Musings on Religion and Science

I find myself in the occasional religious debate, often trying to help someone to understand why religion should not be pressured on anyone, especially if the fundamental practice of the religion argues against the truth of other beliefs.  This, I find, conflicts with many who believe they are part of the “one true religion.”  No matter where the conversation starts, it leaves off with the person I disagree with feeling assured that their personal bias is justified by their god and that I must not understand.  Surely, they must think, I was never “saved,” never a believer, never had faith like theirs.  In a way, they are right; in another, they are wrong.  This is a story of how I decided where to place my faith.

While being raised in a Southern Baptist Church, not far from the Creation Museum, and close enough to the eventual home of the Ark constructed by the same company (so that my father sees the gargantuan attraction every time he drives to work) I was taught that all other religious beliefs and many scientific theories were not valid because they disagreed with the literal interpretation of God’s word in the Bible.  I had often worried greatly for the souls of those who didn’t have my valuable knowledge, and always had a terrible time trying to understand how dinosaurs could have walked the earth before Adam and Eve, even though the first humans had been made during the first week of the earth’s “creation.”  My preacher referred me to Ken Ham, a man from Australia who had come all the way to Kentucky to find people to build his museum and later his Old Testament theme park.  I can’t blame people for becoming excited by these attractions; after all, I followed Creationism for some time, mostly because I knew the people in my life would never lie to me, though I hadn’t yet understood that they could be wrong at times.  

Miranda Mason - Class of 2019

The church discouraged us from taking scientific concepts too seriously and had occasionally mocked scientists who studied evolution in front of children to impress upon us that evolution was ridiculous.  Of course, I later went on to learn that they had absolutely no idea what evolution was, and didn’t bother to find out before ridiculing it.  Don’t think that these people are bad; in fact, they have all the best intentions.  They truly believe that children need to defend themselves from the world of falsehoods and misunderstandings.  The problem is that they refuse to consider the idea that they might have misunderstandings in their own beliefs.

I managed to rinse away the misinformation with education.  I learned about the Scientific Method, and found that Scientists never make assumptions unless they have evidence to confirm even those.  In fact, the Scientific Method is a specialty of the human brain in nature.  It is why babies throw things; it is believed by some experts in childhood brain development that babies are curious to see if every time something isn’t supported it falls.  They find the newly discovered concept of gravity entertaining, and grow up to ask “How?” and “Why?”  Then unfortunately, many go on to be forced to believe things without reason.  They are told what to wear, what to eat, and what to think, just because their elders believe that the best way to protect children is to make sure they follow arbitrary rules set down by men thousands of years ago in order to control the common men of the age. When these kids ask, “Why is the sky blue?”  they are likely told, “God made it that way.”  For many kids, this is the start of the crushing of their curiosity. They learn that in life you don’t really need answers, only blind faith.  

I was never good at blind faith.  I loved detective stories, and wanted to think like a Sleuth.  A Sleuth never settles for a conclusion until they have undoubtable proof. They think through everything they know before deciding something is true or someone is guilty.  They would never take a secondary source as proof in and of itself, without evidence from the scene of the crime.  So, I was a bad believer.  I was the kind who asked the preacher to make it allowed to raise our hands and ask questions during sermons, the one who played Devil’s Advocate, and was never satisfied with an explanation that didn’t give me any reason to believe it.  I really tried to believe as I was instructed, to do everything right, but it always felt hollow, and thus, I believed I was not trying hard enough.  Though I did believe in that religion for a time in my life, I don’t think I ever believed it in the way that I was expected to.  I did, however, take many things Jesus said to heart.  I adored his lessons of kindness and forgiveness and hope and love.  I could believe in acting out of those, just not the whole book so literally.  

An especial reason I found it difficult to blindly follow was that so many people were so very sure that they practiced the “one true religion.”  So many people told stories that were both very similar, yet very variable.  I began to wonder how any one of them could truly believe that theirs, and not the thousands of past and present religions beside theirs, was the only one that was right.  I realized that I couldn’t base my entire life around one story that seemed only as plausible as many other conflicting ones.  It seemed too conceited to believe that only I, and people who were raised and taught as I was, could be correct.  That was to throw away the knowledge and dreams of most of the people who have ever lived on this earth.  I couldn’t believe in something so arbitrarily, without any real evidence that made it better than other beliefs.

I do not deny that a deity could exist.  I admit that anything might be possible, but I don’t have enough knowledge to know what the exact truth is, and neither do the people who claim to.  I don’t think anyone has the right to tell others what they must put their faith in, because faith is one of the most precious things we can give, and one that defines who we are.  No one should define who a person is except that person himself.  So, there is no point for me to theorize over the existence of such a being or to put pressure on others to do so.  It is also not my job to deny that faith to anyone.  What I can do and I hope others do, is try to find truths that we can all see, that have evidence and reason that give them power, not just blind faith.  I find much comfort in what can be known.

I do believe in good Philosophy, which is willing to admit, when better proof is found, to being wrong.  Philosophy is based on reason, not blind faith, and changes with new discoveries and ideas.  It is very much like a detective forming theories based on their knowledge, logic, and evidence, while many branches of fundamental religion are very much like a corrupt and lazy cop, accusing a suspect before looking at evidence, not bothering to investigate further, and denying the very idea that they could be wrong.  Personally, I would much rather have the fact-driven detective taking care of my neighborhood.  And Philosophy and Science, while not gods, reveal some very special things about human beings.  

Science shows compelling evidence to support the Theory of Evolution.  (Keep in mind that science uses the word theory differently than the public.  Instead of a guess, in science the word “theory” is used for findings which are widely supported by evidence, such as the Theory of Gravity.  To say the “Theory of” is to imply the thing to be as sure as imaginable, substantiated by repeated tests and data, but open to further discussion when it comes to smaller details.)  The Theory of Evolution argues that all living things began as a soup of accidental organic chemicals on the young earth.  This organic soup slowly developed into microorganisms, which could only survive by being well suited for the dangerous environment they were in.  The ones which had unique traits that allowed them to survive reproduced and made more like them.  

Over time, many generations would come and go, with those whose genetic material coded for the most helpful attributes surviving.  Mutations occurred, introducing diversity and new traits here and there.  Over eons, the many unicellular organisms took over the earth and some became multicellular.  The multicellular all became different due to mutations: plant-like, animal-like, fungal, and kept developing and diversifying.  Each successful trait was passed on through generations and developed diverse species, and only the most well adapted would survive to pass on their traits.  Fast-forwarding, there were countless rounds of evolution, creating incredible species, such as dinosaurs, which when destroyed in natural disasters, gave way to other rounds of evolution, different animals and plants taking over the world.  The latest round of evolution produced many advanced species of primates; we, homo sapiens, meaning wise human, were the most successful of the primates, and took over the niches of the other advanced primates, and spread out over the world.  We stood out among animals by far.

We became builders, farmers, inventors.  We did the most peculiar things to survive, and those things are our strength.  The intelligent, the social, the hard-working: these are the humans who survived and gave rise to those who exist now.  We can dream and bring the dreams into being.  If this is so, where did religion come from?  Well, living in a world and not knowing anything can be very scary.  People want to know where they come from, why the world is like it is, and what gives them purpose.  This questioning is the result of the advanced intelligence that makes us different from so many other animals (it’s how we came to be at the top of the food chain despite our squishy, delicate bodies).  And, of course, when we don’t know the answer, just like asking why the sky is blue, we make an answer: God.  Humans’ brains are so smart that storytelling is second nature.  So, early people made stories of where we came from, and when they needed to introduce order into their affairs, they made rules, and when the rules needed enforcing, they went into the stories that people were already passing around.  Many of the similarities found between myths are related to the similarity found in human brains, behavior, and experience.  

Man made God in his image, and in the image of the creatures and natural features of the environment around him.  Gods were made to give us strength, purpose, hope, and other valuable characteristics that helped us to become more than just animals.  Humans, in this way, are the creators, each capable of designing whole worlds within their imaginations, and determined to make the worlds as real as imaginable.  All the most interesting people in history have had that boldness to write their stories into the real world and explore the meaning of humanity through them.  Humans aspire to tell the greatest story ever told.

Humanity has a plight.  We are intelligent enough to desire to know our purpose, but often slow to realize that it is our ability to seek purpose that assigns us one.  We evolved to be reasonable, to think things through, and many people attribute that uniqueness to the higher blessings of a god, and it’s so incredible that I can’t blame them.  However, every animal has unique characteristics, interesting designs that can be interpreted as the gift of a god and/or the need for specific traits to fill a specific niche in the environment.  Just because the latter reason sounds less thrilling at first doesn’t mean that it is any less meaningful.  Maybe we aren’t chosen especially by a god, but that doesn’t mean that our ability to reason isn’t a gift of nature or that our lives aren’t meaningful.  We have the ability to decide what we want from life.  As a species, we have advanced past survival.  We have the technology and resources, so that if we were to band together and choose to take care of all the people of the world, we could.  Unlike other animals, we choose to fill our time with activities that are superfluous to survival: art, music, science, law, etc.  

How we choose to live our lives is up to us.  We define what is meaningful to us.  I’ve been asked before by religious friends, “If you don’t follow the rules of a god out of goodness or fear of punishment, then what keeps you from living completely selfishly, in a survival-of-the-fittest lifestyle?”  My answer is simple enough:  I choose.  Why should we live selfishly if we have made great leaps and bounds by working with others?  Consider another question for someone who looks at the world the way I do: why should someone like me want to protect an endangered species?  Simply put, nature is full of brilliant little accidents.  Higher order and uniqueness are valuable because the chance of any one thing developing in nature is so slim.  That’s why human life matters so much, why every individual is so precious, because the combination of genetics, environment, experience, brain chemistry, raising, etc. produces a person so unique that there will never be another quite the same.  In our evolution, we became dependent on one another, on the diversities and intricacies of different people to develop a higher order outside of flesh and blood.  We have done ugly things in our history, but we have also made most wonderful things by working together to take advantage of the chance of nature.  The world is a better place for humankind today than it has ever been (from a net total perspective).  We must help each other to keep making wonderful advances.  Love thy neighbor, because love gives people strength to push past toil to make a greater tomorrow together.

What about after death?  I cannot know what happens in any realm outside of the immediately physical one when we die.  I do anticipate an afterlife though.  The wonderful thing about studying the universe via science is that it reveals many beautiful truths.  For instance, the molecules that my body is made of will be broken apart and dispersed once I’m dead.  The things I am made of will be reshaped and recycled by the earth in the same way that they have been countless times before.  I am made from the same materials that previous living creatures were.  Someday long after my death, I may contribute to the growth of a flower that a young lover hands to another, or a bit of the carbon now in my heart may be found in the iris of a child’s eye.  And perhaps someday, long after our planet dies, our sun fades, our galaxy collides with others, and our universe implodes in the “Big Bounce,” every molecule of everything that has ever been a part of our universe will expand outward again, creating a new universe with new galaxies, new stars, new planets, new oceans, new lands, new living creatures, new intelligent beings, and new wonders of chance, made up of the same matter that we are.  

Every life form on far-off planets that we never knew existed, every enemy we swore against, every person we loved, every mountain we aspired to climb, every disease we feared, every constellation that we admired, and every inspiration we carried in our hearts and minds will be one with us, and everything will begin again.  

That’s more than enough for me.

Unfortunately, my belief in this, while reasonable and beautiful and hopeful, while encouraging me to be kind and giving me comfort, is not enough for many people I care about. For many of those who believe they practice the one “true” religion, I am a heretic, surely damned to the pits of hellfire because I don't believe in the flames.  I understand why they think this, because people have been telling them the same story all their lives, and they have been told to interpret it literally, rather than literarily. I don't want to disappoint them, but even if I saved the world, I'd still have failed to believe, and that is enough to discredit me.

How do we teach people to respect other beliefs, when so many believe that to allow other beliefs is to betray their own?

How do we unite so many who don't believe in each other?

I think we must wake up and smell the logic, and recognize that we are bigger than the stories we tell.  They are often wonderful stories that should be shared, that teach valuable lessons, and train some good habits.  They are important to our history and for many they give hope that is necessary to face troubles in life, but they should not be a source of strife, nor determine how we live together, without taking other things into consideration.  They shouldn’t overcome the knowledge and common goals we share.

As for myself: I’ve been reading a story, Life of Pi, which hints that my belief system is the worst, because it has no leap of faith.  I adore the book, for it acknowledges the weaknesses and strengths of religions.  I like it because it points out that atheists and all theists are brothers and sisters in faith, because it requires a leap of faith from the peak of the known to proclaim to know whether there is or is not a god.  An agnostic, however, is depicted as not being able to make up their mind, not being able to take a leap.  I would argue that sometimes this is true, but it is only half an argument.  Just because Agnosticism does not require a leap of faith into the great beyond, outside of the senses, does not mean that I cannot leap.  It leaves things open, but I can decide what to put faith in without knowing if there is a god.  

My leap of faith is into the future, for humanity.  I fill the coffers of the future generation, I beg forgiveness from posterity for all my faults, I offer up my life, my love, and all that I am to our children.  I put faith in fellow people, in a better tomorrow.  I trust story-tellers with all my heart, and lean not on my own understanding.  In all my ways, I acknowledge dreamers, for they will direct our paths.  Amen.

Miranda Mason, a sophomore student from Corinth, Ky., studies biology, liberal studies and political science.