I read this article titled “Without God” by Steven Weinberg a week ago and had to blog my thoughts on it.

The article is a very thoughtful analysis of the weakening of religious belief in countries with advanced science.

He attributes the causes for it to these:

• Explanation of mysteries as natural occurrences with scientific explanations (e.g. floods, earthquakes, etc)
• These explanations have resulted in discounting of man as a special creation of God. Especially the discovery of evolution of man shows man is not a special saviour of the world.
• The faithful seem to believe that the idea of determinism (in terms of laws of motion, gravity, etc) is against the idea of a non-deterministic miracle-causing God.
• Traditional religions have a belief in infallible prophets or gurus. But in a scientific world, even Einstein could be wrong.

He then goes to talk about how to live without God. Here is the best part:

First, a warning: we had better beware of substitutes. It has often been noted that the greatest horrors of the twentieth century were perpetrated by regimes—Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China—that while rejecting some or all of the teachings of religion, copied characteristics of religion at its worst: infallible leaders, sacred writings, mass rituals, the execution of apostates, and a sense of community that justified exterminating those outside the community.

When I was an undergraduate I knew a rabbi, Will Herberg, who worried about my lack of religious faith. He warned me that we must worship God, because otherwise we would start worshiping each other. He was right about the danger, but I would suggest a different cure: we should get out of the habit of worshiping anything.

The article rightly then focuses on how to deal with the clinical nature of a scientific belief - the idea that our entire outlook, speech, belief, actions are explained by chemical reactions within the body. All in all a great read for all non-believers and agnostics!