Why Explaining Religion Is Not Sufficient to Explain Away Religion

An argumentative exploration of the leading evolutionary explanatory accounts of religion to demonstrate the inability of science to explain away religious belief

Abstract

While science continues to make significant progressive strides, religion has yet to add to its historically established doctrines. Not only has the rapid expansion of science brought into question the validity and necessity of religion, part of scientific inquiry now focuses on how ‘counterintuitive’ notions of religion came to be. ‘Counterintuitive’ ideas of religion posit religious beliefs to go against or violate empirically verified facts or knowledge. Some argue that we can utilize the knowledge attained from advancements in science to explain away religion. One particular aspect of science that is used to explain away religion are evolutionary theories. In this paper, I will argue that while evolutionary accounts can explain our affinity towards religion, it has yet to explain away religion. I will explicate and refute the three different argument for evolutionary accounts of religion, including the socio-evolutionary, bio-evolutionary and cultural-evolutionary, to demonstrate how science has not succeeded in explaining away religion.