5 Things Religions Figured Out Before Science

Before I start giving some kudos to religion and follow the title of this post. And before I get whipped by scientists, I must first describe my background and my views on religion and science. To make it sweet and short, I believed and prayed to god up until the age of 14. After that I realized that the reason why I was a war refugee was because of religious people. And as I gained reason my faith in religion slowly faded away. I no longer needed religion, I despised religion. I even closed my eyes on the idea of god and to this day, I call myself an atheist or agnostic depending on which side of the bed I woke up. I put all religions into the same box and all religions are dangerous. Religions are dictated by the words in their books and those words are interpreted by each different individual that reads them. Religions create differences which create conflict which creates violence. Religion has not worked for 3000+ years, it has killed a lot of people in the name of. How can one still believe in religion?

There is no harm in believing in your god on an individual level. Do it at home, it is an intimate relationship you have with god, do not share it with others. It kills people. Religion should be feared by everyone. Living with religion is like learning how to swim while someone holds you up. The challenge is to learn how to swim on your own. Now the fanatics will say “but people need morals and guidance”. Morality is an evolutionary trait just like any other. And guidance is fair but we have education for that nowadays. Education has taught me not to be racist and that we are all equal, it was not religion.

Having said all that I must give some credit to religion for certain practices that only now science seems to backup. I stumble upon hundreds of science articles looking for content for HighT3ch.com and every once in a while an article excites my memory and makes me think how religion has already figured that out.

Here is my top 5 religious practices / wisdoms that science seems to back up today.

#1 – Fasting

Every religion encourages some level of fasting for it’s followers, or should I say, every major religion. And recently I stumbled upon this article which says that fasting helps build the immune system and clean the intestines as well as brain health.
Audio of Dr.Mark Mattson

How did they know that fasting was beneficial thousands of years ago? Could this be just a strange coincidance? A message from above or trial and error recorded down generations?

#2 – Sex after marriage and birth defects

This one might stir your plate a little more but I came across an article which says that the most common STD’s such as HPV and Herpes can have a negative effect on the fetus.
Could this be the reason why religion encourages sex only after marriage and with only one person?

Strange coincidence or could this be the reason why marriage has been so important in the past?

#3 – Pork, red meat and cancer

It is a myth that only one religion, Islam has pork forbidden. Jews do not eat pork and certain interpretations of the Bible tell that pork is not healthy. So all three major religions are against eating pork and yet just recently I read an article which tells me exactly that, pork is cancerous. Apart from the recent swine flu and the fact that hogs are scavengers, eating anything dead infested by parasites. It seems that even 70% of farms pigs have bacteria according to this article.

Here is another article that talks about why not to eat pork.

And to scare you even more here is an article that says all red meat causes DNA damage, cancer.

Could religions have figured out some kind of death-causality with meat consumption but with lack of proper evidence based it all on pork since it is a scavenger?

#4 – The Big Bang theory & Book of Genesis

I was a little surprised to read an article that said that the Book of Genesis talks about the creation of the universe “out of nothing”. Which pretty much sounds like the theory of the Big Bang which is the best scientific model we have to this day for the creation of the universe.

And another interesting argument I hear all the time about the 6 days of creation from the Book of Genesis is just time relativity. Because Einstein said that time is relative, therefore those 6 days could mean anything. And therefore conform to the billions of years model that science talks about. Right, I hear you all, it is insane to make the connection between the two, science and The Book of Genesis but nevertheless interesting to talk about.

#5 – Incest banished for good reasons

All religions banish incest because close relatives just have higher odds of having newborns with genetic mutations, defects. Now for this one, you don’t need science to tell you that. You just have to look at the results within one generation and conclude that it is unsafe practice. But it is still interesting how science validates this common religious law.

Bonus – Meditation

All prayers are a form of meditation and only in recent years have we found the benefits of meditation as having a concrete positive impact on the body and overall health.

There are numerous interesting facts like these that we can all call “fascinating coincidences”. Those were my top 5, feel free to send me more.

Conclusion

Now, I don’t know what should be the real conclusion for you out of this. Always check the sources by yourself and make your own conclusions. I will not praise religion and adopt it to my lifestyle because of all the things I mentioned above. But here is what I can tell you; Live your life by doing the right thing and there is only one rule that you need to obey to do so. That rule is the golden rule, the rule that all religions have in common and interestingly it is the only common one.
“Do not do to others what you wouldn’t like to be done to you”.

If you follow that rule and even if you are not religious it will guide you on the right path. And just in case there is a man with a white beard waiting for you at the end in front of a gate, you will make him happy.

Bonus Video – IS THE UNIVERSE ALIVE?

I posted this documentary a few months ago and I never get tired of watching it. It is a rather interesting concept to imagine the universe alive. Planets behaving like cells…