Religion
In reply to the discussion: Why Science Can’t Replace Religion [View all]MineralMan
(146,248 posts)Fewer than there used to be, but there are still such things. I don't insist that they be explained, though, as part of my atheism. I don't need them to be explained, and probably wouldn't understand the explanations completely if they were. I not a stupid person, and can cope with high-energy physics just fine, although I cannot check the mathematics used in such explanations. Others can, though, and I trust they are being rigorous about that. In reality, busting a scientific theory is a good path to fame, too.
Personally, I cannot conceive of the events that occurred in the first 10 milliseconds of the Big Bang. We won't ever be able to get to the zero point. We can't stand far enough back to observe it, as a practical limitation.
I love the theories that have developed around cosmology. They've been fascinating to follow. But, in the end, I don't know exactly what happened, and that's not really a concern of mine. I don't need an explanation, really. I understand a lot of the sciences very well. They've fascinated me since I was about 8 years old, and I'm smart enough to comprehend journal articles in most fields, except maybe the extremes of high energy physics, which I understand only conceptually.
Religion has offered to explain many things over the millenia. For those who need simple explanations, it's just fine. For those who can't see beyond the contradictions posed by some of those explanations when held up to actual knowledge, that's fine, too. I don't care if people are satisfied with a "godditit" explanation. It matters not to me. But, when you do study the sciences and discover that most of the religious explanations of so many things are just mumbo-jumbo, it gets more and more difficult to accept the basic premise of most religions: that there is some supernatural entity that can speak things into existence or wave a hand and make things from nothing.
It's a logical process. For some, the "symbolic" explanation works OK. For me, it simply doesn't. I can't, under any circumstances, believe that Noah and his family loaded the animals on a homemade boat and survived some flood that supposedly killed every other living thing. I can't do that. I can't do it symbolically, either. Clearly, the event did not occur. It is an impossible event. So, how does one decide which things are true and which not? For me, after so many things believed by that particular religion were thoroughly debunked, it didn't matter any longer whether any of it was true. Logic dismisses the whole thing. And then, since each religion deals with all that stuff in similar ways, they all fail that basic logic test. Very colorful, those religions are. All of them. Very imaginative. But not convincing.
By the time I was 20, it was no longer possible to believe any of it. That's a step that, when taken, cannot be reversed.