Humans have always needed to predict the future. This is why Stonehenge was built: our ancestors needed to know when winter would end and spring would begin, and, no, they couldn’t just google it.
Stonehenge isn’t just a religious site where pagan summer and winter festivals have been held over the millennia. It’s also one of our earliest scientific instruments. Stonehenge is one of humanity’s earliest compasses and calendars as it tracks the movement of the sun across the sky and marks those days when the sun will be at its highest and lowest points in the sky. Of course, Stonehenge may seem like more of a religious site than a scientific instrument because science and religion have historically been muddled together. Moreover, the religious aspect of this site has always been more celebrated than the underlying science.
Science and religion are separate because scientists are studying and trying to make sense of the natural world, while theologians are supposedly studying and trying to make sense of the supernatural world. Science studies the natural world so we can understand and predict the behavior of things in the natural world, while the supposed goal of religion is to explain the supernatural world so we can predict the behavior of God. Of course, the world’s religions have failed to offer a unifying explanation of God’s behavior, instead, they just offer a pleasing social and “spiritual” experience for a small donation.
To be effective hunters, farmers, and tool makers, humans need to know how animals behave, how the seasons change and how different rocks and metals will behave when used as tools. Just as important would be to understand how God behaves and how our worship, rituals and kindness, or lack thereof will affect God’s behavior.
Science has done a remarkable job of allowing us to predict the weather, animal behavior and the tensile strength of different rocks and metals. Unfortunately, the world’s religions have failed to offer accurate predictions of God’s behavior. In fact, humanity is united by science and divided by religion because the predictions made by science are reliable, while the predictions and prophesies made by the world’s religions are unreliable.
This is how science works: scientists make predictions based on hypothesized laws. Scientists then design and run experiments to see if those predictions come true and, thus, if the laws are accurate. If their predictions don’t come true, then the laws are re-evaluated, and new predictions are made, and new experiments are run. Unfortunately, the world’s religions resist any critiquing and rewriting of their laws and prophesies even though their predictions continually fail to materialize.
Perhaps we’re lucky that the End Times haven’t arrived, as they have been predicted so many times. Yet this constant prophesizing that the world is about to end has caused numerous generations to see our world as disposable, which has discouraged those generations from preserving the environment for future generations.
The world’s religions aren’t predicting or revealing the future; they’re predicting or revealing what most people want to believe. They’re predicting that most people want to believe that God will forgive them for their sins, that karma will right all wrongs, and that a savior will arrive shortly to fix all the problems in our world.
We shouldn’t follow religions that don’t understand and can’t predict the future. We should demand that our religions explain why the world is still here in spite of all their doomsday prophesies, why karma hasn’t eliminated all evil people, and why a savior hasn’t shown up to solve all our problems. This won’t be easy because demanding that our religions actually explain the past, present, and future will take humility, as it’s far more narcistic and appealing to predict and believe that our generation is the chosen and final generation than to predict and believe that life will go on beyond our generation.