Jonathan Rée's Essay 'The Poverty Of Unbelief'

There will come a time when religion is no longer needed because science will have advanced so far that it will be able to explain anything and everything. It is no secret that science is constantly advancing, and everyday scientist are finding new ways to explain what once was considered unexplainable. For example, many early religions believed that gods and goddesses controlled different aspects of life including the sun, moon, and stars or the weather. However, through science we now know that the sun, moon, and stars follow a constant predictable pattern. Likewise, meteorologist are slowly becoming more accurate with predicting the weather. While they are still no where close to perfectly predicting what will happen, they can show without a double why different weather patterns happen. Modern science is also threatening the religious belief that God created the universe. Scientists have found that Earth is some 4.5 billion years old, but that creation in the …show more content…
Where Miles presented religion as more of an escape from our worldly problems, Rée believes that religion should be used to combat these problems. For Rée it is not good enough to just use religion as safe house where you can hide from you problems forever. He believes that you must find religion and then turn around and use it to face reality. Rée states, “Religious traditions are ways of facing up to unease and cherishing uncertainty.” He believes that a lack of religion is the equivalent of giving up and not wanting to face the pressing issues of society. For Rée, religion is admitting that there may be an intelligent of looking at things different then what you can comprehend. He encourages people to believe in this possibility and use this knowledge as a backbone to face the chaos, grief, and terror that surrounds us in today’s