Science VS Religion

When you prowl the Internet, you can occasionally see people arguing about science versus religions. Usually both delegates have pretty bad arguments: The science guy tries to explain what science is, while the religion guy tries to gain support from quotes of religious texts.

Religions try to explain the existence, and in a way try to link the progress in a life to the afterlife. Religions are works of imagination, no matter how strong an individual tries to believe or is impressed by a story. Religions are a pre-science way to understand or explain the happenings in the world, but most importantly ways to give a life a purpose. There have been beliefs probably for millions of years. People tried to explain why some disease killed somebody or why lightning struck a tree. Beliefs and religions come and go. Some more sophisticated religions contain references to real life. For example, no doubt Jesus lived, but was he really “a magician” or a miracle maker? It is more likely that he was an extremely influential person with pretty good insights to life, but everything else around it is probably fabricated or misunderstood. People tend to have an ability to magnify the real happenings and fill empty spaces to have an uniform story to pass on to next generations. It is like a habitual trait. People need structure. Trying to connect the existence, reason for it and real life occurrences to one explanation is kind of far fetched. If somebody dies, why does it have to be a will of a god? It could also be that the god had nothing to do with anyways, so you are practically blaming the god for no reason, which is heresy and blasphemy?

I have never read any religious texts completely, mainly because the executions are outdated or themes are kind of childish. I started to read the bible, but I had to stop when there started to come out a list of some kind of family tree of a guy(?). I actually have something better to do in my life, than read something, which does not have any actual relevance to reality, or the reference is long gone. It reminded me as if I started to read a phone book, and from that trying to understand life. I believe that many religious texts have good intentions and life advice when reading between the lines. But so does reading a phone book, which tells plainly that there are just people and this is the list of life? People tend to explain things that they do not understand. There are also psychological factors that can affect the perception of an individual. Somebody was probably in psychosis or on drugs, who knows?

Where is the problem? The problem is when a person tries to convert another person or push predilections onto somebody else. Is it right to exploit a person who is vulnerable to believe whatever is there and sounds good? Is it right to enforce beliefs to somebody who does not want to believe? Same goes another way, is it right to enforce thoughts on somebody who does want to believe? Does this actually mean that your religious beliefs are wrong if you are trying to enforce your beliefs? Is it evidence that if there are multiple religions, they are probably all wrong? In the end, it could even escalate to violence, which is proven many times in history. Anyhow, religious texts are always prone to be exploited by somebody who is narcissistic, psychopathic and power hungry, or more commonly self-righteous. This is where religions are at their weakest. People like to prove that another person is wrong. It is a continuous loop, which does not prove anything.

Thoughts. People are built from thoughts? It is normal to have thoughts and feelings, that is what makes us people, humans. This is how science explains life. Science is a key to everything, to understand the lock of existence, is probably the most religious way to explain science. Science can be right or wrong, but the difference to religions is that science evolves, innovates and reforms its concepts and implementations. Science never claims to be the ultimate truth, as some religions do, but it is the most sophisticated tool to understand “the truth”. For example, religious beliefs and texts are built around predefined concepts, there are boundaries. During the test of time, either the religion will disappear, it will stay as a hollow shell for a tradition, or the texts will get adjusted. By adjustment, I mean somebody uses his power to interpret religious beliefs/texts to match the purpose of the belief and religious agenda to the current ambiance or attitude of the population, as if trying to rebrand the old ways. Religion is prone to be mismanaged by a man, and a vector can be made that it is a will of a man. Religion is the feeling of presence of a supernatural force, and a journey is to honor by worshipping it and finding markers leading to the righteous path. From a “scientific” point of view, it is completely normal to have feelings, but the difference between right and wrong is how extreme these feelings are driving an individual to a path, how ill the methods are to enforce thoughts. Probably the most common sense method to spot an individual, who has lost the way of the god, is the one who does not understand that there are other people around, who believe in other realities. Belief is an individual feeling and it should gather around people who believe the same way, not enforce it on those who do not want to. This is what divides a man from right and wrong, ill and sane.

Science is an idea of thinking in the context of finding evidence. Classical fallacy between religious and scientific people in the Internet is an argument similar to this: Triggering effect could be (not making a remark that it is always a fault of a religious individual) that an religious individual brings in something religious to the table in the subject of, let say, sports. We can even take more specific subjects, for example Mixed Martial Arts and Khabib Nurmagomedov, and his glorious success in life. A religious person says that the success of Khabib is because of a god. Scientific guy says that there is no god. Then the interaction between these guys takes a lane of cluttered perceptions of realities, which actually proves the point. Religious guy says, which is actually something that somebody has said, that if you can not touch or see gravity, it does not exist. The last notion from a religious “proof” is probably the simplest rhetoric I have ever seen, but it is also proof of the quality of the mob. The mob means a generic population who can not think more sophisticatedly, probably lack education, has limited understanding, but still have to take part in an argument. The argument keeps going on and on in the same lane of nonsense, both guys trying to poke each other with some derogatory ideals, in simplest terms, just to hurt each other. And it is not just only about this case sample, but it is probably happening widely in the whole Internet. Is it really surprising? No, actually it is not, you can see the same quality of talk in any local pub around cheap beer (or other substance) in any part of the world. Or the kids in the local kindergarten having an argument over who has a stronger father. The point is, if you are a believer of science, you are probably wrong. If you are a zealot of a religion, you are probably wrong. Why is it so hard to keep some slack in your thinking? Why is it important to always be right and somebody else has to be wrong? I think the key for thinking is the classical phrase, I know that I do not know. Let people believe what they want to believe. Let people experience life on their own terms.

Another case study was when I had an argument with a person who had a background in science and in scientific institutions. The argument was about the subject of intelligence and motivation. The subject raveled around a board game. I said something similar that I do not have the intelligence to beat my opponent, and the opponent said that there is only motivation. The argument evolved a little while and the person deemed that the only difference between people is the motivation, in his words people are pretty much equal, for example in intelligence. I tried to illustrate the intelligence part by taking an example of Magnus Carlsen, probably the best chess player in the world. With simplified terms and Magnus Carlsen, I tried to explain that intelligence is a physiological trait, determined by brain tissue, which derives a usage of memory and pattern recognition. The other person insisted on his beliefs, and explained that “motivation is a complex thing”. I do understand that there is a motivation, which is the defining factor between a person who has motivation and the other who has not. But in my opinion, motivation is only a beginner attribute. It is not a magical well, which will give a person supernatural powers to exceed the physiological definitions. Motivation can be measured by time. With that time, you can train, study, focus and do whatever you believe helps to achieve victory, even cheating. If there are two individuals who have the same amount of motivation, the only separating things are the physiological traits and sometimes luck. That is why there are rankings, for example in chess or intelligence quotients. I could not ever beat Magnus Carlsen in chess, even if I practiced 24 hours a day for the rest of my life, with the best help I could get in the world. This is the fact. Even my psychologist said in my evaluation that my intelligence is lower than most people have, mainly because of poor memory usage, and I can not do anything about it. But the other fact in this argument, is that the other person is not familiar with the competitive world: He does not like or play video games, he does not watch sports or he has never taken part in any competitive sports. Practically he did not have a perspective to the subject at all, which is why he believes this way. We happened to play a board game, and the argument got him naked, even though he is a very bright and intelligent person. I did not start bickering about it much, I just let him believe what he knew. Nothing I could do about it. There is a darkside, though. Some people purposely mask their achievements under the motivation, even if it is obvious that they are cheating, for example in the competitive bodybuilding business. Substances are “illegal” in sports, so it is good to have a chance to give the audience false impressions of what is possible and what is not.