The Evolution of Science

The great Bill Hicks asked, “You ever notice how people who believe in creationism, look really unevolved?” While this is funny, there is a certain truth to it. I have often said that the religious are a previous chain in our evolution. Our brains have evolved beyond superstition. Their’s haven’t. They just haven’t died out yet.

Religion is a primitive explanation for the unknown. You see, humans hate not knowing things. We can’t stand it. We need to understand the world. But what we hate more than not knowing an answer, is being wrong. Basically what happened, is primitive people noticed that the sun rose in the east every morning, moved across the sky, then descended in the west. They needed to understand why. So they did what we do best. They worked with the knowledge they had, and built a hypothesis. Perhaps there is a supernatural force that moves the sun across the sky. They didn’t want to look foolish, so they had to test the hypothesis. “I’ll pray to the supernatural force and ask it to move the sun again tomorrow.” The sun moved the next day, and the hypothesis was confirmed. They needed a name for this force, and picked “god”.

The problem wasn’t the method. It was the lack of knowledge available at the time. But that was thousands of years ago. We’ve gained a lot of knowledge since then. If you do a complex equation, you will get a different answer, depending on how accurate the result. For instance, calculate pi. 3.14 is the common answer. 3.14159265359 is more accurate. More fine tuned. Yet, for some reason, some people still accept the primitive idea of a god.

Oddly enough, one of the biggest arguments atheists face is that science doesn’t explain everything. Religion does. Well, not very well. “God” is just a catchall explanation. Don’t understand evolution? God. Don’t understand the weather? God. Don’t understand death? God.

Science isn’t the end result, it’s the method. It’s a series of tests designed to check the veracity of an idea. The more tests we run, the more we can fine tune our theories. The more theories we have, the more knowledge we have and the more understanding. Just because we don’t know EVERYTHING, doesn’t mean that someone thousands of years ago who couldn’t read or write, knew more than we do.

One of the greatest things about being alive right now in history, is that we get to see these wonderful NEW discoveries. Planets and galaxies are being discovered daily. Our understanding of the cosmos grows constantly. We are just now getting to the point, technologically, where we can explore the depths of our own oceans. Scientists keep finding new species that have evolved traits that are developed specifically for their environment. It’s a very exciting time.

The difference between science and religion is that science not only accepts, but expects and encourages new knowledge. Even if it shows us that we were wrong. That just means that our next theory will be even more accurate. Not religion, though. They have the answer already. No new knowledge is permitted. That’s like accepting 3.14, and refusing to believe it could be more accurate (except their answer of “god” is like calculating pi to be 2.46). While we want to be wrong now in order to be right in the future, they haven’t evolved to the point where they can improve their ideas. They are stuck.

This is why I argue that they are the previous chain in our evolutionary development. We have a skill they lack. The thirst for more and more knowledge. It improves our species. It raises us to greater and greater levels of understanding. We can fine tune our tests to prove or disprove our theories. Religion can’t change. Because god is the answer to everything. Since their concept of god has been established to be the end all, be all of existence  there is no need for further learning.

Why do you think that religion is constantly negatively correlated to knowledge? Why are college students more likely to be atheist? What sin did Adam and Eve commit that damned all future generations? They ate from the tree of knowledge. Even in primitive days, the writers of the bible knew that knowledge proved their ideas to be pure nonsense. If knowledge is power, what is religion? It’s holding them back, and just like lack of opposable thumbs held prehistoric chains in our evolution back, religion is doing the same thing to the immediately previous chain.