50 days of stupidity – Day 49
Religious people love to pretend that religion and science are compatible world views that should be given equal time. In theory this might be true. It isn’t necessary that religions conflict with science. But the plain and simple fact is that they do. And when they do, science should, and does win. And it wins every time for one simple reason. Science is the study of reality.
Reality is the constant that we all have with one another. We might all have different interpretations of some event but science can show us the true nature of that event. The observations that science reveals are objective and true for everyone, not any particular subset of people.
I’ve said many times before that science can’t be used to validate or invalidate religion but I realize now that that isn’t exactly true. And many of the ridiculous “proofs” that I’ve responded to over the past 50 days have reinforced that to me spectacularly. Science can, in fact, disprove or at the very least, cast serious doubt on certain claims that many religions make. These claims being the ones that step into the realm of reality and out of the realm of philosophy.
Christians, for instance, think they are untouchable because their views are religious in nature. But they aren’t. Some of their beliefs are wrong. Religious claims that step out of the philosophical realm should be able to stand up to scientific scrutiny. So there is no conflict between religion and science as long as they are kept separate but as soon as you try to combine them, you are going to run in to problems.
In #45 (Day 42), a quote by Stephen Hawkins is used.
Science may solve the problem of how the universe began, but it cannot answer the question: why does the universe bother to exist?”
This is a good example of science and philosophy being separate. Science can’t answer the question: “why does the universe bother to exist?” because it isn’t a scientific question. It is a philosophical one. If religion stuck to these kinds of things, there would be nothing to fight about with science. No one would ever step on the others toes.
But they don’t. Instead, you get religions like Christianity trying to step into the realm of science. And coming out looking spectacularly stupid in the process. Evolution denial must be the most ignorant, brainless, vacuous… really, there aren’t words strong enough to express how foolish evolution denial is. Yet they deny it. They have let their dogma push them into an area that religion is not qualified. And they constantly make themselves look like fools to everyone who knows better.
This is a fight that ought not exist. Evolution is true and that truth does not eliminate all theistic beliefs. Christians, a long time ago, made a mistake. They thought they were doing the right thing by telling this silly story about how everything was created and how life came about but they didn’t realize that they were stepping out of their area of expertise. And, maybe it wasn’t even their fault, after all, science wasn’t exactly a well developed field of study at that time. They were doing the best they could with the knowledge they had available to them. But now we know better. It’s time to get over it. The book is wrong. It is obviously wrong to anyone with half a brain who looks at it with an open mind.
Evolution denial makes you look like a fool. And worst of all, it makes your religion look foolish. Stick to the philosophy. Come up with answers to the questions like “why does the universe bother to exist?” There is still a market for that sort of thing and there probably always will be.