The argument between science and religion is one that has been passed down from generation to generation. Although there is no absolutely clear answer as to whether or not one side is more right than the other, I personally tend to agree with the scientific side of the argument.
A very common theme in the religious world is the work of God through design. In religion, design is seen as everything around us having a designer, who in this case is God. If someone were to pick up a watch off of the ground, that person unconsciously determines that the watch was made by a watchmaker, who bought the parts from someone else who made the parts, etc. Theistic people think in the same way, where everything was specifically designed by God, who is the original designer. However, Richard Dawkins describes design perfectly from an atheistic point of view, stating that design is an illusion that comes from the phenomena that happens all around us in nature. Natural selection and evolution has created everything around us after four and a half billion years.
Dawkins also states that nature is so complex that it is often misunderstood, in that nature is design, but just though adaptation and evolution. I thought this was a really good point because natural selection itself made organisms evolve, or design themselves, to thrive in their environments and survive. Although Dawkins’ beliefs cannot prove that God does not exist, one of his main ideas is that his philosophy makes the existence of God highly improbable. This philosophy is very similar to saying that there is a comic book on Pluto, as it cannot be proven, but common logic tells us that it is highly unlikely.
Another advocate of atheism who I believe is highly intelligent about the subject in Penn Jillette. He became an atheist in his teenage years as he questioned the bible and its’ verity. Now, Jillette is a comedian, actor, and magician in Las Vegas. He believes that religion, like magic, is an illusion rather than a mystical power. I found this belief to be very interesting, as I also connected a magic trick to the stories of religion in books like the bible. A magic trick can be passed on from person to person, however everyone is different, so each person who learns the trick does it in their own unique way. I connected this with biblical stories because they have been passed down for thousands of years, and surely they cannot be exactly similar to the original. The stories have been passed on through all ages/races/languages/genders, and like the magic trick, everyone has their own interpretation of the story. This makes me question how reliable the bible stories are, as they have been altered for many years, and continue to be altered today in order to find their true meaning. As science can be tested and proven, the trying to find the original interpretation of the bible is impossible.
Penn Jillette also gives his own opinion on design and creationism in his show, Bullsh!t:
Due to the growth of individualism and freedom of being oneself in the past few years, I believe that people are beginning to care less about the subject of religion. As individualism continues to rise, less people are attending church as they try to find their own meaning of life, and young adults try to figure out who they are rather than why the world works and its origins. I think that because of problems such as environmental changes and political disagreement, people are trying to find out how they themselves can change the world, rather than waiting on an omnipresent being doing the job for them. Through this, science is given the advantage, as it is able to provide hard evidence as to why things work in the ways that they do. This coincides with the way that the world works today, as people are always looking to improve, giving religion a much worse advantage, as everything is already written down in the book and cannot be changed. I can see this trend continuing in the future, as millennials grow older and become more infused with the world and its problems, as well as science becoming more advanced, harming the static stories of religion, and proving why science is becoming a more effective argument than atheism.
Works Cited
Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker. United Kingdom, Norton & Company, 1986. Web
Npr. “There Is No God.” npr, 21 Nov. 2005, www.npr.org/2005/11/21/5015557/there-is-no-god. Accessed 19 May 2017.
Burleson, Donald R. “Richard Dawkins.” World Religions: Belief, Culture, and Controversy, ABC-CLIO, 2017, religion.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1650186. Accessed 7 May 2017.