Faith School

There was a time when – like the adherents of mohammed – most people, even the intelligent ones, believed in a god. How else to explain the rising of the sun and the bounty of the earth? But there is something in the human psyche that demands their god be so insecure in his omnipotence that he insists on an exclusivity clause – thou shalt have no other god before me – and brings down a righteous smiting on all who demur. Naturally, being aloof sort of characters and somewhat reclusive, all gods seem to need the hand of man to do their smiting, but as long as one puts such small details out of mind, sustaining belief isn’t so hard for the not so bright.

But then, as society evolved and we became better at survival without strife, overcoming the vagaries of nature and freeing some from grubbing for subsistence, our big, busy brains began fizzing with enquiring thoughts and doubt. Science showed us that in the absence of proof the existence of anything is not a matter of fact but a matter of faith and in time the continued absence of proof has worn away at faith; in the developed world the bishops no longer have the power to control by edict and divine threat.

But Voltaire said “If god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.” And he had a point. What is filling the void left by the church? Science may have done for god in Europe, but science if anything is a harder master to follow than god. Science demands reason and reason demands education. It seems we are demonstrating that you can’t have an easy freedom from religion without the intellect to exist in the world beyond it. In the twentieth century it looked as if secularism was getting somewhere as education freed the masses from unthinking faith (apart from the USA, but that is a work in progress).

So what went wrong? By now we should be a free society of intelligent people, grateful for our liberty and running our lives at a profit, not by a prophet. We should be settling our disputes by reason and coming to consensus, not fracturing into ever smaller, selfish, special interest groups. And we should be absolutely resisting the encroachment of medievalism in the form of men in dresses and women in sacks. And yet the latest OECD report has British teenagers among the thickest in the world; barely able to tie their shoelaces by some accounts

Six billion years of evolution?

Maybe Voltaire was right; in the absence of intellect gods will have to do, but do we really want the old gods back, with all that smiting and human sacrifice? No, we need to invent a new god and a proper one at that – reality TV won’t do - and money has had variable results. No, we need a proper, inclusive, omnipotent, unprovable deity again and a congregation without the wit to challenge ‘him’. The OECD report shows the way; if we can’t make everybody clever, let’s make everybody stupid again – so that they can accept the lord and be saved.

Joybringer

They say you should never bring up politics, science and religion at the dinner table. So I spent some of the weekend poking the cowpat of faith with the shitty stick of inquiry to see how many flies I could enrage. I ended up watching and retweeting a few videos of such luminaries as Richard Dawkins and Mehdi Hassan, Christopher Hitchens and various ludicrous ‘men of god’ and I was struck by how often the faith communities love to fire off total non sequiturs by insisting that science is itself a form of faith and lacks definitive proof. Dear old Dickie Dawkins gets quite impatient at the suggestion, not without reason.

Religion says “Believe me, for I am the word of the creator of all things!” Science replies “Prove it!” to which religion falls back on the schoolyard response, “No, YOU prove it.” Now the discussion can only proceed along a well-defined path... To the scientist, if god is the omnipotent creator of all things, surely proof that he exists should be pretty easy to rustle up. After all, how much effort would it really take to produce a minor miracle, say an actual answer to a prayer? But, as Jimmy Carr said, “I prayed to god for a bicycle, but then I realised he doesn’t work like that. So I stole one and prayed for forgiveness instead.”

The flood! they cry! What proof? say the scientists. Besides, what about climate change? (Admittedly, some areas of climate change theory are articles of faith themselves.)

God, in his wrath, sent forth plagues and pestilence! What? Your heavenly father, all-knowing, all-wise? Couldn’t he just have smited and be done? And when was the last time he did any judicial smiting anyway?

But he gave his son to be crucified! Oh yes, about that; wouldn’t it would have been way more impressive if he’d just rescued him? You’re saying the best way to prove his existence and rid the world of evil was to have the lamb of god barbecued? We don’t see a lot of saviouring about these days.

But, but, but. ..

Science revels in inquiry which modifies, or disproves theories, sometimes those which have stood for centuries but now with keener minds and greater technology no longer hold to detailed scrutiny. Religion says, hold on, we read the book again after you said all those hurtful things and we now see that he didn’t literally come back from the dead; that was just a metaphor. Science says, don’t bring me your metaphors, bring me evidence, to which religion says... let’s have a gander at that book again and see what we can find between the lines.

The smitin' days are done!

In the meantime the killing goes on and the happy brotherhood of man carries on daily disproving the existence of that to which he looks to for guidance. It’s little wonder the world is fucked up. The burden of proof still lies with the faithful no matter how many deflective arguments they dream up; re-interpreting a text, itself the product of many men and many revisions, is not proof. Ah, but religion brings hope, they say. Except that it is science which shapes the world. It moves on and evolves and builds greater understanding and genuinely does offer hope that as it solves life’s mysteries, one-by-one it is also conquering all of the ancient biblical terrors.

Science says you don't need a god to be good. It says: we don't have all the answers but we will keep on looking and report back as we find them. It says: little by little we are making your lives easier, longer and more healthy. What contribution does religion make? It says: god moves in mysterious ways.