Religion is a comfort, obviously, as it explains the universe in a way that makes it not so chaotic, not so out of our control. Religion comes along with culture, raising us up within its bounds so that, again, we find comfort inside its walls, instead of outside, where it’s scary. Religion becomes, almost immediately upon subscribing to it, and moreso over time, a fundamental part of who and what we are. But, then along comes science, challenging the very nature of many a religion, telling us that the world wasn’t created in six days, isn’t flat, isn’t sitting on the back of a giant turtle; in fact, it’s hurtling through space at truly outrageous speed—about 66,000 mph in orbit around the sun (plus a rotation speed of about 1000 mph at equator), plus the solar system moving within the Milky Way galaxy at about 560,000 mph, plus our galaxy moving around 1.3 trillion mph; that is not sitting on any turtle going that speed, and is certainly not sitting motionless at the center of a geocentric universe with a celestial sphere of stars in a shell around it. When it comes to something as simple as the position of the Earth, science has swooped in and erased just about everything mankind has ever known. As Steven Pinker put it [1], “no honest and informed person can maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago,” not anymore. Even Christoph Cardina Schonborn, a Dominican friar, says that the “‘scientific mentality’ that often accompanies [science], along with the power, control, comfort, and convenience by modern technology, has helped to push the concept of God into the hazy twilight of agnosticism” [2]. But, still, there’s that comfort thing.
Bertrand Russell once wrote of a teapot, orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars. If nobody could disprove his assertion that this teapot was there, then it would be, “an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it.” If “the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity” [3]. Aside from the obvious God metaphor there, there’s a simple description of the religious service “every Sunday” and religious texts—be it the Bible, the Koran, Vedas, or what have you—being “affirmed in ancient books.” It isn’t that something is or isn’t the truth as to the way of things, but that it is what has been taught and written down and taught again and written down again and again and again. It’s the repetition and the slipping into the culture and the society that makes it so permanent, so comforting that we can, like William D. Phillips, Nobel Laureate, can argue that “belief is not a scientific matter” [4], so, of course, science does not make belief in God obsolete.” But, it should.
Still, Robert Sapolsky argues that “belief remains relevant because of the comfort it can provide” [5], and because it is part of our society and our culture (or various cultures). But, then again, Sapolsky continues: “Solace is not benign when reality proves the solace to have been misplaced.” When we can see the teapot isn’t there, how much comfort can there be in still pretending… at least as long as we acknowledge the pretense. There is the rub. By continuing to practice our religions, by still attending our religious services, by still turning to religious texts for guidance, we keep up the pretense, and it is oh so easy to pretend, when it makes life easier, to comprehend and survive. Religion may be “our first, and our worst attempt at explanation,” as Christopher Hitchens says [6]. It may be “how we came up with answers before we had any evidence,” but our impulse, our gut feeling, or simply the comforting thought of knowing how the universe works, keeps it with us. Hitchens goes on to argue that religion “belongs to the terrified childhood of our species.” In his book, God Is Not Great, he boils down the trouble with religion like this:
There still remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking. [7]
Given these problems, one must wonder—if one has already stepped away from religion, at least—how this misplaced solace can withstand such objections. If one wanted to simplify, the argument could be that religious people don’t understand the science, but then, a religious person might argue that a sciencist person doesn’t understand the religion. At least they don’t all try circular argumentation like Keith Ward, who argues that if God is a “non-physical conscious intelligence” then his “causal influence is most unlikely to be law-governed, measureable, predictable, or publicly observable” [8]. Essentially, this tack is that God exists in such a way that we couldn’t measure him, even if he was there. You can’t prove a negative, as they say. But, shouldn’t you also have the responsibility to prove something that has so much of an effect on the everyday lives of so many people. The existence of God has affect on not only those who believe in it but in everyone they know, everyone they meet, everyone with which make business deals, have relationships or even go to war. But, they use the lack of evidence for such a being as some sort of positive.
What we should do is “distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason” [9]. Instead, “We are supposed to think that a supreme being exists who follows the path of every particle, while listening to every human though and guiding his favorite football teams to victory” [10]. Hitchens has a point when he asks “How much vanity must be concealed—not too effectively at that—in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan” [11] I will end with this, from Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s “How (and Why) I Became an Infidel:”
The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more. [12]
One more thing before I go. Kenneth Miller suggests that the sciencist’s view is that “God is an explanation for the weak, a way out for those who cannot face the terrible realities revealed by science.” He, clearly not liking the group who calls themselves this, suggests the “‘Brights’ are those who face that reality and accept it without the comforting crutch of faith by declaring God to be obsolete” [13]. He goes on to attempt to argue that science requires faith as well, which kind of misses the whole point of science. Really, while presenting this line about the “comforting crutch” as a negative view of the religious, what he presents is a fairly accurate view.
[1] “Yes, if by…” Does science make belief in God obsolete? <www.templeton.org/belief>, 2
[2] “No, and yes.” Does science make belief in God obsolete?4. [3] Russell, Bertrand. “Is There a God?” Unpublished. 1952.
[4] “Absolutely not!” Does science make belief in God obsolete? 7
[5] “No.” Does science make belief in God obsolete? 13
[6] “No, but it should.” Does science make belief in God obsolete? 15 [7] “No.” Does science make belief in God obsolete? 17
[7] Hitchens, Christopher. God Is Not Great. New York: Twelve, 2007, 12.
[8] “No.” Does science make belief in God obsolete? 17
[9] Hitchens. God Is Not Great. 12.
[10] Stenger, Victor J. “Yes.” Does science make belief in God obsolete? 19
[11] Hitchens, God Is Not Great, 15.
[12] Ali, Ayaan Hirsi. “How (and Why) I Became an Infidel.” The Portable Atheist. Ed. Christopher Hitchens. Philadelphia: De Capo, 2007.
[13] “Of course not.” Does science make belief in God obsolete? 25