Malcolm Gladwell: How I Rediscovered Religion

My point here is that faith & science is not at crossroads, it's one and the same. Science is there to uncover the mysteries of the Creator/God/Allah/Bhagwan and the spiritual dimension of life. Everything is magic until you know how it works. Same goes with faith & religion. Science and humans will always play catch-up and that's what makes life exciting. :)

First, historicity. When we pull apart ancient holy texts, we find a mix of myths, legends, distorted tales, and eventually the foundation of history. Any religious belief has to first demonstrate that it's consistent with our archeological finds, current resources, and competing histories.

Second, speaking of competing histories, is comparative religion, AKA comparative values and beliefs. Religions generally have contemporary competitors. They may claim different versions of historical events or have contradictory metaphysics.

Third, physics and the fallacy of nature. In short, observable events are natural and described by physics, and the burden of proof is on religions to show that supernatural events happen. As science has marched on, miracles have shrunk in occurrence and priestly rituals have decreased in power.

So, for example, how might born-again Christianity fare when considered this way? On the first barrier, there probably was somebody like Jesus or John the Baptist or Simon the Zealot at roughly the given times, stirring up the trouble and getting killed for it. Also, we know that the Gospels were secondhand accounts at best due to when they were written, and we know that they were deliberately crafted to fulfill Jewish prophecies. However, Second Temple Judaism doesn't have strong historicity for its founding figures of Abraham and Moses, which hollows out the promises that the figure of Jesus makes.

On the second barrier, there are a pile of sun-god and resurrected-demigod cults around the Mediterranean, some dating back to the Egyptian New Kingdom, which would have made the general mythological ideas over a millennium old at the time of Jesus. Indeed, in the Gospel of John, Jesus performs a resurrected-demigod ritual. I want to say "nothing is new under the sun-god", or maybe "Jesus is too much in the son-god"?

And on the third barrier, there's no reason to accept any of the miraculous claims for as long as there are natural physical mechanisms of action, and explanations which are simpler than the implications of the Problem of Evil. We know that modern speaking in tongues is a sort of hypnosis, that modern faith healing is quackery and scams, that modern reincarnations are a combination of childish pranks and gullible adults, that modern water to wine is a magic trick dating back to Egypt, and that modern baptism feels tingly in your brain because of the mammalian cold-water diving reflex. There's no evidence to suggest that these were any different in ancient times, and plenty of evidence to suggest that humans were broadly the same then as now, and that their culture was extremely similar to ours.

So, on reflection, what actually supports Christian beliefs, and why should we accept it as evidence? It turns out not much at all!