Put away all the arguments for God you’ve heard.
Instead, let’s place God as an axiom in your system. This way, you don’t fall into any kind of circular reasoning that even Ben Shapiro is guilty of where you both argue for the the existence of God while simultaneously believing that you cannot reason without God.
Does God influence our world?
Maybe!
Again, that’s something you take on faith. Whether you believe in the simulation hypothesis or in God, you still believe in something outside our world that has ultimate control. In either view, God has the root password to the system.
And what can this God do? If God exists, then there is no limit.
Now you’ve got a few directions you can go from here. Which religion, if any, corresponds best to this god? And how would you even go about finding out?
But hold on, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. What’s the alternative to believing in this “outside” or God?
Why not “I think, therefore I am”?
In fact, if everything is a simulation, can we know anything at all? According to Descartes, we can only be sure of our own existence. So we retreat into solipsism, and we are justified every step of the way.
Since there is nothing we know for sure, can we trust our feelings? Our thoughts? Is it possible for us to go insane? Clearly yes, but this is troubling. If you can’t trust yourself, then what do you put your trust into? Something outside? But how do you know your senses aren’t deceiving you? Well, there’s got to be some internal consistency, and the universe is surprisingly consistent. It makes sense to believe in it over whatever may be happening internally.
If there is no outside, then you are the source of truth, and if something doesn’t make sense, then it’s because you’re not being true to yourself. Narcissism and self-preservation become second-nature.
But if you were to give up the solipsism, and believe there is an outside, then you’ve still got a problem. This “outside” doesn’t have to interact with our world at all. It can appear that we live in a closed system whether or not God is real.
Picking a religion
Now, suppose you do believe there is some power outside the universe. How do you go from there to choosing a specific religion?
Nukes.
I know this sounds silly, but bear with me.
First it seems obvious that no religion is responsible for inventing nukes. I’ll argue that’s wrong.
Religion that most closely corresponds to reality will tend to be associated with more innovation.
How do we know the religion isn’t a virus? What if we invented nukes in spite of religion, and not because of it? What if there are other factors like human drive, ingenuity, time, place, etc that caused nukes to be invented? Aren’t all those more likely as explanations?
And even if we could answer these questions, what makes me think that nukes are a good argument for believing in any religion?
First, let’s back up from religion. Why do we believe in math?
Why do we believe in math?
Mathematical objects can be manipulated without any relation to any actual object. You can add 1 and 1 without specifying what those 1s represent. But surprisingly, when you apply math to the real world, you do see agreement. Whether it’s apples, oranges, money, or anything else, 1 + 1 = 2. Math can exist on its own as a set of rules for manipulating symbols. When you hypothesize something mathematically, you don’t have to go out and do an experiment as you would with physics. Why?
With math, you’re not dealing with a system that you don’t know the axioms to. In physics, we’re looking for the fundamental truths. In math, the fundamental truths are axioms, and we calculate forward from these truths. We plug in observations into math, and we get useful answers out the other end.
Christianity and Islam as axiomatic systems
I believe religion is more like math. You have a set of axioms you take on faith. Generally, these axioms deal with matters of morality. And it’s not inconceivable that some moral axioms of one religion might be better than those of another.
Now, there are fundamental moral axioms, and many people believe we all have some gut sense of what’s right and wrong. Religions include claims and stories about historical events. But if we’re interested in religion for moral guidance and salvation, we want to know which religion delivers the goods.
Suppose your religion claims that conversion is a process of making a commitment to the almighty creator. And if you break this commitment, you are breaking a commitment with God and are therefore worthy of death. On some level, this makes sense. A sin against God is the worst sin you can commit.
Now, when you see a proposal to build a giant turtle-shaped boat city, do you wonder how someone could commit to something like this? Did nobody tell these people this was a bad idea?
Is it possible that there’s some connection to the religion here? Or could it be the oil money that’s the core problem? Islam is a religion of strength. You submit to Allah.
The Christian faith, by comparison, is centered on a person who was abandoned by all of his disciples. Christ asked people to have faith with an open hand, but that hand did not close when you tried to leave.
In my opinion, Christianity does a great job of coordinating people at large scales, while simultaneously giving people enough freedom to be creative. Scale + creativity is how you get industrialization, cars, rockets, nukes, and the internet.
Conclusion
If I’m right, it’s not science per-se that creates our progress. Instead, it’s a belief system that helps us get along while also encouraging us to get closer to God (whatever that means to you) through science and understanding. Even if we cannot know anything about the “outside”, we can try and it’s in this effort to push the boundaries of our knowledge that we invent the world we enjoy today. Religion and science should not be opposed, but co-conspirators working together toward a future we can’t even imagine.
Maybe the sci-fi future that actually works requires religion.
Loved it!
For me, the word "god" collected so much negative baggage over time that I try to actively avoid that. I also believe that all current major religions are just a bunch of myths - taking them seriously or building your life upon them is nothing short of delusional, take it as you wish... All these attempts to "rationalize" religion should just take the scientific method as their axiom and leave the myths & gods behind for good, like kids leaving Santa and the tooth fairy. Civilization didn't progress thanks to the Christian religion but despite it - and any common myth unifies people just as well. If you can't live without religion anyway, make unconditional love your religion. The world would be a better place.