The Skeptic Stop

Is there a reconciliation between science and religion? The late astronomer Carl Sagan expressed eloquently his view that science and religion address similar deep-seated human wonder and awe of the natural world. There is no doubt beauty in a sunny, lush spring day, and this wonder apparently leads some to the worship. However, it leads many others to the sciences. Whether you end up in the first camp or the second (or maybe taking some other path) seems to depend on the level of early childhood religious instruction you had. You may view the sense of grandeur of nature as confirmation of your parents’ religious intuitions. Those of use raised in secular households more often view it in secular terms.

But even if they address the same deep-seated emotional needs, science and religion will never be reconciled, nor should they be. Consider chemistry versus alchemy, which both seek to understand the elements. There is no hope that chemists will ever seriously bring alchemists into their fold, even though they superficially try to answer similar questions. This is because chemistry is grounded in evidence and reason. Alchemy is superstition and ignorance, and has been completely rejected since chemistry entered the modern era. The same is true of astrology. It would be wrong for astronomers to devote any research money at all to discovering if there is anything to the idea that stars trillions of miles away may actually influence your date tonight. Astrology is sounding rejected by scientists as nonsense, for good reason.

The dichotomy between science and religion follows a similar pattern. We’re talking about evidence and reason on one side; ignorance, superstition, and wish thinking on the other. Science should not make any attempt to reconcile its philosophy with superstition, because to do so would undermine the entire scientific enterprise. Science demands not just wonder and awe and respect for our natural world, but it requires healthy skepticism and intellectual rigor, which are both absent in religious thinking. It’s almost as if the major religions hijacked the best part of science and stripped it of its intellectual framework, imprisoning the mind to keep the faithful mired in 12th-century thought and fear.

There is a popular notion among Christians that the miracles attested to in the Bible provide evidence for the truth of scripture. Or, that the Bible correlates with historical record, so the stories related must have some element of truth in them. Or, that the New Testament confirms Old Testament prophesy. The fact that there are people out there - often thinking, college-educated people - who are convinced by these arguments is utterly baffling to me. A moment of critical thought reveals why all such arguments are simply bankrupt of reason.

Let’s make an analogy to Harry Potter to see why. The Harry Potter book seem to have all the same arguments going for them. The wizardry described in Harry Potter is certainly miraculous. Harry Potter also correlates with real-life events. Harry Potter takes place in modern London, which we know from secular sources exists. And, later Harry Potter books seem to confirm the predictions of earlier books. Do these facts therefore mean that the wizardry of Harry Potter is true? Is the author God? Of course not. It simply means that J.K. Rowling wrote her books in this way.

Similarly, we should not be led to believe that apparent historical connections between scripture and secular records is evidence that the supernatural events are also true. Could the scribes who wrote the Bible have referenced the current events of their day? Of course they could. Could the scribes of the New Testament have written their books in such a way that they would appear to confirm the predictions of earlier books? Yes, of course. It would be a trivial task for an amateur writer. Is there an explanation for the miracle stories of Jesus? Yes: they were made up. Is it actually realistic to think that a set of books could have all of these elements in them at once? The Harry Potter series seems to have them. Why not the Christian Bible?

Of course, the Harry Potter stories make no claims about their real-life authenticity: it is fiction and claims to be fiction. The Bible is fiction claiming to be fact.

Let’s grant Christians, just for the sake of argument, the following assumptions: let’s assume that Jesus existed, he was crucified in exactly the way that the Bible attests, and all of the apostles existed in a way described in the Bible. Suppose we even have photographic evidence of Jesus dead on the Cross with Mary Magdalene weeping nearby. Does this therefore mean that the supernatural deeds of Jesus really happened? No. What if we also have a later video showing Jesus walking around Judea after purportedly being resurrected? Does that mean that a miracle occurred? No. Think about it very carefully and you’ll understand why. Hint: think of Carl Sagan’s immortal phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.

God… Religion… Faith… Skepticism… When conversing in matters of religious faith, the discussion often degenerates into a series of redefinitions that has the effect of anesthetizing my opponent from all criticism. If we’re going to critique these concepts we’ve got to define them first. And God knows we’ll be critiquing.

god: An intelligent Deity. Zeus, Allah, Shiva, Jehovah… these are all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), and everywhere (omnipresence). They are intelligent, creative forces or beings. They can read our minds, juggle around planets or galaxies, bend the laws of physics, see the future, and a host of other amazing things. Some of them have children, siblings, and other family, while others do not. I’m going to use “god” in the lowercase form, since “God” as upper-case is a proper noun, and generally denotes the Christian version. I’m an equal-opportunity blasphemer.

religion: There are a lot of definitions of religion, usually describing a “shared set of beliefs” or “devotional or ritual observances” or a “moral code governing the conduct of human affairs” and so on. I think that the important component of any definition of religion is supernaturalism. Religions are a set of beliefs shared by a community, and invariably offer up a moral (or immoral) code, but what is important is that such beliefs and codes have a supernatural underpinning. The belief that the world is round is also shared by a large community of persons, but there is nothing supernatural about circumnavigating the globe, or triangulating the sun’s shadow at different points on Earth. The methods of science are not supernatural methods, so science is not a religion. Atheism is a rejection of a supernatural belief, so it is also not a religion. Are palmistry and ESP also religious? Well, yes and no. They rely on belief in unproven supernatural phenomena, but they lack other characteristics of religions, like ritual observances and a moral code.

faith: One of my personal peeves is how the faithful hijack words to describe aspects of their religion that really have nothing to do with the word. Faith is one such example. “Truth” is another. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Truth bumper stickers, where the “t” is the Christian cross. Faith is used by Christians to mean “belief in the absence of evidence”, and indeed this is even quite close to Webster’s 2nd definition of faith; the first being “confidence or trust in a person or thing”. But no one really has faith without evidence. If I have faith that my mother loves me, it’s because the evidence points to this fact. She hugs me when I see her, offers words of encouragement when I feel down, tells me how much she cares about me, and so on. I have faith that the sun will rise because it’s done so every day of my life, and I understand the motions of the planets well enough to know that sacrificing a house cat will not change that pattern. In other words, my faith in the sun rising is an extrapolation of years of experience. The only time humans ever seem to have unjustified “faith” is in the area of religious belief. Thus, when I write of faith with regards to religion, it’s unreasoned, and unjustifiable faith. Faith is nothing more than an excuse to believe - or pretend to believe - in imaginary beings when reason fails or evidence is non-existent.

skepticism: In our (Western) culture, skepticism has a negative connotation. The skeptic is the doubter, the one who lacks faith, the naysayer. Skepticism is perceived as a negative position. In fact, we are all skeptics. The default position that we all take - or should take - when presented with an extraordinary statement is one of skepticism. The “innocent until proven guilty” is a simply admission of this. If someone accuses me of murder, I would hope that the jury assumes skepticism about this claim.