Religion is a failed science.  It is, depending on the religion, either a 1300-year-old conversation explaining the universe (Islam), or a 2000-year-old conversation (Christianity), or even older (every other major religion).

While religion is a failed, outdated science and really has very little impact on modern-day science’s facts and theories, it does have an impact on public policies that ultimately affect how we go about our scientific discourse.  This is because of the sheer amount of people who still believe, unjustly, that their religion is the one and only, Capital-T “Truth”.  And yet, when grilled with questions, most of these believers find they have no basis for their beliefs at all.  And then there are those few who ground their beliefs in rhetoric and mental gymnastics.  These latter people are what we usually call “apologists.”

It is to the apologists that I write this.  At the root of Islam and Christianity lies Judaism.  If Judaism is proven wrong, then Islam and Christianity are wrong by extension.  There are numerous claims about the Old Testament that we can say is wrong, both scientifically and ethically. 

I could mention four-legged insects, bats that are referred to as “birds”, and all sorts of interesting phenomena described in the Bible but not verified by science.  I’ll describe just one of these in the interest of readership.

In the Book of Genesis, we encounter numerous scientific claims that are basically false.  For instance, in Chapter 1 the author(s) of Genesis wrote that God created a firmament to separate the higher waters from the lower waters.  Essentially, this is stating that prior to the creation of the Earth there was nothing but a huge blob of water.  The Sumerian myths from which the Genesis myth is influenced call this blob of water “the waters of chaos.”  A formless, deep, void of water.

An image of the firmament

Genesis 1:6 "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters."

The firmament is an invisible, physical barrier that made a separation, almost like a bubble, within the waters of chaos.  Except this “bubble” was half spherical, with the Earth being its bottom border.  The purpose of the firmament was to allow a space for God to create mountains, and trees and animals.

Here is my point.  The firmament is a scientific claim.  It is falsifiable.

It’s a scientific claim because it was a theory that these Bronze Age, desert priests who lived 3-4,000 years ago, made by observing nature.  Looking up at the sky on a clear day one can’t help but observe that the sky is blue.  Like water.  From horizon to horizon, the view appears circular.  When it rains, water comes from the sky.  If you dig deep enough, you’ll find water.   All of these phenomena are explained with the firmament.

That was 3,000 years ago.

Today, thanks to the scientific method, we know that on the other side of the Earth’s atmosphere there is a void of empty space, there are no boundless amounts of water.   We know that the Earth is round, that it revolves around the sun, and that we are on the edge of a galaxy comprised of millions of other stars.  We know from our studies in meteorology why it rains; that water vapors condense in huge cumulonimbus clouds and when the condensed water gets too heavy, it falls to the ground.  We know from geology that water naturally collects underground in water tables, or simply “groundwater.”

That is the power of science to relinquish the claims of religions.  Imagine if scientific progress was forced to stop at Isaac Newton’s discoveries just a few hundred years ago.  We would have no trains, automobiles, telephones, satellites, nuclear power, or anything like that.  We wouldn’t know about the theory of relativity or about evolution.

For billions of people, it is kind of like that, except instead of 300 years they are incorporating a belief that stopped progressing anywhere from 1300 to 2000 years ago.

Another study that has shown that the religion of Judaism religion to be wrong is ethics.  For millenia Judeo-Christian religions have claimed that their religion instills moral principles into people.  While there are plenty of great things that are said in these traditions, and even more so in the Eastern religions, it should be noted that morality doesn’t come from religion.  It comes from our own intuitions.  Since the Bronze Age, our ethics has changed drastically.  While the Old Testament goes into detail on how we should keep, or punish, slaves.  The Old Testament also goes into detail on how we should beat our children or kill them if they talk back to us, whether we should sell our daughters into slavery, or whether we should kill nonbelievers and homosexuals.  We in modern Western society no longer do any of that, and we have rightfully decided that these are disgusting and immoral acts. 

It isn’t the Bible that gave us morality.  Rather, it is our our desire to relieve suffering, both in ourselves and in others.  Empathy and compassion, which are admittedly Christian characteristics, are also shared by many other religions, like Buddhists and Jainism. 

For instance, let’s consider the 10 Commandments.  The 2nd Commandment says that we “shall not create graven images …”  As a statement of morality, this doesn’t seem like it should be listed as the second most important commandment, or simply on any list of 10 moral precepts.  We can place anything we want and it would probably be more important.  “Thou shalt not kill animals needlessly” is a much more moral commandment then the one we are familiar with.  Or, as Sam Harris says, “Thou shalt not fry all of your foods.”

So, by simple reasoning and regular conversation, we have been able to deduce that the morality does not come from religion or from religious texts.  However, I would suggest that the two, morality and religion, come from the same place.  The human mind.