the speed of sound, and walk on the moon. It’s about time we talked about religion for a bit.
I don’t care if you’re Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Zoroastrian, or just “spiritual.” You believe in God or some kind of force that’s unquantifiable, not scientifically supported, and invisible, and I get that. You have a faith, and an understanding of the way the world works. You believe that your own faith is correct, and you have some reasoning for that as well. Again, I get that.
Now do me a favor; for the next 10 minutes, drop those beliefs. I don’t mean revoke your belief in God, or renounce your faith. I mean, just suspend your religious and spiritual beliefs. Simply be the person who worries about buying groceries, feeding the dog, reading that novel that’s been sitting on your desk, getting that TPS report out before the deadline, and remembering to buy a birthday card for your mom. Don’t think about meditation or prayer or confession or Easter or prophets or fatwahs or holy anythings.
Good.
Now let’s start at the beginning. How did we all come to be? Where did this world come from? Modern science claims that the Big Bang theory explains this. Simplified, the Big Bang theory says that all matter was intensely condensed at one point in time, estimated through scientific calculation at about 13.73 +/- .12 billion years ago.
Notice that I say “theory.” Not, “the Big Bang,” but the “Big Bang theory.” Why? I’m willing to acknowledge that we don’t know if its true. I sure as hell don’t know; I could spend the rest of my life devoting myself to studying the universe and could never say that I know for sure that it’s true. Where did that first bit of condensed matter come from? I don’t know. What will happen after the Universe ‘ends’ or after all energy is dispersed into entropy? I don’t know. But so far, the Big Bang theory has stood up to scientific experimentation, which is all I can really ask for.
The same is true for the theory of evolution. Again, note that I call it the “theory” of evolution. I can’t say with 100% certainty that evolution is how the world came to be the way it is today, but it sure seems like a damn good explanation. The theory has been used in other fields; for example, scientists were able to use a genetic algorithm to create a circuit that completed a defined process more efficiently than any humanly designed circuit. In fact, there were elements of the circuit that didn’t make any logical sense, but through their minute affectations of the magnetic field of the circuit, and the temperature of the room the circuit was made in, they were integral parts of the process. A sort of “modern miracle,” if you will.
What’s my point, then? The point is that we don’t ever know anything with 100% certainty. All we can do is hypothesize, test, evaluate, and re-hypothesize. But of all of your theories about how the world works, why would you choose one that claims that an invisible man (or woman or being or whatever) created the world?
Do you ever think that maybe religion was just an ancient way of explaining a world that we can never fully understand? That maybe it’s just an outdated biological response to help us cope with this life? In fact, did you ever stop and look at what motivates us? If you look at it, education, working, competing, socializing, and all other major parts of human life all seem to come down to one think; furthering the human race. We strive to make our species better, to find a life partner (or partners) with whom to reproduce and ensure the protection of our race. Maybe love, hate, ecstasy, depression, happiness, sadness, anger, and fear all come down to biological responses to further that purpose.
Maybe religion is just a holdover from those ancient times. I mean, it is passed down generation to generation, right? Maybe it’s time to stop and say, “Wait a minute… what are we doing here?” For example, take Christian beliefs. Keep in mind that we’ve suspended belief in God for the purpose of this article, and take a look at some of those stories. Genesis? The Garden of Eden? Noah’s Ark? Do you really believe those stories to be true? If you do, don’t you think they seem to fall apart under even the slightest of logical scrutiny? If you don’t believe in them, but you still claim to be Christian, isn’t there something WRONG there? You claim that the Bible is the word of God, but you don’t believe all those stories. So what’s the deal? You can use one passage to say that God is against homosexuality, but you’ll say you don’t believe in the stories that claim you can sell your daughter and take an eye for an eye and all of that. Seems rather convenient, doesn’t it?
It doesn’t make sense! Look at religion again, in the eye of logic and rationality! It’s nothing more than the word of men, who made a convincing story and spiritual structure that gave people a false sense of comfort. Instead, if we stopped taking things on “faith” and started testing out our theories, a whole lot of stuff we do would suddenly make a lot less sense. It’s not bad to question your faith; it’s your human responsibility.
I don’t know if I’ve made any impression on your or not. I don’t dislike or judge religious people because I know that there’s a lot more out there in the world that I don’t understand. I can’t even say that there is no God, because I have no proof. But I need to tell the world why I believe what I believe, and allow my theory to be tested in the public sphere; that’s what any responsible scientist would do.
So go at it. Please. I’m begging you. Pick my theories and ideas apart. Prove to me why I’m wrong. I’m all ears.
