Religion needs science

By Josh Fedder

Over this past Christmas break, I was surrounded by family, good food, and ever-present Christmas music. I am not Christian, yet I sat through dozens of songs joyously proclaiming that our King is born. With all this talk of virgin births, I was left to reflect on the reasons why I don't believe Jesus to be the son of God. Most of these reasons were examples of science saying, "No, religion. This is not possible."

Science contradicts numerous other biblical occurrences aside from virgin births. Walking on water is not possible, unless the occurrence is miraculous.

Likewise, living in the stomach of a whale is not scientifically possible. I don't say these things to discredit Christianity and its moral teachings, or any religion that claims to have such literal miraculous occurrences. I point this out because these things either happened or they did not. Jesus walked on water or he did not.

When it comes to understanding the physical universe, science trumps religion by a landslide. Religion invokes faith to conclude that miracles actually happened. Science explains things by demonstrating how matter functions on the level of the atom.

I think everyone ought to recognize that this is something positive. Upon looking at religion, one realizes that two of its core purposes are to one, bring people closer to God and two, to provide society with a set of moral guidelines. It is the job of science to provide us with facts and knowledge about the physical world we inhabit.

The problem with most major religions is that they were created long ago, before humans possessed the sort of knowledge we do today. Most science points to the theory of evolution as our true history.

Even if we can't travel in time to watch human evolution unfold, we don't have to look far to see evidence of evolution in other physical and mental systems: Evolution is real and does occur. Are we really expected to believe that humans descended from a man and a woman living in some kind of garden paradise?

I think an even more intelligent and amazing belief is that we evolved over the 14-billion-year history of the universe.

We went from innumerable, randomly distributed hydrogen atoms to complex, organized, physically evolved conscious beings. That seems like better physical evidence for the existence of God than believing all the animals on earth were once aboard a large boat for 40 days.

Religion needs an upgrade. Its rigid dogmatism needs to allow scientific discovery to have a say. Instead of resisting, religion should take these insights into account and evolve along with our increasing knowledge of how the universe really works.

Josh Fedder is a junior psychology major.