A very interesting take on Religion/Atheism

From my friend Lars. His blog is pretty entertaining, even if you don't always agree with his points of view. Here he has managed to pretty much crystallize my opinion as well. As usual Gentle Readers, I invite your comments and opinions. I will even forward them on for you if you wish.

Alex, I Would Like to Solve the Puzzle Please

I consider it the height of irony when I hear a scientific idea being described from a religious standpoint by an “expert” in the field. I could line up 100 other “experts” who are not believers to support one side of, say, the need for intense stem cell research and the religious community will shrug off their credentials and their exhortations simply because these “secular scientists” do not give religious concerns or even “what the Bible says” proper importance. But they are quick hold up the academic and professional achievements of a “Christian scientist” who publicly voices opposition. What we atheists all want to point out at these moments is that, first of all, it’s 100 voices against 1, and second, listening to the religious voice and giving it any weight is like listening to Charles H. Duell as head of the U.S. Patent Office in 1899 recommending that the Office be closed because “everything that can be invented has been invented” and not bursting out laughing. Although the story of Mr. Duell recommending the Patent Office’s closure is a myth, the fact that religious scientists are close to being worthless, if not downright dangerous, is not.

The religious community of God believers always likes to trot out Copernicus, Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton and a few other historical scientists of note to show that great scientists have never had any trouble also believing in a personal God. This, of course, is an ingenuous ploy not only because for every one they can claim to be believers there are dozens who didn't, but also because even though these men (and women) may have outwardly purported to believe in God (Newton certainly did, but I am not so sure about Copernicus) and what they had discovered may have been extremely important to the advancement of human scientific knowledge it cannot be said that it is because they believed in God that the discoveries and advancements were made. I would say that it had nothing at all to do with it. If anything, “the Church” was continually instrumental in holding them back from the work they could have accomplished had they been given the freedom to do so and only reluctantly acknowledged it when they absolutely had to. Over and over again in history discoveries have been made by scientists, religious or not and over and over again the critics, nay-sayers and yes, the persecutors rise up from the religious establishment and seriously deter if not altogether squash them so that if takes another great scientist in a later time to bring to light the knowledge that the earlier scientist may have given us.

To speak in round numbers, it is certain that 500 years ago the most knowledgeable scientists could not say for certain what the thousands of lights they saw in the sky at night even were. It was not known to them which organ in our bodies acted as the seat of thought. No one knew about, let alone understood the physiology of the human circulatory system. No one knew exactly how plants came to grow when you potted them well, watered them and gave them sunlight. Biological reproduction was a mystery. Even the Greeks saw the effects of electricity when cloth was rubbed against amber but, in the year 1508, the word “electricity” was more than a century away from first being coined. Aerodynamics? Not a clue. Earthquakes? No idea. As late as 1930 the best guess as to the true age of the earth was still somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 years.

I could rant about the role that religious persecution, intolerance and ignorance has played in the devastated lives of millions upon millions of individual people who have passed from birth to death on this planet in the last two millennia. I could write of the religious wars and the way in which religion and its countless manifestations have held people of lower class down so that generations upon generations of aristocracies could glut themselves. There are so many reasons to see belief and the insufferable, theocratic, bureaucratic outgrowth of that belief as a terrible and embarrassing line item in the ledger of human culture. But the exact protest I would like to make here concerns the stultifying effect that religion’s constant presence in any of its forms has had upon our general understanding of the world around us, the workings of our own bodies, the microscopic world, and the universe at large.

And all I want to really ask is this…What in Hell have they been afraid of!?!? Well, I am going to tell you.

You know what it’s like? Religion and the behavior of its adherents? It’s like a giant game of that old game Alex Trebek hosted for a while back in the late 1980s…Classic Concentration. The contestants would compete for prizes and the right to make attempts at solving the rebus puzzle initially hidden by the 30 panels on the playing board. If a player matched two panels, they would win the prize described on the matching pair and then they would be removed so that parts of the rebus would be revealed underneath. As the game went on, two by two, the panels would be removed and the puzzle would appear until, at some point, there was enough information for one of the contestants to put it all together and utter the full and precise answer for the right to play for the grand prize, a shiny new automobile. The idea was to keep matching tiles so that you had a much clearer picture of the rebus before you made your guess but for the uninitiated even a fully revealed puzzle was sometimes surprisingly difficult get right and much mockery was made of the contestants who just couldn’t see it though it was staring them right in the face. Now, I see a lot of comparison between that game and the effects religion has had throughout history. See, it would be as if a bunch of people got together to play a giant version of the game and one person decided after the first two panels were removed that he had the answer to the puzzle. He would say,

“I have the answer…I don’t have to play anymore.”

“What? Already? Wow. Well, ok, what is your answer?,” the host would ask, who in this case would be just a moderator and would not know the answer himself.

The contestant confidently would answer, “early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

“It is possible, I guess, and it is certainly poignant, but it is extraordinary that you know that already,” the host might observe. “Don’t you want to know for certain before throwing down your choice?”

To the surprise of almost everyone, “I am sure of the answer. Therefore, I don’t need to play anymore.”

At this point some of the other contestants would be convinced simply due to the man’s charisma and confidence. Besides, they were never any good at these kinds of puzzles anyway…he sounds like he knows what he is talking about. They would also leave the game.

The game would go on and a few more panels would be revealed. The remaining contestants would be able to easily see that the first respondent’s answer, despite his earlier confidence, was incorrect. The host might return to the first respondent and ask him if he wanted back in the game.

The contestant would reply, “I already told you that my answer was, ‘early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise’ and it is still obviously correct. I don’t need to play anymore.”

The host might be willing to be understanding of the man’s obviously embarrassing plight and might persist. “No, you see right here. Your answer simply can’t be right. We have proof.”

The man would steadfastly respond, “You can’t be sure of it. That might not be the picture of a cash register…it could be a futon.”

“No, I think it is a cash register. The buttons are right there,” the host would explain.

The contestant would reply, “I already told you that my answer was, “never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.”

Professionally ignoring the guffaws from the audience the host would patiently remind him, “No, you said that the answer was, ‘early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.’”

“No I didn’t,” the contestant would protest with a Python-esque defiance.

“Yes, you did. We have it on tape,” the host would state, matter-of-factly.

Without an ounce of incongruity in his voice the deluded man would answer, “Well, what I meant by saying ‘early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise’ was ‘never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.’" For a moment there would be a stunned, unbelieving silence in the studio. But then most of the early respondent’s group of admirers, not wanting to admit they may have been incorrect in following along in the first place and probably for the most part just figured they are not smart enough to understand the mystery of the switcheroo that they had just witnessed, would voice their support for the man and stay beside him. But there would be a few that would admit the mistake and drift back to the main group to wait for a better answer. The host would begin to say something about the rules of participation, how the rules clearly allow changing one's answer so it is completely unnecessary to lie about it, but would realize that it was of no use to waste his breath and would go on with the game.

Every time more panels of the puzzle are revealed the same thing would occur. The early responder would insist that his previous answer was correct, deny all evidence to the contrary, and when he finally seems to realize that he was, in fact, wrong, he would claim to have never had the previous, much different answer. And what would astound the host and the audience more than anything would be that each time bits of the puzzle are revealed the man insists on trying to solve it. He can’t seem to just shut up and let the thing reveal itself naturally. He has to have an answer, not partial bits of the answer but the whole answer. And there are so many contestants that simply don’t want to think for themselves each time the man makes “updates” that they too would ignore the evidence and the obviously unstable nature of the man and stay by his side. And each time more of the puzzle comes to light the early responder, the obviously delusional man would claim that no one else knows for sure what the answer to the puzzle is and therefore has no business telling him that he doesn’t have the right answer.

To make matters even more confusing, there would seem to be a disturbing trend among the remaining contestants. During every round of the game more of them would decide that instead of waiting for additional clues to the puzzle’s true nature to be revealed they would make a guess of their own, confidently state their position as to the final answer, and drag others to their camp, leaving less and less contestants to work out the puzzle’s actual solution. This would invariably frustrate the host and would also leave the remaining, enthusiastic contestants feeling they like they need to convince those who have bowed out that they are missing the most important point of the game. They would want to tell them how the game is more fun if one does not insist on knowing the answer. They would say that the focus of the game should be the challenge of the game itself and there is no reason for anyone to be embarrassed to say that they are still stumped by parts of it. They would insist that it is ok to patiently wait for more and more panels to be revealed. Some of the more exasperated players would burst out, "You don't know what you are talking about!"

And the insistent and delusional early responders would shoot back, "No, I know the truth, it is you who don't know the truth. Don't you want to quit the game and share the truth with us?" And then fights would begin to break out between the early responders some based on aspects as mundane as the inflection with which you must utter the final answer or how fast to say it.

In our hypothetical and supremely chaotic game of Classic Concentration, the fortitude of the deluded, pre-ejaculatory and combatative contestants is always found in the “gaps” of knowledge, the areas of the unknown. If the information from these gaps was known there would be no confusion and no disagreement. Even they would have to admit the truth when it was revealed to them. But instead of admitting they are wrong they simply co-opt the truth to be their own, original answer. They adjust the history in their own minds and blithely put forth this claim to the rest of the contestants. This is very frustrating to those playing by the rules of the game and it keeps them from the job at hand, that of solving the puzzle. And so the one wish of all the remaining players is for the delusional ones to just shut the Hell up if they aren’t going to really play anymore.

This is why it is frustrating for us who are still “playing the game” and searching for real answers in the real world to the interminable list of questions that remain unknown or only partially answered. We know science is indefatigable in its search for these answers and to answers for questions that have not yet even been posed. We don’t have to be experts in high energy physics or evolutionary biology or astronomical phenomenon to know that it is worth “playing the game”. Religious people, by succumbing to their delusions (or simply to their indifference), not only possibly dilute the pool of intelligent people searching for the truth, they hold up the “game” and stand in the way of the fulfilling experience of those of us still actively participating in either the actual science or the eager comsumption of the findings. Religion, at worst being sanctioned by the state and at best being the nay-saying, loudmouthed bystander, never, ever has given science the freedom to advance the breadth of its knowledge without meddling in it because whenever science makes an advance it is to the detriment of religion which will have narrower and fewer “gaps” from which to claim relevance. Just imagine to what heights science may have taken human understanding of the very small, very large and all other aspects of the natural world if it had not been for the stultifying effects of the religious stranglehold upon its activities! It does not have to result in planes flying into buildings or a crusade against occupying infidels or the downtrodden state of the underclass for it to be a constant drag upon our progress. Anyone who thinks that religious belief is only a harmless characteristic of our modern culture for religion to still have such power over people’s lives, even if it is just wasting their time on Sunday morning, has not thought about it nearly enough.