God is a ‘cop-out,’ isn’t testable

God doesn’t exist.

Or at least I can’t prove otherwise.

This higher being quandary has been discussed and debated ever since human beings were developed enough to communicate. But the fatal flaw with the religious thought process is its reliance on something that can never be measured. It relies on faith.

Faith can’t move mountains, and it can’t prove the existence of god. Those “believers” who say god exists because they feel it, because they’ve been touched by it, can’t point to any evidence that has ever been recorded or been consistently agreed upon in scientific journals.

And that’s the problem.

I’m a biology minor. I think scientifically; I think analytically. Though science is by no means flawless, it is the best process we humans have devised. Science gathers data through experimentation by looking at the world as perceived by the senses. God’s existence has never been consistently “proven” by the scientific community, and because of that, it doesn’t stand up to the rigors of peer review. To science, god has neither been proved nor disproved.

Of course you’ll hear accounts of god performing miracles, or better yet, god listening to prayers as proof of his existence, but it’s just plain wrong. God does neither of those things. The world is governed by the rules and regulations of nature paired with the unpredictable nature of chance and free will.

Rabbi Harold S. Kushner came to the realization that god doesn’t have an effect on day-to-day life events after he lost his young son to a debilitating disease. In his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Kushner said all the prayers in the world couldn’t help his son or anyone else faced with the potential cruelty of life. He claims when the universe was created, god included in the mix the randomness seen on a daily basis. God doesn’t heal the sick. Medicine does. Science does. If god did heal the sick, why would it heal some good people but not others? Why would god make good people suffer?

Sociology says religion is a social construct used to bolster solidarity among humans and to explain the unexplainable. It makes sense. I used to go to a Catholic church on a regular basis. I felt good after attending Mass. We performed the same rituals week after week together and eventually strengthened our connection with one another. But it wasn’t god’s power and love coursing through our veins. We felt good because of group solidarity. We felt good because of human nature.

Historically, god answered the tough questions: What happens after we die? Where did life begin? But god is a cop-out. It can be used to solve any problem, and its explanation isn’t testable. And that’s where it falls apart. Science tests hypotheses about the universe according to standardized perceptions. It doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, and that’s part of the excitement of it. Science is always changing, always evolving.

Until someone shows me a study or clear evidence about the existence of god, I can’t buy into it. Don’t start quoting Bible phrases as an explanation — misinterpretation is very human.

Mike Klesta is a senior newspaper journalism major and is editor of the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].