Frank Harrison Final Project Post 2

I suppose furthest reaching question with relation to religion (I will often use Christianity as my basis for comparison, as I don't really have any other life experience with other religions) vs atheism is "where did we all come from?" Firstly, I must address the idea of Creationism. Some say that life is simply to complicated to have randomly sprung from nothing, and that some form of intelligent design must have been involved in the process, but this just not true. I found the following explanation  to be helpful:

Stating the odds as intelligent design (ID) theorists do is highly misleading since they presume that life must have turned out exactly as it has. All we are left with is rarity. But "rarity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable." [quote from John Allen Paulos, "Innumeracy"]

Just because something is highly improbable, certainly does not mean that it is impossible. We are finding new concepts in physics all the time that were previously thought to be highly improbable. In fact, now knowing what we do about unfathomable size of the universe, wouldn't it be more likely that the conditions for life exist in certain areas, as opposed to one supreme being creating the universe to place life in our one little area? I won't go into all the implications of an infinite universe composed of multiple dimensions, but put simply, in a test sample so large, life must exist. 

But then why do so many people believe in a higher power, and why have they done so for such a long time? Could the fact that humanity seems to inherently need religion be evidence that this greater power has ingrained himself into us? Well not necessarily. I have previously explained the common human condition to seek comfort in the existence of an afterlife, but there is also another explanation why religion is so far reaching. Once upon a time, humanity was not far reaching, and neither was organized religion. Tiny pockets of civilization (I use that term loosely) appeared, but in their primitiveness, they had little else to do aside from eat, sleep, procreate, and look at the sky. In looking at the sky they be came very familiar with patterns among the stars and began to create stories to accompany the cycles of the heavens. These stories evolved alongside humanity, and as civilization spread, so did these tales. Consider the following clip from Zeitgeist (2007) -- you will need an open mind, but the information is incredible:

This shows that it is not the need for religion that is inherent in humanity, but instead, it is the art of storycrafting. Face it, religious tales are some of the most imaginative stories ever told, and that is why they have withstood the test of time. How else could such fantastical stories be accepted as absolute truth, at least by some. The fact that many of these tales throughout time have been so similar lends further credit that they are just an evolution of the art of storytelling. I don't think this discredits the religious texts at all. Quite the opposite. I believe that these stories have grown alongside civilization and server as a great basis for moral guidance (at least in many cases). They should remain revered as literary accomplishments, but should never be taken literally. For man to claim that the can decipher, document, and understand the nature of a god's plan is purely egotistical. People need to learn the concept of metaphor; humanity would be much better off.

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

Isaac Asimov