I'm going to try and be as logical as possible about this....

Firstly, I think we can all agree that religions (note the plural, all religions) exist to answer three fundamental questions: Where do we come from, where are we going, and why are we here.

Science has answers to all three of these questions, and very logical ones at that. We come from chance, evolution has pushed us to the top of the food chain. It was pure chance that Lucy climbed down from her tree one day in the primeval Savannah and stood up to look for predators over the high grass. It was pure chance that her descendants chose to pick up the first tools that lead us to Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, and later, Homo Sapiens. When we die, we go to nothing. Our body stops functioning, our thoughts fade, and if we live on, the only form in which we do so is via our works in life (ie, our writings, achievements, goals, children, et cetera.) We are here need not be answered. We come from chance, therefore we are here by chance. Can anyone disagree with these? Please provide me a logical explanation if you can.

The second question is, I think, slightly more important than the other two, because it seems to also determine another fundamental characteristic of religion: The existence and purpose of the soul. If you believe that all religion is, more or less, a crock of ****, then there can be no soul. The essential qualities of each person are genetic, or a product of the environment in which they were raised. Because of this, I'm going to focus a little more on the second question than the first or third. I'm also going to discuss four major religions: Christianity (and Mormon within it), Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

The Christian eschatology is very widely known; at least, the common idea of heaven and hell is. When a person dies, their soul leaves their body and they head "up" to heaven. They meet St. Peter at the pearly gates, and are admitted to heaven, all assuming they met the qualifications to get in. If they did not, they go down to hell, and are tortured. In the Catholic version of events, there is a third option, purgatory, where the soul will go if they were not good enough for heaven but not bad enough for hell, or if they were an innocent (such as a baby who died or was stillborn, or a person who lived before the time of Christ.) They wait in Purgatory until their survivors back on Earth either pray them into heaven, or the rapture, at which point Christ comes down and redeems the ones worth redeeming, and condemns the ones who aren't.

The Mormon version of this is pretty different. When a soul dies, if it is a good Mormon, it goes to Paradise. If it was a bad Mormon, or not a Mormon, it goes to purgatory. There, the person is given a chance to convert and repent for everything they did wrong, at which point they can go hang out in Paradise. But all of this is basically a waiting pool, because when the Rapture comes, everyone is judged. The people who were the best Mormons in life are given essentially their own planet, which they become the God of. The OK Mormons will populate these planets, or get a smaller planet, depending. The bad ones and the ones that never converted are done for.

Judaism is similar to Christianity in its belief in heaven, but Judaism does not include hell. Instead, Judaism has Seven levels of Heaven, and your deeds and works on Earth decide where and how you go. I believe it is also possible to move up through these levels.

Hinduism expounds the belief in reincarnation. When you die, your soul goes into the cosmic cycle, and is then stuffed into a new body back on Earth. There is little change from one life to the next - the soul is a rather static object, and generally if you are in a lower Caste, you can expect to stay there for some time.

Buddhism also includes reincarnation, but it is different than Hinduism. It was best explained to me like this: Imagine a candle, and before it is extinguished, its flame lights the flame of a candle next to it. The second candle lights a third, and so on. Fifty candles down the line, it is hard to imagine the flame burning there is the same flame that burned in the beginning, but the fact remains that the final flame came from there. This mutation of the soul, growing from its experiences in life, and learning until the soul (not its current possessor) gains enlightenment, is the principal belief of Buddhism. In Hinduism, your soul never gets out; in Buddhism, there is an eventual end to the cycle.


All of these five different belief systems contain one thing in common: the soul. Science eliminates the concept of a soul entirely. If you are going to argue that science does NOT, then please explains what happens to the soul when you die. Religion answers this.

If you do not argue that a purely scientific belief includes a soul, then you agree that when the body dies, the essence of the person decays along with the flesh, correct? Am I also correct in saying that it is a flawed scientific method to claim that the absence of evidence is, in fact, evidence? The reason I ask this is because the only evidence you could give for a lack of a soul is that there is no physical evidence thereof. The problem with that (aside from a lack of evidence not being evidence) is that there IS proof of a soul, or at least of some other incorporeal part of humans that lives on after death. There is massive evidence of ghosts and spirits haunting places, and people. There is scientific data of temperature changes, things moving on their own, and the like. To deny this or try to explain it away is to do the SAME thing that Christians do to evolution. There is always another explanation.

So, logically, you can assume that since everything can be "explained away" despite a great amount of scientific proof, both evolution and souls are complete fallacies. If, however, you chose to think that not all things that CAN be explained away SHOULD be explained away, then you must think that NEITHER evolution nor ghosts and supernatural should be. If you are going to stand here and tell me that one should and one should not, then you're nothing but a hypocrite. If you're a hypocrite, then I automatically win, so don't try


Because we've successfully argued that there is, in fact, a soul, I think we can agree that not all religion is a crock of ****. However, the question still remains of whether or not there is a god. Not all religions specifically believe in one. However, most religions have some sort of belief in a higher power, be it one or many. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all believe in the same God, call Him Allah, Yahweh, or just God, it's the same thing. I point to a famous text in the Old Testament, the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments. Commandment number 2: "You shall have no gods except me" or, in Latin, "non habebis deos alienos coram me." Think carefully about the explanation here. Why would God, being the all knowing deity that He is, note that the Hebrews should have no other gods, if He is the only one? Why is God a jealous god, if there are no other gods to be jealous of? The Hebrews are His chosen people. I don't think God cared what the OTHER people on Earth did or believed, or which god they worshiped, as long as the Hebrews only worshiped Him.

So does this mean there are many gods in the world? Why not?


I can continue on this thread, but it's going to come down to me explaining why my specific set of beliefs is...well, is what i believe. I think my point was best made when it came down to proof that both religion and science must exist in tandem, or neither can exist in all.