Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg writes in The New York Review of Books an essay on atheism: Without God. Dr. Weinberg identifies four tensions that put science and religion at odds:
1. Science removing the supernatural as required to understand the world;
2. Science revealing Earth and Man to have no special place in the universe;
3. Religion rejecting the establishment of natural laws as an arrogant constriction of God’s ‘infinite’ abilities, and
4. Science illuminating a paradigm that doesn’t include infallible knowledge.
An excellent read.
Science has been slowly explaining things that used to be God’s domain — lightening, pregnancy, crops, disease, the tide, the motion of the heavens. None of these have thus far turned out to be supernatural. The more sophisticated our measuring devices become, the more mysteries we’ll unravel. Sheer persistence will probably uncover the origin of life itself, and that too will turn out to be a natural process. We just don’t need the idea of God to explain the world around us any more.
We can live in a world without God.
Religion was invented before humanity was capable of adequately searching for and proving things true. It offered explanations (powerful gods) for significant phenomena (the sun rising) which led to ritualistic requests for consideration in the timing or severity of those phenomena (”please make it rain”; “please make my wife pregnant”, etc.). Embedded in our minds as the true cause behind all effects, Gods that you could ask to help you became forces to constantly be obeyed.
Religious “truth” made a great a construct to provide us with a reason to adhere to social rules (restrain your greed and urges to murder, rape, philander, steal) and work towards common social goals (marriage, families, cooperation). It served a purpose in dark ages.
Genuine knowledge—the product of science—strips away the supernatural impetus for prosocial behavior, but certainly not the need. Anyone with enough critical thinking skills to see past God can certainly agree that we benefit from living in a civil, healthy, cooperative society and can accept the social contracts necessary to make that happen.
They can live in a world without God.
The other best use of religion is as an anti-depressant; purposelessness is anathema to the human psyche and we’re highly susceptible to existential fear of there not being a bigger picture. Belief keeps your chin up when you’re not sure you’re on the right path, or whether there even is a path. Belief is also a crutch that obscures the need to assess your own priorities, and to arrive at a decision on how to live your life that’s based on personal reflection. Do we need meaning? Sure, or we go bonkers. But don’t take the easy way out. Reason out your own personal meaning, act on it, refine as your perspective widens.
You can live in a world without God.
P.S. Don’t be bummed about your new found purposelessness. Redirect your sense of wonder where it belongs. This is what science does for us all.
The Dark Knight is a story of archetypes, like all superhero tales. This one gets it right, however, and is sophisticated enough to reflect the moral greys of reality.
Instead of good vs ‘evil’, it’s good vs chaos. The destruction in life is not painted with the superstitious brush of ‘evil’, but rather etched with the realistic shades of disorder,anarchy and
chaos - the choice to be or not to be good.
This high-level view of society appeals to the agnostic, as it doesn’t couch morality in terms of God. It presents the choice to be good as just that, a choice, one made regardless of affinity
for the supernatural or the natural.
The ferry-bound Gotham fleers are only the most literal example of a choice for good; the Dark Knight abounds with moments of choice versus the negativity of chance. Bruce Wayne’s socialite
friends represent the order of will over chaos: the good in theworld are those who opt to be kind, philanthropic, civil and generous, and the more of us elect to be so, the better our world is.
The Dark Knight doesn’t omit religion, but addresses it on the ‘popular’ level on which it really exists. ‘Evil’ is easy to understand. The truth about Dent - that he’s no hero, that he fell from grace - is kept from the populace in order to create an icon, a perfect goodness for the masses to worship. It’s more important, socially, that the common man think perfect good is attainable than for him to know the truth. Even Bruce Wayne is lied to in this manner, with the burning of the letter, in order that he keep having something to believe in. This attachment to good is beneficial in itself; the sentiment more important than the fact. People who weren’t there when the story unfolded, to whom the complexity of the choices made can’t easily be conveyed, need a simpler version to adhere to, that they may have an example of good to aspire to. The simplicity of religious belief has its’ place.
The Dark Knight’s thesis is that there is no evil, supernaturally speaking, in the world - only chaotic occurrences of poor personal decisions. People are bad for a variety of reasons, but none of them are devilish in origin. The devil himself is but a metaphor for misfortune, hate, and contempt for the beauty of life.
Russell’s Teapot, a collection of free thinking atheist comics in which a small boy hangs out with Jesus and calls him on his various inefficiencies and general mysterious ways.
Includes “Know Your Bible“…a wonderful idea! Were you aware, for instance, Ecclesiastes 3:19 concludes with the sentence “Everything is meaningless?” Who knew the Big J was a Buddhist?
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