Rico Penguin

  I’m sure I’ve quoted this enough times that it looks like I’d sleep with Galileo or at the very least take him to dinner (which I surely would…dinner that is). This phrase is, to me, one of the most powerful statements in the history of civilized man. The full line is "The Bible was written to show us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."

  While I am known for my rather callous feelings towards religion. This is not the goal of this post and indeed 99% of my posts are not trying to butcher the faithful upon a pedestal. What I’m here to discuss today especially is what religion cannot do and will never be able to do.

  There has never and will never be a scientific use for faith. All of the benefits that people get medically from being religious have been seen with equal success in merely positive people. It provides absolutely no aid to any real world field of science. This is no a negative to faith, because it was never meant to do such a thing (or at least I don’t believe it ever outwardly advertised such), however in modern day it is a huge flaw that is overlooked by many who have vendettas against certain scientific beliefs.

  Obviously to many this is a post in response to intelligent design, formerly known as creationism, and even before that known by 4-5 names. As was stated in a very good book I’ve been reading (“only a theory”) it would appear that more often than not religion is not trying to explain how something works but instead is trying to merely get credit for the something.

  You cannot discover how malaria spreads, why the suns light gives people skin cancer, nor can it even explain why people cannot breath underwater. We didn’t decode the human genome with a single bit of guidance by any book of faith nor did we make it to the moon through the discoveries found in any scripture.

  There will never be a time when faith can properly function as a scientific tool and likewise there will never be a time when science can function properly as a tool of faith. Each is by its very roots incompatible with the other. This is not to say you cannot be a faithful scientist, that is a scientists who for whatever reason has religious convictions, but neither will benefit the other. They exist in solitude from one another and that is by no means a bad thing.

  The danger is when we make the mistake of assuming that faith can save our biological selves. We do not need another era of trephinations to remind us of what happens when we fight that truth. So as many have, much more eloquently than I, this is a modest request to cease and desist with the incessant attempts to use faith as a tool of science. In the end it helps no one and creates various problematic and violent situations.

  Well that’s it for today, I will likely discuss the book linked above once I finish it. It is fantastic though and roughly 50% of the way through it I suggest anyone read it who has the ability to do so.

  First I’m sure there is a book with this title, its alliteration that really works well between the two words. However I am probably talking about something entirely different. Also I got a big box of magic cards yesterday and not only did I miss myth busters because of the excitement but I also forgot to update. Talk about a brain overload. At any rate.

  As I’ve stated before I tend to think that god (was) is a terrible parent. Put in basically the simplest possible parenting situation God failed terribly and theoretically it was this failure that lead to absolutely every tragedy that has ever unfolded. Hundreds of thousands of women still die every year to childbirth, that’s a single problem that can be compounded with hundreds of thousands of others that cost the lives of millions. But I’m digressing, when we look at the case of God and Parenting the introduction of the Devil comes into play.

   The serpentine form of the Devil coaxed the children like Adam and Eve into devouring the fruit of Knowledge and thus getting them nixed from the garden of Eden. Now this is a prime example of the influential powers of the devil, a being above humanity in power and knowledge (anyone wanting to disagree with that is going to need to get their Ego checked). So we go from the events that ejected the two and the punishment they (and consequently every human after them) received.

    So if in the case of two humans God could not be active enough to help hinder the actions of the devil in persuading God’s children (IE. Humans) how on Earth does anyone reasonably assume that with billions upon billions that God is anywhere near capable to deal with humanity? Especially when between the two (apparently) the Devil has had far more widespread influence. You have huge ‘false’ religions, major wars, endless civil struggles, death and disease across all edges of the world, and every form of government is rife with corruption of varying degrees. Throughout all this each Religion has thought they were the correct one and cite beings who have thought they spoke with God.

    However it is impossible to know if it was God or the Devil influencing any of these people. In fact who is to say that Two Millennia ago it was not the Devil walking the land preparing the world for a future of strife, death, and persecution because of his ‘divinity’? It seems like a wild statement, and indeed it is, but this is a wild topic. There is absolutely no way of knowing whether any event you’ve dealt with or in any way been a part of was influenced by the devil or not, without first admitting that you are more brilliant and perceptive than Angels themselves. I’m sure however that such egotism would only be welcome in one realm of the afterlife and its hardly the one that people are shooting for most times.

    If this is the case it would finally help me understand the idea of Blind Faith. What tool is more destructive than convincing people that they should follow the words of a many times translated storybook over the obvious realities of the world. Of course this also puts us in a pickle of wondering who, if anyone, is the devil. Is it me? Is it the person sitting next to you. Is it the President of France (I doubt it is any of these but I figured I’d ask)?

    We sit on a planet that is not a perfect sphere, in a Solar System we are not the center of, warmed by a huge continuous explosion that is not without blemish, and there are explanations for every previous event that is historically provable and was once thought to be the work of divine intervention. It would appear to me that as time progresses more of various texts are found to be wildly incorrect, which has always felt like a misguidance. Who would desire more to misguide you than some unexplainably selfish being of once divine nature? Other than maybe Corporations (Badumpish).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30890934/

  Now it isn’t an isolated incident, there are nations that have been battling for hundreds if not thousands of years merely because of a disagreement in literature. I know people say that even without faith we will still have conflict but I tend to think that once people are fighting over which is better, star trek or star wars, we’ll be able to step back and stop it much easier.

  In my mind I wonder though, what benefits do religion give you that you couldn’t acquire by simply being a positive human being? Neither is necessary to have the other so this is not a case of parsing how you could do one without the other.

  Just how much dependency on a belief is too much is another thing I’d be interested in knowing. When you ignore simple medical care and allow your child to die, when you rush to develop nuclear weaponry simply to attack another group of people who disagree with you on a single aspect of your life. At what point do we step back and just say “Whoa”…likewise just when will I start using question marks again to end my questions?

  That’s where I stand though, I’m just not grasping the gain. The benefit of glorifying death over life. For now I just read the newspaper and see event after event that is pretty upsetting. Taking course after course where there is a single theme that holds true.

  However amidst it all I’m pretty positive about life, that to me is what counts. In case you were curious .