DangerousTalk

Often times when I am discussing religion with a fundamentalist Christian, they will change the subject on me and say things like, “well, you believe that the Universe came from nothing,” or “well, you believe that people came from monkeys.” I wish I was making that up, but it is true that fundamentalist Christians have repeatedly attempted to change the subject with those answers. The scary part is that they also claim to understand the theories of the “Big Bang” and “Evolution.” But that is another topic.

Aside from their grossly inaccurate view of these two theories, their argument amounts to, “don’t criticize my answers to the big questions because your answers are also ridiculous.” The problem is that those aren’t my answers. Before we get into my answers, we need to know what the questions are.

What was before the Universe? And how did we get here? These are the two basic questions that every child asks. For religion, the answers are the same, “God did it.” For science, the answer to the first question is, “We don’t know… yet.” While the Big Bang is a great theory and the scientific community is reasonably sure that is how the Universe started, it does not address what came before the singularity. We don’t know what came before the Big Bang. All we can measure is what came after the Big Bang and what the effect of the Big Bang is on our universe. While there are many ideas about where the singularity came from, we just don’t have enough data to determine any real “first cause” or “prime mover.” Before the Big Bang, the laws of physics and cause and effect may not have even existed. So we just don’t know… yet. Science is always learning new things and is continually searching for more evidence and new information so that some day we may have an answer.

As for the question of how we got here, we have a much better idea. The theory of evolution does give us a pretty accurate idea of how human life started on Earth, but we still don’t know the nitty-gritty of it completely. On this question however, science has made steady progress and the theory of evolution continues to evolve to fit the latest discoveries and evidence. As it is with all science however, we cannot say with the absolute certainty that fundamentalist Christians demand that we have all the answers. The fact is that while science is reasonably certain of how life began on this planet we could be wrong on some of the details. New evidence can come to light, which will cause science to adapt its theory. But as time goes by and more and more evidence continues to confirm the theory, we become more and more certain of it. Yet we can never really claim to “know with absolute certainty.”

The point here is that while fundamentalist Christians try to change the subject by butchering the scientific theories, all they are really doing is acknowledging their own ignorance. First by dodging the actual issues at hand and second by showing their ignorance about science and the scientific theories they hope to demonize.  The fact is that while Christians can change the subject and attempt to criticize theories they don’t understand, that still doesn’t make their ridiculous beliefs any less ridiculous. God still doesn’t answer any of the questions that Christians claim it does. We still don’t know what came before the universe or how we got here from the Christian perspective. “God did it,” is simply not a sufficient answer to the questions.

Filed under: Religion