For a Godless Science

[ZenitYerkes]

TL;DR - Religious people will kill me


When I've spoken to some of you who have a strong faith in God, I have felt dumb when I talked since the competitor in my theories was no less than an omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent God, Creator of the world. Specially when discussing the Darwinian theory of evolution, the answer "God made it, it's hard to believe that animals can change at all" is too tempting to ignore it and go for another, more complex and difficult to understand answer; since there is actually few completely certain data.

Also, morals are a touchy issue that somehow always pops up when talking to you. I've seen comments to the Evolution theory (just to keep going with the example) saying "I'm sorry, but I'd rather believe the Church. They take care of widows and orphans", or "Evolution theory says the needed should die. It's horrible, I'm not going to believe in that."

I'm not saying anyone here does it (actually this is the last place where I am expecting that kind of replies), but it's not just once that I've heard something similar.

Any case, I beg you people to keep God away from non-religious discussions for it harms more than helps.

God made it.

For the people who turn up with the "God made it" answer, I ask them to keep that for when there is actually no more reasoning to do and anything left is blurry, unknowledgeable and speculation land. Then yes, please -God came up and made it.

A theory should be coherent with the data available and with the natural laws and mechanisms that work now and have ruled the world -it always follows logical cause-consequence schemes.

But if you take out the natural cause of it and replace it with God -who, for being omnipotent, could have perfectly made it-, theories drastically change -and not exactly for the better.

Let's take the hypothesis "The world started to be since 5 minutes ago". Logical reasoning will tell you for personal experience: that happening is quite unprobable since it'd need all the people to have false memories until 5 minutes ago; and no possible cause making that happen turns it impossible. However, considering God there could make it actually happen, since we can't know why he did it -but he does, and that's enough.

There are people of all kinds and though quite very much improbable, I bet someone would support that hypothesis by saying that God made it happen.


"That example is stupid, and we are more intelligent than that Zenit". I know it's not the best example, but I'm just pointing out the absurd of replacing something that still can be explained naturally, logically with the God cause.

Tho, the more distant we get in time, the less track we have of the past and less proofs we have to support our theories. Evolution or Big Bang theories support themselves on sheer logic and a few facts, like the Doppler effect or fossils. Creationism supports itself on the Bible and the existence of God -since it needs no further base or alteration of the present proofs, it fits perfectly.

Which is right? I go for scientific theories since they do follow logical schemes and can explain more things without getting into unknown land; they explain why anything in the Universe happens.

Religious theories on the other hand are not as accurate, and most of them replace the natural cause with the God cause, to fill those gaps where science can only bring yet-to-be-proved speculations and almost proofless hypothesis.

However, I can't make these people change their minds with a long post. But I ask them to at least consider the other theories in spite of them being right or wrong, what I leave to their own judgment.

That's plainly wrong, I won't believe that.

Feeling anything is right or wrong doesn't change it. Disasters cause thousands of deaths, are we going to ignore them for it? No, what's more -exactly because they are tragic we will get prepared to face them.

For example, evolution theory has the great pro of explaining natural processes of selection -and those processes exist independently of anyone's opinion (or isn't the small fish eaten by the big fish?). Any case, religion appears in the scene and some people say "No, that's not what the Bible says"...

Whether you take the Bible as your reference, or follow what the Pope asks the Catholic Church to do: you should look for stronger reasons to follow their advice, specially when contradictory messages appear.

If all the foundations you have for "Condoms are plainly wrong" is that your pastor said so -that's ad baculum, authority fallacy; and I could retort that the archbishop told me it's better to prevent AIDS.

Both are based on strong authorities -but what makes one better than another it's not who said it, but rather what making that does, which the results are. To put it another way, it's better to let the argument "defend itself" for what it is and what it makes; rather than making it look right or wrong depending on who said it, or how they said it, or...

I'm afraid this just made no sense.

Any case, I'm writing this with all the respect religion deserves; and I hope nobody gets offended for it. If it does, I'm sorry -it wasn't my intention.