Ever noticed the kind of music favored by various radio talk-show hosts? You have the religiously-based hosts like Bill Bennett and Dr. Laura (even though these shows are not overtly religious, the hosts make no secret of their religious biases), whose music tends to be selected from the past. And then there are hosts like Michael Savage, whose music is pretty much cutting edge.

My theory is that religion tends to clutch the past, while atheism tends to fix its eyes on the future. This is similar to the difference between parents and children. The parent has been around for a while and bases his or her understanding of the world on experience. The child, who has no experience to speak of, will generally want to know, "Why?" Both views have merit.

Experience has great value, but is not always a useful guide. Experience that's based on unchanging truths about the world, we ignore at our peril. On the other hand, past experience, the way we've always done it, can be evil and destructive. Hence the great value in the youthful question, "Why." If no one ever challenged the values of the past, we would never move forward.

While religion tends to decry what it sees as the loss of values in the modern world (as when Bob Jones University grudgingly relinquishes its prohibition against interracial dating and Mormons battle against same-sex-marriage) and cling toa 2,000-year-old book as the "unchanging Word of God," atheism demands to know, "Why?"

I propose that we value the past without becoming slaves to it. That we glean from religious valuable insights while maintaining the right to ask, "Why?"

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While both science and religion can be called "world views," science is as different from religion as day is from night. I just posted over on Singularity & Futurism an article called "Memristors - The pathway to artificial intelligence?" that reminded me of one of the most important differences between the two.

Science actually discovers truth about the universe in which we live. This truth, when discovered and applied, is demonstrably accurate, as all truth should be, as evidenced by how it works in the real world. Science is real. It works in the real world, and the undiscovered country of things science does not yet know continues to grow smaller.

Certainly the religious adherent may say at this point that religion does the same. But I ask you: What has religion ever discovered? What has religion ever revealed about how our world works?

Religion, at least in its non-supernatural aspects, describes the human condition and what humans have learned about themselves by long, sometimes painful, experience. All well and good, but in doing so it is no different or better than philosophy.

Religion tends to be about coveting the past, while science tends to be about reaching for the future. Listening to Dr. Vernon McGee on one of his Bible broadcasts, I was struck by the irony of his deriding "all this newfangled technology," whilst making excellent use of it to promote his worldview. I daresay no religious individual would want to do without the advantages of technological progress (even the Amish use the wheel), while millions do without religion quite nicely.

What say you?

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It's so common it's become a cliché. Someone close to you dies, so you're angry with God. You lose your job, you blame God. The crops fail, God has it in for you. "Why did God let this happen?" "God and I aren't on very good terms right now." And so on. Seems pretty silly to me. Wouldn't it be more rational and reasonable to conclude  that what happened was not the doing of a spiteful deity, but rather the result of earthly causes?

When people suffer, they tend to seek a "reason." They want to have an explanation. But people die. Bad things happen. What makes anyone so special they should be exempt from the harshness of a disinterested universe?

Since I've admitted to myself and others that I'm an atheist I've been accused of being angry with God. How can one be angry with a being one has no reason to believe even exists? When bad or unpleasant things happen to me, it seems I'm much more capable of dealing with these events when I focus on real causes. Is there something I can do to rectify the situation? Is there a way I can prevent this sort of thing from happening again? If not, what's to be gained by dwelling on it? Like that.

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An amusing saying: The man who smiles when things go wrong, has found someone else to blame it on.

Christians have a ready-made and defensless scapegoat whenever you point out any one of the counless examples of poor design in nature. If God is so wonderful and perfect, we ask, how could he have screwed up so royally? Why are people's backs so easily put out? Why is there cancer? What's up with the problems between men and women? (You know, can't live with them, can't live without them.)

No matter what you look at that's messed up and badly designed, the answer is the same: It's because of the Fall! Before the Fall, everything was perfect. Animals ate only veggies, not each other. There were no back problems. If only Adam had done the right thing!

Of couse, the Fall might be the perfect scapegoat except for the fact that there isn't a shred of evidence to show that things were ever better than they are now!

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