3.12.2010

An Incomplete Understanding of Natural Phenomena Has Never Meant Goddidit

physicists

I miss StumbleUpon. You'd tell it what you were interested in (e.g., atheism), click a button, and it would magically transport you to a random website or blog on about the topic you selected. It was great for generating blog traffic and for turning up gems like this meme. Much like the "Why is there something rather than nothing" query I recently addressed, this poster reminds us that scientific illiteracy is a poor excuse for religious belief. In fact, it isn't an excuse for religious belief at all.

There are plenty of things we cannot explain, and there probably always will be. Our difficulty explaining something has never been useful evidence of gods, and I don't see that changing. There was a time when we didn't understand the concept of germs. That was not somehow valid evidence that illness was caused by demonic possession. There are far too many examples of this sort of thing, and the conclusion is always the same: not fully understanding something in no way means "goddidit."

Christians (and others) who continue to worship the "god of the gaps" are demonstrating that they have learned little about how science works and have even less knowledge of history. Theirs is a shrinking god that gets smaller by the day. We don't need it. We never needed it. It is time to recognize this truth and move on with our lives without gods.