Although there is no doubt that religion has been the tool of the con man (and the tyrant) since the early days of humankind, I doubt that what Mark Twain said is true, or even that he meant it as a serious statement.
It seems far more likely that when Homo sapiens came along somewhere around 100,000 years ago, with his enormous, recently developed brain, he began to pose important questions like: How did all this stuff get here? What causes day and night and the dozens of other features of our world that are now referred to collectively as astronomy? Why do bad things happen to good people, and vice-versa? What causes illness? What happens to us after we die?
The idea of an all-powerful God, or perhaps a number of them, seemed at the time to be the best possible explanation. But about 2500 years ago there arose a stirring in our species that perhaps we might begin to figure this stuff out by studying it and applying reason to it.
Aristotle told his pupils to design and use experiments, and the scientific method was born. Ever since, we’ve been chipping away at the vastness of our ignorance of natural phenomena.
Seminal astrophysicist Carl Sagan explains why uncomfortable ideas may be banned in religion, they must not be shunned in science.
This is an important concept in American life today, as conspiracy theorists are convinced that climate change denial cannot be considered in scientific circles.
I happened to bring this up in my interview with Dr. V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution, who has been amassing data on global warming since the 1970s. He laughed, and explained, “If I could prove that human activity was not causing temperatures to rise, I’d be be one of the wealthiest and most famous scientists in world history.”
As suggested at left, a great deal of the hardship that has befallen the U.S. was simply bad luck. Al Gore came within a whisker of victory in 2000, a win that would have forever changed the course of our nation in terms of energy policy, education, healthcare, and international affairs.
If Bernie had become the 2016 nominee, we wouldn’t have had Hillary Clinton telling our country’s most mean-spirited and least-educated people that they were “deplorables,” ushering a criminal sociopath into the White House.
We Came Incredible Close to Averting the Disaster that Is Donald Trump
Social democracies are nations in which the tax base provides everyone with healthcare and education, and where the richest and most powerful people are not free to ruin the environment.
I run into someone from one of these counties a couple of times a month, and I like to ask why their people are consistently at the top of the World Happiness Rankings. The normal response is always some variant of the following:
It’s hard to be happy living in a society that is indifferent to the suffering of others. It’s part of the very nature of human beings to care about one another.
Something else I notice about these places is that very few people are religious. Sweden, e.g., is about 80% atheist.
That means no childish tribalism, no ridiculous dogmas, no worries about eternal damnation, etc.
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