Hey Bill.
I’m Andrew LaRue.
I’m from northwest Ohio.
Thanks for taking my question.
My question is where — I’ve been indoctrinated
with religion most of my life and I am 20
years old right now and I’m just kind of
opening my mind up to what I’ve learned
from science.
And I’m just kind of wondering kind of by
reeducating myself because religion is all
I’ve really ever known.
So I’m just looking to start over.
Thank you.
Andrew, this is a heavy question.
How should you deal with science and religion?
And what I tell everybody by analogy: When
you learn about what we in science-education
like to call skeptical thinking or critical
thinking, where when someone says, "I have
the ability to communicate with the dead,"
for example.
At first you go wow really?
And then they show you the evidence, which
is you in a dark room and they hold hands
and a ghost appears in the corner and you
hear hissing sounds — shhhh, shhhh.
If you’re led to believe that they’re
ghosts, at first that seems quite reasonable
to you.
But after you start thinking about it skeptically,
you go, "That’s probably a guy with a handkerchief
on a stick and a steam kettle making hissing
sounds probably."
Which is what Houdini did by the way.
So you come to abandon or change what you
were brought up believing not in a moment,
not in a revelatory instant, but over the
process of many months and years.
So I encourage you, when it comes to religion,
is to evaluate the claims which is a big thing
in skeptical and critical thinking.
Somebody claims that he— it was through
his mind that he was able to get the tide
to go extraordinarily low at the Red Sea.
It could be.
It could be, but there may be other explanations.
It could be that when a football player or
a baseball player in the U.S. has a successful
play, hits a double in a critical point in
a baseball game, scores a touchdown at an
opportune moment — it could be that there
is a divine spirit that enables this person
to do this extraordinary thing at that moment.
Or it could be that the person has been practicing
this for years and years and years and he
was at the right place at the right time and
caught the ball or hit the ball or what have
you.
Both are explanations for you to evaluate.
The big thing is when it comes to ethics and
morals and religion, to see if there’s anything
different between what religions want you
to do and what you feel you should do.
What you think is ethically innate within
you.
For most people, most people are not inclined
to murder people.
But certain religions quite reasonably have
rules against that.
It’s antisocial.
See if that comes from within you or it comes
from outside of you — from without you.
And then evaluate each claim and don’t beat
yourself up.
To become — I’m not talking about religion.
I’m talking about to be skeptical of astrology,
be skeptical of extraordinary magic tricks,
to be skeptical of faith healing, to be skeptical
of crop circle origins.
These things, it takes a way of thinking that
you don’t develop in an afternoon.
You’ve got to let them steep to turn over
in your mind.
But I hope you do a lot of it and all the
time you spend on thinking about these thoughts
will lead you somewhere.
Now I don’t know exactly what you were brought
up with, but if you’re in Ohio it’s very
reasonable you’re in the Ohio River Valley.
You were probably brought up with a lot of
the Bible.
I really encourage you to read the bible.
Just read it and see if it all — see if
it seems to be literally true to you.
And they had some extraordinary penalties
for crimes that or for perceived misdeeds
that — modern penalties aren’t as severe.
And there might be good reasons for that.
If you’re in a small tribe, survival is
a big deal and you’ve got to think fast
and take swift action.
Now after many centuries of reflection, our
society has very different approaches to some
of these deeds that are described — if the
Bible is what you’re brought up with.
You might be brought up with something else.
But just remember: Don’t beat yourself up.
But get into skeptical thought.
Check out skeptical websites and do not — be
careful because there are English words that
come to us from Greek.
Do not confuse skepticism with cynicism.
Those are two different things.
Cynical means you don’t have any expectation
of good outcomes.
Skeptical means you want things to be proven
or shown.
They’re two very different things, but because
the words come to us from Green and we merge
or blend the consonant and vowel sounds, they
sound very much alike to us.
But they are two different things skepticism
and cynicism.
It’s a cool question man.
Good luck.
