ZEAL IS WASTED ON RELIGION AND REVELATION SO BESTOW IT ON SCIENCE INSTEAD
 
RELIGION
Religion comes from a word meaning to bind. The best definition of religion is that it is dogma that people are bound to adhere to no matter what. The pope for example does not permit himself to doubt that Jesus is God. Thus religion is not the same thing as good. It is not about how many good people are in it. Religion is about offering commitment to principles. Catholics give a good definition - it is about forming a relationship with God by prayer and by believing what God has said. For that reason, a Catholic who won't commit or try to is not a Catholic. So Catholics rightly argue that the only question is when faced with religion is, "Is it true?"
 
Atheism is not a religion as long as it is all about rejecting hypotheses there is no evidence for and using reason and experimentation to work out the truth. Atheism counts God among such hypotheses. If religion really cared about truth, Catholics for example would be encouraged to check out the Church and given the resources to decide for themselves and leave the Church if their conclusions were unorthodox. You may say it is the person’s own responsibility, but the Church claims to be the shepherd of souls meaning it takes responsibility.

REVELATION
When God or a spirit gives a supernatural message  we call that revelation. Revelation is propositional (in statement form) and clear. It tells you a truth that God wants you to know. Unclear or controversial revelation is not revelation but shows God is a bad teacher or the revelation is not really from him.
 
Those who want to make out that all people and religions have the same essential spiritual truth but do not realise it are saying revelation is non-propositional are patronising. They want to make all religions the same and ignore their differences which is nonsense and which is really a recipe for implosion. So they are experts on every religion and can tell it what it really teaches? Moreover they invariably discriminate against some smaller religions! It is really relativism pretending to be tolerance. If God is bigger than our errors and works in hidden ways - an idea at the heart of non-propositional revelation ideologies - then it follows it is fine to get a sense of meaning and faith from your dog or in being atheist.
 
Such "revelation" forces people to use their own understanding and interpretation. There is no direct revelation or knowledge which accuses Jesus and Muhammad and Joseph Smith of lying for saying there is. Non-propositional revelation only produces a culture where people make religion and morals whatever they feel it should be and nobody will agree. Experience, even religious experience, does not support the notion of inward non-propositional knowledge which is why we have different religions and sub cults in the first place!
 
For Christians, revelation is the miracle of God giving us knowledge we wouldn't get otherwise. It is necessarily anti-reason and anti-evidence - and therefore anti-science. We will see this in a moment.
 
The Church disagrees - it says revelation is not irrational, not even slightly. It says reason is good for seeing if a claim is coherent or true or false. It sees it as a tool. But it says reason alone cannot tell us everything.
 
Reason says we need to take things on trust in order to function in life. It is reasonable to do that for reason is not enough. But it is not reasonable to claim that religious trust, trust in God and religion, is needed. The minimum faith we need is faith in each other. That is the default. Humanism, us deciding what is best for ourselves while assuming there is no more to life than the natural universe, is the default. Any faith that goes beyond the essentials then is against reason.
 
Revelation is invariably a scam with which to gain power over people’s thinking. It denigrates our human ability to look after ourselves for the magical messages would not be coming if they were not thought to be needed. God should help us to reason better so that way he doesn't need to appear in visions or write holy books through his channels. Revelation should take place the mundane ways.
 
We may not do well at looking after ourselves but that does not mean we need revelation for we are just abusing our resources and could waken up. God could give revelation simply by giving us inspiring thoughts that we don’t know are from him instead of setting up a monolith of dogma, a miraculous source of revelation such as a Church or Bible, which serves only to stir up trouble and division and confusion.
 
Man cannot claim to be God for it will soon become apparent that he is not. So the next best thing and the safest thing is to pretend you have a revelation from God and have been appointed to a divine mission. If you slip up you can say you are not immune to misinterpreting God once or twice.
 
A divine revelation to X that man passes on to you is not a divine revelation to you. It is hearsay. For any man to claim to be the mouthpiece of God, to claim to be the Son of God which is to claim to be the supreme mouthpiece, demands extreme arrogance for he wants you to be dependant on what he wants you to believe about God. Maybe God is talking through him but how do you know? Remember that many people with stronger faith and more intelligence than you could have another prophet saying completely opposite things. It is really the man who is trusted and not God and it is the man’s vision of God not God that is worshipped. If revelation is immoral, then so are miracles for they are supposedly intended to reinforce the authenticity of revelation. The men in one sect claim to have verified miracles that show their gospel is from God while there are other sects claiming the same verifications for their gospel that contradicts it. It is not God and religion we oppose when you think about it but the men trying to fool us.
 
When man's word is mistaken for God's, you end up following what you think is good and what you think is truth instead of the real good and the real truth. The more you heed man then the bigger the risk of danger and the more you waste your life and energy.
 
To embrace faith in revelation or miracles is really to abdicate responsibility. It is letting another tell you what to think and believe. In principle you became like the Nazis, "Oh I was only following orders." The outlook is evil in its intent. Like the Nazis you virtually tell yourself, "I choose to think this because X thinks it. So I will live it out and if it harms or misleads others I care not." Not all believers will necessarily do much evil but the mindset is the same as the ones that do. They have a vicious mindset underneath the sweetness.

SCIENCE
 
Science teaches that there no truth claim or doctrine or belief that should be made immune to testing and questioning. Science is about always checking things out and rechecking. Religion refuses to change its mind at least in matters supposedly revealed by God. The attitude is the reason for the gulf between religion and science. The other problem is that it is too easy for man to present his ideas as God's.
 
Catholicism is infamous for being opposed to science. Today it claims to respect science and both science and religion (the Catholic one) are valid sources of truth. Is it true that Catholic faith or any religious faith fits and endorses and learns from science and merely sees faith as another way of gaining information and truth?
 
If science says it is okay if there really is a God and he speaks, it still cannot take man's word for it that his word came from God. It is biased and unfair to take man's word for it that his words are God's. It is biased and unfair in principle. Also, when religious prophets contradict each other it proves it is risky to elevate any man's teachings to divine authority, to invest them with divine inspiration. Thus science will have to ignore religious claims. If science says it has no problem with God, we must remember that it is not that simple. It does not imply science must be open to religion or any religion. It could only be open to a religion that is from God. It will be open in principle but in practical terms this is not possible. Science cannot risk mixing man-made doctrine with scientific truth. It seeks to teach so it cannot encourage the layman to mix.
 
Man-made religion is definitely a threat to science and even religion should admit it. It can admit it. Man-made religion creates errors and as man's word is mistaken for God's people are reluctant to challenge it. They feel they cannot and should not query God's word. So such religion creates more error and where there is a lot of error it is hard for the voice of science to be heard.
 
If God and science are complimentary as religion says, this only applies if God is real. Mormons say God is a polygamous married man with great but limited power. Catholics say he is absolutely not like man at all and has boundless power. Science will be unable to do experiments to support either of these ideas.
 
We see that it is religion that says they are complimentary - science cannot say that. It may say they are not complimentary or that no body knows. Religion is consciously lying.
 
We see that if two theories fit together it does not mean they really are complimentary. Complimentary means that both theories have to be true. A wrong theory fitting a true one only threatens the true one.
 
We see that religion is trying to make its theories equal with the facts and theories of science. That is utterly deceptive, dangerous and disgusting. No religious doctrine could ever compare to a fact. No doctrine taken on faith could ever be equal to a theory that is developed after testing and experiments.
 
Science ignores the supernatural because the supernatural cannot be tested. A scientist can only say that an alleged miracle is unexplainable. Occam's Razor says that if something takes place that needs explanation, we must look for the most likely and simplest explanation. It does not say the explanation is necessarily right but it is the one we will choose if we are sensible.
 
Miracle and science are diametrically opposed. Those who are truly grateful for and to science, will not sully themselves by propagating miracle stories.
 
The whole purpose of miracle and magic beliefs is to encourage people to put them out of reach of any tests. The person who believes in a miracle is putting her belief beyond testing. For example, we could find out that the apostles were on opium when they thought they saw Jesus back from the dead. Would that prove that the miracle of the resurrected Jesus apparitions never happened? It in fact would not. If God wants you to see a miraculous vision then you can see it despite your propensity to hallucinate through drugs. It would take a greater miracle for a smackhead to have a genuine supernatural vision than a clean and normal and sane person. A belief that is made untestable is not worth anything. The doctrine of the resurrection being a miracle actually fails to make it any more important than the notion that a flower told you that a spaceship is coming next week to take you to a planetary paradise forever.
 
Suppose a miracle happened. All science can say, "We can find no scientific explanation." That means there might still be one. To say it is a miracle is an assumption - it's going too far.
 
The believer in the Bible who thinks that all knowledge - whether revealed by him or not - comes from God will find he has to reconcile science and everything else with the Bible. In other words, everything must be made to fit the Bible. Anything that contradicts it may evoke an attitude of, "We still hold the Bible is right and let us wait for more light. Maybe this thing that contradicts it will be proven false." This attitude can only lead to fundamentalism and distortion. The best obscurantist always pretends to be distorting nothing.
 
It only takes one or two false notions or beliefs or assumptions to make you go far wide of the truth. Hitler developed a bad view of all the Jews based on a few unpleasant stories about some Jews. And the New Testament played its role. Science is based on the fact that whatever assumptions and beliefs you have control how you view and interpret evidence and it seeks to reduce this tendency as far as possible. It wants to see things as they really are. This totally opposes the view that any alleged revealed religion should be considered when interpreting and trying to understand the evidence. It's what the microscope reveals that counts. There is enough to skew our perception without religion's input and especially with all the severe disagreements between religions.