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In the second book of the Inheritance Cycle, Christopher Paolini steps out of the storyline of Eldest for a second to have 2 characters, Eragon (the main character), and Oromis (his teacher) discuss religion. I found it a rather good jab at Christianity, and even if I am reading into it a bit, seems to reflect the views people with scientific backgrounds have about religion.

While this is toward the latter half of the book, there are no spoilers…

“Where do you think the world came from, then, if it wasn’t created by the gods?”

“Which gods, Eragon?”

“Your gods, the dwarf gods, our gods… someone must have created it.”

Oromis raised an eyebrow. “I would not necessarily agree with you. But be as that may, I cannot prove that gods do not exist. Nor can I prove that the world and everything in it was not created by an entity or entities in the distant past. But I can tell you that in the millennia we elves have studied nature, we have never witnessed an instance where the rules that govern the world have been broken. That is, we have never seen a miracle. Many events have defied our ability to explain, but we are convinced that we failed because we are still woefully ignorant about the universe and not because a deity altered the workings of nature.”

..skip a bit..

[Oromis] “Dwarf priests use coral as proof that stone is alive and can grow, which also corroborates their story that Helzvog [the dwarf god] formed the race of dwarves out of granite. But we elves discovered that coral is actually an exoskeleton secreted by minuscule animals that live inside the coral. Any magician can sense the animals if he opens his mind. We explained this to the dwarves, but they refused to listen, saying that the life we felt resides in every kind of stone, although their priests are the only ones who are supposed to be able to detect the life in landlocked stones.”

That’s the interesting part. Many, many things believed by religious people cannot be proved, so they are told to rely on their faith that it did happen, even when there is evidence the opposite is true. For example, check out the “Conservapedia” entry on dinosaurs: http://www.conservapedia.com/Dinosaurs. This link should take you to the Dinosaur Fossils section. Check out the 2nd paragraph:

Evolutionists point out that radiometric dating of rocks containing dinosaur bones shows them to have formed between 65 million years ago and 250 million years ago, whereas rocks with human bones in them are dated as being much newer (less than 5 million years old). Young Earth Creationists believe that these methods of dating rocks provide false results, and therefore reject this argument.

So, this proven scientific method, which can accurately tell when objects are up to 6000 years old and can tell approx how old objects are outside of that range, have placed dinosaurs at 65million to 250 million years old. Religious factions say this must be wrong, and the dating must provide false results because “the bible tells us otherwise”.

Another classic excerpt from that site is:

It is sometimes asserted that if human bones aren’t found with dinosaur bones, then dinosaurs and man didn’t live together. Creation scientists point out that this is a false assumption; if human bones aren’t found buried with dinosaur bones, it simply means they weren’t buried together.

Can you count the rash assumptions in that last statement?

1. Humans and Dinosaurs lived together because god (lowercase because I don’t know which I’m talking about) created dinosaurs on the 6th day and man on the 7th day.
2. Dinosaurs were buried by humans when they died.
3. Man intentionally buried dinosaurs away from their burial grounds.
4. If man and dinosaurs lived together, then man was never killed by a dinosaur because their bones were never found together.

Then there are other topics, like Moses getting 2 of each “animal” on the boat, regardless of the physics surrounding creating a boat of that size and finding/corralling every animal possible.

So, getting back to the basis of this article and away from the hilarity of the Conservapedia, the reason people do believe in religion is simple, fear. There’s always that 1% chance that one of the parties involved is wrong. Maybe the Heaven’s Gate Cult, those that put $5 in quarters in their pocket, wore their Nike sneakers and killed themselves waiting for the Hale-Bopp comet were right and we’re all screwed. I’m not an athiest, but damn near close, and I’m smart enough to at least realize that religion came about as a method for self governance. The powers that be (government, society, whatever) needed a way to keep people from killing each other without just saying “’cause I said so” It started with the Greeks and the Romans having their people work to please the gods (including sacrifice, which thankfully died off [pun intended]). These governed people stopped killing each other, stopped stealing things, stopped “coveting thy neighbor’s wife” because there was an invisible being over their shoulder watching everything they do. In that respect, it’s brilliant.

In closing:

“We [the elves] give credence only to that which we can prove exists. Since we cannot find evidence that gods, miracles, and other supernatural things are real, we do not trouble ourselves about them. If that were to change, if Helzvog [the dwarf god] were to reveal himself to us, then we would accept the new information and revise our position.”
“It seems a cold world without something… more.”
“On the contrary,” said Oromis, “it is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our own actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment…

Well said…

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Talking out of turn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.