Keep the faith, don’t lose your perseverance and always trust your gut extinct.

Paula Abdul, Performer

I always trust my gut reaction; it’s always right.

Kiana Tom, Television Host

Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality.

Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize Winner (Medicine)

Before making a decision about whether to trust our gut, it seems like a worthwhile endeavor to first try to understand what exactly our “gut” is. There are a number of possibilities:

1. Sometimes gut feelings can be explained by our evolved instincts that are encoded in our DNA, which exist because they helped our ancestors survive in the world as it was hundreds of thousands of years ago. For example, we are likely to feel anxious when confronted with something unfamiliar (a large unknown animal, for example), or feel fear when we hear a loud noise. These sort of reactions are very useful at times, but typically only work well in scenarios involving danger or conditions that are similar to those that our prehistoric ancestors encountered. At a birthday party where balloons are being popped, a fear of loud noises is not useful. On the other hand, when walking in a canyon, a loud noise might indicate a cascade of rocks and a fear response might save your life.

2. In many cases our intuition is associated with our immediate emotional responses to stimuli. For example, we might get a positive feeling towards someone who has a warm smile, or feel negatively towards a person who is raggedly dressed. While our emotional responses clearly are important (e.g. it’s important to feel sympathy towards a friend when they look sad, and to feel fear when encountering someone who has hurt you in the past) they can also be distorted and counter productive. For example, many people feel slighted if a friend fails to return their phone call. However, one is likely to feel better about the situation (despite his initial emotional response) if he reminds himself that there are all sorts of reasons that a friend doesn’t return calls, including being temporarily busy or absent minded. On the other hand, those who trust in their initial response of hurt and anger (which might stem, for example, from a lack of confidence or insecurity) are more likely to blow up at the friend or act coldly during the next encounter, which could damage a generally fulfilling relationship. Unfortunately, it can be tricky to differentiate between emotional responses that are useful and improve our lives, and those that are based on misperceptions and are unhelpful. Both of these types of emotional responses feel equally real when you are experiencing them, and it is often only when we carefully scrutinize them from a neutral point of view that we can tell the difference.

3. Sometimes our “intuition” is based on repeated experience that we access automatically. For example, a surgeon might get an uneasy feeling during an operation, which could be triggered automatically when she notices similarities between the current patient and difficult surgical cases she has had in the past. Another example would be a painter who suddenly has an impulse to add more thinner to the paint he is using, which could be a subconscious reaction based on years of art making experience. Generally when we repeat similar tasks enough times, their execution becomes automatic and begins to feel like an instinct. We might then say that we have developed an intuition for effectively completing the tasks. These kinds of responses can occur much faster than those controlled by conscious thought, and thus can be very efficient and useful. Of course, if the initial learning phase that leads to one’s intuitions is not of good quality (e.g. we complete the task poorly while learning), the intuition will be of poor quality as well. Sometimes intuitions of this form are experienced in emotional form as an uneasy feeling, in particular when our (possibly subconscious) expectations (based on experience, training or practice) do not match what we see. A day trader, for example, might decide to sell a stock due to an uncomfortable feeling about it. In reality, what may have happened is that the stock chart had a pattern that did not conform to his expectations. This intuition can be quite useful since those cases that don’t match our predictions can be especially difficult, require special attention, and present unknown hazards.

4. Societal conditioning can create a kind of gut reaction that operates without conscious awareness. If we are told enough times when we are young not to trust strangers, then we may feel immediately distrustful when a stranger strikes up a conversation. The trouble with responses of this kind is that they are often formed without thought or careful reflection. For example, if we grow up in an area where a lot of racism is present, we might be told that certain races are inherently dishonest, and so could have strong intuitive reactions to people of those races based on this idea. Similarly, if we are taught to believe that black cats bring bad luck, we might start feeling uneasy in a house with a black cat. Since the ideas that society conditions us with may not be true, it can be very valuable to be aware of these automatic reactions and to carefully evaluate their logical and empirical validity.

5. Our brains are capable of forming very strong associations (between perfumes and people, for instance) and this can lead to what might be interpreted as “gut feelings”. For example, if we were attacked by dogs when we were young, we may feel anxious around dogs later in life, even when we know on an intellectual level that we are safe around them. Such associations clearly have a valuable survival purpose, but on the other hand, can push us into self defeating behavior (like refusing to visit the house of a friend because she has a dog). Our brain’s natural tendency is to be “better safe than sorry”, as your ancestors were very unlikely to die from forming spurious associations (such as that dogs are generally dangerous), but were at real risk of dying if they failed to form certain real associations (such as that wolves are dangerous).

As we can see, what people call their “gut” is most likely a hodgepodge of various brain activities, which include survival instincts, emotional responses, automatic recall of learned information, societal conditioning, and associations. It is not at all obvious that these systems will lead to good decision making in general. Each has its very important uses, as well as significant domains where it will fail. A business man cannot rely on fight or flight instincts when giving an important presentation, a person with an anxiety disorder cannot expect his emotional responses to be accurate representations of reality, a doctor cannot rely on his old impulses when learning a totally new surgical technique, and no one can expect that their society will condition them only with true information. Hence, to make truly good decisions, it is essential to evaluate your intuition to make sure that it is likely to be accurate in the situation at hand. Each time our gut tells us something, we cannot know whether to trust it until we understand where that feeling originates from.

Almost nothing can be known for certain. For example, we cannot prove with absolute, one hundred percent certainty that what we take to be “real life” is not just some computer simulation being applied to our brains (like in the movie the Matrix). But, just because we cannot have 100% confidence in much of anything does not mean that we can’t make claims about the world. For example, I can state with a great deal of confidence that there is not an invisible, inaudible, intangible pink elephant in my room. I certainly can’t prove right now that this elephant doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t say it doesn’t exist. When we have no compelling evidence for a claim, even in the case when we can’t actively disprove that claim, it is generally reasonable to say that we don’t believe in it. Many atheists have similar feelings about the existence of gods. While they cannot prove absolutely that there are no gods, they find the evidence for the existence of gods lacking. Therefore, they say they do not believe that gods exist, just as you would say that the invisible pink elephant in my room doesn’t exist, despite the fact that you can’t actually prove it. As has been pointed out many times before, religious people generally deny the existence of the gods of other religions that contradict their own. Atheists take this one step further, and deny that there is sufficient evidence to believe in any god.

2. Since we are made of energy and the laws of physics say that energy cannot be destroyed does that imply that a part of us must survive death?

While it is true that our energy will never be destroyed, this says nothing about our chances of surviving death or experiencing an afterlife. Think about it this way: If you were to lose a hand, while the energy in the hand would not be destroyed, you would no longer control that hand and the energy in it would then be useless to you. Likewise, when we die the energy in our bodies remains (for a little while, anyway) but this energy is useless to us because our brain, now also dead, can no longer use it to do anything. It is also worth keeping in mind that throughout your life you constantly gain and lose energy from different sources (you lose heat energy through the air, you gain molecular energy from food, you lose molecular energy through waste products, and you convert potential energy into kinetic energy when you move). We are not the same as our energy, energy is just something that we use, and it keeps entering and leaving our bodies throughout our lives.

3. The stuff we see on our planet, like eyeballs and walruses, seem like they were designed to serve a purpose. Does that imply that they must have been created by an intelligent, conscious designer? If we found a watch on the beach we would assume it was designed, so should we assume the same thing about other apparently designed objects?

While eyeballs and walruses certainly appear to be designed, that does not imply that they actually were designed. Until the 1800′s human beings were simply unaware that any naturally occurring process could create something of such enormous complexity and apparent design. However what Charles Darwin discovered is that through a process of “evolution”, it is possible for incredibly complicated creatures to arise from less complicated ones via a combination of random mutation and natural selection. Today, scientists have an enormous body of evidence demonstrating that evolution is true, and hence that creatures that appear to be designed need not ever have had a designer. While evolution doesn’t create things like watches, over incredibly long stretches of time it does create complex creatures which themselves can create watches. The theory is not by any means obvious (which helps explain why it took humans so long to think of it), and if you are incredulous that evolution could possibly work or that enough time could have elapsed to produce all of the complexity we see, I urge you to take the time to educate yourself about the evidence for evolution, and the mechanisms by which it works. Unfortunately, popular attempts to “refute” evolution often are carried out by people who don’t really understand the theory themselves, and therefore these attempts help perpetuate common misperceptions, such as that evolution claims that single celled organisms appeared “by chance” or that evolution makes claims about the way things “should” be (rather than just the way things are and were). Even the evolution taught to children in school is often a highly incomplete explanation of the theory. The best sources for information are books by well respected evolutionary biologists. Without reading any of these it is unlikely that you will truly understand the details of the theory. At this point evolution has as much supportive evidence behind it as nearly any scientific theory.

4. If we don’t believe in certain religions and they turn out to be true, then we will go to hell. On the other hand, if we do believe in a religion, and it turns out that there is no God, nothing bad will happen to us. Therefore, isn’t it the safer bet to take “Pascal’s Wager” and follow a religion just in case it turns out to be the real thing?

To begin with, this question assumes that we can choose what we believe. As far as many religions (such as Christianity) are concerned, just pretending to believe in order to save yourself from damnation probably isn’t going to lead to salvation. On the other hand though, perhaps if you did try practicing a religion intently enough and spending time only with people of that religion you could eventually get yourself to believe if you already were inclined toward spirituality. In that case, which religion should you choose? Should you be a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Confucianist, Buddhist, Sikh, Spiritist, Jew, Baha’i, Jain, Shintoist, Caodaiist, Zoroastrian, Pagan or Rasta? Or should you perhaps choose one of the hundreds of other religions that currently exist or have existed in the past? It may seem obvious to some people that the bigger religions are far more likely to be the one true religion, but no religion represents more than 50% of the population today, so clearly whatever God or Gods are out there aren’t too concerned about making their message easy to discover. Furthermore, the popularity of religions has risen and fallen over the centuries and will surely continue to do so in the future, so why should we think that what is most popular today is somehow superior to what was popular in the past or what will be most popular in the future? At best, we can say that (on account of their size) larger religions might be slightly more likely to be true, but a strong correlation between truth and size does not seem likely, given the factors mentioned.

Most people accept the religion that they were taught as a child, but of course there is no reason to assume that the religion that you happen to be born into is more likely to be correct than any other. Rather than trying to guess which religion is true, we might try the approach of attempting to minimize the suffering we would incur by selecting the wrong religion. This would be done by trying to convince ourselves to believe in the religion that claims the worst punishment for non-believers. But given the very large number of fundamentally conflicting religions out there, whatever this most punishing religion happens to be it has a high probability of being a false one, and hence even if there does exist a true religion at all, you are probably not protecting yourself. After all, someone could start a new religion right now which has a punishment far worse than any other religion that has ever existed. Intuitively, we would imagine that this religion is very unlikely to be true, and yet by this selection method we would choose to believe in it to avoid that worst of all punishments.

Another thing to consider about pascal’s wager is that forcing yourself to believe in a religion simply to avoid hell or some other sort of punishment (or gain a promised reward) may well have negative consequences in your life today. If the religion turns out to be false then you will have a false understanding of reality, which may lead to bad decision making. You could spend a large amount of your time doing rituals to please a non-existent being, and might expend a lot of energy trying to convert others to this false religion. In the case of some religions, you may actually be required to give up part of your salary or time in service to it.

It seems that taking Pascal’s Wager has a low probability of protecting you unless the following conditions are met:

a) You somehow can be sure that only a small number of religions have a significant chance of being true, and can therefore eliminate the hundreds of other religions from consideration.

b) You are able to convince yourself to truly believe (and not just pretend to believe) in the religion of your choosing.

c) You manage to follow the rules of the chosen religion carefully enough to avoid the punishment for non-believers.

d) The particular sect of that religion that you choose has not distorted the true teachings too much.

e) You can be reasonably confident that the chance of SOME religion being true is quite high.

f) You don’t reduce your happiness so much while practicing the religion or miss out on so many earthly pleasures that all is wasted if it turns out there is no God, or the religion you chose was false, or the sect of the religion you chose had distorted teachings or you misinterpreted your religion’s teachings or you failed to obey the teachings closely enough to avoid punishment.

5. Since almost every human society in the past 4000 years has believed in and worshipped God (or Gods), isn’t that compelling evidence that God really exists, and that each of these groups has discovered some of this truth?

Unfortunately, the fact that most societies have worshipped a god of some kind does not provide compelling evidence for the existence of gods. To the contrary, it provides strong evidence that humans are very prone to making gods up and very adept at believing in these made up creations. The reason, simply put, is that the huge number of religions that humans have created contradict each other on such fundamental questions that there is no possible way that all of them or even the majority of them could be true at the same time. These religions disagree with each other about how many gods there are, what a person needs to do to please the gods, whether there is a soul, what happens to humans after they die, the codes of laws we all should follow, how the earth and the universe originated, and many other important question. Hence, the most reasonable interpretation of the the fact that religions are so ubiquitous is not that all of the religions are somehow tapping into some basic truth, but rather that they include a great deal of falsehood that was made up by (and fervently believed by) human beings. If even one major world religion is false, that would be enough to demonstrate our potential for deeply and unquestioningly believing falsehood en masse. Even under the assumption that at least one religion is true, there have likely been dozens (or more likely, hundreds) which contained little truth, and which effectively were all worshipping different gods.

6. Even if some spiritual and religious beliefs are not true, why does it make a difference, so long as these ideas bring joy and meaning into people’s lives?

While in general it is great when an idea improves someone’s life without negative consequences, false beliefs can have a variety of costs associated with them, and sometimes falsehoods lead to other falsehoods, entrenching a person deeper into delusion. Religion and spirituality (even when not founded in the truth) can definitely have some advantages for certain people. For example, false religion can at times:

a) Provide a sense of community.

…but there are many ways a person can find community.

b) Reduce one’s fear of death.

…but it is possible to reduce one’s fear of death without religious belief (such as by employing modern psychological methods like CBT, learning to view death as a release from the suffering of disease and old age, or considering whether immortality would really be better than death).

c) Give a person comfort when reflecting on loved ones they have lost.

…but comfort can also be found by reflecting on the good and the joy in the deceased persons life, and on the fine moments spent together.

d) Cause people to behave more altruistically out of fear of punishment or promise of reward.

…but many atheists behave altruistically without the threat of punishment or temptation of reward, and it seems that a certain degree of altruism is built into our genetic code.

e) Encourage a loving and sympathetic nature (“love thy neighbor as thyself”).

…but many people cultivate a loving attitude towards others without religion, and recognize that cultivating a love for others nature is very fulfilling in it’s own right.

f) Provide purpose in one’s life (e.g. following gods will, or getting into heaven).

…but many atheists feel like they have a genuine purpose in life, whether it is to help others, find happiness for themselves, or promote an idea that they think is of great importance.

g) Give a person the feeling that they are not alone and that they are being looked after.

…but many people feel that they are looked after by friends and loved ones or by the government, and so don’t need to imagine that their are spiritual beings doing this job.

h) Give a person the good feeling that their is justice in the universe (good behavior is rewarded, bad behavior punished).

…but a lack of supernatural justice can motivate us to try to create justice on this earth.

i) Give a person the comforting feeling that bad things happen for a reason.

…but bad things usually have a silver lining which can be seen if we look hard enough, even if that lining is only a lesson to be learned

j) Make a person feel like they understand why things are the way they are.

…but we can learn a lot about the way things truly are without needing to delude ourselves with false wisdom.

In other words, while false religion can provide benefits for some people, it is not essential for attaining these benefits. What’s more, false spiritual beliefs can unfortunately lead to many negative consequences as well. They can at times:

a) Create conflict between or prejudice among groups with different beliefs (e.g. hatred of jews, distrust of muslims, etc).

b) Create intense and terrible fear of supernatural punishment (e.g. of being burned alive for eternity in hell).

c) Fill a person with fear that loved ones will be punished after death.

d) Cause people to behave in destructive ways out of fear of punishment or promise of reward (e.g. suicide bombers, abortion center bombers, etc.)

e) Encourage a distrustful attitude towards non-believers and atheists and those who violate religious laws (e.g. homosexuals, according to some religions).

f) Provide a self destructive purpose in one’s life full of great but futile sacrifice, like devoting much of one’s time and money to reaching a non-existent heaven or converting others to one’s own false beliefs.

g) Give a person the disturbing feeling that the devil is out to get them or corrupt them (e.g. in 2007, 70% of Americans said that they believe in the devil).

h) Give a person the false expectation that whenever they good things, they will be rewarded for them, which could lead to disappointment or disillusionment if the reward does not come.

i) Make a person think that when tragedy befalls someone else, the person necessarily must have caused it in somehow by their thoughts or actions (an idea espoused in the popular book “The Secret”, among others).

j) Give a person the false impression that they understand why things are the way they are, which could lead to them making bad decisions based on their bad information.

What’s more, religion can lead to terrible feelings of guilt, especially over sexual matters (e.g. masturbation, sex, homosexual impulses, lust, etc.). It can also lead to unwanted pregnancy (through rules prohibiting contraception), religiously justified wars (e.g. the Crusades), cruelty towards outsiders (such as occurred during the witch hunts and the Inquisition), the use of ineffective quack medicine (e.g. prayer healing and faith healing which are promoted by many spiritual systems), and it can lead to false predictions about what will occur (e.g. If I pray that I find a better job it will increase my chances, if I act on my sexual urges God will punish me, and if I check my astrological chart it will tell me what decisions are good for me).

In conclusion, false religious belief has it’s advantages and disadvantages. It is often underestimated just how serious these disadvantages can be (to get an idea of the potential impact consider what some cults do to their members and keep in mind that false spiritual beliefs are what allows this to happen). Many or most of the advantages of spiritual belief can be achieved via other means which do not carry with them the dangers of false religion.

7. Since science tells us that ever effect has a cause, there must have been a first cause. Wouldn’t it be fair to call this first cause “God”?

The idea that “every effect has a cause” is an idea that we develop from our experience in the everyday world. It is certainly not a scientific theory (you won’t find it in any science textbooks, though you will find it in some theological ones), and sometimes our intuition about the way things work (such as the idea that time always runs at the same pace, or that particles have well defined positions) end up being painfully inaccurate when we start exploring regimes outside of our usual experience (such as huge scales, tiny scales, enormous velocities and huge energies).

As a matter of fact, it is difficult to even define rigorously what is meant by a “cause”. If a politician is assassinated by three snipers shooting him at the same time, assuming that he would have died had any of those snipers not been involved, which sniper was the cause of his death? All of them? None of them? The answer isn’t clear. Furthermore, suppose that there is an apple on an apple tree. Who caused the apple to be there? Was it the tree that caused it? Or was it the gardener who took care of the tree? Or was it the woman who decided to plant the tree? Or was it the botanist who developed that particular type of apple?

Even if we do manage to come up with a sensible and consistent definition for causation, it is still not clear that there must have been a first cause. For example, if the universe always existed then there could be an infinite chain of causes and effects with no beginning stretching back for eternity. What’s more, evidence now points to the idea that not only did the universe start at the moment of the big bang, but time may have started at that point as well. Without time, it is not clear what it would mean for something to exist “before the big bang”, and therefore it may not even make sense to say that something caused the big bang.

Another problem with this “first cause is God idea”, is that even if there was a first cause, it is unclear why we should call this God. Sure, we can use whatever word we like for it, but that doesn’t mean that it has any of the properties that are often ascribed to God (such as intelligence, omnipotence, love, etc.)

A final point to consider is that if God was the first cause, then we are implicitly assuming that nothing caused God. But why are we willing to accept the idea that a being like God could always exist without cause, yet at the same time assume that everything else needs a cause to exist? This seems like an assumption for which we have no evidence, and it seems to undermine the original proposal that every effect has a cause.

8. Without religion, what reason does anyone have to be ethical? Won’t everyone just behave in a selfish, hedonistic fashion?

Fortunately there are strong genetic and social component to ethics that exist independently of religion. The vast majority of non-religious people enjoy loving and mutually beneficial relationships, get pleasure from doing good things for those that they care about, and feel guilt when they hurt others without some kind of justification. Even religious people usually have some ethical principles that exist independently from their religions. For example, many Protestants feel that divorce is morally acceptable despite the fact that divorce is specifically condemned by Jesus. Furthermore, many Christians feel that masturbation is an immoral practice (even when fantasizing about one’s own spouse), even though it is not actually mentioned or condemned in the Bible. What’s more, many Americans (both christian and non-christian) are disgusted by the idea of marrying a 1st cousin, even in the case where the woman is infertile and hence their is no chance of genetic abnormalities arising, and even though the practice is common in the old testament and in other cultures today. The empirical evidence tells us that without religion, most people still have moral principles that they will choose to adhere to.

What reasons do religious people have to follow the rules of their religion? Either, they want to attain the reward their religion offers (e.g. heaven), they want to avoid their religion’s punishments (e.g. hell), they want to avoid social ostracization, they want to be thought of as a pious and good person, they want to feel like a good person, they enjoy following the religious rules, or they feel like they owe something to their God or gods and follow religious laws out of a sense of obligation. Likewise, what reasons do non-religious people have to follow societal (or their own personal) principles of ethics? Either they want to avoid punishment from the law, they want to avoid social ostracization, they want to be thought of as a good person, they want to feel like a good person, they enjoy following their ethical principles, or they feel a sense of duty to be ethical. Essentially, the motivations that the religious and non-religious have to be good are very similar.

9. Even a single celled organism is far too complex to have come into existence through chance alone. So if evolution is true, how could life possibly have started?

First of all, given enough time, enough space, the right kinds of atoms and appropriate levels of energy, any conglomeration of particles that is capable of occurring will occur. Hence, if the universe existed for long enough and is large enough, we SHOULD expect a single celled organism to pop into existence just by chance once in a very long while, since this event is not impossible, only very, very, very rare. That being said, evolutionary biologists do not claim that single celled organisms came into existence on earth by chance alone. Rather, evolution predicts that before life existed on earth, it is a simple, self replicating molecule that came into existence through chance collisions. This molecule replicated and spread through the waters that at that time covered our planet. Since the copying mechanism of this molecule was imperfect, every so often a copying error occurred. While most of these errors lead to molecules that copied less effectively than their parent, every so often they copied even faster or more efficiently. This scenario is believed to have been sufficient for the process of natural selection to get going, leading to ever more efficient molecules, and eventually conglomerations of molecules, all competing for copying resources. The first single celled organism would then be an ancestor of these very simple replicators. Evolution’s method for developing single celled organisms is vastly more efficient than waiting around for a single celled organism to pop into existence by chance!

10. If evolution is true, then why haven’t scientists been able to discover any “transitional forms” or “transitional fossils” that represent intermediates between species?

As a matter of fact, scientists have discovered many transitional fossils that bridge the gap between major categories of species. To give just a few of many known examples, Archaeopteryx is an animal that has many features of both dinosaurs and birds, Kutchicetus is thought to be a transitional form lying between land mammals and whales, and Tiktaalik is believed to link fish and tetrapods. More importantly though, the theory of evolution tells us that all creatures are “transitional forms” because species are constantly in flux, with each subsequent generation differing slightly from the last due to genes being combined in new ways and new genes forming via mutation. The categories that we create like “fish”, “reptile”, “amphibian”, “mammal”, etc. are simply useful labels, but we could have chosen to divide animals in many other ways, and in fact there are a great many creatures that have lived that do not fit neatly into any of these groups (since evolution works through gradual change).

An important fact to keep in mind is that fossil formation is extraordinarily rare (depending both on the local environment and on the composition of the species), and those fossils that do exist can be buried deep underground. Since extinction is fairly common, It therefore should not be surprising if we have never found fossils for (and therefore, probably don’t even have names for) most of the species that have ever existed.

Some people expect that if evolution were true there would have been creatures like crocoducks (a creature half way between a crocodile and duck). Of course, no such species ever existed, because ducks do not have crocodiles as ancestors. Crocodiles and ducks do have a common ancestor however, but it probably did not look much like either a crocodile or a duck, and given how common extinction is and the rarity with which fossils are created and found, we likely do not have fossil similar to this common ancestor. What’s more, even if crocoducks did exist (i.e. ducks were the ancestors of crocodiles), if we ever found one of their fossils this would simply lead people to claim further gaps in the fossil record since we would still not have fossils lying between crocoducks and ducks or between crocodiles and crocoducks. Hence, gaps in the fossil record are not only expected but impossible to avoid, but that says nothing about either the truth or falsehood of evolution.

Sadly, most of the attacks on evolution are made by people who either don’t understand the theory, or who do understand it but choose to misrepresent it to further a religious agenda. Anyone who (like Kirk Cameron) who mentions the crocoduck as a “problem” for evolution is seriously confused.

11. If God does not exist, and evolution is true, doesn’t that make life meaningless? If life is without meaning, what is the point of doing anything at all or even going on living?

If God not not exist and it is also the case that evolution is true, that does not mean that we cannot experience a great deal of meaning in our lives. It may however mean that there is no overarching “purpose” for life, other than as a necessary consequence of the natural process we call evolution. Most of us wouldn’t ask what the “purpose” of rainbows is, as our ancestors might have, because we know that they come about as a consequence of the physics of light and the refraction caused by moisture droplets. Likewise, the existence of life on earth is a necessary consequence of the natural process we call evolution and the fact that earth’s early state was amenable to the formation of self replicating molecules. This being said, our lives are indeed very meaningful to us, and we can choose to fill them with actions and emotions that give us a strong sense of purpose. Very few people live their lives merely because they think life itself has an over arching purpose. Filling our lives with joy, love, and other positive emotions provides plenty of motivation to go on living, and we are free to choose what we want the “point” of our own lives to be by seeking that which leads to our personal fulfillment.

12. If there isn’t something “more” to life than what science tells us, how can we explain mysteries like memories of past lives, mystical experiences, psychic connections, the feeling people have that God is with them, etc?

There are many things about the universe that scientists have not yet been able to explain. To give just a few of many examples: the Big Bang, human consciousness, how memories are stored, and how (in detail) the brain generates emotions. However, science does provide explanations for many experiences that are generally thought of as being spiritual or of a paranormal nature. To give some examples of how one might respond to various spiritual or supernatural claims from a scientific perspective:

- Hearing the voice of God speaking to you, or seeing an angel.

More than 10% of people will experience intense visual or auditory hallucinations at some point in their lives. These experiences can be brought about by many causes, including by schizophrenia, epilepsy, sleep deprivation, and sleep paralysis. We know for a fact that many experiences of a religious nature are hallucinations, so it is not such a great leap to assume that most or all of them are. Since we know that many people would say that they heard the voice of God and saw angels even if these beings don’t exist, the fact that people make such claims (which, of course, we have no way to independently validate) does not constitute scientific evidence for these beings.

- Remembering past lives.

Human memory is highly fallible, and it has been demonstrated that false memories can be created (or even implanted) that seem totally convincing. Is it not possible that people’s “memories” of past lives are in fact false memories? Many past life stories come from children, who are highly suggestible and also prone to using their imagination. What’s more, many people makeup extravagant stories merely to get attention. Finally, with more than 6.7 billion people on this planet, extraordinary coincidences are bound to happen quite often, so we cannot simply assume that because an event was very unlikely it was not caused by chance (we tend to hear about the rare, extremely unlikely and remarkable events, not the billions of likely and ordinary ones).

- Mystical experiences, such as ecstatic states, and feelings of nirvana or enlightenment.

The human brain is capable of generating all sorts of interesting and powerful emotional states, ranging from enormous anxiety to joyous ecstasy. While people’s descriptions of some mystical mental states may well be genuine attempts to describe the way in which they actually felt, there is no proof that these states represent anything other than specific chemical configurations of the brain. Feeling that we are “one with the universe” or “close to god” is not the same as actually being “one with the universe” or “close to god”. A number of “mystical” experiences have been induced by altering the operation of the brain, either through chemicals (like Psilocybin, the hallucinogen found in some mushrooms) or through magnetic stimulation of the brain (as is used in the God Helmet). Other bizarre internal experiences seem to be caused by epilepsy, migraines and even strokes. Hence we do not require the existence of Gods, spirits, or paranormal phenomena to explain these experiences that people have. Of course, even if these experiences can be explained simply by changes in the brain’s state, that does not imply that these are not deeply moving experiences that can sometimes have profound effects on people’s lives.

- Psychic powers and connections

There is not credible scientific evidence that psychic phenomenon really exist. Professional psychics are known to employ a variety of tricks also used by magicians for simulating psychic ability, such as distraction, cold reading and hot reading. When people claim to have ESP related experiences in their own lives, they often are making the mistake of believing that a highly unlikely event has an explanation other than coincidence. For example, if you move your hand to pick up the phone to call your friend and your friend is calling you at that same moment, does that reflect a psychic connection or just a very improbable event? The answer is that while it is very unlikely that such a thing happens to any given person, it is very highly likely that it will happen to at least one person in the world each and every day. The only way to study psychic phenomenon is in a very carefully controlled laboratory setting, and even then, the research must be replicated by multiple, independent researchers in order for it to be considered reliable.

In conclusion, we see that science does provide explanations for these experiences that so many people assume are outside the realm of science. While these explanations do not satisfy many people who very much want to believe in supernatural phenomena, they are sufficient to explain the phenomena in question using ideas that (unlike the supernatural) have been validated by science.

13. The are only three possibilities about Jesus: he was a liar, a lunatic, or the son of God. Since he does not seem either to be a liar or a lunatic, does that really mean that he must be the God’s son?

This is actually a false trichotomy, as there are other possibilities besides the three mentioned. For example, it could be the case that the Bible does not represent the exact words that Jesus spoke, and therefore that we don’t really know what Jesus said for sure. There is general consensus that there was at least a 7 year gap (and possibly much longer) between when Jesus died and when the first of the New Testament books was written down, with the other books following somewhere within the next decades. It is unlikely that the precise words that Jesus used would be perfectly preserved without any modification over this period. What’s more, we do not have any copies of the original New Testament, with our earliest fragments being dated more than 70 years after Jesus’ death. Finally, there are a variety of early versions of the New Testament, reflecting changes that had been made to the original text, and it is unclear which of these is to be considered authoritative. All of this evidence points to the idea that we do not know for sure what Jesus said, and it would be a miracle indeed if their were not many misrepresentations of his words in the Bible as we know it today. Some Christians might argue that God would not have allowed the true words of Jesus to have been altered, but that argument amounts to assuming the existence of the Christian God in order to prove the legitimacy of Jesus, which is a circular argument in this context.

Another possibility is that Jesus may not have existed at all, in which case he would be neither a liar, lunatic, nor the son of God. However, if we are willing to assume for a moment that Jesus did exist, and that the Bible does reflect his message very accurately, then it probably safe to assume that he was either lying, delusional, or in touch with God. Of course, it is also very possible that he was a mix of these things (e.g. delusional about some things while lying about others, while still more details could have been invented by his followers or by scribes). Without assuming at the outset that Jesus was the son of God, it is very hard to prove that he was never lying and never delusional.

14. Is science just a form of religion? Don’t scientists take many things on faith?

To prove that science is not a religion, it is sufficient simply to check the definition of religion. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the primary definition of “religion” is “the service and worship of God or the supernatural”, or “commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance.” Since science is only concerned with natural things, it clearly does not fit the first definition. Furthermore, the scientific method is based on gathering evidence, and testing beliefs based on experiment, which is precisely the opposite of faith (which is belief held in spite of a lack of evidence). Of course, since scientists are only human beings, they believe many things in their lives that are not based on rationality and evidence, and sometimes hold beliefs that require faith. Furthermore, evidence is occasionally faulty and scientists sometimes arrive at the wrong conclusions based on legitimate evidence. However, the scientific establishment more than any other human establishment is designed to reject personal opinion and accept only that which is confirmed by independently verifiable experiments. While scientists cannot confirm every piece of evidence for themselves, and therefore must trust other experts for information, this is always the case in every endeavor (since no one has the time to check every single fact), and it is probably fair to say that believing in scientific results requires less faith than believing in the results of any other academic field.

The Formation of Life

The theory of evolution tells us that given the right conditions (a sufficiently powerful source of energy, the right kinds of atoms, etc.) life can form through a natural and essentially automatic process. Scientists do not understand the precise details of how this occurred on our planet (which shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that the event happened billions of years ago on a microscopic scale during a time when earth had a very different chemical composition then it does today) but they do have reasonable conjectures. What seems very likely is that prior to life there existed what we might call pre-life: simple, self-replicating molecules, the first of which was formed by a lucky collision of atoms. These replicators would occasionally make errors while copying themselves, which most of the time would be disastrous to the reproductive capabilities of their offspring (destroying the possibility of further replication), but which every so often would lead to slightly more efficient replicators. Of course, copying requires the use of chemical materials, so the replicators would be in competition with each other for molecular resources. Over time, through the processes of natural selection, those replicators that were most efficient at surviving and copying themselves in the prevailing environment would spread wider and faster than the others. Over many generations, the lineages of replicators that survived would get progressively better suited for their environment, very slowly becoming what we would recognize as life.

If this process of life generation can spontaneously begin on earth, then it can occur on any other planet, assuming that the planet has sufficiently favorable conditions for a sufficiently long period of time. In particular, since the laws of physics on earth appear to be precisely the same as those that govern the rest of the universe, and since the universe looks to be approximately the same in every direction, we should anticipate seeing other earth-like bodies distributed throughout the universe (in terms of size, position within their solar systems, chemical composition, etc), and we should expect that these planets have a probability of developing life that is similar to the chance earth had. It may be possible that life could take forms that are difficult for us even to imagine, occurring on astronomical bodies that are not very much like earth at all, but since life occurred once on a earth-like planet, earth-like planets are our best guess for where we can expect to find alien life.

It is estimated that there are far more than a trillion planets†† in the universe, providing a staggering number of opportunities for life to begin. Furthermore, the universe is more than 13 billion years old†, so there has been an enormous amount of time for life creating processes to take place. Given enough planets, it is inevitable that at least one will be sufficiently like our early earth to house life. Given enough time, it is inevitable that life will eventually form on such a planet. Hence, the spontaneous formation of life on earth indicates that life very likely exists elsewhere in the universe, though estimating the actual probabilities involved is tricky. The question of exactly how much life has existed in our universe can be reduced to a question that can be studied empirically through scientific means. Essentially, one needs to calculate how many planets (or other astronomical bodies) in our universe today are likely to have undergone long periods during which conditions were suitable for life to begin. Unfortunately however, even with the best telescopes our ability to peer through the vast expanses of space is severely limited, and our understanding of planet formation and evolution is far from complete, so this question is unlikely to be adequately answered for a long time. Ultimately though, the question of the existence of aliens is a scientific one, and therefore we should expect scientists rather than philosophers to eventually have the greatest insight into its answer.

Traveling Through the Universe

Some people believe that intelligent life is unlikely to exist outside of our planet, because if it did, we likely would have encountered it by now. This belief reflects an ignorance of the incredible size and spaciousness of the universe. To give an illuminating example, suppose that humans were interested in traveling to the star (other than the sun) that is the closest to our earth. This star is Proxima Centauri (a red dwarf, it turns out), at a distance of about 4.2 light years from earth. That means that if a space shuttle traveled to Proxima and back at the speed of light, 8.4 years would have elapsed on earth by the time they returned. In practice though, the equations of Einstein’s theory of relativity tell us that it would take an infinite amount of energy to get a massive object to move at light speed. We therefore might employ the more realistic assumption that the space shuttle traveled at about 25% of the speed of light (or, as a physicist would say, 0.25 C). This would still be an incredible scientific achievement, considering that it is about 37,000 times the speed of the fastest plane. To get a space shuttle (weighing, say, 24,000 kg like some space shuttles do today) going at this speed would require a minimum (assuming perfect efficiency in converting potential energy to kinetic energy) of about 67 million terra joules (actually, slightly more, taking into account relativistic effects), which is approximately 280 times the energy released by the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created. Of course, naively setting off 280 nuclear weapons of this kind would be far more likely to kill all life on earth than to get an object close to the size of a space shuttle traveling at the desired speed. As a matter of fact, the process would have to progress rather slowly. Since the human body is limited in the amount of acceleration it can withstand (before blood pools heavily in the legs, and worse), it would take a minimum of 15 days of accelerating to get up to this enormous velocity (unless drastic means were taken, such as keeping the astronauts submerged in fluid during acceleration). In the end, even with the stupendous speed of 25% of the speed of light, a journey to Proxima and back would take over 33 years from the point of view of someone on earth, more than a third of a human life span, and long enough to ruin all of one’s personal relationships. And let us not forget, all this would get us is a roundtrip voyage to our second closest star! The universe is an extremely spacious place, and even for an alien civilization far more advanced than ours, it would take an enormous amount of time to explore even a single galaxy, let alone the more than a hundred billion galaxies that are thought to exist. Our own milky way galaxy is thought to contain approximately one hundred billion stars, and from the point of view of someone on earth, a traveler moving at the speed of light would take approximately 26,000 years to reach earth from our galaxy’s center. In particular, this means that aliens located at our galaxy’s center could not possibly be aware of the first human radio broadcasts for many thousands of more years. Finding alien civilizations, and exploring a galaxy is long, hard work!

There is an important point to be made about the way in which Einstein’s theory of relativity relates to travel at speeds approaching that of light. Because of an effect known as time dilation, time literally moves slower for a traveler that accelerates than it does for the people (or should I say creatures?) on the traveler’s home planet. At speeds like 25% the speed of light, the effect is a rather minor one, but at 99% the speed of light or faster it is very pronounced. In a sense, this provides a space travel loophole, because an alien could theoretically travel extremely long distances at close to the speed of light without aging very much (though, the rest of the universe would continue to age normally of course, so their loved ones would probably die off before they returned from their journey). For example, while a trip from our galactic center to earth would take about 26,000 years for a traveler moving at the speed of light from the point of view of someone still on earth, from the point of view of the traveler himself the journey would feel almost instantaneous. The trouble with using this method for space travel, however, is that the closer to the speed of light one wants to travel, the more energy is required to do so (with, as we have said, an infinite amount of energy being needed to travel at light speed exactly). Hence, time dilation comes at the price of dramatically increased energy requirements. It is also probably worth mentioning that a ship traveling at these sort of speeds would be insanely difficult to navigate. There would be very little time to change course to avoid any interstellar objects, and at the speed of even only 25% the speed of light, a rather small piece of rock or ice carries an enormously destructive amount of momentum. All this being sent, with phenomenal technology, an enormously plentiful energy source, lots of time for acceleration, incredibly good navigation systems, no desire ever to return home again, and a lot of luck, aliens might be able to get from planet to planet quickly without aging very much in the process. The amount of aging they would undergo on such journeys depends on how close to the speed of light they can get without destroying themselves or using up their energy source. A hypothetical method that has been proposed for achieving speeds close to that of light is the Bussard ramjet, which involves using powerful electromagnetic fields to harvest free floating space particles during flight, and converting them to energy with a fusion powered rocket.

What about traveling at speeds beyond that of light? Unfortunately, as far as physicists can tell, no object can ever go faster than light. Of course, we can never rule out the possibility that science not yet discovered will one day allow that possibility, but the extremely well validated theory of relativity currently denies it. That being said, there are at least a couple of ways that the light speed constraint can theoretically be circumvented without actually breaking the ultimate speed limit, but they may not be of any practical use.

Quantum theory predicts the existence of “wormholes”, which are essentially open passages that connect two points in spacetime. While wormholes have as of yet never been observed directly, they may exist at an extremely small scale, popping into existence for miniscule amounts of time and bridging together very short spacetime distances. Expanding or creating large wormholes, getting them to stabilize for reasonably long periods, and controlling which parts of spacetime they connect are currently very far beyond the scope of modern science. It could easily turn out that worm holes are essentially useless from a space traveler’s perspective, no matter how advanced technology has become. Some initial calculations done by physicists of what it would take to create a useful wormhole make demands that are probably beyond the scope of ANY civilization. Some physicists have argued that large, stable wormholes could already exist strewn throughout the universe, a consequence of the inflation of the universe after the big bang. While wormholes like these could potentially be useful for interstellar travel, locating them and actually getting to them could itself be extremely difficult, and since their pathways would already be determined they would not provide much flexibility to a traveler. It is worth mentioned that these strange tunnels can cut through time as well as through space, transporting a traveler into the past while at the same time altering his position (though a wormhole could not take you back to a time prior to when it was created).

Another, totally different way that the speed constraint of relativity is sometimes circumvented is through the phenomenon known as quantum tunneling, where tiny particles jump locations approximately instantaneously. Unfortunately though, this is inherently an unpredictable process, and therefore not useful for controlled traveling. What’s more, like worm holes, this phenomenon is only known to happen at miniature scales, far smaller than even a single celled organism. In the macroscopic world of massive objects like people and spaceships, quantum tunneling is never observed.

As we have said, if aliens managed to achieve speeds nearing that of light, they would be able to explore the planets of their galaxy without aging a great deal. However, from the point of view of planet earth the process would still be extremely slow (the aliens would experience time dilation due to their enormous acceleration, causing time to run more slowly for them than usual, but we would age at our normal pace). If, for example, there were aliens at the center of our galaxy traveling at almost the speed of light directly towards earth, they might find earth in what to them is a few years, but what for us is more than 500 generations. Hence, even if aliens knew where we were located, had a desire to get to us, and didn’t care about ever returning home (after all, their own civilization might be extinct by the time they returned) we would be waiting an enormous amount of time before they got here. By the time they arrived so much time would elapsed that our planet might be destroyed, or our technology might have become as good as their own (making us a potential threat). Unless an alien civilization was lucky (or unlucky) enough to have evolved on a planet very nearby us (by which I mean, within a few dozen light years), even discovering where we are located would be highly problematic. While it is true that the radio waves that we transmit travel at the speed of light, and might potentially be detected by another civilization, these signals grow dramatically weaker as they propagate away from earth, and by the time they are a hundred light years out may be extremely hard to detect (especially when mingled with many natural interstellar sources of noise).

It is probably worth mentioning that there are some reasons to think that aliens might not travel all that much around their galaxies even after they are able achieve speeds near that of light. For one thing, humans already have the technology to destroy all life on earth, and we aren’t yet anywhere close to having ships that can quickly carry humans through interstellar space. It may well be the case that most alien civilizations that exist destroy themselves long before gaining these capabilities. If, as seems to be the case, creating massively devastating weapons is much easier than near light speed travel, civilizations might generally not last long enough to travel. On the other hand, if near light speed travel is sufficiently difficult to achieve (requiring, say hundreds of thousands of years of research by modern humans), then species might tend to be destroyed by natural disasters (such as supernova) before acquiring the technology. What is more, it is interesting to consider the role that virtual reality would likely play in an extremely technologically advanced civilization. If essentially any experience can be had virtually, the need felt to travel outside of one’s own planet (let alone, to ever leave the virtually constructed world) may become limited. Once a civilization comes to construct and accept a virtual world that accurately simulates experiences, but in which one can create or do whatever one one wishes (perhaps even invoke pleasurable feelings upon command), how much time would creatures really choose to spend in the real world?

Aliens Here On Earth?

What is a person to make of the innumerable tales of alien abductions, alien autopsies, crop circles, and spaceship sightings that have been floating around since the 1940′s? While it is impossible to examine every single one of these cases (there are far too many), upon close examination every case that I know of that was thoroughly investigated did not provide solid evidence for alien life on earth. Most of the alien abduction stories come with no corroborating evidence whatsoever (only witness testimony), and most of them occur just after (or during) sleep. Hence, it is impossible to rule out the very mundane explanations of lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis, deliberate fraud, misperception, drug use, illness, and psychosis as explanations for these alleged experiences. Once the idea of aliens became popularized back in the 1950′s alien creatures began to appear in great numbers in people’s dreams and hallucinations. As far as crop circles go, those have essentially been debunked as the work of mischievous (and creative) humans. A number of UFO sightings have turned out to be either unusual aircraft (such as air balloons), normal aircraft flying in formation, normal aircraft with unusual lighting, meteorological events, or tricks of the nighttime sky coupled with human perception errors. While many UFO sightings have gone unexplained, a lack of explanation is a far cry from proving that aliens are here on earth as there are dozens of possible explanations for a person claiming to see moving lights in the sky. In order to prove a point, professional skeptic James Randi once claimed on a radio show to have just seen a UFO. People began calling into the show, claiming also to have seen the same UFO that evenining, unaware that he had made the sighting up. Unfortunately, even photos of UFO’s do not provide good evidence as they can easily be forged (in fact, many of them are known to have been), or are ambiguous as to their interpretation. As far as alien autopsy videos go, those I have seen are obvious or known fakes (like the alleged Roswell autopsy video). Essentially, there doesn’t seem to be any strong evidence behind the alien sighting phenomenon, and it is clear that there is an enormous amount of human psychology involved. Even if aliens are on earth, the vast majority of alleged alien sightings are undoubtedly not genuine. Until actual alien technology is found (that has a function or material composition unachievable with human technology), an alien is actually detained, or video of aliens is taken that could not have been forged using computer generated imaging, it is wise to remain skeptical of stories about aliens.

An important point to keep in mind is that the fastest way that aliens have to discover that intelligent life exists on earth is to detect the radio or microwave signals that we produce. However, if the alien’s home planet is hundreds of light years away then our earliest signals would not even have reached them by now! In particular, since the invention of radio is less than 150 years old, the only possible civilizations that could have discovered that there is intelligent life on earth must be within 150 light years of us. Even worse, if aliens travel at a maximum speed of 25% of the speed of light, the only way that they could have both detected our signals and traveled to earth is if they were within 30 light years of earth when we first started broadcasting, which is a very tiny sphere compared to the size of our galaxy.

Contacting Aliens

While it is very unlikely that aliens have arrived here already, if humans continue to exist for another one hundred thousand years (admittedly a somewhat dubious prospect), it would not be terribly surprising if contact with aliens occurred at some point, most likely through electromagnetic signals rather than through direct face to face contact. Astronomers have now broadcasted messages into space, designed specifically to be detected and interpreted by technologically advanced aliens. Because of their design, these signals are more likely to be detected and properly interpreted than ordinary radio or television broadcasts. Unfortunately, contact with aliens may well be a very bad idea from the point of view of human survival. While aliens could potentially be friendly, there is reason to expect the opposite. Evolution, wherever it occurs, is a highly competitive process, requiring creatures to kill each other for resources. As essentially all creatures on earth (including humans) have many selfish and exploitative tendencies, it seems likely that aliens will as well. Under natural circumstances, creature that are too altruistic tend to be taken advantage of by more selfish individuals, and hence weeded out of the gene pool.

If humans are detected by an alien civilization in the next hundred years, the aliens will almost certainly have far superior technology to our own (by the very fact that they are able to detect us at all), and therefore could likely annihilate us with ease if they felt we might one day be a threat. With sufficiently powerful technology, for example, they could launch a weapon at us at near light speed. By the time we could even detect such an object (if indeed we would be able to detect it at all), there would be little time for us to understand it or react to prevent our destruction. The sad truth is that much of the time when groups of humans have encountered those who are much less technologically advanced than themselves (but who, nonetheless, are in control of useful resources), the weaker group has been suppressed, enslaved, or annihilated. Just look, for example, at the colonization of North America and Africa by Europeans. Unfortunately, it is not terribly unlikely that aliens would be similar to us in this regard. Even if there were only a 30% that the aliens would decide to kill us all, would that really be worth the risk? One thing to keep in mind is that if aliens do ever receive our signals and choose to respond to them in kind, the wise thing for them to do would be to obscure the origin of their messages, perhaps by reflecting them off of astronomical objects (to avoid the danger that we one day develop technologically strong enough to harm them). Hence, it is unlikely that contact with advanced aliens will actually allow us to identify their location.

Conclusion

While technologically advanced alien life is quite likely to exist elsewhere in the universe, it seems that it would be very difficult for these creatures to travel to earth, and perhaps even detect our existence in the first place. Moreover, if they did try to travel to us, it would almost certainly take an extremely long time (from our point of view) for them to make the journey. Finally, if aliens do visit us, there are reasons to think that the visit may be hostile. Unfortunately (or, perhaps quite fortunately) our only interactions with aliens in the next hundred years will almost certainly be only in our imaginations.

As an illustration of Biblical interpretation adapting to science, consider Joshua 10:12-13, where the Bible says that the “sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.” Many early Christian writers took this passage, and others, as irrefutable proof that the earth is fixed in the heavens and that it is the sun that travels around the earth. For example, around the year 1600 AD, in response to the scientist Galileo’s support for the heliocentric view of the universe, Cardinal Bellarmine wrote:

“I say that, as you know, the Council (of Trent) prohibits expounding the Scriptures contrary to the common agreement of the holy Fathers. And if Your Reverence would read not only the Fathers but also the commentaries of modern writers on Genesis, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Josue, you would find that all agree in explaining literally that the sun is in the heavens and moves swiftly around the earth, and that the earth is far from the heavens and stands immobile in the center of the universe. Now consider whether the Church could encourage giving to Scripture a sense contrary to the holy Fathers and all the Latin and Greek commentators.”

Today, however, the astronomical evidence for the earth’s movement around the sun is so strong that there is almost no one who doubts it, even among those who take the Bible to be an inerrant revelation of God’s word. It appears that in this instance there has been a shift of biblical interpretation over time to fit the scientific evidence.

The preceding argument may give the impression that the Christianity and science are not or cannot be in conflict (either because they deal with different subjects, or because interpretation adapts to harmonize with science). It is undeniable, however, that a strictly literal and inflexible reading of the Bible deeply contradicts science, and it is simply not possible to reconcile these opposing points of view. Below I have outlined a few of the most extreme examples of direct disagreement.

1. Evolution Vs. Adam and Eve

Scientists, supported by enormous amounts of evidence (including transitions in the fossil record, DNA similarities between species, experimentally induced evolution in laboratories, observed evolution of bacteria, and empirically validated prediction based in theory) argue that all life on earth evolved from microorganisms. On the other hand, according to the biblical story in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2:

a. God created plants (on the third day) prior to creating the sun and the moon (on the fourth day).

b. God created birds (on the fifth day) prior to creating land dwelling mammals (on the sixth day).

c. God created the first man from “dust of the ground”.

d. God created the first woman after the first man from the first man’s rib.

Each of these statements, when read literally, contradicts the available physical evidence, and hence is inconsistent with the scientific viewpoint.

2. The Big Bang Vs. Let There Be Light

The big bang theory for the development of our universe is now accepted as truth by nearly every physicist, supported as it is by a great deal of evidence (including the cosmic background radiation, the observed velocities of galaxies, the distribution of elements throughout the galaxies, and the distribution of galaxies throughout space). According to the biblical story in Genesis 1, however:

a. God creates the earth before creating “the light”.

b. The original earth (or perhaps the whole universe since the language is ambiguous) is covered in water.

c. God created a “firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” In doing so, He “divided waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament”. Finally, “God called the firmament Heaven”.

d. The heavens, earth, and life were created in just six “days”.

A literal reading of these statements clearly contradicts the scientific evidence for how our earth and universe formed.

3. An Old Earth Vs. A New Earth

Through the use of radiometric dating, scientists have been able to estimate the age of the earth to be within a percent or two of 4.54 billion years. A literal interpretation Genesis, however, tells us something very different. The book provides details about many of the descendants of Adam (the first man), including some information about the ages at which these descendants had children and died. A number of biblical scholars have used this information (combined sometimes with information elsewhere in the Bible) to construct accounts of how old the earth must be, with estimates ranging from about 6,000 to 10,000 years, in dramatic contradiction with the scientific estimate.

4. A Dry Earth Vs. A Flooded Earth

According to Genesis 6-9 God caused it to rain for forty days and forty nights, so that “every living substance” that he has made will be destroyed “from off the face of the earth”. The flood supposedly was so great that water covered every mountain on the planet. Scientists have found no physical evidence to support the claim that there was a massive flood that wiped out nearly all life from the face of the earth, and which would have caused substantial geological changes to the planet. What’s more, archeologists are aware of a number of ancient civilizations that survived through this period when the great flood was supposed to have occurred.

The Bible also claims that the boat that Noah built to survive the flood contained two of “every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings.” Today there are thousands of species of mammals, thousands of species of reptiles, and thousands of species of birds. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that there were only a thousand species in each of these groups in Noah’s day, the idea that he could have lived in a boat which contained at least two of each animal (in fact, he took seven of each “clean” animal ), is extremely hard to believe, especially considering that he had to store food for each, deal with their waste products, and prevent them from killing each other for the three hundred and seventy days of the journey, all in a time before electricity and refrigeration.

5. Laws Vs. Miracles

As far as scientists have been able to tell, the universe follows a set of immutable laws that are as true today as they were thousands of years ago. The Bible tells us, however, of a world where the physical laws that scientists repeatedly verify are every so often conspicuously violated by the will of God. The Bible tells of water being turned into wine, Jesus walking on water, the Nile becoming blood, Jonah living inside a fish for three days, Noah living to be 950 years old, demons being exorcised, and a few loaves and fishes feeding multitudes. Each of these events is incompatible with the laws of physics, as understood today by science.

The trouble with asking whether science and Christianity are inherently contradictory is that the answer depends on which definitions of “Christianity” and “contradiction” we care to employ. If the question is whether a literal reading of some passages of the Bible are at odds with Science, the answer is an unequivocal yes. On the other hand, there are of course many Christian beliefs that are related to issues (such as ethics) about which science has nothing to say. Finally, if we are willing to interpret the Bible as freely as we please, contradiction can be avoided. But then, of course, we are placed in the awkward position of choosing how literal each passage should be taken, leading to a multitude of possible biblical interpretations and little final consensus. Perhaps this partially explains why some Christian groups forbid condoms, while others don’t, some prohibit abortion, while others don’t, some forbid masturbation, while others don’t, and so on and so forth. Metaphorical interpretation can lead to enormous variety in beliefs.

1. Dark Matter

We still have little understanding of dark matter, the strange and non-interacting material that seems to make up about 22% of the energy of our entire universe. We can infer its existence through its gravitational effects (which, for example, alter the properties of galaxies), but we have yet to detect it directly (though there are currently attempts underway to do so). If scientists are correct about dark matter’s existence, then it seems our own milky way galaxy has much more dark matter than other types of matter. There are a variety of theories now competing to describe what dark matter is composed of, but whatever it is it interacts so little with its environment that it can easily pass through our planet and our bodies without us being able to tell the difference.

2. Dark Energy

We still have very little idea about the nature of dark energy (which, despite its name, is unrelated to dark matter), a form of energy thought to permeate all of space. Dark energy appears to be required by theory in order to account for the idea that our universe has an accelerating rate of expansion (contradicting the old belief that gravity should be causing our universe’s growth to slow). This mysterious stuff is estimated to make up about 74% of the energy in our universe, and hence it seems that the vast majority of energy is accounted for by things that we do not yet really understand! At this point we cannot rule out the possibility that one day new theories will be able to explain astronomical observations in ways that make the ideas of dark energy (and perhaps also dark matter) unnecessary.

3. Quantum Theory + General Relativity

No one yet knows how to combine quantum theory (which deals with the physics of the very small) and general relativity (which is Einstein’s theory that describes gravity) into a single consistent theory of the universe. Some people believe that the relatively new field of string theory may lead to a consistent “theory of everything”, but since it has not yet produced any predictions that scientists have been able to test, there remains ample reason to doubt that the theory is true or even useful. Interestingly, even if we do manage one day to explain all of the known forces of physics in a single, consistent theory, that theory could lead us to still deeper riddles or new unexplained forces that we are now unaware of.

4. The Beginning of the Universe

We do not have a good understanding of the very, very early universe (say, from the moment the big bang is believed to have occurred until one trillionth of a second afterward). One aspect of the big bang that makes it so troublesome to analyze is that it is one of those rare occasions when the equations of quantum theory and general relativity must be used simultaneously, and no one knows precisely how this is to be done. The equations of relativity applied on their own predict that the universe may once have had infinite density at the moment of the big bang, but it is possible that quantum effects could alter our understanding of this scenario.

5. The End of the Universe

It is not yet understood what will happen to our universe in the long run. Will it expand forever (a “big freeze”)? Collapse into a point (a “big crunch”)? Collapse and expand in endless cycles (a “big bounce”)? Tear all matter apart due to ever increasing acceleration (a “big rip”)? Or will it come to a sort of equilibrium where repulsive and attractive forces balance? Knowledge of which of these possibilities is going to come true depends on some currently unknown facts about the universe, such as its geometry (which relates to the curvature of space) and the precise amount of matter and dark energy that it contains.

6. Memory and Learning

There are still many mysteries remaining about how the brain stores memories and information. One thing that does seem to be known is that the formation of memories occurs in many different areas throughout the brain, depending on the type of the experience, rather than being localized in a single region. A related unsolved problem is that we still lack an understanding of what sort of algorithms the brain uses to learn and to make predictions from existing information. Perhaps one day knowledge of the process of human learning could allow scientists to build machines that posses what we would recognize as true intelligence.

7. Consciousness

We don’t yet have a good sense of how consciousness (or, at least, what feels like consciousness to us) arises in the brain. Some researchers believe that consciousness is a property of any sufficiently complex system which might one day be realized in silicon chips much as it is today in carbon based brains. Others suggest that consciousness may have evolved through mutation and natural selection in order to increase the chance that the organism has of survival. Still others think that consciousness may be a fiction, a mere “trick” that our brain plays on us.

Another point of uncertainty is the extent to which animals other than humans have consciousness (however we are to define it), including chimpanzees, dogs, mice, fish, birds, reptiles, insects, and microscopic organisms. Some philosophers and scientists view consciousness as a discrete property (you either have it or you don’t) whereas many think that it can come in continuous degrees (ranging from weak forms to the strong form that we have).

8. Embryogenesis

There are many remaining uncertainties as to how a fertilized egg accomplishes the creation of an entire organism. The zygote, consisting of just a single cell, divides again and again and again, eventually producing every cell in the body. Each cell that is produced follows a set of locally applied rules (many of which are unknown or poorly understood) that lead to the construction of every organ in the body.

9. The Origin of Life

The origin of life on our planet is still shrouded in much mystery. Darwinian evolution provides a theoretical explanation for how life likely began. However, the transition from dead matter to living organisms seems to have occurred relatively rapidly more than 3.5 billion years ago, during a time when we do not fully understand the conditions on earth. Furthermore, the events during that period left no fossil record behind. Hence, it is hardly surprising that there are still many things that we do not understand about how life got its start. It is even theoretically possible (though there is currently little if any evidence to support this idea) that microscopic life on earth actually originated on another planet, but spread to earth via an asteroid or comet.

10. Alien Life

If life was able to spring into existence from organic (or perhaps even inorganic) compounds on earth, then it seems extremely likely that a similar process has occurred on at least one planet orbiting one of the billions of trillions of stars in one of the many tens of billions of galaxies that are thought to exist. What’s more, if life exists on a great many planets throughout the universe, it seems probable that in at least some locations it will have evolved to be more intelligent than human beings, therefore likely possessing technology that is vastly superior to our own. However, until life is actually identified on another planet, we cannot completely rule out the possibility that we are alone in this staggeringly wide and ancient universe. Questions relating to how common life is in our universe, what conditions are necessary for life to form, and how similar life on different planets would be to us (e.g. does all life use something similar to DNA?) remain deep mysteries.

11. Interpreting Quantum Mechanics

There is currently a deep mystery relating to quantum mechanics, that branch of physics that describes the world of extremely small particles like protons, neutrons, electrons and quarks. Quantum mechanics tells us that particles do not truly have intrinsic fixed positions and velocities as they seem to in our macroscopic world. Instead, they seem to possess (or, perhaps, consist of) probability waves (often called “wave functions”) that describe their potential to be in different positions at different times. Only when we perform a measurement of some property of a particle do these probability waves collapse into a particular “choice”, at which point we can say the particle was actually in a given location or had a certain velocity. Unfortunately, the reason for this wave function collapse is not yet understood. Current proposed explanations for this phenomenon are varied, including special properties caused by the interaction between macroscopic and microscopic systems, a “multiverse” theory where there are many different “universes” of events that only agree with each other when they become entangled, a “global wave” theory where the universe is really deterministic but has local behavior which can be effected by particles arbitrarily far away, or even an explanation involving a special role for the consciousness of sentient beings (which is, of course, popular in new age circles, but lacks any concrete evidence).