The world has this nasty habit of forgetting about things a week after they happen. Please, if you can, donate to the relief effort in Japan. http://msf.org Doctors Without Borders Tide comes in, tide goes out, you can't explain that. I recently had a discussion with a friend, brought up by my last video. He argued that "I want to learn as much as I can about the universe but I accept there are some things humans are not capable of learning. That is where religion comes in for me." The funny thing is, I do too. I want to learn as much as I can about the splendour of the interactions between predator prey systems, and the delicate balance held in nature(Reimchen, 1983). I want to learn as much as I can about the nature of our Universe. How it's expanding at a positive rate of acceleration. How in a few billion years, it may become impossible based off of light-based observation, to determine that the universe even exists beyond our galaxy (Krauss 2009). I want to learn as much as I can about the nature of the reaction of Fe3+Oxide and aluminium, when you give it a little push (Thermite). But the funny thing is, if I turned to religion, I would never be able to. Religion is a non-answer. It is a construct of the mind. A holy book belies it's ethereal qualities through the edits and insertions of political and societal ideologies. They offer no knowledge not previously attainable, and often far more accurately described, outside of their religion (Dawkins 2010). So when I hear the phrase: "I accept there are some things humans are not capable of learning. That is where religion comes in for me." All I can think of is; "How does a product of man give you insight on something man isn't capable of giving insight on?" What would have happened had we simply stated: "Tide comes in, tide goes out, you can't explain that." Where would be today if we hadn't inferred that the gravitational pull of the moon, associated with the rotation of the earth, drives the cyclical variations in shoreline water level observed throughout the world? If we instead decided the question was unknowable, or that Lorthos the Tidemaker drove the tides in and out with his tentacles of fury? Where would be today if we hadn't investigated the structure of the cell, hadn't determined that the reason people started coughing up blood every now and then wasn't because Avies, of the Sky and the Wind was seizing our right to breath, but instead was an infection of tubercles bacillus, and that given the right biochemical arrangement of our treatment molecule, the infected areas and only the infected areas could be destroyed. I choose not to turn to religion, not because I disagree with it's objective morality, not because I disagree with it's factual inaccuracies, not because I disagree with it's use of threats to persuade others to your cause, but because I don't need to distract myself with non-answers. I don't need to resort to the bible to know that I should treat others with the same respect I wish to be treated with. These things people claim you need religion for are fundamental to our social society. We didn't learn from religion, religion learned from us. It just dropped out of class thousands of years ago. Thanks for watching. Music = Kevin Macleod, Open Those Bright Eyes Reimchen, T. E. 1983. Structural relationships between spines and lateral plates in threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus ). Evolution 37:931-946. A Universe From NothingL Lawrence Krauss. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo Thermite vs. Car http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdCsbZf1_Ng Richard Dawkins: Faith School Menace? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulX8nZjeCXE

• published: 19 Mar 2011
• views: 3194