In my earlier post, I talked about my journey to figure what world view I could believe. I detailed my criteria in my previous post: "My Journey: With or Without God."
From the feedback I got, there was no problem with my criteria, but something I mentioned much earlier on: the incompatibility of the Science worldview and the Religious worldview.
Today, many more liberal or progressive believers of faith try to bend the two views together, arguing that they compliment one another (while most others take either or as the only true story). The story of the divine beings (the thousands of them) are our first effort to explain the world around us (and the universe). For this, these divine stories should be given due credit and I would never take that away from them because they take on human curiosity and seek to explain what we see around us.
The reason why I say they are incompatible is because of the trend that has been going on since the beginning of man. As the earliest world view, belief in the divine has been used to explain everything:
- Cavemen used it to explain nature by talking about different natural Gods.
- This was also reflected in Roman and Greek Gods for explaining everything from the season changes to lighting.
- The divine Gods (from the Greeks to today's religion) explained why the Sun rose every day.
- Stories of the Gods explained love, the flaws of man, different kinds of hell (Hades, Hell, or Jhannam)
- Most importantly, they detailed the creation of our universe
- God created the universe in 6 days, rested the 7th.
- Egyptian God ejaculated and his sperm created the earth and all humans (no joke).
- They also spent no time explaining things like how humans came about
- Made of clay, breath of life
- A God is ripped to shreds and his lifeless body parts turn into man.
Even now, we still haven't touched on the thousands of differing beliefs about how the world came about, as well as humanity. There is, however, one consistency: Religion's retreat over time.
When people explained lightning as the anger of Zeus, scientists struck that down and explained that they were naturally occurring. When people explained the mountain's and God's direct hand, science explained that they were a result of plate tectonics. When worried about crops and praying to different Gods, scientists explained different weather cycles and the seasons.
This gradual retreat by religion hasn't stopped either, even though believers constantly bend their beliefs to get around science. Where once, the Gods raised the mountains, now, the Gods just set in motion the process for raising mountains. Where once, God made man of clay, now God set the "spark" that led to evolution. Where once the earth was the center of the universe since man was God's "greatest" creation, now, humans are one of the most irrelevant pieces in our universe. The end of our species wouldn't even be noticed by any part of the universe.
The divine stories were written to be understood literally, however, we can always say that that is just because of the influence of man, and that the god (whichever one) knew we would discover the true reality of our world (like a child story, where the child eventually learns the truth). This again, is another example of a retreat. Where once these stories were literal, now they are metaphorical.
The idea of intelligent design is also a biased one. Most intelligent design believers believe in one God ruling the universe. What kind of intelligent design will Hindu's, Daoists, and Buddhists, who belief in (literally) thousands of gods hold? What makes the beliefs of the monotheistic religions any more intelligent in design than the polytheists or pagans?
If the beliefs were so compatible, then religious beliefs wouldn't constantly be bending to new science discoveries (and it doesn't in many areas where science is dismissed). To many, the earthquake in Japan is not the result of a converging (or reverse) dip/slip at the tectonic plate boundary at Japan's sub-duction zone deep underground (which caused the tsunami), it is God's punishment of a nation with the highest concentration of atheists.
I'll be the first to admit that humans don't know everything, and science leaves more answers than questions. "Science" back in the day, had very little rules and very little oversight on reliability. In fact, early on, observations of the universe were made to try proving the beliefs of one set of religion over another.
Today's standards are much different and much higher which is why so much "science" thousands of years ago is dismissed today. As time goes on, we can imagine that our standards will continue to increase and although science may not be able to explain such complex processes like love, anger, sexual attraction, and most other things in our minds, this is not a reason to dismiss it because there is always the prospect of discovery.
This is why the two views are incompatible and why I believe you can't have both. I think that those who think they are compatible don't understand the extent of what belief each entails (the divine and science belief).
Please feel free to comment with your thoughts!
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