Let's start off with this video, which is about an hour long, of a debate by the
QED Organization:
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Interesting discussion if you have the time.
Moving on to an article written by Albert Einstein in 1930:
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Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us. Now what are the feelings and needs that have led men to religious thought and belief in the widest sense of the words?
A little consideration will suffice to show us that the most varying emotions preside over the birth of religious thought and experience. With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions - fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend.
Thus one tries to secure the favor of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation, propitiate them or make them well disposed toward a mortal. In this sense I am speaking of a religion of fear. This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste which sets itself up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on this basis. In many cases a leader or ruler or a privileged class whose position rests on other factors combines priestly functions with its secular authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the political rulers and the priestly caste make common cause in their own interests.
The social impulses are another source of the crystallization of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence, who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes; the God who, according to the limits of the believer's outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even or life itself; the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral conception of God.
To summarize what he was trying to say, is that basically the idea of god is created out of the need for the primitive mind to explain that which is feared. Since the primitive mind has very little understanding of the world around it, illusory beings and their will are created in that mind.
When one does not peruse knowledge on their own they instead rely on generation after generation of experienced knowledge passed down through mediators, or a special caste of society commonly referred to as priests and alike. Because of social impulses this reliance on religion is seemingly necessary as every mind starts off as primitive or lacking knowledge.
Today, however, has a faith in science taken the place of this mediator caste?
This question is being put forth because of the reluctance of the primitive mind to question science because it is deemed science and not religion.
Some recent studies in brain activity, when put together, have shown that both science and religion affect the same parts of the brain.
First let's take a look at how thinking about god and/or religion affects the brain:
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Brain scans showed that participants fell back on higher thought patterns when reacting to religious statements, whether trying to figure out God's thoughts and emotions or thinking about metaphorical meaning behind religious teachings.
"That suggests that religion is not a special case of a belief system, but evolved along with other belief and social cognitive abilities," said Jordan Grafman, a cognitive neuroscientist at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland.
Such results fit with previous research which shows that no single "God spot" exists in the brain. Both believers and nonbelievers participated in the new study, detailed in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
What we have here is higher thought patterns and evolution of a belief system when religious thought is invoked. This in turn goes back to the idea of the primitive mind trying to explain that which it fears, the unknown.
Now let's take a look at how thinking about science affects the brain:
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Researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara set out to test this possibility. They hypothesized that there is a deep-seated perception of science as a moral pursuit — its emphasis on truth-seeking, impartiality and rationality privileges collective well-being above all else. Their new study, published in the journal PLOSOne, argues that the association between science and morality is so ingrained that merely thinking about it can trigger more moral behavior.
The researchers conducted four separate studies to test this. The first sought to establish a simple correlation between the degree to which individuals believed in science and their likelihood of enforcing moral norms when presented with a hypothetical violation. Participants read a vignette of a date-rape and were asked to rate the “wrongness” of the offense before answering a questionnaire measuring their belief in science. Indeed, those reporting greater belief in science condemned the act more harshly.
Once again we can see the correlation between higher thought and the primitive mind explaining that which it fears.
However science has been granted a different social status by claiming that thinking about science emphasizes a moral pursuit. Is this claim really true though? Or is this just another case of the primitive mind trying to explain that which it fears?
The question of science being akin to the same thought processes that religion invokes is best summarized in this article from The Huffington Post:
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"In many ways, science seems like a 21st Century religion," Ma-Kellams told HuffPost Science. "It's a belief system that many wholeheartedly defend and evolve their lives around, sometimes as much as the devoutest of religious folk. And although many have studied the link between religion and morality, few had tried empirically at least to test whether science also had moral repercussions."
To put her theories to the test, the researchers conducted four experiments. The first had 48 undergraduate students read a story about date rape, and then judge the actions of the accuser. Then the students were asked to rate on a one-to-seven scale how much they believed in science.
The researchers found that while there was no relationship between the students' religious affiliation and their answers, “those who reported greater belief in science rated the date rape as more wrong," according to the study.
The other three studies examined the way people enforced moral norms, attempted to make a positive difference in their communities, and interacted with strangers. Before each study, participants were asked to complete word scrambling puzzles -- some of which contained science-related words.
"Across studies, we found that believing in science and thinking about science led to more morally normative outcomes," Ma-Kellams told HuffPost Science.
Pacific Standard magazine reported that some people might initially be surprised by the study's results, given science's status as an essentially amoral subject.
But Ma-Kellams demurred.
"Many like to think of science as a neutral, purely objective force," she said. "But in reality, the things what we study and investigate and think about influence our very conceptions of right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, without us necessarily realizing it."
The study stops short of concluding that merely thinking about science can make someone more moral. However, the researchers do think their findings indicate "that science has moral implications."
There are two key things to point out here. One is that science is typically an amoral subject. Yet people use science to justify their beliefs in today's world.
The second is that even in using science to justify your moral decisions, both religion and science have moral repercussions.
It would seem at first glance that the difference between science and religion is that religion is an absolute and cannot be questioned. Whereas science relies on questioning. However once you scratch the surface, mainstream science has become almost religiously defensive about questioning their answers and results.
Why shouldn't it be questioned? Is that not a function of science?
Especially since even science is prone to outside influences affecting its results, just like religion.
