Science Doesn’t have the Answers
I was listening to Christian apologist Dinesh D’Souza recently. He made an interesting argument in which he claimed that science didn’t have the answers to three very important questions.
1. Where did we come from?
2. What is the point of our lives?
3. Where are we going?
The first question science is working on. Dr. Stephen Hawking has some great theories about how the universe got here and of course the theory of evolution through natural selection shows us the method of how life has evolved here on Earth. D’Souza knows this already and if he doesn’t, he really should because he is a well educated person.
As for the other two questions, they are not scientific questions so of course science doesn’t have an answer to them. Let me put it another way. Everyone reading this please take out your cell phone. Hold it up. We all know that we can talk into our cell phone and someone hundreds of miles away can hear it on their cell phone. How does this happen? Religion has no answer for this. It isn’t a miracle. God doesn’t lend out your ear so to speak.
No, religion has no answer. Religion steals science’s answer to this question and well it should. Science gives us a method for accurately understanding the world and making real predictions that we can test and observe. This method has allowed us to create cell phones and many other tools including the computer you are reading this blog on and the internet you are using to connect to this blog.
Religion predicts the end of the world almost every year. The Bible predicted that Jesus would have his second coming within the lifetime of those living at that time (Matthew 24:34). This was the one thing religion was supposed to predict and it can’t seem to do it accurately at all. Christians will say that the Old Testament predicted Jesus, but that is neither testable nor observable.
So what is the point of our lives? For this we have to turn to philosophy, not science. The existential answer to the purpose of life is to live a life of purpose. The idea is that our existence precedes our essence or purpose. It is not the other way around. We define our purpose in the universe.
Where is humanity going? If religion has anything to say on the matter, humanity will be extinct so that our “souls” can either kiss God’s ass for all eternity or be tortured for all eternity. Personally, I’ll pass. I think Humanism and science can create a much brighter future for humankind. This is what we call vision and hope. The human imagination and history help to guide our path through time. We learn from these things and work toward a brighter future.
As far as where we are going personally (i.e. after we die) the answer to that is simple enough. When we die, we are dead. However, we live on in the memories of those who come after us. What we do in life affects the lives of others. Ben Franklin said it best, “Remembered. If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten; either write something worth reading or do something worth the writing.”
Filed under: death, Dinesh D'Souza, End of Days, evolution, Hope, prophecies, Religion, science
