Throughout recorded history people have always believed in a god of some sort. Some religions have come and gone, others have remained intact for thousands of years; religion has been a major part of peoples' lives since the beginning of humanity as we know it. Many historic wars have been fought completely over religious beliefs; g-d was the most important thing in peoples' lives for thousands of years. Alas comes the renaissance, a time flourishing with new ideas, art, science and philosophy. Mankind broke out of the "dark" ages with the ability to begin making sense of things on his own. Where he no longer needed to answer "because g-d made it that way", and was able to explain phenomena using scientific explanations. This was a very encouraging boost for humanity and allowed people to begin doubting whether a belief in g-d was necessary altogether. Perhaps as time goes on, humans will be able to explain more and more phenomena until religion will be viewed as an obsolete theory that was only needed at a time when peoples' thinking was limited. Since then prosperity has exploded and mankind has used his ability to think, to richen himself, once again proving that man is in charge of his own fate.
This was basically the way many historians describe this history. The first issue we should address is the accuracy, are the educators using certain description methods intending to make their point. Let's take each step at a time. First of all, the title we give to the middle ages, dark, as in a time of nothing happening, no one thinking on their own, just mindlessly accepting what they hear and moving on. In fact this darkness must have been going on since the beginning of mankind (our recorded history dates back some 6000 years), where generation after generation no one was able to put two things together. Perhaps if one were to take an evolutionary approach it would make sence, since evolution claims that we have constantly been developing throughout our history so it would seem natural that we are now at our peak and will continue to grow. But the open-minded intellectual must be willing to question whether this truly is the case. Does it make sense to assume that for so many years people went through complete lifetimes without questioning the system; not a single philosopher amongst them? Or did they perhaps have arguments of their own that the scholars of today did not discuss?
Historical descriptions often color it's wording to display different attitudes, it is inevitable that these attitudes will pass onto it's readers. The period of the renaissance is almost always described as a wonderful joyous period where people impartially questioned their ancestors' beliefs to find truth. Or did they? Were there no personal motives behind such a way of thinking? Almost every religion known to man has laws, some of them social laws, some of them prohibiting various worldly pleasures, etc; they also emit guilt on to those who transgress these laws particularly the popular religions of the time like Christianity. It seems like a pretty good ulterior motive for scholars to attempt to eliminate this restraining force. We therefore must question whether their theories were truly unbiased or somewhat partial to what they collectively wanted to believe.
This question is one we can probably ask of anyone today. Do people choose to believe in theories such as evolution because they truly feel that it is scientifically correct or are their beliefs somewhat colored by their want to live without restriction and to justify their partaking in actions that religions disapprove of? A truly open-minded scholar who seeks the objective truth must consider this question even though it may be a little discomforting.
Perhaps we should begin by taking the theory most often cited as the alternative to religion, the theory of evolution. By definition evolution describes how over many generations reproducing items evolved into the forms we have today. In other words it explains how things can come from other things. Notice what is being claimed, after one thing is already in existence it can reproduce, creating another thing. However the original thing must have already been in existence. How did it get there? Science has only on possible answer; it evolved from yet another thing, and that thing evolved from a different thing. Notice the circularity of this response. The theory will never address the original first thing that ever existed. Surely science won't presume that the world is eternal, for that is not scientific at all, how can something not have a beginning? So where did the first item come from? Whether it was a cell, an atom, a neutron or something even smaller doesn't really matter; it had to have had a beginning. If two things banged (a pun to the big-bang theory), where did the bang-ees come from. Every thing needed to have had a source whether it's a gas, an atom or perhaps or even a force (think about this last one for a moment). It appears as if no scientific theory can explain this fundamental question, "Where did everything come from?" In fact it could be argued that this is the most fundamental question that one could ask and may explain why so many people throughout our history have turned to explanations involving g-d.
Being that this is a scientific essay we should refrain from describing specific religious beliefs, let us simply say that a religious explanation will answer the question by establishing that there must be some supernatural force that caused something to be created. Saying that it is supernatural connotes that it is free from the laws of nature in that it itself does not have a source that created it, and that it somehow caused something to be created out of nothing. This seems to be the only possible explanation of the fact that something does exist.
Understand that the theory of evolution has not thus far been disproved, we simply argued that it is inadequate as is any scientific theory in explaining all the facts. It seems to be true that once the world has come to existence it has been governed by scientific law, and it still can be believed that this supernatural force only caused a small item (with the ability to reproduce) to exist and it then evolved in accordance with the theory of evolution. But then again once it's believed that something was created from nothing what would impel someone to believe that only something small was created, perhaps the whole world in it's current form was created from nothing. However, this paper will not address questions of this sort, for it is out of the scientific realm.
To conclude, one cannot denounce all the good that science has done for mankind. It has produced computer machines; medicines to heal the sick; it has built huge prosperous cities, and has given each and every one of us the ability to make some sense out of this magnificent world. However we must understand that it cannot explain everything. What is this supernatural force, where is it now, and what was it's intent, are all questions that can't really be understood using scientific explanations, so what to believe seems to be a question that will have to answered by each person individually.
PartII