This Will End Your Faith: Neil deGrasse Disproves Religion in 25 Minutes

Bible tells you how to go to heaven, not

how the heavens go,

>> which is why does religion have such a

persistent hold on human thought despite

all that we know of science?

>> Uh yeah, I think there are several ways

one can address that question. Let me

address it in in a consider not long ago

when so much of the western world was

the state was the religion and we have

actually moved quite a distance from

that compared with 200 years ago, 300

years ago, 400 years ago, the era, the

Inquisition and this sort of thing. And

so to say that it has such a grip, it

has a fraction of the grip that it once

did on the operations of human conduct

and of society. So the real question is

if implicit in that is given what we

know of science why would religion still

have any grip at all not does why does

it still have a big grip cuz it's not a

big grip when you look um in the in the

developed world so in fact most of

Europe are just there you know the whole

countries where religion is essentially

disappeared entirely and the countries

are not the countries are not full of

violence and you know it's just the

assumption that you have to be religious

to be moral is a false one, it's

empirically false because you just look

around in places where that's the case.

So um

so, so that's one fact. And we pull away

from that a little. There's plenty of

what goes on in religious texts that has

tremendous value to how to think about

life and how to treat one another. Uh,

in fact, uh, Jefferson created what was

essentially what you can think of as the

Jeff Thomas Jefferson, the Jefferson

Bible. I don't know if you ever heard of

this. He went through the Bible and I

think both the Old and the New Testament

and he crossed off everything that was

sort of mythical, magical,

uh things that clearly violated known

laws of nature and kept the rest and

said here is the the stuff of the Bible

that will should have value to any

modern person going forward. If you look

at people who are religious today who

are not in conflict with science, they

have viewed their religious texts as a

spiritual

something that gives them spiritual

support, not as a science textbook. The

the inter the conflict in society is

when you have those who are still

religious who want to use the religious

text as their

access point to understanding the

natural world and persistent efforts of

the past to make that happen have just

simply failed. The the the Bible does

not work as a science textbook. In fact,

Galileo knew this and he himself was a

religious man. He's famously quoted as

saying, "The Bible tells you how to go

to heaven, not how the heavens go."

So on that scale, the the the conflict

comes about when that subset of the

religious community feels threatened by

scientific discoveries that are

different from how they interpret what

should the natural world should be. In

the

>> religion still hangs on mostly because

it filled the gaps before science

existed. People didn't understand

lightning, disease, or the stars. So,

they called it divine power. But once we

started testing ideas instead of praying

for answers, the gaps started closing

fast. We discovered electricity, germs,

gravity, evolution, all without any help

from scripture. What's left of religion

today survives more in culture than in

truth. In Northern Europe, where belief

in God has dropped below 30%, countries

like Denmark and Sweden consistently

rank among the safest, healthiest, and

most educated in the world. That alone

proves morality isn't handed down from

the sky. It's built through empathy,

cooperation, and shared progress. Even

the Bible shows its age. Genesis 16-8

describes a solid dome holding back

waters above, which made sense before

telescopes, but not after we saw

galaxies billions of light years away.

The more we learned, the smaller those

old explanations became. Science didn't

kill faith. It just replaced

superstition with understanding. Bible.

>> I think it's that point where you get to

the concept of the god of the gaps. The

the you go, we do not understand this.

You know, science takes us so far, but

we don't understand anything beyond

that. Therefore, that's God.

>> The stuff that we don't get, that's God.

And the trouble with that is the moment

that you actually go, no, we do

understand that now. Is people going,

well, did God just go away then? and and

and it goes back, you know, nice simple

things like the rainbow, the point where

you go, whoa, the rainbow actually it's

it's an optical effect. It's not

something magic that gets put up in the

sky to memorialize the flood.

>> Plus, did you know that everyone sees a

unique rainbow?

>> No, that's right. Um, the rainbow is an

optical effect for the person who sees

it. So, if you stand 10 feet to my left,

you see an actual a different rainbow

than I see. It's a remarkable uh fun

fact about rainbows.

>> My my my favorite fun fact about

rainbows is the fact that they were

originally believed to have six color

bands, but that Newton added added

indigo and violet.

>> Newton liked he liked because he liked

his seven

>> the number seven. He had the mystical

feeling for the number seven. Throws in

indigo that no one else sees.

>> Nobody I mean hands up here who actually

goes

>> indigo violet. There's the indigo. Yeah,

you just go purple.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> Go purple. But

>> another thing about the rainbow, because

each rainbow is unique to the viewer, it

can only be a rainbow that is exactly

face on to you. You've never seen a

rainbow that was like at an oblique

angle. Think about it. They're exactly

hemispherical in front of you. That's

why you can never get to the base of the

rainbow

because that would mean your perspective

on it would change. That's what makes it

a good place to hide the gold. Okay,

in case you didn't know. All right.

Are you are you are you are you outing

yourself here as an unbeliever in

leprechaorn?

>> People have been burned at stakes.

>> Indeed am. Um and uh another thing just

you mentioned the god of the gaps in in

a free society, a free pluralistic

society where the freedom of the

expression of religion is

constitutionally protected which is a

fundamental part of why America was so

attractive to immigrants from around the

world whose religious differences were

not being supported in their hometown. I

will never be one to tell you what you

should believe or what you should not

believe. What I will say is that if you

want to say that where we don't

understand things, that's where God

rests. That's where God operates. The

God of the gaps argument because I get

asked that all the time. What was around

before the univer

must have been something God? So they

got to stick in God where we're not

there yet. And I just say I got we got

top people working on that. That's it's

a current frontier.

We're not there yet. And given the

history of the moving frontier where

people had previously said, well, God

must be operating. We're long past that.

We those explanations have come. And so

I I don't there's no compelling reason

to say God did it and then sort of give

up and go on to the next problem. My

issue with the God of the gaps is that

if you feel that way, you should not be

writing the science curriculum of a

classroom. Okay?

That's all.

Okay?

Because if you do,

you are undermining the very process of

what science is all about. Because the

god of the gaps principle is like a it's

a philosophy of ignorance whereas

science is a philosophy of discovery.

And that's an important distinction

between the two. And if you remove that

foundation for what builds science, you

are undermining the capacity of your

culture of your nation to compete

technologically in this the 21st

century. So it is not without

consequence to have conducted that way.

>> The god of the gaps idea is one of the

oldest habits of human thinking. When we

don't know something, we fill it with a

divine placeholder. But history shows

that every time science closes one of

those gaps, God gets pushed a little

further out. We used to think lightning

was Zeus, rainbows were promises from

God, and disease was punishment for sin.

Now we know lightning is electricity,

rainbows are light refraction through

water droplets, and sickness comes from

bacteria and viruses.

Each explanation replaced faith with

understanding. And that's the key

difference Neil's pointing out. Religion

stops at we don't know while science

says let's find out. The Bible itself

reflects that ancient ignorance. Genesis

9:13 says God set a bow in the clouds as

a sign after the flood. But that was

written by people who didn't know about

optics, sunlight angles, or atmospheric

scattering. The god of the gaps doesn't

explain the world. It explains why

people stopped looking for answers.

Real progress comes from curiosity, not

surrendering to mystery. That's what

drives discovery. And it's why we've

advanced more in the last 200 years of

science than in thousands of years of

prayer.

So, normally I don't I don't go here.

Normally, I don't go here normally

because I just like talking about

astrophysics,

but I I given this conference and given

how many of you out there are raid

atheists, I got to give you a bone here.

I got to toss you a bone. Okay.

So, I'm going to toss you a few bones.

Okay.

Just cuz you're rabid. All right.

So, let's look at some data here. You

probably know all these data. Uh,

actually, the data I'm about to show is

for the United States. I don't know what

it is. I'm sure the data exists, but

when I compiled it, I'm going to make

yet a separate point. So it wouldn't

have mattered what country was

represented here. In America, 90% of the

nation would claim to be religious. And

you you define this in a way that's

unambiguous.

You don't say, "Well, do you go to

church every Sunday?" You don't ask that

question. Plenty of people go to church

who are not religious. They go to get a

date or so. They go for the cupcakes or

something. They don't go to be

spiritually enlightened. So you ask a

different question. You say,

"Is there a God that listens to your

prayers?"

If you answer yes to that, you're

religious by anybody's definition

because your understanding of a deity is

that that deity is monitoring your daily

affairs. So that's unambiguous. About n

this number has dropped in the last

couple years, but it's about 90%. Turns

out if you go to college

and get an advanced degree, a master's

or a doctorate where these are degrees

where you actually question the state of

existing knowledge. The undergraduate

degree doesn't really do that. You're

learning from textbooks that written by

somebody else. Your doctrines are

already there. The higher degrees imply

that you are questioning the very fabric

of the knowledge you had previously

learned. among that community it's 60%.

It has dropped.

That's interesting. Let's keep going.

How about scientists

of all stripes? So, biologists,

chemists, sorry, let's include engineers

as well. People who have formal

scientific training, mathematicians as

well. Okay. What what happens next?

Drops to 40%.

Now, if you look at this number, it

looks like wow. So scientists the public

is 90% scientists are 40%. No the drop

is not that significant because every

scientist

has an has an advanced degree. So in

fact the drop is not from 90 to 40. The

drop is from 60 to 40.

So becoming a scientist

is not as big an effect on whether

you're religious as you might otherwise

think. Most of the drop comes because

you're educated. Educated beyond the

level of college. So that's 40%. So now

you go to elite scientists, members of

the national academy, highly

accomplished subset among scientists,

the number drops to 7%.

There was a headline in Nature, the

British journal Nature, which said after

this study was released, 93% of elite

scientists reject God. So that was

supposed to be a shocking headline. And

I look at that and I said, "That's not

even interesting.

That was the trend line." Anyway, what's

more interesting, which was not the

headline, is that 7% of elite scientists

pray to a god. Is Isn't Isn't that a

more interesting fact to you? Isn't that

kind of interesting?

The most accomplished scientists in the

world in that community, 7% of them

still pray to a personal God. I think

that is deserving of more study

than the 93% who don't

because something's going on there. We

don't know what.

And I have uh confronted people on this.

I would say to the most sort of

voseiferous in the atheist community, I

would say, "You're beating the public

over the head." Say, telling them, "Why?

Why are you doing that?" And I'm

thinking, "Before you beat the public,

why don't you beat them over the head?"

Okay. No, I'm just saying if you're

going to rank, if you just cuz that

understand that first because if you

can't convert that 7%, you've got no

hope in the general public. That's all

I'm saying. This this this is among the

ranks

of the scientifically educated. Now

philosophers basically invented atheism

and if you do this if you check the

statistic for philosopher it's down it's

below 1%. There are no religious the

only religious philosophers there are

they're like theologian philosophers.

All right if you subtract the theologic

philosophers this numbers is essentially

zero. All right. So they're basically

birthed atheism. Uh, the philosophers.

>> Neil brings up something most people

never think about. The more education

you have, the less likely you are to

believe in a personal God. It's not

arrogance, it's exposure. Once you start

questioning ideas, testing them, and

demanding evidence, blind faith doesn't

hold up. In the US, about 90% of the

general public say they believe in God.

But that number drops to 60% among

people with M's or doctoral degrees.

Among top tier scientists, members of

the National Academy of Sciences, only

about 7% believe in a personal God. And

it makes sense. The scientific method is

built on skepticism and testing. While

religion asks for acceptance without

proof, the more you study cosmology,

genetics, and neuroscience, the more the

gaps that used to be filled by God get

replaced with measurable explanations.

Philosophers, the people trained to

question everything, are almost entirely

non-religious for that reason. Once you

understand how knowledge is built, you

realize faith isn't knowledge at all.

It's the placeholder that disappears

when real answers show up.

>> And

there's this talk uh I I don't know here

in in Australia.

Uh

what does the Bible in the public school

class or not?

>> No. Is it by law or is it just by

tradition?

>> Is it by law? Okay. So in America

there's this understanding that the

state and the church are separate and by

and large that's been honored for by and

large for most of the history of the

country by and large. And the

what's interesting about America, a

point that was a little bit alluded to

earlier today, is that it was founded

on the principle that the state has no

religion. The state is indifferent to

what religion you might have. So that

means there's no authority over you

that's going to tell you who and what to

worship. And that's a state that we all

take for granted, but so many places in

the world that is not true.

Well, there's a case in New Jersey where

a middle school kid was lectured to by

the history teacher in a public school

and the history teacher said,

"If you don't accept Jesus as your Lord

and Savior, you are going to hell."

There's a little Muslim girl there said,

"You are already damned to hell." First

point. Second, that

Noah had dinosaurs on his ark. Third

point he made is that big bang and

evolution are just theories and you can

take them or leave them. So I I don't

like I said I don't get into these. I

just don't. We got people who do this.

We've got the four horsemen. We got we

got our boy here um who's coming up

after. We got people who fight this

stuff. I'm not one of those really. I

I'm doing this because like I know

you're you all this is the bone I'm

throwing you, but I really I don't do

this. So, but then I thought about it

and I said, you know, I have an op-ed I

can I mean a a letter to the editor on

this that I can write. And I left out

the part about Jesus.

I left that out

because if that's how he feels, he want

he wants you to be Christian. That's

okay. Fine. I left that out. I went to

the rest of what he said

and this was my letter as it appeared in

the New York Times. People cited

violation of the first amendment when a

New Jersey that's a separation of church

and state essentially New Jersey school

teacher asserted that evolution and the

big bang are not scientific and that

Noah's arc carried dinosaurs. The case

is not about the need to separate church

and state. It's about the need to

separate ignorant scientifically

illiterate people from the ranks of

teachers.

That's the problem.

If he wants to believe Jesus is a

savior, that's not synonymous with being

scientifically illiterate. Because 40%

of American scientists pray to a

personal God. What is identical with

being scientifically literate is that if

Noah was a human being,

he did not have dinosaurs on his ark

because humans and dinosaurs did not

coexist. All right? Every one of those

scientists knows that even the 40% who

pray to God. So this is this is how I've

sort of split the kingdom there.

Then then you get the the billboard

wars. Okay, this was fun. Big Bang

Theory. You got to be kidding. God. All

right. So, this goes on. This is what we

we put up with. All right. Um, so then

we got to then there was like let's come

back. Praise Darwin evolved beyond

belief. Freedom from religion founding.

So, the billboard wars are are in

progress here. There's some people who

are like okay with God and okay with

sort of how things evolve. So, they ride

the the fence. So, here's a bumper

sticker. The Big Bang Theory. God spoke

and bang, it happened, you know. So they

they're excited about both God and the

big bang.

But then we had this idiot back in May,

judgment day. Did this Did this

judgement day stuff reach below the

equator?

>> Jeez. Okay.

Uh

yeah it was it was now the good thing

this what unlike other predictions like

Jesus will come one day this had a date

okay you could test this was like easy

to test you just sort of wait around for

it all right so

now it turns out that May 21st was only

the day Jesus was supposed to show up

the actual end of the world is October

21st so the end of the world is still to

come this year. This is directly from

the website. So I had to tweet. So this

is May 21st. So on May 21st or May 20th,

I tweeted this. If Jesus actually

arrives May 21st, it'll be easy to

convince skeptics. If he doesn't show

up, do the faithful become atheists?

That was my question. Now, in a Twitter

stream, it's a it's a it's a live

conversation with complete strangers.

Everybody depositing their 140

characters worth of thought. So, here

this is there was a huge reaction to

that tweet.

Now, you would expect that most of my

followers or at least a big fraction of

them would be sort of atheistic. So,

you'd expect people say, "This guy is an

idiot. Why are we even spending any time

on them?" Well, one such person did make

such a reply,

but not in the way you might think.

No. Anyone who's read the Bible know

this camping was full of

from the start.

Okay. So, what do you do with that? So,

so this is somebody complaining about

the prediction of Jesus coming because

he says this other guy doesn't know Jack

about the Bible, but this guy does and

went on. There are other places where

people quoted that one can't know when

Jesus comes. So, the fact that this guy

is saying he knows means he doesn't read

the Bible. So, this so so this is what's

out there. people who are ready to

voseiferously argue about who knows the

Bible the least.

>> The problem isn't belief. It's ignorance

pretending to be education. When a

public school teacher tells kids that

dinosaurs rode on Noah's ark or that

evolution is just a theory, that's not

faith. That's misinformation.

Every credible field of science from

geology to genetics proves humans and

dinosaurs lived 65 million years apart.

Fossil layers, radiometric dating, and

even DNA degradation timelines confirm

that gap beyond dispute. The First

Amendment wasn't written to erase

religion. It was written to protect

learning from it. The founders knew that

when you mix scripture with science, you

destroy both.

Teaching creationism in science class

isn't freedom of religion. It's the end

of critical thinking. Even among

scientists who still believe in God,

none deny evolution or the Big Bang.

That shows faith and facts don't have to

fight unless you force them to. So, what

do you think? Should religion stay out

of science classrooms completely? Let me

know in the comments. Hit like if you

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challenge belief with evidence.