Reason and Knowledge vs Faith and Belief

The following e-mail was received from a good friend who is a Christian and attends a fundamentalist church in Illinois, near Springfield. His identity will remain secret because if his church gets wind of his doubts he will be asked to leave. Only in a church are you accepted for what you believe and kicked out for what you know. Here is his e-mail, followed by my reply.

“I'm actually enjoying religion. We had friends from Springfield who are the age of our kids drop by yesterday. We first became friend with their parents twenty years ago. They are very conservative members of the Church of Christ. Their son isn't. He and his wife are attending a "liberal" Church of Christ. He agrees with me on many issues and in fact said, "The church has to change. To think you are the only ones going to heaven doesn't make sense." I told him I had a book he might like to read and gave him a copy of mine. Change comes slowly, but it always happens


Hi xxxxxxx

As to your “liberal” Church of Christ friend….good for him. However, as a practicing skeptic I would posit that perhaps it might make more sense if rather than wait for the church to change, just acknowledge the wonderful fact that he has changed. He will never win an argument with his preacher. It is impossible to make someone understand something if their livelihood depends on them not understanding it.

As you said, change comes slowly. For many it can be difficult and painful. But it can also be exhilarating. Evolution is a perfect example. Evolution is a fact. When we accept that fact, the very foundation of the Christian religion is swept away. There was no Adam and Eve. There was no “original sin”. The notion that we are all miserable sinners because we “fell from grace” is exposed for the deception that it is. We just happen to be primates that developed huge brains. That’s it. Mark Twain said, “We do no end of feeling and mistake it for thinking.” He was right. When we allow reason, rather than emotion to guide us; when we begin using evidence rather than faith to lead us, we begin to make progress.

Religion has always shackled learning, from Galileo's time for making the daring claim that we went round the sun rather than the sun around us, (for which he was placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life) up to the present, where stem cell research is shackled because of the erroneous belief that a few cells called a blastocyst contain a human soul. If we have been brought up to think that we are at the center of the universe, it becomes rather difficult to accept the fact that we are not. On the other hand, once we begin to realize that there is not a big daddy in the sky watching our every move and reading our every thought, it can be a tremendously liberating experience.

Here is what Carl Sagan had to say about it.

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. “

Some argue that at some time in our distant past, religion played a part in our survival as a species. That could be, but I think it has as more to do with power than survival. From the Pope, and his red robed, minions with their funny hats, to Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Billy Graham, and the Grand Ayatollah, right on down to the “humble” ministers in the smallest churches, their very jobs depend on convincing us that they have a special mission from god.

Again, it is impossible to make someone understand something if their livelihood depends on them not understanding it. But whether they care to understand it or not, here are the facts.

Modern humans evolved from archaic Homo sapiens (thinking man) about 200,000 years ago, as the subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens. (That would be us)

If we are to believe the Christian bible, this means that for 196,000 years, god let his most favored creation suffer unbelievably from cold, starvation, disease and terror while he stood by twiddling his thumbs and did nothing. Then about 4000 years ago, apparently he suddenly awoke and revealed himself to us, then sealed the deal a couple thousand years later by having his “son” born in one of the most remote places on the face of the earth, where the news would not leak out for over 300 years. His son proclaimed (John 14:6) that unless we bought into his story, we would suffer eternal agony in hell. Since as of this writing there are 6.8 billion of us on the planet, two thirds of which reject Jesus out of hand, then 4.5 billion of us living and breathing right now are going to spend eternity in hell. Let alone the billions who have already died. And of course since god is omniscient, he knew from the beginning this was all going to happen.

Since the Jesus myth sprang up, literally thousands of religions have sprung up also, all claiming to have a special truth not proclaimed by all the others. This is beyond foolishness. It borders on the criminal for the following reason.

When we, as adults, expose children to unfalsifiable claims, we are engaged in a clandestine kind of theft. We are stealing from these young people their ability to reason . We are robbing them of their critical thinking skills. If we were caught stealing their dolls or bicycles we could (and should) go to jail for it. But the more flagrant crime; the theft of their reason and critical thinking skills, goes unpunished. They will grow up with a self centeredness that causes them to think that the earthquake killed everyone else when it brought the church down around them but a loving and merciful god spared them.

Now for some opinion.

Karl Popper came up with the idea of falsifiability. In my opinion, the most egregious sin one can commit is to fill young children’s heads with unfalsifiable junk. Whether it’s teaching youngsters that their prophet rode a white horse to heaven and back, dug up some magic plates and reading stones, that dead men come back alive or that their god used an army of monkeys to build a 30 mile long land bridge, it is all unfalsifiable junk. (One exception…Mormonism’s history is so recent that it can be demonstrably shown to be false.) We know these religions can’t all be true for the simple reason that they contradict one another. But there is an overriding reason. As noted, with the exception of Mormonism there is no way we can prove any of them false. Let me give an example of what I mean. Let’s say that I made the claim that I did not write any of this; that instead a hand appeared over my keyboard and wrote everything you are reading. Since there are no witnesses, how can you prove me wrong? You can’t. I have just made an unfalsifiable claim. Ever notice how these religions spring up by revelation with no witnesses? Moses on the mountain; no witnesses. Mahomet in the cave; no witnesses, Joseph Smith talking to the angel, Moroni (rhymes with baloney) no witnesses.

Now for a philosophical question. The kind you and I enjoy.

Imagine for a moment (don’t worry you won’t go to hell for using your imagination) that we were to find out that there is no god, that there really was no Jesus; that all that stuff is just made up; that we live in a natural world where dead men don’t come back alive, horses don’t fly and donkeys and snakes never once uttered a word. How would you change? How do you imagine your fellow C of C members would change? If the answer is no change at all, then why do we need a god? We truly can be good without god.

However, if the answer is that we would be more likely to commit crimes against one another, then what does that say about us? It says we are a sorry lot indeed. The people who claim on the one hand that there is a god and on the other hand say they would act differently if they found out there was not one, are in my opinion, not only a sorry example of humanity but unbelievably stupid to boot. If there is an all knowing god do they really think he/she/it can’t see right through to their rotten core?

My opinion is that if there really is a god, there will be a lot of Christians, who will be in for an ugly surprise after they die.

I hope you forward this to all your religious friends. Ask them to point out the flaws in my arguments. If they find them delinquent in some way, and they can offer evidence refuting them, I am always open to change if the evidence calls for it. I am not open to arguments from faith. Faith is a free ride and we should all know there is no such thing as a free ride. Faith requires no work, no intellect. If arguments from faith were valid I would be consulting Osama bin Laden and his 19 hi-jackers. No one has shown stronger faith than them.