A false choice
The evidence is everything.
We have been presented with a false choice. A choice between a religious or a secular society. A choice between science or religion. A choice between the God of our faith, and understandings of observation.
We live in a world without evidence of God. Yet every culture since the dawn of time have believed in the existence of more than their senses can show them. Every culture has ideas about God, and life after death. It is as if, on a very deep level we know that there is more, that we are more.
We are asked to draw “lines in the sand” that determine what is of God, and what is not. What is science, and what is religion. Where is God present, and where is God absent.
We are asked to make these conclusions based on the cultural stories and ideas of others. We are presented with the option: believe in the cultural story of God based on understandings that predate even the most basic discoveries of the cosmology of the Universe, or, believe in the conclusions of science and reason.
Religion is fighting a losing culture war with science and reason. Even those who profess to believe in the specific dogma of a specific faith, to the exclusion of science, still depend on it. They drive cars powered by internal combustion engines, they listen to radio, and watch high-definition television. They no longer believe that the earth is flat, or that we are the center of the cosmos, but still cling to rigid ideas about God that were conceived when we believed that the Universe revolved us.
The choice between science and religion is not a choice at all. They are both sides of the same coin. They are both attempts to understand the Universe we live in. Science has supplanted religion as the dominant thought paradigm in our society because it is willing to adapt it’s understandings to accommodate new evidence.
Religion pretends that it has the unchanging “word of God”, ignoring that the tenants of every major religion have changed, fractured, and mutated over the brief period of a few thousand years. They ask us to believe in literal translations of metaphor, written by unknown sources, that contradict the very basis of all of our current technological and scientific understandings. They ask that we do this on the basis of a God they claim only they understand. Yet, by ignoring the evidence in God’s creation they limit their understanding of God. You cannot truly understand God by ignoring what is all around you.
Our understanding of God needs to evolve with our understanding of his/her creation. If your understanding of God excludes anyone, or anything, you have an incomplete understanding.
The idea of a schism between science and religion is an artifice created by those interested in preserving their particular power structure. The early Catholic church created this war by persecuting early astronomers who observed a different model of our solar system than they had authorized. They lost that battle, and have lost every battle since.
Some of the most brilliant men ever to walk the face of the earth were deeply religious. Newton gave us an understanding of gravity, the laws of motion, calculus, and probed deeper into the laws of the Universe than any man before. His discoveries were fundamental to our current understandings. He didn’t perceive a contradiction with his beliefs in the power of science, and the power of God. He saw them as complementary.
Religion has driven people away from God by insisting that if you believe in God, you can’t believe in anything that contradicts their particular cultural story about God. They do this, rather than question or alter the cultural story about God that stands between a unified understanding. A new story about God could unify science and religion. It would eliminate the need for a cultural war that generates nothing but casualties on both sides.
The concept of God is a deep part of the human condition. It is something that we have inside of us. Like art, music, poetry, dance, and love it exists to prove that we are not just struggling for survival in a mechanistic Universe. There is more.
Look to science for answers about how the Universe works. Look to God for answers about why. Any understanding that excludes either, is incomplete.
The evidence is everything.
