Why I Became an Agnostic Atheist
By Aminoddin M. Domado
“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
– Richard Feynman
The story of the origin of life has been narrated several times before science ever even existed. Some have been forgotten into oblivion, others turned into myths, and others persisted as irrefutable truths in the minds of devout believers. But let’s go back a few millennia: a Homo sapiens probably once lay on a plain field and wondered about the beginning of everything — life, inanimate objects, the multitude of stars in the night sky, and the unknown realm beyond it, the universe. This moment could have been a catalyst for scientific discoveries. In their primitiveness, however, early humans instead crafted fantastical stories to make things easier to comprehend. These stories were something they were fond of, as proven by the hundreds of ancient scriptures.
This tendency led to more independent stories as well as modified versions of them, with the modified ones becoming absolute truths in gullible minds despite being obviously man-made myths. Most of these stories aimed to provide an answer to existential questions — our creation, our creator, our purpose, our planet, our place in the universe, and what happens after death. Indeed, what potentially constituted scientific curiosity turned out to be cumulative mythology. What could have been the birth of scientific rigor became the thing that eventually opposed it (particularly in moments when science did not conform to its principles). The first attempts to marry curiosity and creativity were made by religions, a.k.a. various beliefs that lack evidence. But the truth is this – the mystery of our origin may have arisen when curiosity first tickled the human mind, but humanity never properly confronted it until science emerged from the chrysalis of ignorance to help us along.
What could have been the birth of scientific rigor became the thing that eventually opposed it
These are my realizations from having an upbringing with only a few science books but a big
Islamic religious circle. I admire science as a tool and body of knowledge for being systematic,
extremely open-minded, and backed by firm evidence. You can follow the process of how a scientific finding is established as a fact and see the proofs that built the facts. Above all, the best thing about science for me is that it is not afraid to say that it does not know the answer to a question. Science is imperfect, and that is necessary. It continues to seek the truth and openly adjusts if a new or better approach or knowledge is introduced. That said, the opposite of it is a belief system that claims to be perfect and does not conform to change as it thinks that the immutable truth was already written. Its extreme close-mindedness — in which many of its claims suffer from illogical and contradictory statements — persists so severely that it distorts the mind of its believers. This is religion. I’m glad I’m out of it.
