Today's thought is on Religion and Atheism.
Ah, religion, such an interesting and sometimes controversial subject.
In the current political climate, we hear a lot about Muslims and Islam. While Terrorism is what most people fret about, it's really about the fundamental belief systems of the Religion which some have attributed to some acts of Terrorism. Because of those acts, many are judging the Religion and by consequence, the people who believe in that Religion. However, today's thoughts isn't about Muslims or Islam specifically, but about the mindset and arguments regarding the beliefs in religion in general.
When Religion comes up, inevitably so does Atheism. Simply put, if one is not Religious, then by definition they are Atheist. It's so compelling and almost easy to argue for Atheism instead of Religion. In fact, I used to do just that.
Atheism is easy to argue for, because science has advanced so much that we can objectively prove many things that at some point in history, we couldn't prove. Evolution, Technology and Science combined with Logical thinking pretty much pokes so many holes in the concept of the existence of God,(which Religion is predicated on) that the idea of believing in Religion seems irrelevant.
What has sparked these thoughts for me, is that I've been listening to Sam Harris's Atheism position quite a bit lately. The interesting part about the arguments for Atheism is that they depend on "debunking" the existence of God with known methods of the various areas of science. However, science has it's flaws as well.
If we attempt to argue against science, we know there are many areas of life that science cannot explain. I say cannot instead of not yet because in order to discuss a topic, we can only look so far into the future. Since there are many areas that may have theories, they are still far from a method that can prove them to be true.
We know science cannot prove through empirical data what consciousness is, in fact, according to some like Sam Harris, consciousness is an illusion.
Though the Big Bang has been adopted as the concept we believe the universe started from, Physicists are still divided on whether or not that's true or if we just have insufficient knowledge. It's not proven, but empirical data show some correlation to that theory.
Blood, science has determined all of the components that make up blood, yet they can't re-create it without using human stem cells. The argument for science usually goes "when we figure it out", "if we can..." and rightly so if we look at the trend. Science does tend to figure out many things. However, the real questions gets lost in all of the talks on empirical data, those question are, if science can't prove something, does it mean it doesn't exist? Or is it just "we aren't there yet"?
Religion on the other hand stems from one single premise, there is the existence of a God or Gods. From there springs ideologies and teachings from these Beings. Take the Christian Bible. When we hear the story of Adam and Eve being the first humans, science tells us not true.. The thought of Eve being created from Adam's rib bone makes us think of biology lessons from school and how totally unplausible that claim is.
As I think more and more about religion, I have found it's more about metaphors than literal interpretation.
Many of the stories have probably been injected at some point for some politicized reason. However, when we look at the teachings of all of the different mainstream Religions, we'd find that at the bare bones level, they have a lot in common. Yet, Religions were created before a time those cultures and races ever met one another, and yet their base teachings are so similar.
Like the concept of the Big Bang, if we were to use the same type of logic in reduction to bring Religion to a single point, we could arrive at some interesting ideas.
If we take out the stories of Religions and strip it down to the bare bone teachings, no killing, speak the truth, no stealing, love the fellow person, do not commit adultery. These are the common points among most of the traditional Religions.
The most important common point varies, but has the same intentions. Obey God or Karma, this serves to develop Respect/Fear/Trust, whether that be in a Being, multiple Beings, or Karmic fate. This is the most important point because as long as God/Karma holds true, all of the teachings hold true as well.
If the God/Gods or Karmic fate is proven to not exist, all of the subsequent teachings have no foundation to support adherence to them. This is what the Atheism arguments set out to "debunk".
What science cannot "debunk" is that because of the existence of Religion, is how we have arrived at our current state of life.
Without Religion, we wouldn't be where we are today, we wouldn't have the same concepts of Morality and Standards of being. Without the existence of Religion, it would be safe to assume we'd be drastically different, more than likely we wouldn't be anywhere near as advanced as we are. The assumption of the existence of God which then lead to Religions, allowed for "structuring" of society and it's people. It's with these structures in place that humans have had the comfort to be able to create new things and advance.
We have too many examples that without "structure" which include rules/laws, expectancy to obey them and enforcement of those rules and laws, humans behave in very chaotic ways. After all, the very nature of what we are, is animalistic.
We typically are able to only consider others when our needs are met.
In a world where no structure exists, there would be no reasonable standard of expectancy, without that expectancy, we'd never feel safe. The need to feel safe would supersede anything else, even at the expense of others. That safety comes in many forms, from the Need to feed to the Need to be physically protected.
If we removed all laws and no longer enforced them, we'd get the Anarchy movies and more than likely, worse.
Assuming all humans by default are good without the presence of "structure" is folly, as is assuming by default everyone in the world would follow some internal default "goodness".
The necessity for Religion has already been proven vital in the quality of life we enjoy today. Does God actually exist? Perhaps like most scientific theories, we're not at a point where we can prove it, but we may be able to at some point. I feel that's a much more positive way to view it.
Because of this, I have found my way back to Religion and in the belief that there is a God and that maybe one day through science, we'll meet God.
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