the entire town burns down and your kid loses an arm in a fishing accident,
well, then . . . oops. Where was God?
Throughout history, authorities have expended a lot of effort to hide the
lack of evidence supporting their religion and/or to punish anyone who dared
question the validity of their faith-based values. It’s for this reason that, like
most atheists, Nietzsche loathed spiritual religions.
Natural philosophers, as scientists were called in Isaac Newton’s time,
decided that the most reliable faith-based beliefs were those that had the most
evidence supporting them. Evidence became the God Value, and any belief
that was no longer supported by evidence had to be altered to account for the
new observed reality. This produced a new religion: science.
Science is arguably the most effective religion because it is the first
religion that is able to evolve and improve upon itself. It is open to anybody
and everybody. It is not moored to a single book or creed. It is not beholden to
some ancient land or people. It is not tethered to a supernatural spirit whose
existence cannot be proven or disproven. It is an ongoing, ever-changing body
of evidence-based beliefs, one that is free to mutate, grow, and shift as the
evidence dictates.
The scientific revolution changed the world more than anything before or
since.^10 It has reshaped the planet, lifted billions out of disease and poverty,
and improved every aspect of life.^11 It is not an exaggeration to suggest that
science may be the only demonstrably good thing humanity has ever done for
itself. (Thank you, Francis Bacon, thank you, Isaac Newton, you fucking
titans.) Science is singularly responsible for all the greatest inventions and
advances in human history, from medicine and agriculture to education and
commerce.
But science did something else even more spectacular: it introduced to the
world the concept of growth. For most of human history, “growth” wasn’t a
thing. Change occurred so slowly that everyone died in pretty much the same
economic condition they were born in. The average human from two
thousand years ago experienced about as much economic growth in his
lifetime as we experience in six months today.^12 People would live their entire
lives, and nothing changed—no new developments, inventions, or
technologies. People would live and die on the same land, among the same
people, using the same tools, and nothing ever got better. In fact, things like
plagues and famine and war and dickhead rulers with large armies often made
everything worse. It was a slow, grueling, miserable existence.
And with no prospect for change or a better life in this lifetime, people
drew their hope from spiritual promises of a better life in the next lifetime.