To be a True Atheist

Now, our society cannot live without science. We say a subject is a science if it uses 'scientific methods' based on proofs and experiments. On top of all these researches, we have the subject called 'engineering' and it is everywhere in our lives, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, chemical engineering.... you name it. So we believe that we live in a rational era that everything is proved. Then people fight back to God, it is not "scientific" to believe there is a Creator because we cannot see Him and cannot prove Him exists. People are evoluted from monkeys and fishes. If you keep your cats long enough, it can became another higher intellectual being.


I am not here to argue that if God exists or not. It just bugs me a lot when people emphasis the word "scientific". I sometime can see people are proud of being not religious but claiming themselves to be rational and scientific. Let's have a look what 'science' means. For my own opinion, i like this definition from a dictionary most:

"The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena."

Some other dictionaries have other meanings. (Although, I will say some are actually meaningless.) I will buy the above definition to be a quite correct and complete meaning of the word 'science'. In plain English, science means a 'systematic' way of observing some interesting phenomenon, then try to repeat some 'experiments'. If, what the experimental result shows it is consistent, then our observation probably is a 'truth', and we state it as a "theory".

My counter-attack is, who told us that if something happens ten times, then it is a truth? I can throw a dice and three in a row it shows '1'. Then I conclude that my dice, and all other dices in world, in the past and in the future, all shows '1'. Maybe this example is exaggerated. However, the 'scientific experimental proof' is the same thing (maybe they spend more money?) When we refer to 'proofs', it is either 'mathematical proof' or 'experimental proof'. For the later, there is not theory proved that doing experiments prove something. We are just believing this methodology works.


Moreover, there exists a chance that these experiments give wrong interpretation. There was a survey in Africa showing that the boys in the age of 6-10 have higher I.Q. if their feet are larger. Does it tell us that bigger feet makes people more clever? (Or some part of our brains can grow in the feet?) More deeper investigation tell us the fact is just that some boys grow up and develop faster, and that's why they have higher I.Q. Experimental results and surveys are not that as accurate as we thought and sometimes misleading... I do not mean these are wrong, but just feel very sad for people who do not really understand what 'scientific' means and just abuse it and say 'Christianity' is not scientific. I think if you ask me, and many other Christians, they can tell you that our reformed lives are the biggest experiment showing that God exists.

There are still a few things that bug me when people do not understand science. A lot of time, scientists are 'guessing' then do some experiments to prove they are right. Just like molecular model. By all means, 'modeling' means 'guessing', we do not know the real configuration or fact, so we come up with some ideas to 'approximate' or 'guess' the real one. For example, noone has ever see what a molecule is really like, don't even talk about electrons or ions. We just guess what they maybe, and teach all of these to our primary and secondary school kids. When they grow up, they think all of these are truth. I don't mean they are not wrong (nor right), these all 'models' are just unfalsifiable.


The other thing i may want to say is about mathematics. I guess a lot of people treat maths as some 'holy' truth. Anything that is proved mathematically cannot be wrong, and 'scientific'. Do you know that maths is an ART SUBJECT? Why? it does not have any experiment, so we cannot say it is a science. Also, although some mathematics theory are proven, but when you traced up the proofs, they all start with 'definitions'. Have anyone prove that -1 times -1 is +1? That is defined but not proven. Maybe it can be still proved, but the proof will still be based on definitions. What I mean is, we are just believing some ancient mathematicians of what they said, but not some indestructible truth. They are not true, but just unfalsifiable.

I called the above beliefs. Using science and maths are some kind of beliefs that is not as 'solid' and 'perfect' as we thought. Although Albert Einstein is not exactly a Christian, but he said this before:

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

I agree with Calvin (not the one who starts Calvinism, but the one with his tiger friend Hobbs) that mathematic is a religion, thus science is also a religion. If we just treat the word 'religion' is accepting something as our beliefs without proofs of every root. To be a true atheist, don't use maths, don't believe that things are made of molecules (molecular modeling means 'we guess how the molecules look like', no one 'see' any molecules or ions or electrons), don't drive the car because it is not proven.

When I believed in God, there was one idea that struck me. When I am sick, I believe the doctor and take the pills he gives. No one proved those pills will work. Even they works on some other people, they may not work on me. What in earth that I should trust those pills can heal me? but not making me worse? We all have the illness called 'sin', and only God can heal. If we never believe God can cure, we will never be healed.