Tags: Christianity, creationism, culture, culture arts, Judaism, Philosophy, Religion, Science, scientology, universalism
Let’s play a game of two truths and a lie. I’m going to tell you three stories, and you need to tell me which one is a lie.
Story #1:
An all-powerful force spoke from the heavens and made a deal with a human man. The deal was that the man, and all of his descendants, must cut off their foreskins and in return they would receive the land of Canaan forever. It made sense at the time.
Story #2:
The same all-powerful force was angry with humans so he sent his only son, in the form of a human, to die. Once this spirit/man was killed, humans were exonerated, so long as they pray to the same guy they killed and his dad. His body and blood can still be eaten or drank in the form of crackers and wine.
Story #3:
An evil galactic dictator sent immortal spirits to Earth through a series of devious acts. He erased their memories, and [skipping a few steps here] these spirits ended up as what we, today, call human beings.
I assume most of you probably picked Story #3. Obviously, I am relating the stories of Judaism and Christianity in the first two, but what you may not know is that the third story is an abridged version of Scientology, a religion derided by many as fake. But what makes it any crazier than any other religion? What makes the Scientologist belief that our earth used to be called Teegeeack any wilder than the notion that a man (or woman) in the sky created this entire planet in six days?
Think back to the two truths and a lie exercise for a second. Let’s say your entire brain had just been erased and you literally have forgotten everything you’ve ever learned about religion. Are you sure you would still pick the third option as the lie? What if we went back to ancient Rome and told some Centurions about how Jesus died for their sins? They’d probably feed you to the lions because of your radical ideas. Two thousand years later, Christianity is the world’s biggest religion. Is that because it’s the right one, or because the right people (the ones with swords and money) believed in it?
There are many tenets of Scientology that seem crazy when you read them on Wikipedia, but on a scale from 1 to Gary Busey, where do they fall comparatively? Scientologists believe that our life forces are known as “thetans,” and that they’ve been alive for millions and millions of years. Pretty nuts, right? What about Hinduism and Buddhism, both of which believe in reincarnation. And what about Christianity? Christians believe we all live one life and when we die the spirit beings inside of us either live in heaven or hell for eternity. Scientologists believe that the psychoanalytic practices of dianetics (which are far too complex to get into here) are the basis of religion and mental health. Muslims, Jews, and Christians, just to name a few, believe the act of praying can convince God to do good things for you. Truthfully, is any one crazier than the others?
Even those of you who believe in science have to admit that the Big Bang Theory (or whatever you believe) takes an amazing amount of faith. How did we get here? How long has our planet existed? Are we alone? These questions are literally impossible to answer with any certainty, but humans have been doing it for as long as we’ve been around.
While I cannot be sure, I would be willing to wager that every society in history has had some sort of answer to how we got here. How many of these stories are even nominally similar? The Aztecs had a different story than the Mongols who had a different story than the Romans, and they probably are all wrong. I may be the minority here, but I think that telling someone their crazy beliefs are crazier than my crazy beliefs is kind of a dick move. Having faith that God made earth in six days, or being sure that Xenu had something to do with it, is fine if that’s what you think. Once you start criticizing, persecuting, and killing people over these beliefs though, you’ve gone too far.
Willing to die for your beliefs is noble. It may not be the smartest thing to do, but if you are dedicated enough to truly sacrifice yourself then I, personally, think that’s morosely beautiful. But willing to kill others for those beliefs is unequivocally wrong. Scientology is probably not right, but who knows what really is. Until then, I’ll just stick to watching Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.
By: Andrew Eckhous
(Photo by Chan Mya Soe under a Creative Commons license)
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4 Comments
Great post, Andrew. Terms like “belief” and “faith” are inherently vague, and I think that’s where at least some of the confusion arises. Belief is easier–a belief is just something you think is true. You might have reasons to for thinking that, or you might not; it might be justified, or it might not. But faith can mean several things: it can mean trust; i can refer to one’s religion (“my faith”), or it can refer to a belief that is at least in part unjustified. I think this last sense is the relevant one, and it’s probably the one that distinguishes religious “faith” from other forms of belief. Matters of religion may be beyond proof one way or another, or there may even be other evidence that casts them into doubt or refutes them, but people of faith believe them nonetheless.
That’s kind of a rough sketch and probably insufficient, but I think that’s one reason why belief based on science/other forms of rational inquiry and faith-based beliefs are not just two different instances of the same thing. Science is based on a particular form of inquiry and conclusion-forming. No doubt this process isn’t perfect–it’s shaped by social and cultural forces, it’s subject to human error, it involves making certain assumptions, etc.–but even given these imperfections, scientific knowledge is still categorically different from religious beliefs and the means by which believers arrive at and justify these beliefs. There is indeed a difference between the question “Is Jesus the Son of God?” and “How long has our planet existed?,” as well as between their respective answers, and I think the latter can be answered with reasonable certainty in a way that the former cannot.
I think the other main thing to bear in mind here is that science and religion are not just two different sets of beliefs. Science is also a set of practices through which to investigate the natural world, the institutions that carry out these practices, etc. Religion is not just dogma but also religious institutions, religious leaders, devotional practices, and so on. A group of scientists working in a lab does very different things from a minister giving a sermon, both in terms of drawing conclusions about the world and in terms of having an impact on other people’s lives. In this sense, I don’t think it makes sense to say that science is the new religion (although it probably does in the sense that scientific explanations of the natural world have largely displaced religious explanations).
All that said, I’m not trying to knock your post, just respond to it. I think you make a very good point about the equally improbable and ridiculous nature of the narratives religions tell about the world and humankind, and I definitely agree that criticizing someone else for the content of their religious beliefs is poor form. We all end up telling ourselves some pretty strange things about the world, true or not.
Thanks for the comment L.
I understand what you mean, but I don’t agree. If we were talking about something more concrete, like how is a baby conceived or how chemicals work, then I would be on your side. However, the Big Bang is still a theory. It’s a much more well-thought out and researched theory than Creationism, etc, but that just makes it a more plausible theory. I know the next logical step is “well, why don’t we teach creationism in school then?” and I don’t agree with that (I may be rambling now). Because the big bang has been researched and tested over and over again, it is a much more credible theory. It was not written in a book written before astrophysics existed.
Anyway, I hope you liked what I had to say.
Nice article, I think there are some good points there underlying our interesting relationship with faith and spirituality. However, I want to address an important point. One that is often problematic: lumping science and religion in a category where both requires faith.
“Even those of you who believe in science have to admit that the Big Bang Theory (or whatever you believe) takes an amazing amount of faith.”
No it does not. Maybe it takes an “amazing” amount of faith to believe that the scientific community is not deceiving you, but it shouldn’t if on is willing to look through the evidence and the research him/herself.
Science is not meant to answer fundamentally difficult philosophical questions such as “why are we here?” or “why is there nothing rather than something?” These questions are meant for philosophers are theoretical physicists.
The age of the universe, the size of the visible universe, and other more concrete questions can be answered, to the best of our current knowledge (and that is a key part of science, only knowing what evidence tells us), using science.
So, with that, I don’t think that you can have “faith” in science, because faith means believing in something that is not based on proof. Whereas fundamentally, science can only answer the questions that do have proof, such as the time of the big bang or what our molecular make up is of.
A few years ago, now I cannot recall the source, I remember hearing someone once say that [science is the religion of the 21st century]. Perhaps framing it in this light might make Andrew’s argument a little more clear on what it means to have “faith” in science.
As a neuroscience major myself, I certainly explain any phenomena I come across in my day to day life by science. (To add, I also don’t have an extreme involvement in my religion). However science is still evolving (no pun intended). For instance, “neuroscience” itself didn’t “exist” until 1963. What we may consider today to be the ultimate-proving-objective-perfect Scientific Method may be ridiculed by students centuries from now, who perhaps might find many flaws in what we “believe” objective is.
And I think that is where Andrew’s point really hones in. What is the difference in “belief” and “faith?”
Why are we so quick choose to reject lumping science and religion together? This is question that has been asked by many and, as made clear by this forum, the answer ultimately falls onto what we choose to “believe.”