Printing presses, industrialized education, and the industrial revolution.
Giving people en mass the time study and educate themselves.
Religion exists for a number of reasons, but the primary purpose it serves an individual is as a foundation for their overall worldview.
“Faith” as many call it, serves to answer questions we don’t have answers to.
Where did we come from? Why are we here? What happens after we die?
Religion gives us comforting answers to these questions, and as these questions are ultimately unanswerable, can do so in perpetuity.
Religion has also tried to answer questions that we didn’t yet have answers for.
What are the sun, moon, and stars? Why are there tides? Why does it rain?
God was long accepted as the source of these things, and prayer was thought to be the best way have any influence.
But today we have answered basically all the major questions. We have a working model of the entire solar system, down to the weather on other planets. We figured out how to turn rocks into computers. All that’s left is the unanswerable.
As for where we come from, we’ve filled in a lot of gaps. Evolution is now the accepted answer for where Humans came from, now the question is where life itself came from, and if there’s life outside of Earth (and how much).
Philosophy has given us plenty of options for what our purpose is. There are plenty of ways to wrap your mind around your own identity without turning to the supernatural.
And our study of anatomy and neurology suggests that our conscious self ceases to exist after death, the only thing standing in the way of that belief is the very human tendency to be in denial of our own mortality.
You need to define God first.
We should definitely start with this.
If it’s biblical sky daddy that influences our everyday lives, pretty much everything.
If it’s just more or less self-conscious entity behind the curtain of reality that sparked the universe, it’s pretty much unprovable and so undisprovable.
Germ Theory
Diseases used to be associated with paranormal powers or the wrath of gods in most cultures. The discovery of microorganisms and advancement of medicine may be our civilization’s greatest achievement.
The scientific method itself considers any as yet unsubstantiated theory as hypothesis. Applying this to the idea of God would leave one agnostic on the issue.
A couple of prominent examples of religious dogmas disproved by scientific discoveries are the Copernican Revolution and evolution by means of natural selection.
Evolutionary biology was the main one
Which is a bit silly to me, in that any religious person could simply explain evolution away as the mechanism by which a god or gods created humanity (to iterate on form until creating their supposed “perfect image”).
God being a human who was also his own father is fine, but the suggestion that evolution could be part of god’s plan is where we draw the line?
Could be, but evolution makes God redundant, and then it is the whole simplest explanation thing that kicks in, right?
No… not necessarily. Why can’t God command the creation of something and then allow the natural process to create said thing? Evolution doesn’t disprove the existence of God.
The “god” part becomes an unnecessarily complex explanation. I prefer simpler explanations when they fit the data just as well as the complex ones. It also reduces te risk when trying to broaden out to other lines of enquiry.
As johsny said It makes the god explanation redundant for the large topic of species of life. There’s no need to waste time or energy “disproving” god. The whole concept of god is simply useless to understanding - and so is a waste of time or mental energy.
But the so called explanations referncing god are typically such bullshit anyway nothing testable, no evidence, just “god did some shit”, “isn’t god cool/powerful”. So they never were actually useful to scientific reasoning. However much they may pretend otherwise religions are so much more aligned with laws and social structures and norms of behaviour than they are about advancing science.
At some point you’re advocating for Deism. Which is fine enough, but doesn’t really provide any satisfactory answers. You need to define exactly what you mean by “God” before any further useful conversation can be had.
The scientific process, including evolution, has dispelled the myths found in any religious textbook ever written, including their particular definitions of “God”. I’d suggest you just drop the word and the associated baggage, and start from scratch. Come up with a new word, and define properties for it that make a coherent argument.
Well for one, I would recommend you drop the idea of what is God from the Christian perspective, they’re clueless. That much is true. Islam is far superior in terms of intellect and sophistication, after all the Quran is the literal Word of God. Unlike the Bible, authored by pagan and anti-Christ men who had a liking to Egyptian mythologies.
(Quran 21:30) Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the Earth were of one connected entity, then We separated them and We made every living thing out of water? Will they not then believe?
(Quran 24:45) And Allah has created from water every living creature. Some of them crawl on their bellies, some walk on two legs, and some walk on four. Allah creates whatever He wills. Surely Allah is Most Capable of everything.
(Quran 64:3) He designed you then made your design better.
(Quran 40:64) He formed you then made your forms better.
(Quran 71:17) And Allah has caused you to grow from the earth a [progressive] growth.
(Quran 76:28) We created them and strengthened their forms.
(Quran 82:6-9) O mankind, what has deceived you concerning your Lord, the Generous, Who created you, then proportioned you, and then balanced you; in whatever form He willed has He assembled you.
Going to be blunt, if you read these verses (and there’s more verses) and don’t believe that this aligns with a creation of something, which in turn evolves (strengthens in its form) then it was meant to be. There’s nothing under the sun I could tell you that will pique your interest.
God has Willed it. This is the way.
He designed you then made your design better. He formed you then made your forms better. We created them and strengthened their forms.
That’s not how any of this works. None of these require the process of biological evolution, they’re clearly written as the islamic equivalent of intelligent design. Those describe some wizard creating something and then working to make it better, which is the opposite of how biological evolution works. Relying on “evolves” having several different meanings (
evolves (strengthens in its form)) is not an argument that is made in good faith. The process of biological evolution is not described in any religious literature, including yours.And Allah has created from water every living creature
I assume you bolded this because it’s important somehow. It’s not, though. It’s a vague allegory that has no predictive power, is not science, and has nothing to do with the process of biological evolution.
Religions don’t teach science. However, in Islam, we are obligated to learn science amongst other subjects. The verses you and I quoted do NOT conflict with evolution.
Many scientists believe that life on Earth originated in the ocean, and that all life was aquatic for the first 90% of Earth’s history. Some scientists think that life may have begun near deep sea hydrothermal vents, which are chimney-like vents that form when seawater mixes with magma on the ocean floor, creating superheated plumes. The chemicals and energy from these vents could have fueled chemical reactions that led to the evolution of life. For example, a 2017 study found tube-like fossils in rocks that are at least 3.77 billion years old that resemble microorganisms that live near hydrothermal vents today.
Furthermore, using the DNA sequences of modern organisms, biologists have tentatively traced the most recent common ancestor of all life to an aquatic microorganism that lived in extremely high temperatures — a likely candidate for a hydrothermal vent inhabitant!
But like I said before, there’s nothing under the sun that I can tell you that will sway you.
Occam’s razor doesn’t mean that the simplest explanation is always true, but rather that it’s usually the most likely to be true.
Using simplicity as a measure of how likely something is to be true always felt a little anthropocentric. How do we determine that something is simple if not via the systems and abstractions that are easy for human minds to comprehend?
any religious person could simply explain evolution away as the mechanism by which a god or gods created humanity
Many did, and this position is called Deism. In most versions, god(s) started the universe with initial conditions that would lead to the formation of intelligent life, and then withdrew.
If you squint real hard, the first creation myth in Genisis is pretty close to evolution.
They had to reject it because any religion with a creation myth specifically says how the god created people. To accept an alternative story would reject the notion of the book as truth.
The religious are not looking for answers, they already have all the answers by definition of their holy book or whatever. They’re looking for confirmation bias and reject anything that goes against that.
Nope. In Islam, God commands His servants to seek knowledge in all things. Muslims are obligated to seek knowledge because it will only continue to prove the existence of God.
If you’re talking specifically about the Abrahamic God, sure. But if it’s about the existence of any higher being, then there’s no contradiction here.
You even used the incredibly nebulous term “higher beings”. Define it.
Anything that you would call a “god”.
If I give an ostensive definition, I would say it includes the beings like the Abrahamic god, or Olympian gods, and exclude humans, animals, bacteria, the planet we live on, and objects we handle in our day to day lives. I’ll tentatively draw the line at any being that is not bound to the laws of physics as we understand them today.
Why exclude humans, animals and bacteria? How about Sun? Jesus Christ? God-King Jayavarman II? A cat? Very small spirit of tiny stream? A holy stone (stone is not a human, nor animal or bacteria, a lot of stones were worshipped in various forms and meanings in history)? A tree chewed by pilgrims? Invisible Hand of the Market?
Incredibly arbitrary definition again constructed to wriggle your way from any concrete statement.
If we had the technological power, would humans run simulations of universes with Planck length precision? Obviously yes. So extrapolating from our one and only example of intelligent life (us), it seems like intelligent life enjoys stimulating universes. If our reality were the result of that kind of project, and the engineers lived outside the laws of physics, I would call them higher beings. And they could be as hands-off or as interventionist as they pleased.
I don’t think OP is asking about the existence of humans, or animals, or any other physical entity. If they were, you can trivially say that you exist, and therefore god exists. That’s unless you want to go into ontology and question what it means to “exist”, which I’m pretty sure also isn’t what OP intended.
The most reliable way to lose faith isn’t through science, it’s reading their holy text.
In general, nothing about science ever shakes a theist’s faith, and I doubt it ever will. Reason being: the moment science breaks new ground, religion retreats further back into the unknown. As long as there is an unknown, theists will have something to take shelter from.
I don’t think it’s taking shelter as much as trying to find an answer to something that has no answer.
For example Eistein I don’t think was trying to take shelter from reality. He wanted to look at reality as deeply as possible and he managed to peek through and see more than almost anyone ever had before.
But he still believed in a God. This is one of those reasons I always call myself an agnostic instead of atheist.
In a practical sense, I’m an atheist. I don’t think Jesus turned water into wine or the Buddha achieved enlightenment and entered a higher plane of existence or whatever.
But I acknowledge there might be supernatural or supranatural items / phenomenon/ or even beings that we can’t ever fully understand.
Einstein believed in “Spinoza’s god”, which is essentially just nature and the laws that govern the universe. It’s not the same as believing in an anthropomorphic God and putting faith in scripture.
This is one of those reasons I always call myself an agnostic instead of atheist.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive terms. “Agnostic” answers whether you know a god exists, and “atheist” answers whether you believe a god exists.
I don’t know of any gods, and I don’t believe any exist, so I’m an agnostic atheist.
Sanitation.
It wasn’t any particular scientific discovery that weakened religion. It was the popularity of science fiction that did it. As Arthur C. Clarke put it, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” People can now imagine how miracles are done without invoking anything supernatural. We might not have the tech to do it yet, but we have a pretty good idea of potential methods. That has placed a lot of “creator god” religions under pressure. Create life? Tech will eventually do it. Create a world? Sure, tech again. Given enough tech, a solar system can be spawned. Water into wine? We’re halfway there with Kool-Aid. We already have vimanas (those ancient Hindu flying vehicles). We call them airplanes or helicopters. We can destroy a whole city with a single weapon. So why should we worship a supreme being who supposedly did those things?
Assuming we can conquer poverty, religions that survive will be centered around improving the human condition. Worshipping dieties will eventually fall by the wayside. It will still be a long process. You can’t dispel faith with reason and facts. And people in poverty tend to embrace religion because it gives them comfort and hope that things will be better in the afterlife.
Translative spoken word by the time a second hand account of the word of god becomes the word of the person speaking. Weird god never came back once we had verbatim recording techniques to address these inaccuracies.
But he works in mysterious ways
Molecular genetics.
Heliocentric model.
Cosmic distance and time. Light speed as a limit.
The geological age of the Earth.
Dinosaurs.
Evolutionary theory.
Continental drift.
The periodic table of the elements.
Quantum theory, including wave-particle duality.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Black holes.
It’s interesting, some theists would just say “that’s how God built the universe” and be satisfied with that.
The halfway sensible ones would. But the ones that thing religious texts are magic books would burn the former as heretics if they were allowed to do so.
Well sure. There are religious people who want to know how the world works. After all, if there is a creator/God then one of the ways that being communicated with us for certain is the universe we live in.
Thats me over 15 years ago. Now I’m staunch atheist.
You should read the Quran. Or not.
What does the Quran say about black holes?
Never read the Quran, but had a coworker who claimed the quran explains a ton of science, including recent science. She also believed in creationism and therefore also thought evolution was bs, so I didn’t put much basis into her words.
What weakened religion is a long process going from the middle age to the modern world. It starts with the pope wars. It peaks with the religion wars in the XVIIth century. By this point the religious power was a political power like any other, but merely with a cultural hold on European populations. Which was the nail in the coffin.
During this period, the Church radicalised itself as a defense mode. Which solidified the laïcal mindset of the Lumières. Basically the church entered a cultural war against science because it feared it would lose controle.
Then the XIXth century happened. Monarchies got destroyed. And the Catholic Church got humiliated and destroyed as a political power. Socialism and communism appeared, and to state how progressive they were, they put the church in the same reactionary bag as the royalists.
In the middle of this are the liberals who don’t care much about anything but profits. Si when democracy is on the rise, they are democrats. When royalty comes back, they praise the king. At least as long as they let them make good profits. And that’s what the church doesn’t let them do. Morale goes in the way of profit. It forbid slavery and exploitation. It’s against science. It promotes charity. That sucks balls for the liberals. But order is good, so why not being a believer but without the problems?
It’s not science that made religion recess. It’s bad political decisions and alliances. Many renowned scientists were believers. Many still are. But somehow the religions are rejecting science because it doesn’t go into litteraly what their old fantasy book wrote. It’s a shame because religions could easily make a humanist evolution if they had the political will to do it.
You do realize you keep using the term, “religion” when you mean to use the term, “Christianity”… Not all religions are like Christianity. smh.
The title mention god with a capital G, which means it’s the religions of the Bible, which means European history of things. Context in small details.
Everything Westerners think they know about religion, they just refer to the ridiculous bs that we know as Christianity and the Holy Bible. “Because this religion is fallible, so too must all the other religions be.”
Christianity is to, “The Flintstones” as Islam is to Harvard University. Not even on the same plane.
Science and religion are often compatible, I know of some Hindu thinkers (for example) who say scientific knowledge is to be taken as truth and religious truth should not contradict it - just that this scientific knowledge cannot explain the whole mysteries of the cosmos. You might be aware of “the god of the gaps” and arguments like that, or that God somehow created the universe using the laws of physics as we understand them. Historically, scientific thought and religious thought were often united and people pursued science and philosophy due to attempting to understand God (like many Islamic scholars in the 7th century or like Renee Descartes who ultimately sought to prove the existence of God by pure reasoning). Science as a complete system of belief without some religious aspect is actually a fairly recent phenomenon that likely had very little to do with any particular scientific discovery.
Indeed, science can do very little to explain why things happen. It’s great at explaining how - e.g. science is great at explaining how fire burns or how a calculator can display an answer but it can be iffy on why. Now, “why” fire burns is probably more of a malformed question like what’s north of the north pole but we’re human, we like to ask why and seek purpose. Meaning makers.
The decline of religiosity wasn’t really driven by science showing biblical stories weren’t real, it’s a process driven by material reality and class relations. Although many people considered themselves Christian or religious in the west, they were very Deist and didn’t think God had much influence with the world apart from answering paradoxes like what was the primum movens etc.
Going further back, religion wasn’t a choice or something to reason to - it was just your life and your community. In medieval Europe, you didn’t really reason your way into a system of beliefs they all tied together into an economic system called the feudal mode of production. You just were a Christian and so was everyone you knew. Maybe some monks debated some esoteric aspects of theology but most people just lived their lives. This lasted for a while through to the Enlightenment and the emergence of capitalism in the 17th century. Except for some malcontents and rebels, people still didn’t reason towards being Christian, say. It was just your life - more like a hangover from that older mode of production and social cohesion than something necessary to maintaining capitalism.
Fast forward to the actual decline of religiosity and rise of spiritual none-of-the-aboves and nothing-in-particular. This was a process started in the mid 20th century (not really in WW1 which was conceived often as a holy or religious war by the soldiers and officer class including miracles and appearances of angels and so on). In reaction to the rise of consumerism and individualism - now religion became a choice or affectation! This is where we start to see the irreligious begin their massive growth but especially by the beginning of the 00s. It’s tempting to say Quantum Mechanics, GR, a scientific basis for cosmological origins like the big bang are responsible for the loss of religion - but in my view, these just coincided due to a third cause (that of economic changes and the settling in of mature capitalism).
religion is the hubris that is the expectation of an answer to ‘why’
I’m curious as to how people toughed it out despite most christian religious institutions being so uniformly corrupt and plain irritating. Shit, the crowd FSTDT dunks on, american politicians, and internet theology were all it took for me to get so deeply disillusioned I wanted to just cut strike everything from my mind, regardless of who’s right or wrong. Merely not having other options to a point where leaving is unthinkable? Fear of reprisal from legal and cultural consequences?
Then again, I suppose at that point they would’ve just shifted to a different, less institution-focused denomination instead of just saying “fuck the whole thing” like I did. It wasn’t a matter of the facts, it was a matter of me being fucking sick of them.
There aren’t any. Some things will disprove specific religious ideas, but that’s about it.
