Carl Sagan's All-Time Sharpest Arguments Against Religion

The word God covers an enormous range of different ideas. And you recognize that in the way you phrase the question. Running from an outsized light-skinned male with a long white beard sitting in a throne in the sky and tallying the fall of every sparrow for which there is no evidence to my mind.

If anybody has some, I sure would like to see it. um to the kind of god that Einstein or Spinosa talked about which is very close to the sum total of the laws of the universe. Now it would be crazy to deny that there are laws in the universe and if that's what you want to call God then of course God exists and there are all sorts of other nuances.

There is for example the deest god that many of the founding fathers of this country believed in. Although it is a secret whose name may not be spoken in some circles. A uh a do nothing king the god who creates the universe and then retires and to whom praying to is sort of pointless.

He's not here. He went somewhere else. He had other things to do.

Now that's also a god. So when you say, "Do you believe in God? " If I say yes or if I say no, you have learned absolutely nothing.

I guess I'm asking you to define yours if you have one. But why would we use a word so ambiguous that means so many different things? Gives you freedom to define it.

It gives you freedom to seem to agree with someone else with whom you do not agree. It covers over differences. It makes for social lubrication, but it is not an aid to truth in my view.

And therefore, I think we need much sharper language when we ask these questions. Sorry to take so long in answering this, but this is a important issue. What is your personal religion?

Or do you is there any type of god to you? Like is there a purpose given that we're just sitting on this speck in the middle of this sea of stars? Humans have created a mythological framework that has always involves some kind of often involves some kind of higher spiritual powers.

And as every human culture has done that as that goes away, as we know more and more that and it seems harder and harder to prove that anything might exist like that, where does that leave us? On our own, which to my mind is much more responsible than hoping that someone will save us from ourselves so we don't have to make our best efforts to do it oursself. And if we're wrong and there is someone who steps in and saves us, okay, that's all right.

Mhm. I'm for that. But we, you know, hedged our bets.

Mhm. It's Pascal's bargain run backwards. Every other proposal, and their number is legion, to displace us from cosmic center stage, has also been resisted in part for similar reasons.

We seem to crave privilege merited not by our works but by our birth by the mere fact that say we're humans and born on earth. We might call it theanth anthropocentric the human centered conceit. This conceit is brought close to culmination in the notion that we are created in God's image.

The creator and ruler of the entire universe looks just like me. My, what a coincidence. How convenient and satisfying.

The sixth century BC Greek philosopher Zenophanes understood the arrogance of this perspective. Here's what he said. The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed.

The Thricians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yes. And if oxmen and horses or lions had hands and could paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses and oxen like oxen.

Ah, listen to this. I hate to read too much, but this is it's almost like they've been reading your book. This is from the New York Times for Friday, uh, May 24.

Americans flunk science. A study finds less than half of all American adults understand that the Earth orbits the sun yearly. According to a basic science survey, nevertheless, there's enthusiasm for research, except in some fields like genetic engineering and nuclear power that are viewed with suspicion.

Only about 25% of American adults get passing grades in a National Science Foundation survey of what people know about basic science and economics. I mean, this is singing your song, isn't it? Well, it's certainly what I'm talking about in in a demon haunted world.

My my feeling, Charlie, is that um it's it's not that um pseudocience and superstition and new age so-called beliefs and fundamentalist zealatry are something new. They've been with us for as long as we've been we've been human. But we live in an age based on science and technology with formidable technological powers.

Science and technology are propelling us forward at accelerating rates. That's right. And if we don't understand it, by we, I mean the general public.

If it's something that, oh, I'm not good at that. I don't know anything about it. Then who is making all the decisions about science and technology that uh are going to determine what kind of future our children live in?

just uh some members of Congress, but there's no more than a handful of members of Congress with any background in science at all. And the Republican Congress has just abolished its own Office of Technology Assessment, the organization that gave them bipartisan competent advice on science and technology. They say, "We don't want to know.

Don't tell us about science. " I mean, you you blast them all. creationist uh Christian scientists who you say would rather allow their children uh to suffer uh than give them insulin or antibiotics.

Uh astrologers come in for particular scorn on your part. Well, I would say scorn just derision. Derision a more generous version of scorn.

And but what's the danger of all this? I mean, you know, this is not the thing that there's two kinds of dangers. One is what I just talked about that we've arranged a society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology.

I mean who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it? And the second reason that I'm I'm worried about this is that science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.

If if we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes amling along. It it's a thing that Jefferson laid great stress on. It wasn't enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a in a constitution or a bill of rights.

The people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education. Otherwise, we don't run the government. The government runs us.

This a lot of this has to do with science in the United States. Are we different than other nations? Absolutely not.

You can see this worldwide. Uh in India, there's a a madness about astrology. In Britain, it's ghosts.

In Germany, it's rays coming up from the earth that can only be detected by dowsers. Um every country uh has its its own specialties. We we seem to be fascinated by UFOs right now.

But one thing, what is that? Before you leave UFOs, tell me about you and professor Mack. you were making a point before I jumped to John Mack.

Oh, yeah. What I wanted to say is uh going back to the question of uh of adequate evidence on something that's emotionally really uh really pulling you. Um I uh I lost both my parents about 12 or 15 years ago and uh I had a great relationship with them.

I really miss them. I would love to believe that their spirits were around somewhere and I'd give almost anything to uh spend five minutes a year with them. Do you hear their voices ever?

Uh sometimes about uh six or eight times since their death I've heard Carl just just in the voice of my father or my mother. Now I don't think that means that they're in the next room. I think it means that they're in your I've had an auditory hallucination.

I I was with them so long I heard their voices so often. Why shouldn't I be able to make a vivid recollection of it? Here's what's interesting about this for me.

I You won't see this, but I'll throw it at you anyway. You convinced me a long time ago that it was arrogant for me or for anyone else to believe that there wasn't some life outside of our to exclude the possibility to exclude the possibility was was to was an arrogance of intellect that we should not assume. You couldn't prove it.

You didn't know it was there. But the arrogance for you, right? We don't know if it's there.

We don't know if it's not there. Let's look. And if you take that, why can't you say there's a lot we don't know?

There's a lot of power there that we know. A lot we don't know. You know, it's what I believe about.

But that doesn't mean that every every fraudulent claim has to be accepted. We we demand the most rigorous standards of evidence, especially on what's important to us. So if some guy comes up to me in a channeler or a medium and I can put you in touch with your parents, well because I want so terribly to to believe that, yeah, I know I have to reach in for added reserves of skepticism because I'm likely to be fooled and and uh much more minor to have my money taken.

Some reviewers differ with your conclusions on this point that you seem to say it's growing this kind of pseudocience. I sorry to interrupt. I I I don't we we've this is part of being human.

Humans have had this way of magical thinking through all of our history. The problem is that today the technology has reached formidable maybe even awesome proportions. And so the dangers of thinking this way are larger.

Not that this is a new kind of thing. You are living with myo dysplasia or I have been. You have been.

It's in remission or you have what? Well, and just share with us because of your your sense of of language and and and your sense of understanding and and being reflective and introspective what this what do you think about and what does it do for you to I didn't have any near death say to you I didn't have any near-death experiences I didn't have a religious conversion but I you thought about what it would be like to die certainly and what it would be like for my my family and and uh I didn't much think about what it would be like for for me because I don't think it's likely there's anything that you think about after you're dead. That's it.

Yeah. Long dreamless sleep. I'd love to believe the opposite, but I don't know of any evidence.

But one thing faith, Carl, faith. One thing that it has done is to enhance my uh sense of appreciation for the the beauty of life uh and of the universe and the the sheer joy of being alive. One point I'd like to make about this is that every human culture has a set of creation myths.

Uh but they're in the realm of mythology or religion or folklore. Uh and they are of course all mutually inconsistent. The great thing that is happening in our time is that we are able through a method which can actually make some progress towards the real universe out there to find out something about origins and this is the scientific method applied to the science of cosmology.

Very much. And Carl Sean, in in your introduction to the book, you commented on this. You said this is also a book about God or perhaps about the absence of God because Hawking left nothing for a creator to do.

Now, God of course means many things to many people. What sort of God basically are we talking about when when we talk about reading the mind of God? Well, I think that's uh that's an excellent question and uh and I'd be most interested to uh to hear Stephen Hawkings answer, but just just to try to illuminate the range of possibilities, consider two alternatives.

Uh, one is the uh the notion popular in the west uh of God as a sort of outsized elderly white male with a long white beard sitting in a throne in the sky and tallying the fall of every sparrow. uh contrast that with uh the idea of God in the mind of uh let's say Spinosa or Einstein which was at least very closely the sum total of the laws of the universe. Uh now it would would be madness to deny that there are well- definfined physical laws in the universe.

And if that's what you mean by God, then there's no question that uh that God exists, but it's a very remote God, a what the French callant, a do nothing king. On the other hand, the former model, the one who intervenes daily, uh for that there seems to be, as Dr Hawkings said uh no evidence. I think it is wise my my own personal feeling uh to be uh a little humble on uh on such matters.

Uh we must recognize that we are dealing with uh by definition the most difficult things uh to know the furthest from human experience and uh perhaps we will be able to penetrate a little way uh into these mysteries. Do you think that the church is in fact beginning to recognize that it it may have to lose its priority, its eminence as the sole arbiter of of these matters and that science will be allowed to come in as an equal partner? Well, the church is certainly when I say the church, the Roman Catholic Church have become very much more liberal.

I had the pleasure of giving a talk in the Vatican myself in the Pontipical Academy of Science quite recently and met the Pope and of course they're reinstating Galileo and so things are moving. In fact, are they moving backwards as well as forward Carl Sean because I understand it in the earliest days of civilization then the priests were in fact what we call the scientists the ones who could study astronomy and who could predict eclipses and things. Do you see the scientist coming back into an almost sacidotal position like this or am I overstating it?

Well, I I I hope you're overstating it. Uh I think the essence of the scientific method is the willingness to uh to admit you're wrong, the willingness to abandon ideas that don't work. Uh and the essence of religion is not to change uh anything.

supposed truths are handed down by some revered figure and then no one is supposed to make any uh any progress beyond that because all the truth is thought to be in hand. I'm really talking about setting an agenda for the future. Uh my sense is that the scientific way of of thinking, questioning, uh some delicate mix of uh creative encouragement of new ideas and the most rigorous and skeptical scrutiny of new and old ideas.

Uh I think that is the path to the future not just for science but uh for all human institutions. We have to be willing to challenge because we are in desperate need of change. Well, you said science should be skeptical of politics.

Don't you think we ought to be a little skeptical about science, too? I mean, can we trust you guys? I uh I think you should certainly be skeptical, but uh my view is that there's no community of people on the planet more skeptical than science.

It's our stock in trade. It's the lifeblood of our subject. Science is a self-correcting subject, not like politics.

There is in this universe much of what seems to be design. Every time we come upon it, we breathe a sigh of relief. We're forever hoping to find or at least to safely deduce a designer.

But instead we repeatedly discover that natural processes collisional selection of worlds say or natural selection of gene pools or even the convection pattern in a pot of boiling water can extract order out of chaos and deceive us into deducing purpose where there is none. What is your real uh belief in the uh in the spiritual beginnings of all of this? In other words, I've read many places that many scientists such as yourself are either agnostic or atheistic in their beliefs about uh the initial beginnings of the universe.

Uh and secondly, my brother-in-law is uh is a highly classified uh person that works for the Air Force. Um the question revolves around what your belief is in UFOs. He's told me some things that I can't repeat about the Roswell incident.

perhaps you could uh give us your your thoughts on and before before we lose time this half hour part one of his question about your personal belief. Okay. Well, I I treat the existence of uh God and the perhaps creation of the universe in exactly the same way.

What is the evidence? Now, the word God is used to cover a wide variety of very different ideas ranging maybe from the idea of an outsized light-skinned male with a long white beard who sits in a throne in the sky and uh tallies the fall of every sparrow for which there is no evidence none at all to the view of Einstein and Spinosa uh which is essentially that God is the sum total of the laws of nature. And since there are laws of nature and since remarkably the same laws hold throughout this magnificent and vast universe, if that's what you mean by God, then of course there's a God.

So everything depends on the definition of God. One last point you ask about uh the origin of the universe, but that's assuming the issue in question, namely that there was an origin of the universe. And in some cosmological models, the universe is infinitely old, therefore uncreated, therefore there's nothing for a creator to do.

So I think these are very deep and difficult issues in which both theologians and scientists ought to bear in mind their own limitations before the difficulties of these issues. We're going to take a short break and come back and continue our conversation. Carl and Dan, you two strike me as a couple of true believers who are no more willing to question the theory that you base your beliefs on than were the um ministers of the 19th century whom you so wrongly criticize as being close-minded.

I'd like to raise a couple of questions and see how you respond. Sure. Fire away.

regarding this theory. Number one, how do you explain the uh switch from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction? Well, first off, let me say that that in no way challenges the validity of biological evolution, whether we're able or unable to uh explain the fact that uh that many species by no means all uh reproduce sexually today.

the the Darwinian concept of evolution and natural selection is profoundly verified not just by the fossil record. Well, where is it possible? Excuse me.

Excuse me. Not just by by the clear experience of artificial selection, but by the record in the nucleic acids which is obtained by DNA sequencing in which we can see the similarities and differences of organisms and trace their evolutionary past. In other words, you got this history theory with a gaping hole in it.

And it doesn't cause you to question the theory. There's no gaping holes. We have we have you're talking about the absence of intermediate forms in the fossil record.

That was one problem the fossil. Let's talk about each thing that you have you have problems with. There's time.

Well, just a minute. You know, you you you raise one and then when I'm about to answer it, you rush off to the next. Let's uh let's do them one at a time.

uh the the fossil record is necessarily incomplete because of the processes of erosion but particularly it seems to me and all the fossils in transition got picked off sir nobody got all the fossils lots of intermediate forms you're going to have to put aside your creationist primmer for a moment and either listen to the answers that you well sir I will thank you for the call but I think it would be unproductive to continue um because our caller I fear is too ready to to battle rather than to listen. He rather he rather reminds me of Pontius Pilot. He asks what is truth but does not stay for the answer.

Let let me uh at least respond to one of uh of the callers uh uh concerns. Uh consider artificial selection. I mean there is something intrinsically implausible about evolution.

Uh particularly if you think that the world is only a few thousand years old as as the biblical chronology would have it. uh then the idea of one species flowing into another is absurd. We never see that in our everyday life we are told.

But consider artificial selection. Consider for example the variety of dogs on the planet. We have dogs ranging from Chihuahua to Great Danes.

We have dogs specialized for hering sheep, for going into holes, for uh catching uh birds that are shot down, uh for taking care of the babies, for guarding the house. Tremendous variety of dogs on the planet. And in fact, they are man-made dogs in a way.

Exactly. Where did they come from? We humans made them by controlling which dog shall mate with which.

We like the characteristics of Rover. We like the characteristics of Spot. We now introduce Rover and Spot to each other so that we can have the products of uh of their of their progeny.

Other dogs with characteristics we don't like, who are unpleasant to us, we do not encourage their reproduction of. And in the short period of 8 or 10,000 years, we produce this immense variety of dogs. Now compare that with 4 billion years of biological evolution, not artificial selection but natural selection which goes into not just the the overall characteristics and personalities of the dogs but into the biochemistry into the internal organs selecting what works a little bit better just the faintest bit in the competition of organisms.

And then it is clear that the beauty and diversity of life on earth can emerge. But if you don't buy 4 billion years, you don't buy evolution. Okay, my last question.

This is probably going to be the most simplest one for you to answer, but what if you're wrong? Well, what if I'm wrong? I mean, anybody could be wrong.

We could all be wrong about the flying spaghetti monster and the pink unicorn and the flying teapot. Um, you happen to have been brought up, I would presume, in the Christian faith. You know what it's like not to believe in a particular faith because you're not a Muslim.

You're not a Hindu. Why aren't you a Hindu? Because you happen to have been brought up in America, not in India.

If you've been brought up in India, you'd be a Hindu. If you were brought up in in um Denmark in the time of the Vikings, you'd be believing in Wan and Thor. If you were brought up in in classical Greece, you'd be believing in in Zeus.

If you brought up in central Africa, you'd be believing in the great juju up the mountain. There's no particular reason to pick on the Judeo-Christian God in which by the sheerest accident you happen to have been brought up and and ask me the question, "What if I'm wrong? What if you're wrong about the great juju at the bottom of the sea?

[Applause] In discussing the large scale structure of the cosmos, astronomers sometimes say that space is curved or that the universe is finite but unbounded. Whatever are they talking about? Let's imagine that we are perfectly flat.

I mean absolutely flat. and that we live, appropriately enough, in a flat land, a land designed and named by Edwin Abbott, a Shakespearean scholar who lived in Victorian England. Everybody in flat land is, of course, exceptionally flat.

We have squares, circles, triangles, and we all scurry about, and we can go into our houses and do our flat business. Now we have width and length but no height at all. Now these little cutouts have some little height but let's ignore that.

Let's imagine that these are absolutely flat. That being the case we know us flatlanders about left right and we know about forward back but we have never heard of up down. Let us imagine that into flatland hovering above it comes a strange three-dimensional creature which oddly enough looks like an apple.

And the three-dimensional creature sees an attractive congenial looking square, watches it enter its house, and decides in a gesture of interdimensional amity to say hello. Hello, says the three-dimensional creature. How are you?

I am a visitor from the third dimension. Well, the poor square looks around his closed house, sees no one there, and once more has witnessed a greeting coming from his insides, a voice from within. He surely is getting a little worried about his sanity.

The three-dimensional creature is unhappy about being considered a psychological aberration and so he descends to actually enter flatland. Now a three-dimensional creature exists in flat land only partially only a plane a cross-section through him can be seen. So when the three-dimensional creature first reaches flat land it's only the points of contact which can be seen.

And we'll represent that by stamping the apple in this ink pad and placing that image in flat land. And as the apple were to descend through slither by flat land, we would progressively see higher and higher slices, which we can represent by cutting the apple. So, the square as time goes on sees a set of objects mysteriously appear from nowhere and inside a closed room and change their shape dramatically.

His only conclusion could be that he's gone bonkers. Well, the apple might be a little annoyed at this conclusion and so not such a friendly gesture from dimension to dimension makes a contact with the square from below and sends our flat creature fluttering and spinning above flatland. At first, the square has no idea what's happening.

He's terribly confused. This is utterly outside his experience. But after a while he comes to realize that he is seeing inside closed rooms in flatland.

He is looking inside his fellow flat creatures. He is seeing flatland from a perspective no one has ever seen it before to his knowledge. Getting into another dimension provides as an incidental benefit a kind of x-ray vision.

Now our flat creature slowly descends to the surface and his friends rush up to see him. From their point of view, he has mysteriously appeared from nowhere. He hasn't walked from somewhere else.

He's come from some other place. They say, "For heaven's sake, what's happened to you? " And the poor square has to say, "Well, I was in some other mystic dimension called up.

" and they will pat him on his side and comfort him or else they'll ask well show us where is that three dimen third dimension point to it and the poor square will be unable to comply but maybe more interesting is the other direction in dimensionality what about the fourth dimension now to approach that let's consider a cube we can imagine a cube in the following way you take a line segment and move it at right angles to itself and equal length. That makes a square. Move that square in equal length at right angles to itself and you have a cube.

Now this cube we understand um casts a shadow and that shadow we recognize it's you know ordinarily drawn in third grade classrooms as two squares with their vertices connected. Now if we look at the shadow of a three-dimensional object in two dimensions, we see that in this case not all the lines appear equal. Not all the angles are right angles.

The three-dimensional object has not been perfectly represented in its projection in two dimensions. But that's part of the cost of losing a dimension in the projection. Now, let's take this three-dimensional cube and project it, carry it through a fourth physical dimension.

Not that way, not that way, not that way, but at right angles to those three directions. I can't show you what direction that is, but imagine that there is a fourth physical dimension. In that case, we would generate a four-dimensional hyper cube, which is also called a tesseract.

I cannot show you a tesseract because I and you are trapped in three dimensions. But what I can show you is the shadow in three dimensions of a four-dimensional hyper cube or tesseract. This is it.

And you can see it's two nested cubes, all the vertices connected by lines. And now the real tesseract in four dimensions would have all the lines of equal length and all the angles right angles. That's not what we see here.

But that's the penalty of projection. So you see while we cannot imagine the world of four dimensions we can certainly think about it. So let me now ask uh if I may some questions about uh about religion.

Um what happens if the doctrine of a religion Buddhism let's say uh is contradicted by some finding some discovery in science let's say what uh what does a believer in Buddhism do in that case? How Buddhist that is no that's not problem the Buddha himself as they made clear the important thing is the uh your own investigation and should know the reality uh no matter you see what scripture says in case the your finding is something contition or opposite that of the scriptures explanation then you see you should uh say you should relying on as a finding rather than on scripture so that's very much like yeah it's like science that's right so I think the basic Buddhist I think concept is the old thing uh I think at the beginning it is worthwhile or it is better remain skeptical Then carry you see experiment through external means as well as internal means. Then through investigation if things become clear and convincing then time is come to accept or to believe.

If through science uh if you see uh proof that uh after death after death you see no more continuity of let's say human mind or continuity of life if proof then theoretically speaking Buddhist have to accept. So what would that do to the doctrine of reincarnation? But I do not think they say uh the uh regarding the existence of continuity continuity of mind or I think more or life you have to yes you have to that you see the concept about that I think uh more say more reason although you see acceptance that kind which is a theory may not solve all your question or may not give you the I think the complete satisfaction but still that theory is better than the theory of non-existence if there is no the continuation of life or continuation of let's say being then you see the the the original cause of the whole galaxies you see including this planet it.

Now for example is a big bang theory. Yes it is all right. It is possible it's a big bang theory it happened to that way but doesn't matter.

All right. But then why it happened? Mhm.

Then either you see you have to accept the things happened accidentally. Yes. Without a particular cause.

Yes. That also uncomfortable. Mhm.

Still you said there are a lot of questions that then you say another thing creator. Yes. uh that also from the Buddhist viewpoint is that also not not so how say a sound answer if you say creator why you say creator creates these things yes that kind of more question still there so do you believe in god in the sense this is some kind of how to say the uh ultimate reality then yes we accept but god in the sense as as almighty or creator then Buddhism do not accept.

So there's no conceivable finding of science which would make you say that Buddhist doctrine is wrong or that you're no longer a Buddhist. I think it is a the scientific finding through careful experiment that Buddhists at once have to accept. M so no problem there some uh you know some some let's say uh some scientists they believe that or I think or there some what's I think some scientific minded Buddhist I think I should say like that way they say they consider Buddhism is not a religion but rather is a science of mind or some sometimes they call inner science Buddhism is something like inner science.

So uh according my you say I say my own experience say as a result of meeting with scientist in recent years I develop much contact with scientist mainly in the field of say the cosmology and then uh neurobiology and also the physics mainly is the quantum mechanic you see uh field and then of course psychology. You see in this field there are many I say common I say common common parallels parallels. So uh see the I say discussion in in length in this field.

uh as a Buddhist I I I got this much hers uh much benefit uh to learn from their finding and very helpful uh to say to a Buddhist at the same time you see uh the some scientist also you see showing genuine keen interest about Buddhist explanation about is a concerned subject. Yes. And as far as I one one is quite clear as far as I say the mental science concerned the Buddhism is very I think highly advanced.

Carl Sean is one of those people that I genuinely wish I had had the chance to listen to at the time he was alive. The other few that I can think of off the top of my head are maybe George Ken, Martin Luther King, Tupac, etc. Yeah, I never heard any of them do their thing on and it's extremely disappointing.

In fact, also never had the chance to listen to Christopher Hitchens who passed away in 2011. And I believe I was 16 at the time, which I think is too young. I don't think people in that demographic listen to the likes of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, etc.

I really don't think so. And even if they did, I can vividly remember that in 2016, I was a firm believer in Christianity man. I wasn't what you'd call a born again or devoted Christian.

But if you came to me saying religion was a sham, I'd comfortably sh you thinking you are a weapon fashioned by my enemies to cail my progress as if my sinful ways will lead into that if the Bible really was the true word of God. That actually makes me think, man, imagine if I today met that version of myself from 13 years ago. I know for a fact that it will be utterly impossible to convince my younger self that organized religion is the biggest scam ever devised against humanity.

So I'd not even bother trying I think. So yeah guys that was Carl Sean for you guys. He's one of the smartest individuals to ever walk the planet.

And it's really unfortunate that still 18 years after he left the world of the living son's communicators like Richard Dawkins and Neil de still have to make the same points over and over again because regardless of how absurd and consistent and illogical religion is, it still gathers a substantial following generation after generation. That's it. And to be fair, guys, according to Gallup News when they first asked Americans if religion was very important in their lives in 1965, 70% of Americans confirmed that it was that number would fall to approximately 52%.

in a survey from 1978. However, for some reason, the percentage would tick up to almost 60% between 1990 and 2005, which honestly doesn't make any sense to me personally because that's also the period that the world experienced its biggest technological revolution from the introduction of personal computers to the invention of the worldwide web. Or perhaps this rise in the number of believers has something to do with the hardships experienced by people after the com bubble that ballooned in the late 1990s.

I don't know. Whoever has an answers to why religion saw its rise in subscribers can let us know in the comment section below. Anyway, from 2005 to 2019 is the first 20-year period that America saw a declining share of Americans who considered religion to be very important in their lives.

The figure at the moment stands at approximately 45% today. So yeah, it's important improvement, but given we are in the information age and 21st century, this shouldn't be something we still talking about, man. And by the way, remember that the 45% figure represents those that consider religion to be very important in their lives.

There is still 26% that consider religion to be fairly important in their lives, which basically implies that's a total of 71% of Americans who think religion has any importance whatsoever. Disappointing stuff, man. I have a theory, guys, however, for why religion remains a big deal in America today.

I'm not saying it's the right theory, but it is mine, so take it with a grain of salt. I genuinely believe that if Islam wasn't as prevalent as it is today, most Americans wouldn't really care about religion at all. For some reason, and I don't know what actually started this, Christianity is usually considered the stock opposite of ideals presented in Islam's holy book.

While in strong Christian societies, the Quran is considered the perfect example of what happens when humans corrupt the word of God. This stock difference is usually made worse by the fact that in Muslim countries like Iran, Afghanistan etc. they take the religion may say serious man which you can learn more about in the first video ever I created in this channel.

I even give examples of flaws within these countries that ruled send shivers through my spine money. They were introduced in my smallest African country. So I guess Middle Eastern countries taking their religion quite serious forces religious people within secular but unofficially Christian countries like American to take a stronger stance subconsciously in an effort to combat that.

As I said that's just my theory based on interactions I've seen online from people of both of these religious communities. The bottom line at the end of the day, however, is that they both need a strong dose of intellectualism within their societies. Another thing that constantly kept popping up in my mind while listening to all the videos of Kal Sean I watched while coming up with this random noise.

How can people listen to this and discard it as nonsense and just choose to stick with their unfounded beliefs? The main reason guys like Carl Sean and Neil Degrasset were so effective in helping this transition from being a strong believer in religion was the fact their concerns always centered around the sheer amount of harm that blind belief has caused humanity over time. And as if that isn't enough, you still have religion trying to cast doubt among its believers that science isn't all it cropped up to be regardless of all the good that science has brought upon the world.

At first I actually did not believe them but I wasn't still by any account. So with time I couldn't help but notice that even with the things throughout humanity that religion tries to take credit for you quickly realized that religion dogma was responsible for the problem that preceded the solution that religion introduced. A great example was of course colonialism and slavery.

You must avoid religious leaders crediting religious leaders as the people that led the revolutions that rule in the end of a term. Both things. And while that is very true, they conveniently forget to mention that both things were justified by the same religions.

Religious leaders just so it fit to stand against these injustices when society was already starting to feel some type of way about what was going on around them. The same thing is exactly true with religious texts. for every kind, selfless and just commandment that you can find.

You can find 10 before it that advocate for some of the worst things humanity has to offer. So at that point, even I couldn't come up with a better lie to tell myself. So I can't keep believing.

So slowly by slowly, I stopped giving a t about this day. Even though the church in our community has existed for more than 30 years, you cannot point to a single project within the community that was started by or is maintained by the church. Every single scent collected from the community is actually sent to the main church in the capital city so they can allocate the funds however they see fit.

That's despite the multitudes of problems within a small African village that the church could attempt solving using said funds. Yeah. So that was the genesis to my exodus from religion.

Guys, this is easily one of the most exciting videos I've ever had the pleasure of creating, man. I even have more videos of Kalagan going in on religion and I look forward to putting together a part two depending on how this video performs. If I had put them in this video, it would have been at least 3 hours long.

So I hope you understand. Yeah. Anyway, in the description section, you'll also find a link to my favorite book by Carl Sean.

It's the actually first book that I ever read from him and I am confident it's the perfect book for anyone who'd like to dive into the inner workings of his mind. Thank you all man and see you again in the next one. Fix.