Religion was always a fascinating subject to me when I was younger. In high school, I devoured the religious debates that I could find on YouTube and participated in these sorts of conversations every chance that I could find. The arguments on this subject are something I’ve spent years familiarizing myself with.
In these conversations, like the one featured below, it’s typically been rare for much in the way of agreement to take place, even though there are certainly thoughtful arguments in favor of organized religion to be made.
In an older world, religion reigned supreme. When the forces riling around us were each terrifying mysteries, though, we were certainly eager for answers. For the early humans that walked the earth, it’s hard to imagine the sorts of conclusions that would have been drawn in the face of volcanoes, tornadoes and thundering storm clouds. To them, even the forces behind the tides were conundrums beyond our scope.
Whether the earth was flat, and whether it stood fixed at the center of everything were questions to which we were thousands of years away from formulating the beginnings of answers. To some of the earliest civilizations, it was thought largely that the sky that emerged above us as the sun set each night was merely a curtain that blanketed the earth.
Why the sun that seemed to give life to crops would disappear for stretches of time each night was any culture’s best guess. And best guesses they offered.
To a humanity fumbling out from caves, it’s difficult to imagine the sort of power that religion could have exerted, or the level of relief that it could have offered. It’s hard to imagine how desperate people must have been for explanations of any of the odd forces that ruled this bizarre world. When sages and shamans began offering sweeping explanations for the mysteries that ailed all of us, our receptivity was only natural.
As millennia have unfolded and science has arrived at answers to so many of our deepest questions, though, religion has remained a dominant cultural force. While it isn’t the entire religious community that buys into the all-inclusive explanations for how things came to be that so many of the world’s religious texts have offered, the persevering belief in the literal truth of these words arises to something that endangers all of us.
In my conversations with religious circles, I’ve often been stunned by some of the disconnects in thinking that can be encountered. Stephen Weinberg once said that, “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” It’s a truth that’s not always difficult to see when we consider so much of the greatest barbarism of our past.
In a conversation I had with a born-again Christian friend of mine recently, I asked her about her thoughts on The Bible condoning slavery. She replied nonchalantly that The Bible condones slavery “because there’s nothing wrong with slavery in itself.”
As a Black American likely descended from slaves herself, I stared at her message in frozen disbelief. She tried to qualify the statement by saying that The Bible meant simply that we should be slaves toward Jesus. To me, it’s the sort of rationalization that could only be offered after a powerful indoctrination has taken place. It’s difficult for me to imagine how a person would arrive at that conclusion today if not through religion.
While I’ve watched her descend into increasingly fringe religious territory, she and I have managed to keep a dialogue open. She even invited me to a Zoom Bible study of hers. After no small amount of debate and being assured that the study would yield to a discussion period at the end, I decided to join.
The conversation wasn’t the most fruitful. Apart from getting one congregant to briefly acquiesce that, maybe a billion trillion years of hellfire might be a little gratuitous for simply doubting in Jesus, there wasn’t much seeing eye to eye. Following the mostly good faith, albeit 25 vs. 1 religious debate, one of the congregants reached out to me personally.
Having already spent a couple hours in a Zoom Bible study, I happily obliged. I opened the floor by asking his thoughts on an essay I’d written about religion. A day later, he replied.
… To start off I wanted to point out that not all religion is the same and have different beliefs. The thing about The Bible is that it’s the only (collection of books; data; evidence) we have today that explains this world and how things came about. I know you said you were atheist which means you don’t believe in God but you said you believe in some sort of Higher Power right??
One thing about sciences is that it’s more biblical than you would think. The Bible isn’t just some story book and book of rules that if you don’t follow you’re going to hell… it’s not like that. Science actually explains in more detail what The Bible mentions. Science (along with a bunch of other forms of research) actually prove The Bible to be true.
Before I continue am I making sense to you so far? Are the things I said about your views correct? Let me know so I won’t get carried away lol
It was at about this point I understood that there wouldn’t be a lot in the way of seeing eye-to-eye here either. But I was happy still to press forward.
I understand what you’re saying but I don’t agree with a lot of it. I’ve heard of studies done that back up some of the claims in The Bible, but to claim fully that the book is scientific is something most of the world’s scientists would disagree on. For example, it’s 98% of scientists in America who believe in the idea of evolution and that certainly isn’t an idea in The Bible. From when we first discovered that earth wasn’t the center of the universe, religion and science have been at odds far too many times for that claim to make much sense.
Would you agree that not every claim made in The Bible about how things came to be is supported by science? I agree that The Bible tried to explain everything, but it’s far from the most comprehensive or detailed accounting of how things have come to be.
I had hoped I might at least get him to acknowledge that not every claim in the book was scientific, but alas. He did not. But my pointing toward that evolution example sent us, perhaps not unpredictably, traveling down an interesting new tangent. The origin of species is one of the more cogent arguments to address with Christians.
It’s one of the issues on which I feel as though they struggle the very most to address the evidence at hand. Citing the fossil records of our ancestors that can be traced meticulously throughout the different geographic regions of the world yields interesting results. That we have a detailed understanding of the changes that took place in our evolution between chimpanzees and humans is an often impossible fact for them to reconcile. That we’re connected to all living things is one of the most beautiful truths that science has uncovered for us.
I point toward the bones of the Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis when I engage in these discussions. The discovery that they represent is such a colossal hole in the creationist argument that there’s simply no addressing the specifics of it from their perspective in any meaningful way. The cognitive dissonance around the subject can be staggering.
Interestingly, as I pressed on the subject he had no difficulty admitting that he believed in evolution. “… I don’t disbelieve evolution nor does anyone Christian. The part that I don’t believe is that we came from apes when it’s obvious we were created by God. Your view of change is different then. Watching a tadpole evolve into a frog is one thing, your perspective is an insect evolving into a mammal,” he explained.
When I asked him if he believed that the genetic change that can be observed within a pond over ten generations would be greater than within only one generation alone, though, he struggled to speak directly to the point.
“It depends on what we’re talking about,” he replied.
“If we’re speaking broadly of life on earth.”
“It’s gonna vary depending on the circumstances.”
“Natural selection applies to all living organisms.”
“Right that doesn’t mean change that takes place in 1 generation can’t be greater than 10 generations. Look at it like this; all it takes is 1 person and 1 generation to make a impact on the whole world.”
“That’s an unscientific statement. I see what you’re saying socially, but the genetics of it is a different story.”
A recurrent point in this argument of ours was that he would point toward DNA as proof that we didn’t evolve but vehemently struggled with the notion that the vast majority of genealogists accept that we evolved from primates.
“Genetically look at DNA. That doesn’t just cease to exist. If we really came from chimps bro we would still see it today. Look at how long chimps have existed alongside those homo sapiens you mentioned. You can’t place your faith in just science bro… it’s some things science can’t explain and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean science isn’t okay lol,” he explained.
At this, I sent him a video that concisely went over the ways our evolutionary origins can be traced through time and geography. It was hard for me to imagine how he could try refuting some of the specifics within the video. But when he attempted to, I was simply confounded.
After watching the video detailing our origins and the ways that our fossils can be traced throughout the world, he replied, “if you believe we transitioned from these things into humans then where are those fossils of the in-between stages (the transitional fossils)”
“… I’m not really understanding what you’re asking. That video is a direct answer to the question ‘where are the in-between stages?’ You asked previously what evidence there is that we transitioned from chimps. These are the transitional species between chimps and humans: Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis and about 10 others. What’s the confusion here?”
At this point, he diverted course completely.
“Okay how about this… that video was showing each stages from those monkeys right… are you telling me you’re more reliant on someone’s theory of us coming from apes rather than us being made in God’s image?”
Why I continued conversing from here, I’m not proud to admit. It definitely wasn’t my desire to convince him of anything; that ship had certainly sailed. Whether it was a foolish attachment to the conversation at hand or a childish desire to get in the last word, though, I’m not fully sure. But we continued traveling from disconnect to disconnect in a circuitous little game.
When I pointed toward the areas in which science disagreed with the biblical narrative, he would flatly state that “actually, science proves The Bible.” Though I repeatedly asked for proof that there’s a God who condemns non-christians to eternal hell pits, he was strikingly short on evidence. He was happy, though, to cite scripture as science in the same breath that he could dismiss the beliefs of 98% of scientists.
It turns out that we struggled even to agree on a definition of what science is.
“How can I scientifically put to the test today if Jesus was resurrected?” I asked him.
“By listening to Jesus’s words in The Bible and having an experience with Him.”
“That isn’t science.”
“Look at the documents. It is. Tell me what is science???
“‘the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.’” I pulled the definition from a quick Google search.
“So apply that to The Bible. It’s a study with observations and experimentations.”
“If I could apply that to The Bible then I could test right now today if Jesus had been resurrected. Because it isn’t science, though, I have no way of testing the claim.”
“You clearly have a misunderstanding of what science is,” he retorted with an enviable confidence.
“What scientific experiment can I perform that proves Jesus resurrected?”
“Following The Bible lol. Actually reading and applying the text.”
“If it were actual science, the claims could be empirically tested right here today in measurable ways. They can’t. It’s not science. I’m not saying there’s no merit in studying it, but it isn’t the same thing as performing scientific experiments with scientific tools and recording the results.”
“It was already it’s been tested for years and keep having the same results.”
“Then how can I test it again today?”
“‘Following The Bible lol. Actually reading and applying the text,’” he quoted himself.
I understand the ways in which faith can transform our lives; I’ve experienced it before myself. It’s important, though, to be able to distinguish between what can be scientifically measured and what can not.
“That’s not the same thing as performing scientific studies with scientific measures and recording the results,” I replied.
“It is bruh. Stop being lazy. If you really want the truth you’ll whole heartedly dive into it.”
If there had been a fragment of hope that we might in some way see eye to eye on some issue of philosophical importance, it had gone out the window and left town by this point. I decided to end the conversation. When we can’t agree on an objective reality, we lose the platform through which we can communicate with anyone. And where faith is involved, objective reality is distorted.
Establishing a rapport on existential questions can be a challenge, but it’s not quite impossible. In a couple of instances, I even played a small role in having several friends walk away from cultish thinking. Faith can be found and faith can be lost. What’s gained in its absence, though, are truths whose beauties have shaped my life.
Walking free from faith-based thinking, we see an intricate system of connection between all the creatures that have ever walked this earth. Free of organized religion, we see the ways in which our planet spins through a churning solar system in a soaring galaxy in a universe that seems to grow larger by the second. We can see more suns and planets than the mind can fathom. We see black holes and anti-matter and quantum entanglement and particles that seem to disobey the laws of time itself.
So often religion is considered as a source of security in the face of uncertainty, but it’s also a forfeit of dazzling realities. What science still has to tell us about some of life’s greatest questions is a mystery. That we’ll ever get there at all isn’t even guaranteed. But for the species building rockets and computers and artificial intelligence, even the deepest of mysteries seem suddenly to fall within reach.
Whether there’s a god or gods or afterlife remains uncertain, but what’s growing clearer by the day is that each of us being here was no certainty. Regardless of whether or not there’s a creator we can still be thankful for what is. To be without religion isn’t to be without awe and to be without God isn’t to live without cosmic beauty.