Persuasive Essay on Religion

Many times I have had discussions about religion, and whether or not there is a higher force controlling everything we do. This discussion is very old, Greek and Roman philosophers already discussed whether or not there is a higher force, and if there is, does this higher force have any influence upon our lives?

One of the major arguments for creationism, the theory that states that everything was created by a higher force, is that we as humans are so complex that someone, or something, must have created us. We couldn’t have evolved from simple bacteria, the first life form on Earth. We are too complex, they argue. And that higher force, who created us, is higher than us, like we are higher to the things that we as humans created. This higher force is referred to as “God” or “The Gods” in theocentrical cultures.

Religious people state that we as humans are so complex, we can’t be the result of billions of years of evolution from the creation of the first Archaebacteria to our current life-form, we have been created. This is blatant arrogance in my point of view, why are we humans better than any other animal? We all consist of the same cells, we all have our weaknesses and strong points. The human brain tells us that we as individuals are truly separated from others. But when one logically analyzes the facts, we can conclude that we are nothing but the result of a long time of ever ongoing evolution.

We live in the ages of science, we try to explain everything that was unexplained before us, or re-explain something that was explained falsely before. In the past humans have always explained the unexplainable with a higher force. That was simply the easiest way to have an explanation for something that they couldn’t clarify at that time. But now, we have a lot of explanations, or at least theories that explain these things, there is no need for a higher force anymore.

An individual can be religious due to several different reasons. They could have been raised as a religious person, started believing in a religion, for example because they where going through a rough time, and a major reason is, a lot of people turn to religion when they are having a hard time mentally. From the above stated facts I conclude that religion is for the weak-minded, the ones not open-minded to scientific discoveries, and the ones not able to believe in the absence of a higher power.

Life is a coincidence. In 1953 two scientists, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey wanted to show that from the very basic substances that were found on earth 5 billion years ago, we can create the base of all life from three substances. When we put electric signals through a mix of CH4(methane), NH3(ammonia) and H2(hydrogen gas), after a few days amino acids were found in the resulting substance. As we all know, amino acids are the building blocks for proteins, which on their turn are the building blocks for life. This experiment shows that life is a coincidence, after a lot of combinations between atoms, and then between molecules, finally the first primitive life form was created. This was probably one archaebacteria, this group of bacteria goes back to 3.5 billion years. From the experiment we can conclude that as long as the building blocks are there, we can make life, there is no god needed to do that.

There is no proof for a god. When there is no proof for a god, and there is a lot of proof pointing in the direction that there is no god (the experiment from Miller and Urey illustrates that there is no need for a god in order for us to exist), at least not a god as he is represented in the holy books of several religions (e.g. the Bible or Koran).

“But”, the Christians say, “Jesus existed, there is proof for this!” Yes, there is proof for Jesus’ existence, there is also proof for him being a prophet. However, recent scientific research has proven that the Jesus as he is described in the bible isn’t like the Jesus he was. In fact, the author(s) of the bible didn’t even know Jesus. Christianity wouldn’t have been a religion if it wasn’t for Paul, the latest apostle. It was proven that before Paul, Christianity was a mere separation from Judaism. Paul added the myths, Jesus’ resurrection probably was something Paul made up to give Christianity more credibility as an independent religion. Large pieces of this original bible were then removed by several Popes in the Roman time, again, to give the religion more credibility. This is all proven, go look at the references.

In this essay I clearly disprove the arguments that religious people present for the existence of a higher force, I provided evidence from which we can conclude that there is no God. I find religion something for the weak minded, I don’t fight religion, I just think the people with a strong mind shouldn’t be religious, for they themselves can see there is absolutely no point in believing in something that isn’t there.

References:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wic.html

http://slovakia.humanists.net/activities_semin.htm

http://www.historyoftheuniverse.com/archaebact.html

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/jesus/jesus.html

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20030616/jesusfake.html

http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/miller.html