By Poch Suzara
Ambrose Bierce defined religion as “The Daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable.” Religion attempts to explain the unknown and the unknowable in terms of the more unknown, thus wallowing in the pit of an informal fallacy of logic which logicians call the fallacy of the unknown by means of the more unknown. In this connection, the theologians, at most times, never know exactly what they are talking about.
The findings of religion are based not on reason, but on faith. Can reason and faith compliment each other? How? Faith has no power to explain reason; yet, reason has the power to explain faith. What faith is to deadly paralysis, reason is to lively analysis. In pursuit of knowledge, there is no need for faith; the power of reason is more than enough.
Science is reliable. It explains the unknown in terms of the known and the knowable. When Benjamin Franklin explained lightning in terms of electricity, the faithful believers rejected his findings insisting that lightning is God’s punishment of sin. It’s sad, however, to imagine the creator of the universe enjoying the sight of his beloved creatures being punished and writhing in pain for offenses against his supernatural creative power.
When the scientific method led to the invention of the lightning rod, the faithful believers denounced it as blasphemy as this device, they intone, obstructed the will of God. Obviously, the faithful believers can never increase the sum of human knowledge. Only real science can do that and science could never have been born if unbelievers did not rise to challenge the traditional wisdom. There is no such as the absolute and unchanging truth in science even though the main business of science is finding the truth. Meantime, the passion to doubt is vital in the scientific process. Genuine scientists see to it that the frontiers of knowledge are always open; never closed. Indeed, scientists see to it that the mind moves not on hinges, but on wheels.
Science readily allows for skepticism when claims are unsupported. It combines an open mind with critical thinking. Science therefore is a self-correcting enterprise. It relies on evidence. It makes no claim for absolute or certain knowledge. In fact, the findings in science are always subject to emendation: questions are far more vital than answers. There is nothing definite as everything in science is tentative. Moreover, science is never afraid to admit that it only understands partially what constitutes total reality. At any rate, in the business of exploring, discovering, and knowing, science has left religion way behind, still stuck in its ancient beliefs and sacred mysteries.
Indeed, things that are said to be conclusive and final are to be found only in religion. Religion is based upon the existence of the unknown. On the other hand, science is based on the existence of the known and the knowable. Properly employed, science is in the business of bringing more light into our world of darkness. By rescuing the human race from abject fear and shameful ignorance, science will increase not only the power of human intelligence, but also the power of world sanity.
Science is organized knowledge derived from reason, observation, and experimentation. Such is its power. Science has left religion in the backwaters of ignorance and superstition. The universe as revealed by science shows man as an infinitesimal speck in space and time. Our planet earth is one of the other worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy, which in turn is only one of other billions of galaxies. To discover that our ancestors were also the ancestors of apes connects us to the rest of life on this earth that gives insight on the origins of human nature. In the meantime, theology is but ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system.
Religion cannot tolerate skepticism. Critical thinking is anathema to religion. Religion uses vague terms and makes absolute pronouncements. It relies on prayers, faith, and beliefs. Since it does not deal with facts, it has, thus far, produced only ornamental, not useful knowledge. To religion, answers, no matter how obsolete, are far more sacred than the formulation of better kinds of questions. Nevertheless, all religion is founded upon the happiness which men believe they have a right to expect from Divinity, who is supposed to tell them: “Love, worship, adore, and obey me, and I will render you happy.” In the meantime, we have yet to realize that the prayers we continually offer to high heavens, prove that we are not at all satisfied with God’s administration of this earth?
The worst, the most destructive, and the most murderous religions that God, in his inscrutable wisdom, has inflicted upon the human race, have been Christianity and Islam. Of course the US government loves these religions. It gives them a profitable excuse to go to war – one against the other. After all, America is not only the land of the free and the home of the brave. It is also a place where weapons of mass destruction are produced, driving more nations to secure such weapons to defend themselves against the destructive foreign policy of the US government against peace on earth and goodwill to all men. Indeed, according to the great American paradoxical theory, nations can only keep themselves alive by preparing to kill each other.
Religion, which is what theology is all about, is the study of nothing. There is nothing to observe, study, or experiment in theology. No one has seen angels in heaven or devils in hell or other heraldic inhabitants in places that do not exist. Moreover, theology is a form of cowardice towards the unknown. Science is wanting to know. It is the opposite of religion, which is not wanting to know. It is only science that can prevent us from fooling ourselves. What we think we know, but do not know, harms us more than what we utterly refuse to know. Consider the task of theology: it is to trouble the brain and when our brain is troubled, we believe everything and examine nothing. Fortunately, however, faith and dogma cannot forever resist the powerful influence of light and knowledge and wisdom.
Now we are told that “atheism” is just another religion too. But this is another hilarious nonsense. The word “Atheism” simply means “free from theism.” The word “agnostic” simply means free from gnosticism, or knowledge. Religion, on the other hand, comes from the Latin, religare, which means “to tie back, to fasten or to bind.” Indeed, in most religions, there is this super-thing existing outside of nature, that it proves itself by miracles, an event or occurrence in defiance of natural laws. That this super-thing has earthly agents to communicate its wishes to people. That it usually rewards those who believe and punishes those who do not believe. If you were a 9-year old, you would readily submit to these moronic threats by clinging to faith by throwing reason out the window. In the meantime, men are unhappy only because they are ignorant; they are ignorant only because everything conspires to prevent them from being enlightened, and they are wicked only because their power of reason has been stunted, if not distorted.
Atheism has none of these. There is nothing of religion associated with Atheism. We have no dogma, no rituals, no gods, no priests, no worship, no prayers, no holy places. In brief, atheism, unlike religion, has no belief system. Moreover, we atheist do not go to war to kill unbelievers of atheism. Only the faithful believers go to war to kill each other in God’s name or for His glory.
Of course, in our world today, we have science that pretend to be science when in fact it is nothing but a religion masquerading as science. One of the most successful is the Hindu doctrine of Transcendental Meditation ( TM ). Its founder and spiritual leader, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, can be seen on a large photo seated in the yogi position, his white hair here and there peppered with black, surrounded by garlands and floral offerings. This worldwide religious organization has a net worth in the billions of dollars. For a fee they promise through meditation to be able to walk you through walls, to make you invisible, to enable you to levitate or even to fly in the sky. Not one smattering of extraordinary evidence, however, has been offered for any such extraordinary claims. TM sells folk medicine, runs commercial enterprises, medical clinics, universities, and has even entered politics. TM charges followers a dear price to pay: the mindless surrender of the self via the mutilation of the intellect. In its oddly charismatic leader, its promise of happy family and community, and the offers of magical powers in exchange for money and fervent belief, it is typical of many of the psuedo-sciences marketed for the mediocre and the superstitious morons, if not for the dumbstruck or the bamboozled, or even for those living empty, if not broken lives.
Any dictionary or encyclopedia will tell you that religion is a system of attitudes, practices, rites, ceremonies and beliefs by means of which individuals or a community situate themselves in a make believe mutual relationship to a god or to a supernatural world, and from which the religious person conjures a set of values by which to judge or to explain events in the natural world.
Are the teachings of religion good? Look at the teachings of the holy bible: In Micah, we are enjoined to do justly and love mercy; in Exodus, we are forbidden to commit murder; in Leviticus, we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves. Yet think of the oceans of blood spilled in God’s name enough to keep the United States Navy afloat.
To an atheist, however, the religious idea of using this life as a preparation for dying is pure hokum. Life is for living; not the preparation for dying. Perhaps, it is true that everybody wants to go to heaven; but it is also true that nobody wants to die to get there.
As science is changing the world, religion is getting more and more nervous these days. It is being exposed for its expertise at contributing nothing to human development. Pushed to a corner, religion is now insisting that science and religion can reconcile and must co-exist. Of course science can reconcile with religion. But before that happens, religion must first reconcile and live in peace and harmony with other religions.
The progress of science during the past century is quite unlike any intellectual development by humans accomplished with the power of reason. Yet, there are fields in science, such as quantum mechanics, (describes how the world behaves at the subatomic level) that can only be understood by the specialist. The rest of us are increasingly uninformed of, yet influenced by, - the power of science and technology. But if the teachers in our schools and the professors in our colleges attended to the cultivation of the scientific way of thinking, then ours will not only be a healthy society, not only a sane democracy, but also a constructive economy.
POCH SUZARA is the chairman of the HIGH-SCHOOL DROPOUT ASSOCIATION OF THE PHILIPPINES.
Tags: atheism, Adamson+University, Adamsonian, religion, Ambrose+Bierce
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