HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
May 7, 2006 Evolution is a religion, did you know that? Global warming – a religion. Humanism is, you guessed it, a religion. Liberalism is, of course, a religion. Conservatism? Yup, religion. Even atheism is a religion. These days when folk from all stripes, even Christians, want to attack or degrade something, one technique is to call it a “religion”. Doesn't this strike anyone as odd? Let's use a quick specific example – evolution. Folks opposed usually misunderstand and consequently mislabel what they perceive as a lack of evidence, a missing fossil for example showing some important transition, a “gap”. Ah-hah! There is a lack of evidence! You are accepting that on faith! It's just a religion. Is the irony seeping in yet? Religion and religious faith are, well, movements based on faith, lol, with no good evidence! This is what makes most religious belief systems bad, negative, undesirable. Rather, this is why religious belief systems should be undesirable for sane and reasonable people. A sort of hypothetical worst-case scenario for the “evolutionists” and the humanists might be, for the sake of argument, that their views are merely religious. This would put them on an equal footing with the more popular religions. Having only faith to support it, evolution would merely break even with Islam and Christianity, for example. That brings up a disturbing little fact about faith – if faith is enough to believe, then all faiths are correct. Of course, all faiths cannot be correct, since many of the most popular have specific and clear rules about being the one and only correct faith. This very quickly gets into contradiction-ville territory and has real-world nasty consequences like war, slavery, hacking arms off, shooting peasants from the backs of camels, burning your female if you suspect she's considered wearing makeup, and so on. According to many “experts” on the Christian faith, for example, John Water's yogic super-powers are incompatible with the Bible. John has also said that he doesn't accept the Christ story as literal, suggesting to me that John values the idea of faith, but not a specific faith. That being the case, what one believes in is irrelevant, as long as one believes in something – but enough about John. Going back to faith in general, one obvious retort from a thinking person might be that faith alone is not required for religion. Congratulations! you are not a fundamentalist, but you aren't out of the woods, either. Those types of debates begin with facts – Babylon, for example. Yeah, it really existed. And yeah, it's really mentioned in the Bible. But probe deeper and attempt to find a correlation between the Bible and outside evidence which supports the supernatural aspects of the Bible and you quickly come up short. We've also found Troy, but you won't find many today which will say that the texts which mention Troy are therefore also correct. In other words, there's no real evidence that the gods got personally involved in that ancient battle. So, invariably, even these types of arguments come back to faith, which we've already agreed is “bad” (a follower of that old faith would need to insist on the basis of faith alone after all that Zeus had a hand in that epic battle, for example). Or, at least, anyone paying attention thus far should realize why I think religious faith is negative. Humanism isn't based on religious faith because it doesn't ask anyone to buy anything supernatural, nor does it expect folks to follow its principles “just because”. Some parts of humanism look towards a hopeful future, one which, naturally, may not come to pass. That isn't religious faith any more than Star Trek is, which also imagines a hopeful future. Hope isn't faith, alternate philosophies and recommendations about how to live a good life aren't faith, imagination isn't faith. Asking someone to accept the imagination of other's as indisputable fact is faith, but that's not what humanism is about. Atheism isn't a religion because it is simply a lack of belief. One can attempt to be clever and suggest that atheism is based on a belief in something which cannot be proven, namely that gods don't exist. This is false – any serious atheist will admit that he/she has no absolute idea if gods exist or not. We just think that thus far, there is no reason to believe, no evidence, in other words. We can't prove a negative – God could be hiding in a crater on Luna – who knows? Most atheists, myself included, think this highly improbable given what we know thus far about the world, but we cannot be absolutely sure. We can't really disprove Leprechauns either. Maybe they really did exist in Ireland at some point, maybe they still do. Unlikely I'd venture, but we cannot absolutely rule it out. Do you believe in Leprechauns? If you do not, do you belong to an anti-leprechaun religion? Of course not. Atheism isn't even really a philosophy – there is really nothing which unifies atheist besides non-belief, and even the degree and precise manner of that non-belief varies widely. Evolution isn't a religion because that theory meets the requirements of a scientific theory: it has evidence, makes testable predictions which pan out and is falsifiable. Imagine if we held religions to those criteria! Global warming isn't a religion because it has a large body of evidence and falls into a very-roughly similar category as evolution. If some of the global warming predictions turn out to be wrong, which is always a possibility, so be it (although some will certainly pan out, some are happening right now) – science corrects itself. Based on what we know right now, based on what all of the experts are telling us, we do indeed have something to worry about, but we need not worry on faith. Erring on the side of caution and expert opinion isn't faith-based belief. If one lives on a volcano which geologists predict will blow, you better move and no special indwelt spirit is required to accept that notion. If that geology is good science, then one could get educated in the particulars of the science, study the data, and reach the same conclusion. Faith never entered the building. Science may seem to be based on faith to lay-people, but this is because most of us don't really understand even basic science. Ideas put forth by science are meant to be attacked critically by other scientists. This is an utter reversal of religious faith. Scientists as individuals are human and make mistakes, falsify data, etc., but the greater community invariable flushes out the phony-stuff. Finally, political views are subjective at best but don't qualify as religion. Good political views are based on something like evidence, though not in the same league as scientific evidence; historical evidence is a better fit. For example, when I speak about liberalism, I often point to other nations which employ a specific liberal principle or set of principles very well and with great success. This has value for a politico-philosophical discussion, but isn't real science since there are many variables not accounted for. For example, perhaps national health care won't work in the US even though it works fine elsewhere because Americans are just too fat and we'd bankrupt the system! Science those types of arguments are not, but neither are they blind religious faith – there is a kind of evidence at play. The same can be said for the opposing political philosophy, although the sources of non-scientific evidence may differ. So, folks, if you consider yourself a person of faith, catch yourself the next time you label something that you disagree with as “just a religion” - do not let the irony escape your mind. Dwell on it. It is indeed a negative and you likely realize it on some level. ------------ About the author Frederick Smith: I enjoy writing about the positive virtues of humanism - humanists are the good guys. I now have a blog that I will start to increasingly maintain and update. Here is the link: fredsuberview.blogspot.com/ About my personal background and life: I was born, I got some education, worked, ate, and had some kids. It seems I like to write � something that was unknown to me until relatively recently...How's that for detail? ;) Hate mail is welcome unless you are from the Army Of God. Please! It's not that I mind seeing pictures of aborted fetuses in my inbox, but once you've seen one you've pretty much seen them all... Email: dahlek65@gmail.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
