Also known
as God of the Gaps.When you run into
something that you can’t explain you invoke a god.
In Logic it
is known as a Fallacy of Relevance.
Argumentum
ad Ignorantiam: Something
is so because it has not been proven it is not so.
There is a
huge percent of the population that believe a virgin can give birth, statues
can cry or bleed, a man can walk on water, Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood,
angles, heaven, hell, the devil, a god that is a human and intelligent design!
And there are those that find it easy and profitable to sell it to the punters
“Science is the antithesis of faith. Science, by definition, is the attempt to
fine physical proof for that which is unknown or not yet defined. When science affirms an answer, that answer
is universal. Humans do not go to war
over it.”
Origin by Dan Brown
A computer
is programmed to store, retrieve and correlate information. When a computer is tasked with a query it
cannot solve its response is insufficient
data.
The human
brain is a computer, but its programming differs from its electronic counterpart. The brain stores information from a lifetime
of personal experiences; but the human brain always seeks closure and
order.
Our brain tends to fill in the
gaps of insufficient data or uncomfortable realities with an imagined
acceptable alternative, in order to bring comfortable closure to a
subject.
Early man
was fearful of things he could not understand: death, storms, fire, night… so
he fantasized Gods to explain the unexplainable. As civilization advanced, the
stories of Gods became more sophisticated.
Poseidon ruled the Oceans (Greek), Vulcan was responsible for volcanic
eruptions (Romans), Odin was the god of war and Valkyries carried the dead
warriors to Valhalla.
Gods filled
in the gaps of man’s knowledge in order to bring about closure to the
unknowable. But, as science and
mathematics advanced the Gods became unnecessary and were replaced with known
quantities.
Religion has
been the enemy of Science and Knowledge from the very beginning. Adam and Eve were supposedly driven from the
magical garden of Eden for eating from the tree of knowledge. William of Ockham was tried for heresy for
his math and scientific studies. Giordano
Bruno was burned at the stake for declaring the sun was the center of the
universe.
Galileo was threatened with
the stake and make to recant his belief in a sun centered universe. It wasn’t until 1822 that the Catholic Church
finally accepted that the fact of that the earth rotates around the sun.
People do
not give up their Gods easily. Science
and logic have systematically shined a light on religious superstitious
ignorance. Yet there are still major
populations of mankind that believe in a virgin birth, a flying horse, a
talking burning bush, a man walking on water, reanimation of the dead, angels,
devils, heaven, hell, bread that turns into flesh and wine into blood…
Religion has
held its sway because children have been indoctrinated from birth by their
religious parents, their religious communities and religious leaders. Children and adults have been played upon by
apostolic snake oil salesmen.
But today,
more and more young people are moving away from religion. The major hold that religions still flexes on
mankind is the promise of life after death. It fills in the gap. It is
what people want to believe.
Religion's promise is: I will pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today. So religions will never go easily into that
good night.
