‘God’ is reasoning for scientific ignorance

11 Dec, 2016 - 00:12 0 Views
‘God’ is reasoning for scientific ignorance

The Sunday Mail

Shingai Rukwata Ndoro Chiseling the Debris  —
THE core of a religious disposition is that the source and sustenance of life is from the causative and creative power of a supernatural force or power, a deity. Such a deity or “God” is then assumed to be humanoid or anthropological with “an appearance, character and attributes resembling that of a human being.”

The deity is also assumed to actively intervene, respond to and get involved in daily human behaviour. It does so by requiring appeasement through perpetual petitioning, invocations and supplications combined with fervent adorations.

Scientifically, each individual is a biological seed and product of the sexual relationship of one’s parents. Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Rastafarianism) then ridiculously claim the whole humanity is a seed of Abraham.

At the beginning of life in general or origins of humanity in particular, they placed a humanoid deity as narrated in Genesis.

The human failure to explain certain things has been the “evidence” for the existence of a deity assumed to have caused everything. Ancients had to find an appropriate name for the force of life or cosmic energy.

Among all the organised religions, Christianity is the only one without such a name of a deity because the word “God” came into Christianity from a Germanic mythical ancestor, “Gaud/Gawd/Gott,” after the 9th century.

Before that, the deity was called “Theos” (Greek Concordance #2316, assumed to be the “supreme force that created and sustains the universe”) and Latin “Deus/Dieu” (itself derived from the chief deity of the Greek pantheon, “Zeus”(#2203), meaning, “lighting, brightness of sky, and clarity of vision”) (Etymology Dictionary).

Since nature abhors a vacuum, the religious people made up some assumptions that cannot be supported by empirical evidence.  To the scientific minded, a deity is a formless variable and gap filler for the religious regarding the following:

First, unknown origin,  this is what you do not know about the universe or how it came into existence.

Second, human interiority and emotions — the neurochemistry is that within and part of us consisting of intentions, feelings and thoughts. What you do not know about yourself creates and increases feelings of inadequacy, insecurities, vulnerabilities and anxieties.

Third, paternal and superior humanoid figure, this is to whom humans look up to with attributes of an alpha male, considered craving for people’s recognition and in turn controls and is intrusive in people’s lives. An individual’s conscience and empathy is then subjected to fear or avoidance of pain or loss instead of responsibility and accountability.

Fourth, nature, natural phenomenon and its physical laws and forces – the nature and the events, effects and consequences thereof which you do not have an explanation for as to how they occur or how you can avoid them if they impact negatively on you.

For example, when human beings do not know the bio-chemical processes of a diseased body, they will explain it superstitiously. Fifth, social and historical phenomena – the perpetual conflict between positive and negative, good and evil, vitality and decay.

All the above are gaps that have been reduced and even eliminated with the advancement of science. The method of science is to find and provide a credible, verifiable and objective explanation based on empirical evidence of the “How” of natural phenomenon. It continuously improves with further research.

In contrast, religion is concerned with exactitudes and certainties to make sense of anything. Scientifically ignorant, fearful and anxious human beings subscribe to a deity (an archetypal parent), regulations of social conduct as a way of recognising the archetypal parent and the moral prescriptions required of the formless and abstract deity.

For Sigmund Freud in “The Future of an Illusion” (1927), religiosity has its origin in humanity’s helplessness and vulnerability in confronting the forces of nature outside and the power within.

He said humanity developed what called an “illusion”, the material of which is taken from its own individual experience as a child. Being confronted with dangerous and uncontrollable forces within and outside of itself, humanity remembers and regresses to an experience it had as children, when it felt protected by a father whom it thought to be of superior wisdom and strength, and whose love and protection it could win by obeying his commands and avoiding transgression of his prohibitions.

Freud compared religiosity with the obsessional neuroses (neurotic disorder) we find in children. He said religiosity is a danger because it prohibits critical thinking, responsible for the impoverishment of intelligence and impedes the power of reason even in other spheres. If humanity gives up its illusion of a fatherly figure and if it faces its aloneness and insignificance in the universe, it will be like a child that has left its father’s house.

References
Erich Fromm, “Psychoanalysis and Religion”, (Chapter II, pp. 10-20, entitled “Freud and Jung”)

The Encyclopedia of Authentic Hinduism (1999), Article #16

www.encyclopediaofauthentichinduism.org/articles/16_the_prime_origin.htm

Feedback: [email protected] or Twitter @shingaiRndoro. A gallery of previous articles is found at www.sundaymail.co.zw/author/shingairukwata

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