Assumption of an Assumption?

The Assumption of the Virgin by Poussin

"People like to say that faith and science can live together side by side. But I don't think they can. They're deeply opposed. Science is a discipline of investigation and constructive doubt, questing with logic, evidence and reason to draw conclusions. Faith by stark contrast demands a positive suspension of critical faculties.

Science proceeds by setting up hypotheses, ideas or models, and then attempts to disprove them. So a scientist is constantly asking questions, being skeptical. Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.

Let me give you an example of this with the story of the Assumption of Mary. Catholics believe that Jesus's Mother Mary was so important she didn't physicially die. Instead her body shot off into heaven when her life came to a natural end. Ofcourse there's no evidence for this. Even the Bible says nothing about how Mary died.



Assumption of the Virgin by Correggio

The belief that her body was lifted into heaven emerged about six centuries after Jesus' time, made up like any tale and spread by word of mouth. But it became established tradition. It was handed down over centuries. And the odd thing about tradition is that the longer it's been going the more people seem to take it seriously. It's as though sheer passage of time makes something that was to begin with just made up turns it into what people believe as a fact.

By 1950 the tradition was so strongly established that it became official truth. It became authority. The Vatican decreed that Roman Catholics must now believe in the doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin. Now, if you had asked Pope Pius XII how he knew it was truth he would've said you had to take his word for it because it had been revealed to him by God.

He [the pope] shut himself away and thought about it. He just thought private thoughts inside his own head and convinced himself, no doubt on tortuous theological grounds, that it just had to be so."

From Richard Dawkins' documentary Root of all Evil. Watch clip here.