Introduction

Human life has always been difficult and complicated. In times of personal crisis, or when the world changes in unexpected ways, people face challenges to their personal beliefs. They may lose faith, or sink into depression when their beliefs are challenged by a health crisis, the loss of a loved one, betrayal by a spiritual leader, or when bad things happen to good people. Today the world is changing at an increasing rate, and our beliefs are often challenged by new developments in cosmology, biology, physics and technology.

This book introduces a new method of religious thinking, “the religious method.” It is inspired by the scientific method, but it has been adapted to work for religion. It is not a specific set of beliefs. Instead, it is a way for anyone to work on their own personal belief system. You can use the religious method if your goal is to create a more flexible, resilient and consistent set of beliefs that will stand up to personal crisis, challenging world events, new scientific advancements and new technological developments.

You don’t have to be religious in order to practice the religious method. It is about developing your own personal beliefs, even if you are skeptical and don’t have an organized belief system. On the other hand, you can also practice the religious method if you have a strongly-held set of beliefs that you feel deeply committed to. The religious method is not itself a religion. Think of it more as a “religious plug-in” that you can use to enhance your existing beliefs and improve them over time.

Overview

Religion is very important because human beings need to know what to believe. We have a deep-seated need to know the answers to questions about the purpose of human existence, right vs. wrong, what happens to us after we die, and what is really going on in the universe at a deep level. Religion gives us answers to many of these questions that are fairly straightforward and easy to understand. Being part of a community of people who share similar religious beliefs can allow us to live more harmoniously, because we share a common set of values and assumptions.

In today’s world, life is changing very quickly and it is hard for most of us to keep up with it. We are surrounded by so many different technologies, and it seems like every month we hear about some groundbreaking new innovation that will solve many longstanding problems, but will also create many new problems that we aren’t prepared to solve yet.

Powerful weapons can allow us to defeat our enemies, and now we worry that those same weapons will be used against us. We have machines that can do the work of many human beings, but more and more people are losing their jobs. We have vehicles that can take us anywhere we want to go without getting tired, but now we have long commutes and spend too much time stuck in traffic. Energy has become plentiful, but now the climate is changing and human survival may be threatened. Electronic communication empowers people to express themselves, but now we’re beguiled and bedeviled by addictive social networks and toxic manipulation of the public commons. Computers are becoming smarter at an exponential rate, and we worry about being automated out of a job.

It seems like suddenly there are so many of these disruptive technologies that many people are feeling, well, disrupted. Why did this happen? What started this chain of disruptive technologies?

The most disruptive technology of all is the scientific method. It allows scientific research to improve over time. It enables scientists to constantly discover new things about how the world works. In a number of centuries, it has enabled science to go from rolling balls to splitting atoms and creating intelligence. All this science has enabled technology to follow it at an ever-increasing rate.

Today, things are changing so fast that it is hard for people to keep up. The world is getting more complicated, disruptive changes keep coming faster and faster, but our brains take a very long time to adapt.

Our belief systems are based on ancient scriptures that were written a long time ago. These scriptures contain useful wisdom that has stood the test of time. But they don’t explicitly mention bio-engineering, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, climate change, self-guided military drones or price gouging.

In this book I will acknowledge all the incredible benefits of our traditional religious systems of belief. But I will argue that the scientific method has tilted the balance of intellectual authority away from religion in a way that is incredibly dangerous. I will argue in favor of a new religious method that will help to level the playing field. I will explain in detail how this method works, and what kinds of results we can hope to get from it.

The scientific method is a cycle of questioning, hypothesis, experimentation, observation and analysis, and conclusion. It requires scientific theories to be testable, and it allows scientists to avoid worrying about theories and questions that are not testable. It favors the theories that give the best answers that are most consistent with testing. When two theories give the same answer, it favors the simplest theory. That’s the scientific method in a nutshell. It’s not rocket science, but we couldn’t do any rocket science without it.

Unlike science, religion doesn’t have to be testable by experiments and measurements. The religious method does not require testability. But it does require religious beliefs to answer all the big questions. Like science, it favors the simplest set of beliefs that provides the best answers. It requires us to test our own beliefs through contemplation, religious practice and dialogue. It encourages us to avoid self-contradictory beliefs as well as beliefs that contradict science or our own lived experience. It is more subjective than objective. But it encourages us to modify our beliefs when we encounter problems with them, or if we come across simpler beliefs that explain the same things just as well.

In a way, the religious method is the quest for the simplest set of beliefs that gives the best and most helpful answers to all the “big questions” about human existence, the universe and our place in it.

The scientific method has enabled science to improve over time. It has transformed science into an overwhelming source of intellectual authority. This has led to accelerating technological progress that solves many problems, but that could also threaten human existence in the future.

The religious method will enable our religious beliefs to seamlessly adapt over time. It will empower us to create belief systems that are completely up to date with the latest changes that face us in everyday life. If we can create a resilient set of beliefs that give us solid answers to the important questions that confront us in today’s world, it will be an enormous help to us. If those beliefs are in alignment with the deep reality of how the universe works, then they will enable us to align our behavior with that reality.

The Scientific Method

As I’ll explain, the religious method is based on the scientific method. I’m going to describe the scientific method first. Think of the scientific method as a set of steps. Then the steps of the religious method will make more sense, because they are very similar.

To describe the scientific method, I’ll use a simple example from gardening. You have tomato plants growing in two parts of your garden. The plants on the north side of the garden are growing much faster than the plants on the south side of the garden.

1. Start with a model of how the world works. I think of this as “step zero” because it’s a pre-requisite. This model is like an ancient map of the world, where some parts are mostly correct and other regions haven’t been explored yet. It is essentially a set of beliefs expressed in language. A scientist starts with an existing set of words and equations that describe how we think the world works.

2. Ask a Question. The question might be based on what we know about the world, or based on experiences we are having. Most of us are focused on answers, but I would argue that the questions we ask are more important. A scientist identifies an unanswered question, or something that doesn’t make sense and is bothering them.

There are a lot of factors that could explain why some tomato plants are growing faster than others. These include sunlight, insects (both pests and pollinators), nutrients (too much or too few), water and drainage, temperature, humidity and soil quality. And many more. So you have two questions: First, which factor explains why the plants on the north side of the garden are growing faster than the plants on the south side. Second, you are specifically thinking about sunlight. You have a hunch that the sunlight might be the reason.

1. Predict the answer. A hypothesis is the predicted answer or explanation. Often there is more than one hypothesis. There might be two competing theories.

In our gardening example, you notice that there are tall trees surrounding the garden. The fast-growing plants on the north side appear to be getting more sunlight. The slow-growing plants on the south side are getting more shade. So your hypothesis is that sunlight explains why the north-side plants are growing faster than the south-side plants. And the “null hypothesis” is that sunlight has nothing to do with it. That the plants are growing differently for some other reason, unrelated to sunlight.

1. Do an experiment. There is a lot that goes into designing and conducting a good experiment. Fortunately you have a lot of time in the winter to think through the details. The next year, you decide to put 20 tomato plants into identical large pots with exactly the same kind of soil, and grow them in the same place. You plant the seeds on the same day, and you give them the same amount of water, but 10 of the plants get full sunlight and the other 10 get half as much sunlight.

Then every week you carefully measure the height and the number of tomatoes on each plant. And you write the results down in a journal.

So you are making careful notes on what happens, and you have tried to make sure that all the plants are growing under exactly the same conditions, except for sunlight which is purposely different.

1. Analyze the data. Probably after the experiment ends, you intuitively know what the answer is going to be. But you need to carefully examine the data that you collected. You might make charts of plant growth where the shade plants are red dots and the sunlight plants are green dots. You might calculate the average height and number of tomatoes each week. And you’d be asking whether the full-sun tomato plants did better than the partial-shade plants.

2. Draw a conclusion. If the full-sun tomato plants grew taller and produced more tomatoes, you might conclude that sunlight is an important factor that might explain why the plants on the north side of the garden grew better. And you might plan to grow all your tomatoes on the north side, using the south side for a shade-friendly crop. If the two groups of plants grew the same, then you’d conclude that the experiment was not successful, and you failed to prove that sunlight explained the difference.

Occam’s Razor is part of the scientific method. It means finding the simplest explanation when two competing theories work equally well. If two theories answer all the questions but one is simpler, then we have to favor the simpler theory. But if one theory explains more or works better, then it doesn’t really matter which one is simpler.

In our case the sunlight theory worked perfectly. The plants that got more sun grew faster and produced more tomatoes. The null hypothesis was that sunlight is not important and the difference is explained by other factors. That hypothesis failed, so it doesn’t matter which theory is simpler.

1. Communicate the results. Scientists try to publish their results in scientific journals, or to present them at conferences. A gardner is not a scientist, but you could still communicate your results by talking to other gardners, posting online and so on.

The scientific method requires our theories to be testable. We were able to test the theory about tomatoes and sunlight. Some theories are not testable, and we can’t investigate them with the scientific method. Those theories are “out of scope” for science.

The scientific method is “recursive”, meaning that we can apply it to sub-questions that come up while we are using it. And it is “iterative”, meaning that we keep doing it over and over again.

The Religious Method

The religious method is just as simple as the scientific method. There are two main differences. First, you can’t really test religious beliefs with an empirical experiment. Second, not many of the deep mysterious questions of existence are “out of scope” for religion. So the religious method requires us to have answers for all of them.

Instead of “steps”, the religious method is more informal and has “phases”. The process doesn’t have to be sequential, but it should involve a number of different phases or areas of concern.

1. Start with your existing beliefs, whatever they are. You don’t need to change your beliefs, and you don’t even need to be completely sure about what you believe, in order to practice the religious method. You can start just as you are, whatever you believe, and whatever that means to you.

2. Ask a question. Often these questions arise naturally, but we will talk about many specific questions later in the book. It can be any question that is relevant to your beliefs, or that poses a challenge to your faith, or that other people have struggled with.

3. Think of answers. You may already have an answer based on your beliefs. It’s often helpful to consider alternatives to see how they stack up. You might have an idea for a good explanation, and a “null hypothesis” that the idea doesn’t help or doesn’t make sense.

4. Put your answers to the test. This could involve contemplation, critical thinking, asking challenging questions or considering edge cases. This is a personal process, in the context of your own beliefs and spiritual practices. It could involve reading, studying, or talking with trusted advisers. It could involve meditation or prayer.

5. Analyze the results. Perhaps your answers are completely adequate. Perhaps there are new questions that come up. Perhaps there are specific situations where you’re not satisfied. This phase works best if you think critically and if you’re open to new interpretations.

6. Draw conclusions. What did you learn? Are you even more confident in your beliefs, or did you feel the need to update them in some way? Do you still have more work to do on these questions in the future?

7. Communicate. This is another way of putting our beliefs to the test. When we communicate with others, we can spread our own wisdom and learn from the wisdom of others. This often reveals information we hadn’t considered. That can be challenging, but using the religious method gives us the opportunity to strengthen our beliefs over time.

An important note about communication. Some people are toxic and hostile, and you are under no obligation to share your beliefs with everyone. The goal is to make our lives better, and you have a right to be selective about whom you communicate with.

To explain how this works, I’m going to use two fictional people, Roy and Sue. Roy is a moderate Christian and Sue is agnostic. They are both thinking about the issue of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems and whether they can ever be conscious. They have different beliefs and they will arrive at different conclusions, but they will both use the religious method.

Roy and Sue were high school friends, and now they are work colleagues. They both work at the local community college.

Sue is the college librarian. She reads an award-winning poem “The Hidden Divine” in a local poetry journal. The poem really speaks to her. She shows it to Roy because he is the writing professor.

Roy loves the poem, and he covers it in class. He gives the students a detailed analysis of the poem. He praises its depth, subtlety and sensitivity.

A few months later, Sue reads about a scandal. It has been proven that this same poem, “The Hidden Divine” was written by a large language model. The award has been rescinded and the so-called “poet” has been banned from competitions and writing journals. Sue is shocked because she never imagined that an AI system could write such a good poem, and because she now feels guilty. She apologizes to Roy, because she showed him the poem and he used it in class. Roy doesn’t blame Sue, but he is completely stunned that a computer wrote the poem.

Roy believes that consciousness is a divine gift, given by God only to human beings. But he is shaken by this experience and it causes a crisis of faith. This poem had such emotional depth, and it resonated with him on a personal and spiritual level. Are these AI systems really intelligent? Do they really understand the pathos of human existence? Are they conscioius? Do they feel emotions?

Roy discusses the incident at a church social gathering. His pastor says that the soul is a “divine spark”. Only God can grant consciousness. A human creation, a machine, would be a “philosophical zombie”. It might seem intelligent, but it would have no internal consciousness. So AI is a tool, and we should use it ethically and responsibly. We should not confuse mimicry with consciousness or self-awareness.

Roy is satisfied and relieved by this explanation. But later he reads an article by a Christian computer scientist who points out that if a future machine did everything that the human brain and body does, it would be up to God to decide whether to imbue that machine with consciousness. Roy still doesn’t think that computers have consciousness. But he realizes that ultimately, it’s not up to us and we have to be humble. We have to trust the Lord to decide.

Sue believes that consciousness is an emergent property of physical brain processes. She doesn’t think that an AI system is conscious, but she is genuinely puzzled. She discusses the poem with her husband, a computer scientist, who points out that AI systems are trained on trillions of human words. They have read all our poems, and in mysterious ways they seem to have developed genuine understanding to some extent. But they don’t have emotions or a stream of consciousness, and they don’t remember what happens to them. So he agrees that AI systems are not conscious.

As a librarian, Sue has plenty of opportunity to read up on the subject. She learns that some philosophers believe consciousness is not limited to human brains. A computational process that integrates information in just the right way might be conscious. Other philosophers believe that all the matter in the universe possesses some level of awareness. All this challenges her materialist assumptions and gets her thinking. She is more open to the idea that a future technology could become conscious, but she still doubts that it will ever happen.

Roy and Sue have an interesting conversation one day at lunch. Roy has gotten very good at spotting student writing that was written by a large language model. Sue jokes that if the computer really was conscious, it would probably feel guilty about helping so many people cheat on their homework. They end up having a nuanced conversation about consciousness, and they both agree that there are still some mysterious things that we don’t yet understand.

Even if they don’t know it, both Sue and Roy have essentially applied the religious method. They asked a question that challenged their beliefs, and they approached the question with curiosity and openness. They weren’t satisfied by throwing up their hands and saying “I don’t know.” They considered alternative explanations, and they put their answers to the test by gathering new information and thinking about the issue in an open and vulnerable way. They analyzed the results, drew conclusions, and they were willing to change their interpretation when they learned new information. They discussed their thoughts with other people and with each other, and they learned a lot in the process.

Sue and Roy didn’t start out believing the same thing, and they both wound up drawing very different conclusions. But they wound up having well-informed beliefs that will probably be more resilient in the future. They both successfully applied the religious method.

Next I want to describe how science gained intellectual authority over time, while religion lost ground. That is part of my argument that the religious method is important and necessary in today’s world. I will describe how religion developed, and then I’ll contrast that with how science developed.

Religion in Ancient Times

Many ancient religious scriptures started as oral traditions, long before they were written down. Human beings lived in small communities, each with its own distinct history and distinct set of beliefs. They hadn’t learned how to build a successful life in one place, so they had to move around in order to survive. It was hard for large societies to form and stay together, so people lived in smaller groups. They passed down stories, rituals and traditions over many generations. These small bands would routinely break apart or join together, and their oral traditions would change when that happened.

These ancient people generally believed that everything they encountered in the world had spirit, intelligence or a soul. They generally had a spiritual leader, responsible for divine matters. But their specific beliefs and social practices varied greatly from group to group.

An oral tradition is hard to spread, because it is hard to learn. It requires many retellings to be passed down from one generation to the next. But it can evolve over time. When new people join the group, or new events happen and new discoveries are made, the oral tradition can change to include new information. When a new generation asks difficult questions, the answers can be incorporated into the story.

Disasters like floods and earthquakes must have influenced ancient beliefs. We can read about such events in many scriptures. If a mythology said that the sun god traveled across the sky during the day, it made a useful prediction about the future. When eclipses sometimes happened, people must have been frightened. They would have assumed it was a very important event. The mythology could then change to include explanations and answers about eclipses. Oral traditions are adaptable in that way.

About 12,000 years ago, human beings gradually learned to master agriculture. At some point, they began to settle down and become farmers. They got very good at producing more and more food, and storing it so they could survive the winter. Societies got bigger, and people had specialized roles. Obviously they needed farmers, but some people specialized in cultivating plants while others focused on irrigation or herded animals. Then they needed people to make pottery, tools, cloth and baskets. They needed religious leaders, chiefs and elders, builders and architects. Men and women had always had distinct roles that varied by group; now those differences also became more specialized.

Villages grew into cities about 6000 years ago. Then writing was invented. At first only a few specialists could read and write. Society needed scribes and record keepers. Accounting was very important. People were using money and they needed to keep records. They needed to write down the kind of information that would today be written on labels, in spreadsheets and other records. Product labels, transaction lists, accounting records, inventory management, contracts and agreements, tax records, orders and instructions, payment records. Most of the earliest writing doesn’t sound very exciting, but it tells us a lot about how people lived. Soon they needed to train more scribes, so they started to write down word lists and dictionaries.

Writing turned out to be incredibly useful. It helped people to develop larger and more complicated societies. This created complex governments, religious institutions and bureaucracy, which required a lot more scribes, and a lot more writing.

About 4000 years ago, royalty wanted to use writing to brag about their achievements. Their scribes started writing down rules and laws, to be able to enforce them. Religious scribes wrote down short songs and prayers. Narrative writing was developed. They wrote down stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Iliad and the Odyssey. Myths and legends, and the histories of royal dynasties also started to appear.

Now history started to move more quickly. More extensive religious scriptures started to be written, including some of the early scriptures that make up modern religions. People had already been writing for a very long time before advanced religious writings started to appear. Historical writings and philosophical writings also date back to the same era.

Eventually more and more people knew how to write, and there were many new kinds of writing. Now they were writing personal letters, biographies, novels and short stories, poems about many topics, as well as philosophical, scientific and mathematical writings. And there was an even greater diversity of religous writings and scriptures. That takes us up to the change from years numbered BC or BCE to years numbered AD or CE.

Religion, Philosophy and Science

Today we think of the terms “religion”, “philosophy” and “science” as separate and completely distinct areas. But it took a long time for that concept to develop, and the relationship between these three areas has evolved over time. It was very different in the past, and it will be even more different in the future.

Religion is a set of beliefs about the world. These beliefs are supposed to give us dependable answers about the deeper meaning of life. If we have a solid set of religious beliefs, we can go about our daily lives without worrying about the meaning of human existence, how the universe was created or the difference between good and evil. If you ask a religious person where the universe came from, they might say, “God created the universe.” If you ask them about the difference between right and wrong, they might say, “It’s right to believe in God and to follow God’s commandments. It’s wrong not to believe in God, or to break God’s commandments.” It saves uncertainty and makes things easier. Religious beliefs don’t have to be testable or provable, and they don’t have to be rational. If another person has opposing beliefs, there’s really no way to prove religion or to convince them through rational arguments. Either you believe, or you don’t.

Philosophy does have to be rational. If you tell a philosopher “God created the universe”, they might respond by asking “Why did God create the universe?” or “Who created God?”. Some people are annoyed by this sort of question, and most of us have given up thinking about such things. But for a philosopher, it is not enough just to believe that something is true. Philosophy covers many of the same topics as religion, and it also asks other questions about the nature of knowledge or what the universe is made of. If one philosopher says, “the universe is made of material” and another philosopher says “the universe is made of ideas,” then it’s not enough to point to scripture or the writings of some great authority. Everything is subject to doubt and rational argument. On the other hand, there’s no need for them to conduct experiments to prove which one is right. Philosophy doesn’t have to be testable.

Science also has to be rational, and scientific beliefs do have to be testable. So if you tell a scientist, “God created the universe,” they might say, “That’s not science,” because there is really no way to test whether supernatural beings exist, much less whether they created the universe. Even if you say, “God does not exist,” they will probably give the same answer. How could anyone actually prove that God doesn’t exist? For a scientist, it is completely okay to say “I don’t know,” because there are so many beliefs that can’t be tested.

How Science Became So Powerful

I am going to argue that the scientific method gave science a structural advantage over religion, and caused it to grow in power and authority, even as it gradually encroached on sacred religious teachings. To do that, I want to briefly talk about the history of religion and science.

Science started as “natural philosophy”, and the scientific method didn’t exist five centuries ago. Experiments and observations of the world were done from time to time, but most of the early work in natural philosophy came from “thought experiments” and rational arguments that were more philosophy than science.

In ancient times, religion was a very powerful force in people’s lives. There were several time periods, including ancient Greece, ancient China, the Islamic Golden Age and the Renaissance when religious attitudes enabled natural philosophy to flourish. The study of how nature works was not seen as a challenge to religious beliefs. Natural philosophy, the study of divine creation, was sometimes seen as a devotional activity.

But the world changed in multiple ways, including wars and new religious attitudes. It becomes harder to do a lot of things when you’re being conquered. Also, natural philosophy discovered new things that contradicted scripture, and it came to be seen as a potential challenge to divine authority. So natural philosophy repeatedly fell out of favor.

Ancient Greece was a diverse and loosely-organized place, and this diversity was a factor in the rise of natural philosophy. The city states were in competition, and there was no centralized authority that covered all the Greeks.

The Greek philosopher Socrates was one of the first human beings to appreciate how little he and other people actually knew. He got a lot of people very angry because he constantly pointed out to them, how much they didn’t know. He boasted that his knowledge of his own ignorance made him the smartest man in Greece. He was eventually sentenced to death, partly for not believing in the Greek gods, but also importantly for being so very annoying by constantly pointing out human ignorance. Scholars and religious leaders were deeply offended by him.

The ancient Greeks did a lot of work in mathematics and natural philosophy over the course of several centuries. Aristotle was one of many notable figures. Supernatural explanations based on the personalities of gods were replaced by natural explanations based on principles and substances. They developed geometry and number theory, the geocentric model, measured the size of the Earth, mapped the stars, predicted eclipses, developed physics and metaphysics, medicine, anatomy and physiology, water mills, concrete construction, aqueducts, central heating and early machines.

The Greeks were conquered by the Romans, who were more interested in technology than science. Then with the decline of the Roman Empire, many texts were lost and scientific progress moved away from Europe.

Ancient and medieval China was scientifically and culturally very advanced. Many new inventions came out of the scientific work conducted there. Chinese science was more practical and technological than Greek science had been. China was a very successful society, and it had a non-disruptive flavor of science. Scientific work didn’t focus on the big questions that could have made it more disruptive. They developed the decimal system, the abacus, negative numbers, accurate calendars and clocks, the compass, gunpowder, catapults and trebuchets, and a lot of other innovations.

Religious leaders during the Islamic Golden Age believed that knowledge was a source of power. Great writings from many parts of the world were translated into Arabic. It was believed that rational thinking and scientific study could inform religious belief. Islamic scholars made many contributions to science and mathematics. For a long time, natural philosophy flourished in the Islamic world. They developed algebra, arabic numerals, trigonometry, advanced astronomy, navigation, optics, mechanics, chemistry, pharmaceuticals and medicine, the hospital, ophthalmology, windmills, textile manufacturing and many other advancements.

But after a while, new religious attitudes emphasized the will of god and denied that events were caused by nautural laws. Natural philosophy fell out of favor. Then the devastating Mongol invasion shattered the Islamic world and destroyed institutions of learning. So scientific progress was slower.

There was a lot of “science” going on in ancient times, even though the scientific method had not been developed and formalized. This happened all over the world, and was not limited to any single culture. But I want to focus on Europe to describe the development of the scientific method. That is especially relevant to the Religious Method, the topic of this book.

Ancient Greek writings were lost in Europe but had been influential during the Islamic Golden Age. Greek and Islamic writings made their way to Europe during the Renaissance. This revived interest in natural philosophy.

A number of other factors helped natural philosophy to develop into science. European powers were competing with each other. They wanted to get a technological advantage over their rivals, including transportation and weaponry. The Protestant Reformation emphasized individual interpretation of scripture over papal authority, so independent thinking was encouraged. European universities already existed, and created a space for scholars to work. The printing press was invented to be able to print bibles more quickly, but it also allowed scientific texts to be spread far and wide.

Many ancient scriptures state that the Earth is the center of the universe, and the sun and the stars orbit around the Earth. Greek philosopher Aristotle created a formal model of that, and Islamic scientists had similar conclusions. This is called the “geocentric model”. European philosopher Nicolaus Copernicus disagreed, saying that the Sun was the center of the universe, that the Earth orbited the Sun, and the Moon orbited the Earth. This is called the “heliocentric model”. Copernicus thought it made more sense, but he didn’t have enough information to prove his theory.

In the early 1600s, Italian philosopher Galileo Galilei formalized the scientific method of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, analysis and conclusion. He started doing experiments and using math to test the theories of earlier philosophers. He rolled balls down inclines and measured their acceleration. He used telescopes and discovered four moons orbiting around the planet Jupiter.

When Galileo saw the moons of Jupiter, he came out strongly in favor of the heliocentric model. He made detailed observations of four new moons orbiting around Jupiter. There was no way that they could be orbiting the Earth! He said that Copernicus was right, and Aristotle was wrong. His writings were printed on a printing press, and circulated widely. They contained abrasive criticisms about church support for the geocentric model. He even criticized the Pope.

The Catholic Church had incorporated Aristotle’s geocentric model into their theology. There were specific passages in scripture that Galileo had explicitly contradicted. They were afraid that heliocentrism was just the tip of the iceberg, and that people would start to question religious dogma and church institutions in other, more serious ways. History would later prove them right. They banned the sale of Galileo’s writings, and forced him to appear before the Roman Inquisition. They threatened him with torture if he did not publicly renounce his belief in heliocentrism, and promise not to promote it in the future. He was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life, and his research was censored.

The oppression of science was partly successful for a while, but it ultimately backfired, and the church had to change its approach. The ban on Galileo’s writings in Italy actually increased the worldwide demand for them. He came to be known as the father of science. The Catholic Church revoked the ban in 1835. In 1992, they accepted the heliocentric model and apologized for their treatment of Galileo.

By the 1800s, science was well established and there was a more complicated relationship between religion, philosophy and science. Religious leaders had learned that they couldn’t easily ban or suppress scientific theories. Philosophers were trying to reconcile religion and science. They said that science could study “how” the world worked, but only religion could tell us “why”. Scientists were able to explain how the world worked without requiring God to actively intervene. But unlike Galileo, they were generally careful not to explicitly question religious teachings.

Scientific discoveries led to technological advancements like the microscope, precision clocks, steam engines, textile manufacturing, gas lighting, vaccination, lithography and photography. Academic and scientific institutions became more powerful over time. Science became more and more successful. Religion tried to stay the same.

There were still conflicts, but most scientists were also religious believers. In some cases, religious authorities tried to censor or ban books and articles that they considered heretical. In other cases, the scientific community dismissed theories that challenged their own religious beliefs. Scientists who questioned religious teachings were socially ostracized, and it became harder for them to do research. This uneasy accommodation allowed most scientists to pursue their work without fear of interference from religious authorities.

Then in 1859, Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution by natural selection. He contradicted religious teachings about the creation of human beings and animals by saying that ancient creatures had gradually evolved into modern animals and human beings. That the world must be millions of years old, and not just thousands of years old as indicated by the Bible. His theory said that we could explain the diversity of species in the world by random variation and natural selection, without requiring active intervention by God.

Darwin wasn’t trying to cause problems or offend people. He took a very cautious approach in his writings and conversations. But his theory was completely revolutionary, and it caused enormous social upheaval.

Religious leaders and believers were outraged by Darwin’s theory. The Bible said that God made man in his image. It said that God created all the creatures just as they are today. This was way worse than heliocentrism! Darwin was directly contradicting the story of creation, the place of humans as uniquely different from animals, and the chronology of events in scripture.

Scientists also had many doubts about Darwin’s theory. Genetics had been forgotten and DNA had not yet been discovered, so there was no way to explain how random variations could occur and be passed on from parent to child. There were not enough fossils to fill in the gaps between species, especially the gap between human beings and apes. They didn’t think that natural selection would be able to create complex biological life. And many scientists had based their careers on existing theories that would now have to be thrown out the window.

It took a long time for science to fully support Darwin. But today, there is a giant mountain of scientific evidence that supports the theory of evolution by natural selection, and there is virtually no evidence that disproves it. While evolution still contradicts scripture and is still controversial socially and politically, it is one of the best established scientific theories and it’s never going to be overturned.

Even though Darwin’s theory was a much bigger challenge to religious teachings, he faced milder consequences than Galileo. He faced public criticism and ridicule. He was socially ostracized. He was portrayed as an ape in cartoons. It caused problems in his marriage. But he also had staunch public defenders, and his theory was openly debated and discussed. He was not arrested or prevented from continuing to do his work. Religious backlash had a chilling effect, but nobody was able to stop him. And similar to Galileo, today Darwin is considered a great hero of science.

In the 20th century and beyond, a variety of scientists have directly contradicted religious teachings. Numerous scientists faced backlash and censorship. These consequences were largely social in nature, and they sometimes did have a chilling effect. But the controversy and criticism of their work also fueled a lot of interest. Their publishers actively promoted these controversies in marketing, and it greatly increased sales of their books.

It’s not accurate to say that there was always a war or an inherent conflict between religion, philosophy and science. Science is very useful, and it can enhance spiritual understanding. But there has always been a tension between religion, philosophy and science, because they tend to come to different conclusions about topics related to creation, morality and the meaning of life.

My reason for talking about this history is to point out that science has gradually become stronger over time, while religion has not gotten stronger. Intellectual authority used to come mostly from religion, with philosophy in second place. Today, science has far greater intellectual authority because scientific theories can be tested, and the wrong theories can be disproven. Scientists worldwide agree on the basic principles of science, even when they come from countries with different cultures and beliefs. By contrast, religions in different parts of the world all seem to disagree with each other. The major world religions largely contradict each other, and believers of those religions do not agree on the major principles of faith.

In the following sections, I will discuss why that has happened, and I will present the religious method as a proposed approach. My goal will be to put religion onto an equal footing with science.

A Procedure Based on Ignorance

In ancient times, human beings didn’t realize how many things they didn’t know. They assumed that they knew the answers to all the important questions of life, and they often got upset when confronted with questions they couldn’t answer.

The story of Socrates was mentioned earlier. It is very important because Socrates was the first one to point out the true extent of human ignorance. This was a revolutionary discovery that opened up a fatal crack in the carefully constructed wall of “infallible” answers that people had always accepted. The discovery of human ignorance was a very powerful advancement. It laid the groundwork for the scientific method. The scientific method is essentially an “ignorance eraser”.

Galileo assumed that heavier balls would roll downhill faster than lighter balls. The Greek philosopher Aristotle had made that prediction nearly 2000 years earlier, and had “proven” it with thought experiments. In all that time, no one had ever tested it! Galileo carefully rolled balls of various weights down the same incline, and found that they all rolled at the same speed, regardless of their weight. Aristotle’s teaching had been disproven!

When Galileo formalized the scientific method, he was codifying a procedure based on ignorance. Because we don’t know how the world works, it’s not enough to do thought experiments. We need to make predictions, observe the world carefully, take measurements and draw conclusions about whether our predictions were wrong. The scientific method is not about proving when we are right. It is about proving when we are wrong.

So in science, it is critically important to have theories that can be disproven if they are wrong. Our theories need to make predictions that we can test. If a theory cannot be disproven, then it is not a scientific theory.

Another characteristic of the scientific method is that we prefer theories that can explain more about how the world works over theories that can only explain one thing. We want to explain as many things as we can. We want completeness.

And we also want simplicity. If two competing theories explain the same things, then we want the simpler theory rather than the more complicated one. This is called “Occam’s Razor” because it enables us to “cut out” extraneous parts of a theory that don’t add explanatory power. A lot of religious explanations used to be part of scientific theory. Many of them were eliminated from science by Occam’s Razor.

Completeness is more important than simplicity. A more complicated theory that explains more things is better than a simpler theory that doesn’t explain as much. Simplicity applies when two theories explain the same amount.

Lessons for Religion

The religious method seeks to put religious thought on an equal footing with science. By examining alternatives, we have the opportunity to consider new explanations that may explain more of what we encounter in the world. We may be able to develop new explanations that don’t contradict science, or are simpler than existing explanations.

In the next section of this book, I will present a list of “tough questions” that are hard for religion, science and philosophy to answer. The goal of the religious method is to enable the practicioner to develop their own religious interpretation that can give satisfying answers to all these tough questions, that minimizes contradictions with science, and that is a simple as possible.

Conclusion

Socrates pointed out two important things about human ignorance. First, that becoming aware of our own ignorance gives us a tremendous opportunity for growth and resilience. Second, that we should be very careful about pointing out other peoples’ ignorance to them, as Socrates himself learned the hard way.

The scientific method is an “ignorance eraser”, a slow but reliable procedure for gradually overcoming our own ignorance in the future. This disruptive method has given science an “unfair” advantage over religion in the past, and as a result science has steadily gained intellectual authority over the last five centuries. And that intellectual authority has come at the expense of religion, which has lost intellectual standing over that same time period.

But science has limits. Human beings need sturdy, reliable beliefs that allow us to understand the meaning of human existence, how the universe works and our own place in it. Science can’t answer the big questions because it is limited in scope. Philosophy can’t provide definitive answers to the big questions because it is rational, and open to rational debate.

This book is about a ‘religious method’ that is not scientific, but that is nonetheless similar to the scientific method. It is not a religion, and can be used by any person regardless of what they believe or don’t believe. It is a very simple method. You can use it at any time to develop a sturdier, more resilient set of beliefs.

I argue that the widespread adoption of the religious method by people in many different belief systems and faith traditions would place religion on an equal footing with science. It would allow religious beliefs to mature and adapt in the face of challenging new realities.

I have no desire to question any person’s existing set of beliefs. Instead, I want to empower people to engage with the difficult questions and challenges that already confront us.

The religious method is not a religion. Think of it as a “religious plug-in” that you can ignore, or that you can add to your existing belief system and spiritual practices in an effort to gradually improve them over time.