Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.
– Isaac Asimov
You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
– Anne Lamott
The beginning of wisdom is the statement “I do not know.” The person who cannot make that statement is one who will never learn anything. And I have prided myself on my ability to learn.
– Thrall (from the Warcraft series)1
A common argument by theists is this: the universe exists. It couldn’t have appeared out of nothing, so there must be a creator. That is, God.
However, we used to be equally sure about the divine origins of, say, the weather. Storms? It was obvious that the gods were angry, or fighting among themselves. But now we know better. We may not know everything, but a lot of it has been successfully explained by science… and, guess what, it’s all natural, so far. No divine intervention required.
Science has been widely successful. It has moved us from the cave to the hut to the skyscraper, more than doubled our life expectancy, and explained a lot of phenomena — once attributed to gods or demons — as natural. But it is not perfect. And it “knows” it. It is always prepared to discard an hypothesis when it comes up with new data that contradicts it. While some would accuse science of “flip-flopping”, of not providing us with absolute, final certainties, that is actually the best thing about science: it’s about understanding reality, but it’s reality itself that is “in charge”, and no scientific hypothesis, or even scientific theory (which is something a lot stronger — tested against available evidence, peer-reviewed, etc. — than what the word “theory” suggests in common language: merely an idea or wild fancy, as in “I have a theory…”), is ever set in stone.
In short, science is capable of saying “I do not know.”
In the opposite corner, ladies and gentlemen, we have religion. Religion doesn’t know the words “I don’t know;” it replaces them with “God did it.” Both in primitive times, when little was known of the workings of the world, and now, religion always claims to have a perfect, complete answer to everything. “God did it.” How? “Who knows? God works in mysterious ways. No need to understand; just have faith.”
What is the origin of the universe? God. How did life appear? God. Where does mankind come from? God. What is the source of morality? God. What happens to us after we die? God.
“God”, as an answer to a question, is nothing more than the fear of saying “I do not know”, even to oneself. Apparently, such an honest admission is scary to many theists; it is much more comfortable to cease all questioning, stop any investigating, turn your mind off, and say “God did it. That’s good enough for me.”
Good thing it wasn’t “good enough” for many people throughout history, or we would still be living in caves, huddled in the dark, afraid of terrible demons and unknowable gods. We don’t live like that anymore, however, all because some people were honest and brave enough to say “I do not know”… and then went and did something about it: they began to learn.
If I take a lamp and shine toward the wall, a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for truth, for understanding. Too often we assume the light on the wall is God, but the light is not the goal of the search, it is the result of the search. The more intense the search, the brighter the light on the wall. The brighter the light on the wall, the greater the revelation upon seeing it. Similarly, someone who does not search, who does not bring a lantern with him, sees nothing. What we perceive as God is the by-product of our search for God. It may simply be an appreciation of the light, pure and unblemished. Not understanding that it comes from us, sometimes, we stand in front of the light and assume we are the center of the universe. God looks astonishingly like we do. Or we turn to look at our shadow and assume all is darkness. If we allow ourselves to get in the way, we defeat the purpose — which is use the light of our search to illuminate the wall in all its beauty and all it flaws, and in so doing, better understand the world around us.
- G’Kar, Babylon 5
I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.
– Charles Darwin
In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed!”? Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.”
– Carl Sagan
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