I am currently reading a book by a Russian author – Alexander Nikonov, titled “Upgrade of the Monkey”. I believe it’s only currently available in Russian. It reminds me a lot of A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, except it’s much less politically correct.
Author opens up with a strong stance against a believe in God and how it makes zero logical sense. He then goes on to explain what we currently know about the world, based on the latest theories from Physics and other sciences.
When describing how science has developed, he gives an example of Bohr’s model of the atom. He goes on to explain that while this model is over simplistic, it allowed to explain and co-relate a large number of scientific observations available at the time. It also allowed to derive a large number of practical applications.
As a number of observations that could not be explained by the Bohr’s model grew, scientist come up with more advanced theories.
The author concludes by saying that just because Bohr’s model was not 100% accurate, it does not mean that it was useless. In opposite, most of our science have been created by slowly moving from more simplistic to more advanced models of the world.
That is where author and I disagree. I don’t think that believe in God is illogical. Especially considering that “Believe in God” is such a loosely defined term. Some people literally believe in a man above the sky, while others simply think that God is nature, and anything in between.
In any case, I think the model of God works and has worked for billions of people over the course of thousands of years. Sure it’s a very flawed model, but it doesn’t mean that it is useless. This model cannot explain a death of an innocent child. Hundreds of millions of people has died in the name of some interpretations of this model.
At the same time, this model has helped billions of people throughout our history to cope with the uncertainty of the world and inspired them to live happier, healthier and kinder lives.
2016 has been a rough year. Let’s try to be kinder to one another in 2017. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!