Question from Dave:
I’m new to this site so forgive me if I’m asking something that has already been asked. I am of the opinion that religion is genetically programmed into humans from birth. I have a number of reasons for believing this and I’m wondering if this is a topic already covered and if so how do I find it?
Answer by SmartLX:
I don’t think we’ve covered it here yet, so thanks for asking.
Religion per se is not likely “programmed” into humans, but some of our instincts do make it very easy for religion to take root. When we’re young we instinctively keep close to our parents and other adult guardians, follow them, keep them in sight, and importantly trust what they say. This is definitely a good thing because it’s how we learn to look before crossing the road and to keep away from fire, but the content of the message is irrelevant to its impact. If we’re told from a young age by every adult we know that God is watching, we believe it before we have the critical thinking skills to decide whether it’s likely to be true. Once that happens, the belief persists even after the critical thinking starts because God becomes a premise in our thinking rather than a conclusion; it’s simply assumed. It can be very hard for a person in this position to even accept that the assumption can be challenged.
Another way our wiring is very inviting to religious faith is the concept of agency. From the caveman days onward, it’s been important to us to know whether what we see has a deliberate purpose to it. If a patch of long grass isn’t moving like all the rest, there might be a tiger in it. If there are carved rocks and tools on the ground, other humans are nearby and you’re on their turf. Unfortunately this is very easy to mis-apply to phenomena we don’t understand, like the orbit of the moon for cavemen or quantum mechanics for us. We tend to assume that everything with any ordered action to it at all has some agency behind it, and when we know humans can’t be behind it we imagine a sort of uber-human, which is how gods are generally visualised. Learning about science helps to dispel ideas like this, as we discover the natural causes of things that otherwise seem designed.
So while there probably isn’t a God gene or a God lobe, the brain is very well positioned to believe in such things, and religions have taken full advantage to their great benefit.
Author: SmartLX
It’s Evolution, Baby
Question from Nichole:
So, I just have a couple questions for those atheists who believe in evolution or those who would call themselves Evolutionists. I’m really curious what you guys think about it. So here are my questions:
1. In your thinking, what is evolution? How would you define it?
2. What do you think is the strongest evidence for evolution?
3. What empirical evidence are you aware of supports evolution?
4. Is there anything about evolutionary theory that makes you wonder about its validity? If so, what?
5. Are you aware of scientific evidence (or mathematical probabilities) that suggests evolution may not be true? If so what?
Answer by SmartLX:
There’s already quite a lot about this on the site so do a search in the top right for ‘evolution’ and other obvious keywords, but there’s no harm retreading old ground. I gather from your language that you’re neither an atheist nor an “Evolutionist”, so everyone has to start somewhere. I’ve numbered your questions for easy reference.
1. Evolution simply means “gradual development”. The demands placed upon followers of the God of Abraham evolved between the Old and the New Testament, for example, when Jesus became a requisite object of worship. Of course what we’re really talking about here is the scientific theory of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, which says that the first primitive life on Earth multiplied and diversified into literally all of the modern forms of life, including plants, animals and humans.
The theory of evolution takes no position on where that initial life came from; that’s a whole other area of investigation. It passes no judgement on the morality of the phenomenon, if indeed morality can even be applied to it, though some scientists have their own opinions. (Even Darwin wrote that “nature is red in tooth and claw”.) It makes no pronouncements on how we ought to behave, as it is merely an explanation and not a set of rules or guidelines. All it does is describe the development of life in all its diversity and complexity, accurately as far as we can tell from the evidence.
2.
I think the strongest evidence for evolution is the genetic and morphological (i.e. shape-related) similarities between living things. Almost every vertebrate animal has practically the same skeleton, but seemingly stretched, squashed and bent by countless generations of developmental pressure. Most of the same organs are there too. Two species of bird on one island may be able to interbreed, while seemingly similar birds from the next island over are incompatible with either species because they’ve been separated for too long. We share over 95% of our DNA not just with apes, but with any given species of mammal. Embryos of different animals look almost identical up to a certain point in their gestation.
In case you think all of this is simply signs that all life had a common designer, it doesn’t speak well of that designer because the similarities are not always a good thing. The appendix is useful to many animals, but about all it can do for us is kill us. Many deadly viruses and bacteria are just as at home in a human body as any other warm-blooded animal, which is why we can catch fatal infections from pigs or birds. The laryngeal nerve connects the brain to the larynx but it takes a detour all the way down by the heart in mammals, because the equivalent route in fish was more direct. (In a giraffe, it’s just ridiculous. Here’s a video where they’re dissecting one – it’s not too gory.)
3.
Everything mentioned above is empirical; you can see the evidence in your own body, anything else that’s alive, the recently dead and even the fossilised remains of ancient lifeforms. Really, the study of evolution is the direct study of living things, so there’s very little evidence for it which could not be called empirical.
4.
There isn’t anything which seriously throws the validity of evolutionary theory into question, or the controversy would be an argument between evolutionary biologists rather than between evolutionary biologists and religious creationists. Religion is the only reason anyone challenges it, which is why there are no secular opponents of the teaching of evolution (except for one fellow I know of, who makes quite a lot of money as a professional advocate). Not every religious person denies evolution as many prefer to see it as a divine method, but opposition to it has just that one source.
5.
Carrying on from #4, creationist evangelists present a wide range of claims about the natural world as arguments against evolution. They all have the same form: “Feature X could not possibly have come about naturally and gradually, or the odds are so small as to be practically impossible, so evolution can’t have produced X.” Even if no evolutionary path to the final result is known, this in all its forms is an argument from ignorance because not knowing how something is done does not necessarily mean it’s impossible. In practice, however, a plausible evolutionary method of producing the feature is often already known before the claim is made – the creationist just hasn’t looked it up.
I think that’s a fair representation of what atheists think of evolution, though any atheists reading this are free to correct me. So, tit for tat: what do you think of it, Nichole?
Faith in Science
Question from Markus:
Quite frequently I read the argument that it takes faith to “believe” in atheism. It’s quite easy to falsify this argument and I won’t repeat that here.
However, as opposed to answering this question on a logical and abstract level, I see a problem if we apply it in the real world.
All scientific facts we know today are well documented and proven by various methods that are verifiable. But while for science as a whole this holds true for me as an individual it doesn’t. For example I couldn’t reproduce the experiments that are necessary to prove that a Higgs particle is most likely. So I have to believe that these experiments where actually done, that the results were correct, and that the scientists doing it came to the right conclusions and were honest. I lack the resources and the knowledge to be able to verify the results.
But it doesn’t have to be something as complex as the experiment mentioned. There are a lot more basic questions which I might be able to answer had I enough time in my lifetime. The scientific knowledge available today is so vast that even the brightest individual could only verify a tiny part of it even if he dedicated his whole life to it.
It is quite easy to verify that the scientific methodology is reasonable. Furthermore it is possible to verify parts of it and therefore create personal evidence that all scientific facts might be true.
One might say that it is possible to verify random parts of science and therefore create evidence for its validity. But let’s say an individual is able to verify 0.0001% of all knowledge available today during his lifetime does he then really have enough evidence for not having to refer to faith instead?
The issue get’s even bigger if we think about the whole world population. I would say that 90% of all people don’t have the resources or the education to even try to understand basic scientific facts.
So if applied to the real world doesn’t it take faith in science?
Answer by SmartLX:
It’s quite true that although we can all apply the scientific method to some degree and gain justified confidence in its results, we can’t each do all the experiments to confirm the wealth of existing scientific knowledge. So rather than faith in science, it’s more a question of the need for faith in scientists.
Fortunately, we don’t immediately have to resort to faith in the absence of what you call “personal evidence”. Through proper documentation, second-hand evidence can also be valid. For centuries scientists have made public not only their findings but their methodology, their preparation and even the results of individual trials. Nowadays, the physical experiments can be watched online or on educational DVDs as well. Simply seeing something happen in a video and believing it right away is of course a bit dodgy, but it can be part of a body of documented evidence from which one can reasonably conclude that the experiment really happened, really gave the expected results and really does demonstrate a real-world scientific principle. This in essence is the conclusion that must be reached by a peer-review board before the work is even recommended to the public.
So, individual experiments can be researched and confirmed by anyone who’s interested even if the means to actually perform the experiments are hard to come by. There’s still the issue that lay people aren’t about to research and confirm every experiment ever done. For anything you can’t check yourself for some reason, you do have to trust the writings and other materials of working scientists, past and present. Above all, that’s a good reason for everyone to check everything they can themselves, because this kind of trust can end up being simple acceptance of an argument from authority.
That said, even third-hand evidence (e.g. articles on science published by anyone but the scientists themselves) can be justifiably accepted if you know enough. Scientific journals publicise their criteria for peer review, and you can decide for yourself whether the measures they take are sufficient for you to accept what they publish. If the scientists in question have other work available, you can look up the kind of scientific rigour they apply to their lab or field work. Knowledge of and confidence in the methods of a scientist, as opposed to his or her standing in the scientific community, can lead to real confidence in his or her findings even without knowing the specifics of a particular experiment.
It is sadly true that there is a lot of blind faith placed in science as a whole, by theists and non-theists alike. This is sad because it’s a straightforward process to become scientifically literate, to know how science is done and to have ways of judging the merits of a scientific or scientific-sounding claim. Without these tools it’s terribly easy to be taken in by pseudo-scientific scams and anti-scientific zealots using science’s own language against it. So in fact there’s a practical reason to apply as much critical thought to science as to everything else, regardless of the philosophical implications of relying on some form of faith.
The Determination Of The Universe
Question from Alejandro:
Message: I was debating (not formally) in my university about the existence of a god, and we ended up in the topic of determinism. My theist opposition argued that determinism would prove the existence of (their) god, that it would prove that, say, life was determined to exist by physics and chemistry, so there is a teleology in it.
In sum, they said the old adage: “Laws require a lawgiver”.
I believe this is a very common argument theists make to atheists, and some don’t know how to answer that.
Does determinism prove there is a god?
Answer by SmartLX:
It’s a common argument all right. Actually it’s two different ones mashed together, so let’s split them up.
Determinism means that everything that’s ever happened or will ever happened was destined to happen from the very beginning, if indeed there was a beginning. God’s plan is one interpretation of this, and a highly disturbing one because it implies that everything bad that’s ever happened was God’s plan, including all the people who’ve gone to hell. There was no way they could have done anything other than commit the sins that damned them.
Another valid interpretation of determinism is that it all simply happened because it had to, without any plan at all. Some very interesting stuff has happened, like the emergence of life and Beethoven’s Fifth and that amazing coincidence that happened to you last week, but in a universe as enormous as ours you would expect at least a few amazing things to happen by chance in a few corners of a few galaxies. If billions of people played the same lottery at million-to-one odds, you’d get thousands of winners.
Finally, regardless of any of the above, determinism can’t establish a god until determinism itself is shown to be true, and it hasn’t been. Decades ago quantum mechanics put paid to our self-assurance that every particle must have a plan, by telling us that a particle’s exact position can be a matter of probability, with no apparent reason why it’s in one spot and not another. Until the accurate predictions of quantum mechanics can all be explained by another completely different and intrinsically determined mechanism, determinism cannot be assumed to be reality.
The second argument is the argument from design, in this case applied to the origin of life. I covered it very broadly in my Great Big Arguments series, and I’ve written a few things on the fine-tuning argument which you might find relevant. Briefly, just because the universe supports life does not mean the universe was designed for life.
Have Some Woo-Woo With Your Whoop-Ass
Question from Ras:
Message: Hello, I as an atheist want to ask a question concerning martial arts.
My question (or should I say ‘problem’) is that I have a huge interest in Chinese, Korean and Japanese traditional martial arts (Shaolin, Takkyeon, Koryū, Tai chi etc.) but I don’t know if I should do them because of the Buddhism and Taoism involved, and I too am interested in learning Zen and Shingon.
Now don’t think I am contradicting myself, I seek evidence and knowledge first but because atheism doesn’t involve woo and all that I feel restricted from doing what I want, namely what I have mentioned before.
As an atheist what is your take? Sorry if my question isn’t making sense, I am being as coherent as possible.
Answer by SmartLX:
Many martial arts as set down by their creators have strong spiritual components, and I honestly don’t see the harm in learning about this aspect as you train physically. Indeed it can be beneficial, as the spiritual perspective of what you’re doing often informs the way you do it in a very practical way. The most common example is that visualising “chi” moving through your body is a great way to shift your momentum and force to the right places at the right times. My personal favourite is a Qi Gong exercise where you’re moving around an imaginary “dragon ball”, which of course is the basis for a long-running manga and anime.
Speaking more generally, since the creators had these images in mind when they designed the movements, if you use different imagery you might end up with subtle differences which make it look somehow wrong, and even cause it to be less effective in combat. So go ahead and learn the whole kit and caboodle, and then you can decide what is real and what is simply a mental aid to performance.
“HERE IS THE EVIDENCE ~!”
Question from Robert:
Why don’t atheists believe in God if atheists admit that there is no proof that He doesn’t exist? (see What is an atheist?) That’s like asking why adults don’t believe in the tooth fairy simply because there is no proof that she doesn’t exist. But more to the point, compelling evidence for the existence of God is sorely lacking.
ARE YOU KIDDING? HERE IS THE EVIDENCE ~!
AND IT IS ABUNDANTLY CLEAR~!! *** REALLY . ****
JUST LOOK. >>>>>
Fast Facts
2. The adult body is made up of: 100 trillion cells, 206 bones,
600 muscles, and 22 internal organs.
3. There are many systems in the human body:
Circulatory System (heart, blood, vessels)
Respiratory System (nose, trachea, lungs)
Immune System (many types of protein, cells, organs, tissues)
Skeletal System (bones)
Excretory System (lungs, large intestine, kidneys)
Urinary System (bladder, kidneys)
Muscular System (muscles)
Endocrine System (glands)
Digestive System (mouth, esophagus, stomach, intestines)
Nervous System (brain, spinal cord, nerves)
Reproductive System (male and female reproductive organs)
4. Every square inch of the human body has about 19 million skin cells.
5. Every hour about 1 billion cells in the human body must be replaced.
7. The circulatory system of arteries, veins, and capillaries is about 60,000 miles long.
———————————————————————
How could evolution, even over millions of years form into such amazing complexity~! How can you explain billions of cells changing into and then organizing themselves into something so amazingly complex as the human body? How did cells which have no brain, change into heart cells, lung cells, esophagus cells, blood vessel cells, kidney cells, liver cells, ligament cells, tendon cells, pancreatic cells, super complex eyeball cells, optic nerve cells, hair cells, eyelash cells, eyelid cells, nose cells, jawbone cells, teeth cells, gum cells, lip cells, muscle cells, bone cells, red blood cells, white blood cells, and super, super, super, super, super, complex brain cells — ALL ONE HUNDRED BILLION OF THEM ~!~!~!
One person likened it to putting all the parts of a watch together, then shaking all the parts together for a million years, and then voila ….. you have watch ~!
——————————————————-
And then here is this. It takes a male and female to be able to create a new life. A male and female COULD NOT EVOLVE AT THE SAME TIME~!~!~!~!
You try to explain this by saying that male and female creatures were once hermaphroditic. THAT IS INSANE~!! Why then are the vast majority of animals today, male and female, and not hermaphroditic? — But even then, how could one animal develop male and female organs —- AT THE SAME TIME ~!~?
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. —- AND SO EVOLUTION ( No God ) IS IMPOSSIBLE ~!
Answer by SmartLX (and by the way, the question arrived with #1 and #6 already missing):
I don’t know what things are like in your neck of the woods, but in most places adults don’t believe in the tooth fairy despite the lack of disproof, and no one disputes that this lack of belief is justified.
Explaining the theory of evolution as it applies specifically to each of these parts of the human body would take up far too much space, and you can get much more information simply by Googling “evolution of ” followed by the name of the body part. To address it very briefly, any positive change to a simpler organism was reinforced because more individuals survived and procreated to pass on the gene responsible, and most of the time that meant making the organism more complex. This process went on for an unimaginably long time, and has been extremely productive as we can see.
The watch analogy betrays a core misunderstanding of the theory of evolution, which is the assumption that the process is entirely random. It is anything but random, because the path of evolution is determined by which creatures survive and which don’t. There are random elements, from mutations to natural disasters to plain old bad luck, but those with better genes are far more likely to survive these uncontrolled events. Would you say that because some elements of a tennis match are random, like the wind and small imperfections in the playing surface, it’s entirely up to chance whether Andre Agassi would beat Peter Dinklage in a friendly set? Of course not. Some differences really do make a difference to the result.
Before gender distinction and sexual reproduction developed, individual organisms were not hermaphroditic. They were asexual, and reproduced through either cell division or forms of cloning. They didn’t have two sets of sexual organs, they had none. Gender developed as a reliable way for two individuals to exchange genetic information and thus allow for recombination of DNA, speeding up the process of evolution by creating more variables.
There are lots of fascinating details like the above to study, but ultimately your argument is a textbook argument from ignorance. You dismiss evolution as a valid explanation for the complexity of life, then immediately assert that God had to have been responsible. If evolution is false, there needs to be positive evidence that your alternative explanation is true or else it could just as easily be some unknown third option. God seems like the obvious explanation to you because you’ve already accepted that there is one, but why would a non-believer discard an explanation with a mountain of evidence behind it in favour of a supernatural explanation with no available substantive evidence at all?
What Alex Tanous Saw
Question from Lukas:
I came across this while discussing a believer. Its about Alex Tanous a psychic and theologian. Believers claim and also like Alex Tanous that he was successful in a OBE [out-of-body experience] experiment where he identified several symbols thus proving a ethereal soul. There is little skeptical information about this guy on the Internet therefore I am asking if someone could take a look at the research about him:
http://www.alextanous.org/sites/default/files/172_370278175.pdf
The research about him is on pages 1-3 and then the OBE experiment the believer pointed me at was from page 4 with the results of this experiment is on the page 12: He scored 114 out of 197.
I also started a thread on the Skeptic Society forum and posted there all the information and skeptical answers I could come up with. If someone could please look into this I would be very grateful. Thanks for your time reading this and have a nice day.
Answer by SmartLX:
I checked the Skeptic Society forum, and if Shen1986 isn’t you on this page then it’s worth reading how he’s driven the issue along. In the third post, only three hours after he first raises the issue, Shen brings up numerous red flags concerning various aspects of the 1974 experiment. The story doesn’t regain much credibility after that.
The amount of time that has passed is the major barrier to determining the exact circumstances of Tanous’ remarkable result. Little public documentation remains 39 years later, and the people who conducted the test would be hard to track down if they’re even still alive. If the test had happened today and we were investigating it in 2052 it might be a different story, but in the 1970s not everything went straight onto a computer, let alone the Internet (which at the time was used almost exclusively by universities and the military).
As it is we have an unsolved mystery, and that’s all. This is not a proven miracle; the results were not reproduced with Tanous or anyone else, despite the fact that practical observations during an OBE or near-OBE are supposed to be a learnable skill. Tanous reportedly worked to teach himself to “separate the wheat (OB vision) from the chaff”. It should have been easier subsequently, but there were no further attempts which were more successful and are therefore more famous today. It should not have been a freak result, but apparently it was. Its impact on modern science is minimal, if any.
Why Evolution?
Question from MiK’la:
Why do you believe in evolution? It is completely unscientific. It cannot be observed, repeated, or tested. Can you give me some evidence for evolution that can be observed, tested, or repeated? (and please give your answer in as little words as possible.)
Answer by SmartLX:
As few words as possible, huh? Okay, I’ll do it in two. Go here.
Seriously though, while evolution itself is very difficult to directly observe or repeat (mostly because it’s so slow), the evidence for it can be readily observed, and some aspects of it can be tested. DNA tests comparing our genome to to that of any other living creature will find at least some similarity, indicating that all life had a common ancestor and therefore we’re all part of the same family. The flu virus evolves so much in a year that the antibodies produced by a year-old vaccine will fail to recognise it. Some species of insects have diversified under observation into two populations incapable of breeding with each other, by definition becoming two species. Artificial selection applied to either plants or animals can radically change their appearance and behaviour in a relatively short space of time, and there’s no barrier to natural selection doing the same over millions of years.
To say that evolution is unscientific is to completely misrepresent science. Let us know why you think the mountains of evidence for evolution somehow don’t count if you like, and on whose work you base this conclusion, but in the scientific community there is no controversy at all over the basic fact that evolution has occurred.
Unpleasant Family Discussions
Question from Chance:
I grew up Christian, I’m not anymore. I don’t consider myself anything, just a human.
My question is how can I deal with my family that is all Christian and talk down to me? It’s starting to piss me off, but I’m always the bigger person. I’m kind when we debate ideas and religion, but they are the total opposites. Any opinions?
Answer by SmartLX:
There’s not a lot to go on here. If your family sees you as lesser or inferior as a result of your apostasy, it’s likely because of their underlying assumptions about the nature of believers and non-believers. You may wish to go beyond a discussion of the religious topic at hand and question their treatment of you directly, because it will very quickly lead back to the topics of faith and reason.
Comment with some extra information if you like. How do these exchanges begin, and how do they usually end? How do you go about being the “bigger person”? In what ways are they unkind, and what triggers this behaviour?
The Benefits of Irrationality?
Question from Ariel:
Hello,
I am interested in your perspective as an atheist on a few things. I am not an atheist, nor am I a theist. I am certainly not an agnostic. As a bit of background: I grew up in an entirely atheistic, secular environment and have only begun exploring religious and spiritual traditions recently. I believe that within all mainstream belief structures that I’ve thus far encountered (predominantly atheist and Christian branches), there arises at some point or another – in some structures it is more hidden and deeply buried than in others – some sort of intellectual dishonesty. In most Christian traditions this dishonesty manifests in a relatively evident form of cognitive dissonance. Obviously very few Christians fully cognize the implications of their beliefs or else they would not be able to function in our pluralistic society. To honestly believe that 3/4 of the people I encounter are going to be punished eternally would put a strain on my existence that would become unbearable. The dishonesty I feel I encounter with atheism is that it cannot provide an answer for the qualitative aspects of our human experience. Answers to questions of beauty, morality, meaning, etc cannot be answered within a materialistic paradigm. Science deals with quantifiable evidence in a horizontal plane of existence while religion deals with qualitative evidence in a vertical plane of existence. It’s been often stated that science deals with the How while religion deals with the Why.
Of course that’s not entirely true. Science can begin to explain Why a particular organism behaves in a certain way by referring to various hypotheses within evolutionary science or psychology or what have you. But any answer to a why in a strictly causal, materialistic paradigm leads to another why, and you end up with an infinite regression. The big questions remain mysteries. When a religious person asks: how does your life have meaning without a God? What do you base your morality on? – those are very valid questions, as much as skeptics seem to want to scoff at them. The answers that often arise are answers of common sense: you make your own meaning, of course! You are moral by treating others kindly and valuing their lives, of course! But none of these answers warrant ‘of course’s.
The way that I see it, atheists have internalized the moral foundations that have been developed in religious traditions and have secularized them without realizing that, in removing ‘God’ from the equation, the ‘foundation’ part of ‘moral foundation’ is eliminated. I believe it might be worth studying / engaging in religious traditions, as well as poetry, speculative philosophy, etc for hints at some sort of higher truth than cannot be captured by adamant rationalism. There is a hugely mysterious aspect to our human experience that should not be suppressed by strict adherence to a particular *method* of thinking, like rationalism, logic, empiricism, the scientific method. These are just that: methods. They are particular closed systems in which we have trained our brains to think according to established rules and patterns. The thing about the aforementioned disciplines of speculative philosophy, religion / theology, poetry and arts in general is that they may, in their most honest and non-dogmatic manifestations, experience a high level cognitive freedom that allows them to delve into the vertical plane of existence. It is in this freedom that we may learn to take the leaps of faith that provide us with the ‘meaning’ that we so desperately crave as human beings. Paul Tillich suggested that with the modern emphasis on rationalism, there has been a removal of ‘depth’ from our experiences. That’s why you see so many people falling victim to consumerism or substance abuse. We are trying to kill an eternal God and substitute him with fleeting things, and it’s not leaving us very fulfilled. It is actually also this rise of rationalism / atheism that has led religions to become as literalized as they are (think about the doctrine of biblical inerrancy established in the early 20th century). Religion feels that it has to move from the vertical to the horizontal in order to duke it out with science, which is why we are now seeing a much more explicit divide between atheist-theism than we may ever have seen in the past.
Anyway. I probably ranted. I am wondering whether you feel there is any space for non-rational thought and belief structures in the ideal future that you envision for humanity.
All the best.
Answer by SmartLX:
Hi Ariel.
Science and the associated rational way of thinking does not presume to have all the answers. This is a major difference from religious thinking, which does presume that the ultimate answer to every question is God. This becomes problematic when the questions themselves start to involve God, because it’s difficult for a thing to explain itself. More importantly, a believer can assert knowledge of an ultimate answer and therefore have an answer for everything, but what is the value of an answer if you don’t know whether it’s right?
While the “big questions” remain a mystery, science provides reliable answers for many of the “smaller” questions with practical applications for our daily lives. Because we know the rate at which the flu virus is evolving, we know how often a new flu vaccine must be created and distributed to ensure reasonable coverage (roughly every year). Because electricity applied to a magnetic coil in the right way can cause it to rotate, motors function. Because human beings have near-universal natural instincts towards not only self-preservation but living in social groups, we can develop laws and social contracts that will benefit us all. Meanwhile we keep working on the things we don’t know, so that we might actually discover the facts. (Incidentally, if you search this site for blanket terms like “morality” you’ll find that we’ve done far more than scoff at such questions.)
Rather than atheism secularising religious moral foundations, religions have claimed credit for ethical norms that existed long before they did; atheists simply tend to be the ones to point this out. For instance, the Commandment not to kill from the Book of Exodus was preceded by many entirely secular laws against killing, devised separately by civilisations the world over.
You can philosophise and go as “deep” as you like into any aspect of religion, but as soon as you take as a premise anything for which you have no evidence is true, you are in the realm of the hypothetical. You may experience profound realisations about your chosen topic, but as they may rely on false premises they are built on sand, and it may not be possible to translate your progress into anything which will be of practical help to anyone. This is the main problem with theology, from a non-believer’s perspective. Religion is often touted as another “way of knowing” besides science, but what is it that we “know” exclusively through religion that we actually do know? Comment if you have an example.
If I had to try to boil all of this down, I would return to my first point and say that while science cannot answer everything, religion has no more authority to answer anything and yet does it anyway. Which one you rely on for your worldview depends on whether you care more about having all the answers or being justifiably confident that the answers you have are correct.
Finally, there had better be room for non-rational thoughts and beliefs in the future, because no matter how hard people try to be rational they will always fall short at times. We’re all human, and no one’s always entirely rational. Fortunately, leaps of reasoning can indeed be achieved by taking seemingly illogical or irrational steps, though only if logic and rational analysis are applied to them afterwards. New ideas can come from anywhere, but you have to sift through them once you get them.