Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Schools and religion

Photo by Laura Nyhuis on Unsplash

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I am not a particularly religious person. I was raised in the Christian tradition — a point I will return to — but I cannot commit myself fully to that set of beliefs. There is an arbitrariness about religions that puts me off.

However, I am not anti religious either. At university, I wrote an essay critical of Richard Dawkins’ evangelical atheism. Essentially, religions posit some kind of supernatural realm — at least the religions I know about do. Science is rooted firmly in nature and so attempting to refute religion with science is mistaken. It’s the wrong tool for the job.

A better tool is Occam’s Razor — why posit the existence of things that are not needed? Why should there be a supernatural realm at all? What problems does this solve? What questions does it answer?

A possible answer is that the universe is odd. If this universe is all that there is then why is it here? An atheist would object at this point, suggesting I am imposing my human need for meaning on something that doesn’t have to have any. But, still.

It’s like those folks who say, “There’s no point asking what happened before the Big Bang because time itself was created in the Big Bang.” It explains everything and nothing.