Science vs Mormonism round one – explanatory power

When I look back on the factors that first caused me to move away from Mormonism, it can be a bit difficult to figure out which was the most powerful wake up call. Mormonism does have an absurdly quirky and shady history, which certainly was a major factor in my disillusionment. However, that was also one of the easiest things to try and reconcile. All religions tend to have their bad episodes and daft characters, and when you grow up being taught a rather rose-tinted view of Mormon history, it is surprisingly easy to put aside misgivings and accept it as a whole. Being gay also drove something of a wedge, but at the same time I had lost all faith in the credibility of the church long before I really accepted my sexuality. Rather, I think science is to blame for the first cracks in my childhood faith, and remains one of the strongest factors involved in my continued rejection of Mormonism, and indeed all religion.

Now, there are plenty of scientific inconsistencies in the Mormon story – massive wars and cities, advanced technologies and unexpected animals present all without a shred of evidence. No record of the “reformed Egyptian” language. Indeed, the idea of an ancient Jewish presence in America is so out of place, the mitochondrial DNA of their long-supposed descendants hasn’t quite had time to catch up. All of these certainly added to my incredulity, but to me there is a more powerful principle behind why I favour science over religious teaching: explanatory power.

I’m a student of Biology, hoping to go into a research career and thus science my way to the very end of my existence. It’s a love affair that has been alive since childhood, and I think the root cause of my obsession with it is that it has the power to explain millions of things. I can see billions of years into our evolutionary history, explain why you can’t catch the same strain of flu twice and begin to understand how each of us arose as a massively complex organism from a single fertilised egg. And these are no mere empty explanations – each fact is established and supported by experimental evidence that continues to face scrutiny and peer review.

In contrast, religious explanations tend to fall into either of two categories. Firstly, mythology which is largely unsupported by or contrary to any good evidence we possess. These are just-so stories to be accepted at face value because the source that they come from is holy and not to be questioned. I do not value the stubborn acceptance of an idea contrary to established evidence to be a valid route to the truth.

Secondly comes the category I like to call explanatory outsourcing, where the explanation of a phenomenon is deemed to be some mysterious purpose outside of human understanding. The most simple example of this is the problem of evil. We live in a world where horrifically bad things happen to innocent people. Granted, the scientific explanation of this seems a little blunt – people are capable of doing horrible things to each other, and we live on a planet with often extreme and unpredictable climatic and seismic events. These forces are rather blind to the moral status of those who fall victim. Religion instead outsources the explanation with contorted explanations of why a loving god stands aside for the greater good, or to allow us free agency, whilst diseases, famines and earthquakes run their course. Of course, the reason is way over the head of our mere mortal understanding, but god is running the show and everything will be alright in the end. Believe that if you will, but give the idea some close examination. Instead of actually explaining a troubling phenomenon, you have merely outsourced the explanation to some divine plan which is itself without explanation. Why does god need millions of African children to die of disease and malnutrition? It might make you feel better to think that afterwards they are swept into heaven for an eternity of peace, but all you have done is mentally compensated for the present evil, not explained the need for it to exist. Do millions of African babies have to die for us to practice the virtues of gratitude and charity? If so, for what reason do we need these lessons, and in such a grotesque form? Training for godhood? It seems to me that this route of explanation is an infinite regress into absurdity.

The scientific explanation may seem cold, but it is consistent and self-contained. Religious explanations only seem to work if one doesn’t think too hard about them.