There are many among us who tend operate solely on raw emotions. And for them perhaps the above heading might be cynical enough to evoke unequivocal hatred towards me, or a barrage of verbal abuse at its worse. At first glance their anger may seem justified. After all it primarily implies that the billions and billions of people who place their on a deity are grossly misguided, and the very notion they invest their faith on is poisoning them to the core. It also implicates that as atheists we are the ones that are safeguarded by our reservations on the whole concept of belief. The rest are doomed.
It’s an important question. But one which I do have a few answers to.
Well for starters I’d like to state for a fact that science has never relied on the insistence of “popular belief” as it were, in order to justify an issue at hand. It was the same case when everyone assumed that the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around it in cycles. But just because it was an “attractive” solution at that point, didn’t necessarily mean that it was truth. And now today the idea of God, of djinns, ghosts, afterlife, heaven-hell, angels and demons amongst other silly beliefs, is almost part of a popular social trend amongst men and women who proclaim to have faith in these entities. All simply down to a referendum, authenticated with a seal belief by the “majority”. All that ultimately proves is that the “majority” have failed to vindicate these concepts utilising proper scientific logic. In fact, they have only managed to present a blindly quantified but invalidated theory to gain the upper hand in a debate, which is a fallacy in itself. There is a proper literary term for this, – ‘Argumentum ad populum’
Besides, just because a large proportion of the world believes in religion, doesn’t automatically mean that it can’t be deemed poisonous to their minds. Countless times we have come across history books recounting tales of plagues, small pox or a cholera infestation which had wiped out entire villages, towns, even cities in some cases. In each instance, the virus manages to annihilate the entire population save a few lucky individuals, who are naturally immune to the virus in question. Now just because the virus obliterated “most” of the population in a village for example, doesn’t make the virus ‘unfaithful’ or ‘unreliable’ in any way, for lack of a better word. And also, it does not mean that the handfuls of men who get spared are abhorrent social misfits.
No they’re most certainly not. In fact if you are familiar with Darwin’s theory of evolution and how it works, you’d know that 99% of the living species that are known to have been extinct today, are mostly so because they did not survive the ordeals of ‘competition’, set aside a handful of their kind of course. Just because a majority of the species ceased to exist doesn’t mean the theory of evolution is untrustworthy. Instead those that remained only persevered because they were capable of doing so.
As such, it is my belief that the expansion and eventual “survival” of religion throughout history is generally comparable to the metastasis of a viral infection. Like a virus which requires a suitable ‘host’ to metabolize and spread itself, religion in parallel tends to fester inside the minds and heart of a smattering of faithful who in turn pass it on throughout the next generation and the process continues till we see what we see regarding religion today. Not only that, if we compare this scenario with that of a bacteria which tends to compete against its own species to save itself and achieve continual existence, the various impressions of belief are no different. If you are raised to be a believer, you’re also generally taught to avoid individuals who do not ‘believe’ at all, because having conversations with them may “taint” your own faith. And as argued above like a virus which copies itself unrelentingly, believers tend to copy or “clone” more believers like them down the road and at the same time, maintain as much of a distance from people with “other” beliefs as possible. The process amalgamates into entire civilizations dependent on the word faith.
It’s an important question. But one which I do have a few answers to.
Well for starters I’d like to state for a fact that science has never relied on the insistence of “popular belief” as it were, in order to justify an issue at hand. It was the same case when everyone assumed that the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around it in cycles. But just because it was an “attractive” solution at that point, didn’t necessarily mean that it was truth. And now today the idea of God, of djinns, ghosts, afterlife, heaven-hell, angels and demons amongst other silly beliefs, is almost part of a popular social trend amongst men and women who proclaim to have faith in these entities. All simply down to a referendum, authenticated with a seal belief by the “majority”. All that ultimately proves is that the “majority” have failed to vindicate these concepts utilising proper scientific logic. In fact, they have only managed to present a blindly quantified but invalidated theory to gain the upper hand in a debate, which is a fallacy in itself. There is a proper literary term for this, – ‘Argumentum ad populum’
Besides, just because a large proportion of the world believes in religion, doesn’t automatically mean that it can’t be deemed poisonous to their minds. Countless times we have come across history books recounting tales of plagues, small pox or a cholera infestation which had wiped out entire villages, towns, even cities in some cases. In each instance, the virus manages to annihilate the entire population save a few lucky individuals, who are naturally immune to the virus in question. Now just because the virus obliterated “most” of the population in a village for example, doesn’t make the virus ‘unfaithful’ or ‘unreliable’ in any way, for lack of a better word. And also, it does not mean that the handfuls of men who get spared are abhorrent social misfits.
No they’re most certainly not. In fact if you are familiar with Darwin’s theory of evolution and how it works, you’d know that 99% of the living species that are known to have been extinct today, are mostly so because they did not survive the ordeals of ‘competition’, set aside a handful of their kind of course. Just because a majority of the species ceased to exist doesn’t mean the theory of evolution is untrustworthy. Instead those that remained only persevered because they were capable of doing so.
As such, it is my belief that the expansion and eventual “survival” of religion throughout history is generally comparable to the metastasis of a viral infection. Like a virus which requires a suitable ‘host’ to metabolize and spread itself, religion in parallel tends to fester inside the minds and heart of a smattering of faithful who in turn pass it on throughout the next generation and the process continues till we see what we see regarding religion today. Not only that, if we compare this scenario with that of a bacteria which tends to compete against its own species to save itself and achieve continual existence, the various impressions of belief are no different. If you are raised to be a believer, you’re also generally taught to avoid individuals who do not ‘believe’ at all, because having conversations with them may “taint” your own faith. And as argued above like a virus which copies itself unrelentingly, believers tend to copy or “clone” more believers like them down the road and at the same time, maintain as much of a distance from people with “other” beliefs as possible. The process amalgamates into entire civilizations dependent on the word faith.
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