Don’t we need a god to save us?

Susan asks: Seeing all of the bad things that happen in our world, how can you not pray to a god to save us from all of this?

Jake answers: Because we’re doing fine enough on our own. Yes there are plenty of problems in the world. Hunger, violence, disease, finances, but compared to 100 years ago, we are as a species doing much better then we have in the past. People are living longer, there is less violence, people have access to information like never before, and so on. People pay to much attention to the news whose job it seems to be to report even the most insignificant negative story in order to get ratings.

In truth, religion like the news, is dependent on things being bad as well. Why else would you need a savior unless the world was quickly decaying into chaos? Why else would you need clerics to tell you how to live your life unless it was because people are to immoral to figure it out for themselves? Like I said in my post about overcoming adversity without a god religions job is to tell you that things are bad, that humans are weak petty things and that unless you have a sky daddy looking over you, you’re going to suffer. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When was the last time you heard a preacher talk about how great things are? How even though there’s hunger, we still feed (and yes I know, throw away) more people then we ever have in the history of mankind? When was the last time you heard a priest talk about how things like the flu used to kill millions each year or how only a 100 years ago the average life span was 25? How about how most countries don’t have child labor or how women across the world now have more rights then they ever have? I’m not saying things can’t get better but the truth is there are people out there coming up with solutions to world problems more then at any point in history. It’s not religion that is making things better, it’s science. Science has given us agriculture, medicine, technology, and more. It’s individuals who studied and used the scientific method to come up with solutions to problems, and you know what ? There’s no reason to believe that science wont continue to make things better. So ask yourself, why doesn’t religion tell us these things?

The simple answer is because they need you to believe that things are bad. Religion doesn’t want things to go well for humans because if people realized they didn’t need to be saved from an invisible devil who tempts us to do wrong, or from ourselves, they might also realize that they don’t need religion.