Science beats religion if...:

...we believe that people harm themselves - and usually everyone else, either individually or as a society - by believing in fictions, which cannot be proven and which by the law of averages are likely to be as near to disproven as possible.

This is fine.

However, the assumption then tends to follow that people are harming themselves, and everyone else by believing in fictions!

A lot of the harm cited as stemming from religion actually comes from clashes of religions/beliefs, but even then, religion is usually roped into far less esoteric disputes concerning liberty, property, territory etc., used as a tool for manipulation, usually by far more rational men. Religion, then, is the scapegoat for the evils of politics and psychological mass manipulation!

This all leads to my question:

If a person is not going to contribute any more to the world as a result of giving up their irrational beliefs than they would if they didn't, does Science actually have a counter-argument?

In more simple terms: can we believe whatever we want if we were never going to be scientists either way?

 

Honestly,

I've never even seen them as opposite or competing fields.

Comparing science and religion is like comparing science and poetry. They serve completely different functions in my eyes.

Most people, scientists included, tend to have at least one weird idiosyncratic and irrational belief. Plenty of Atheists vote Tory, for example.

On the whole, these aren't the problem, it is a willingness to make people explode for your irrational belief that is a problem.
And since it comes to that, are we any happier if someone blows us up for their rational belief? It amounts to the same on the exploding-end y'know.


My short answer:

Religion doesn't hurt people, people hurt people. Take away religion, and they'll hurt one another with something else

 

" religion is usually roped into far less esoteric disputes concerning liberty, property, territory etc., used as a tool for manipulation, usually by far more rational men. Religion, then, is the scapegoat for the evils of politics and psychological mass manip"

Which is why we should get rid of organised religion, if people want to believe in God that's fine, it's a personal thing, why do we have to set up this world wide establishment to keep it going?

"n more simple terms: can we believe whatever we want if we were never going to be scientists either way?"

Because it's counter productive, we as a society should openly embrace science as the law of this world, not religion, things like stem cell research is being held back predominantly by evangelicals.

"Comparing science and religion is like comparing science and poetry. They serve completely different functions in my eyes."

For a lot of people, like yourself, they serve completely different purposes, but for a lot of other people, they clash, mostly when it comes to the search for answer. Again, scientific research like stem cells, or what to teach our kids in school, these are cases where the two clash.

 

Same reason you won't get rid of nations, languages, etc. We're social animals, we like to do things together, to share our beliefs. How would you "get rid"? People set up groups, some groups grow, etc. You have to limit freedom based on ideology in order to prevent organised religion (organised prejudice, organised belief, etc.).

It's not all about efficiency. What's the point in freedom if we can't do what we want in it?

I'm not convinced that stem cell research is being unduly held back. It will happen, but if there's no resistance to it, it could pass through unchecked. Same goes for GM crops and such; even with the best will in the world, I think science benefits from opposition, and much as I love science, I wouldn't trust peer review to do the job.

I'd also suggest that, much as we'd have war without religion, we'd have conservatism without it too. Even in a secular society, you'd have tradition, you'd have history, and you'd have those who benefit less from progress than others.

This is precisely my point though. Take a really obvious thing: the earth is round (approximately). This knowledge affects the lives of a tiny minority of people in their day-to-day lives. The fact that it's pretty much indisputable doesn't change that.

This was what I meant: there's an argument made that religion holds up the progress of science, but that would imply that everyone could a scientist if they weren't religious.

 

BTW, I'm not religious. I just demand more from science than the assumption that we all need to know everything (aka agree with it) for any progress to be affected. I don't think people are absolved from logic or reason or rationality, but on matters that science can't agree on, or which aren't going to get them killed, where's the harm?

 

I was wondering.. this is not really on topic.. but.. isn't religion also a philosophy?
Trying to explain everything, that is what philosophy is all about? so, in what matter does religion differs from philosophy, in the end religion is also a explenation. I actually don't see any difference, we might not recognise it as philosophy because most religion is not well funded and agrumented, as philosophies we know nowadays.. but trying to explain life by saying there is this divine thing, or whatever.. couldn't that be as good as any other philosophy? And isn't it in every man's nature to explain all what is around out, what is occuring inside of us, and in the outside, maybe some people can't find enough satisfaction with merely science?

 

I would say maybe it used to be, but the average religious person nowadays is not philosophical in the least. The literal translation of the word philosophy means "the love of wisdom". According to the first known philosopher, socrates, wisdom is being able to distinguish between what you know and what you do not know. Are many religious people nowadays ready to make that distinction? I dont think so. This is why dogma is so dangerous. Instead of questioning why we know what we think we know, and why we think the way we think, instead of recognizing our assumptions about things, many just assume they are right, because something else "says so".

 

Yes, that is true.

What i believe is, for example, if there was a person who wrote "the bible" .. it migt just have been a philosopher trying make his wisdom and sense for moral more accesible for the regular people by putting his philosophy into stories.. but if this could be true it is obvious that the people only saw the stories, but not the wisdom behind it.. so yes, you're def right, but even tho, i do believe that religion can be a source of wisdom, but that depends from person to person.

 

I also think religion can be a source of wisdom, if you approach it correctly. But then again, I believe that anything and everything can be a source of wisdom.

 

I don't know how true that is, to be honest. I'll admit that the likes of the ID crowd seem determined to just make up what they can't prove, and in that sense many of them do not know what they do and do not know. But I don't know that they really account for that many people globally.

I guess the distinction you'd make is between those who care that they don't know things and those who are happy enough not to know. There are plenty of people who have a religious belief that aren't stupid enough to claim that "it just says so"; rather, they accept a religious answer in the absence of a better one.

These religious people may not be as vocal as the evangelists that all atheists are apparently constantly accosted by every time they leave their house. But they're still part of the average.

In a nutshell: I'd like to meet this "average religious person nowadays" please. I hear so much about him/her on philosophy forums, but I don't know that I've ever met him!

 

Indeed. I'd only have a problem with someone having a religion if they were opposed to anyone else learning anything from any other text. There are a few who seem to think that there's nothing worth knowing that isn't in their holy book. But it really is a tiny minority, and I suspect most of them are full of it and a bit mad, or bornagains who are still over-compensating for all the bad things they did.

 

Well, I certainly can't speak on a global level, but in my experience (GA bible belt), there is an average religious person, and they usually fit quite nicely into all the stereotypes you hear about average religious folk (Blatant ignorance and disregard for others' opinions.)

heh..like I said, I dont know about the global scale, but at least down here, it definatly isn't a tiny minority.....not a minority at all.

 

Maybe you should move? Even the people we'd call "religious nutters" here are pretty docile. I dunno what church attendance is like in the US, but it's pretty low here. Someone said 1 million regularly attend, but I don't know what they'd class as "regular". I guess it's somewhere between Christmas-and-Easter and every Sunday. But there's very few of the wacky ultra-Christian communities. America really needs to sort that out about itself.

One thing I think religion does do that is harmful is to discourage people from truly not giving a shit what anyone else does, by making keeping oneself to oneself a virtue, rather than a given. There's a difference between "turning the other cheek" and not giving a shit.

 

In my opinion, the problem with rigid forms of religion is that they try to conceptualize everything to the point where spirituality becomes something similar to Aesop's fables. If souls and some higher power or grand workings really do exist, then surely, as individuals who all share something in common, we have individual means of arriving at our own conclusions.

I was recently discussing some common tenents of Christianity with a friend, and was using several passages from the Bible to help make my case. He concluded that since I was interpreting the Bible differently from him, I wasn't "reading it right" and that I needed to ask God to help me truly understand, which is along the lines of "You see it differently from me, but I'm told that I have God on my side, so I'm right."

To me this sort of mentality only serves to limit people, and really hinders our capacity to think for ourselves and question. It's totally uncreative, and just kind of sad. To me, life is a journey of self-expression, and of realization about the nature of myself, which naturally, can only be a product of myself. To live by someone else's views and ideals is a sacrifice of your own awareness.

 

Maybe. On the other hand, subjective truth doesn't have to exist. The fact that we struggle to absolutely prove anything doesn't in itself indicate that truth is as malleable as so much Play-Doh. There can still be an absolute truth, even if we don't know it.

I know plenty of non-religious people who are every bit as guilty of that kind of mentality though. Not wishing to bring up an old battle, but remember this? Is "for me, it is fact" any different from "God says so so ". Subjective reality could be just as easily abused as the love of God.

I don't see much harm in believing something you've read to be true. If we have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. Hard to imagine that Isaac Newton would've got far if he'd tried to fathom the universe starting from the beginning. Must we carve out our own morality, in every instance of every situation, living as people and as a species on some perpetual learning curve, only ever acquiring as much knowledge as we can in a lifetime? Subjectives would suggest as much.

If something cannot be understood without being experienced, we're severely limited in our capacity to understand it. If a religion, a science, whatever, provides us a framework, even if we then totally dismantle it, it's still better than starting with nothing.

 

Everyone seems to be talking religion but what about the other side of the coin?

The question is, science beats religion if?

So what about science? Everyone often takes science as a good thing but is it?

Some would argue that man is not old enough or mature enough to know the things he already knows. After all pollution, global warming and the atomic bomb can not be blamed on religion. These can all be blamed on a mankind not ready for the science he knows.

So as mankind runs headlong into knowledge that he has no idea what the long term effects of which will be or how that knowledge will be used, shouldn’t mankind be looking for ways to become more mature so he can handle such knowledge in ways that are beneficial and not harmful?

Personally I would say that “love your neighbor as yourself”, “as far as it depends on you be peaceable with all men” and “seek peace and pursue it” all “religious statements” would be a good start in the maturing of mankind.

 

i just think it has no place in the 21st century.

 

If people were going to have worked out their personal spiritual beliefs then that would have been the case a long time ago. But someone comes up with a more appealing idea and others adopt it. Science is the same...it's just that the scientific community can support itself through exchange of material knowledge. Religion in the past relied on taxing or pillaging

 

I wasn't particularly attacking the idea of science, just the tendency of some not to support pro-science arguments. I don't think there's much of an argument that science has done more harm than good. But I'd want those on the Science side to back up the argument that religion is holding up the course of science. I've not seen a wonderful counter-argument yet to why someone who isn't going to be a scientist, and who doesn't object to funding research, shouldn't belief whatever they want to.

 

I didn't think you were attacking the idea of science and really I'm not either but the question does imply science defeating religion. Which I feel is a bad thing.

Because I believe that religion is one of the things, yes, holding science in check. You say you don't think there's much of an argument that science has done more harm than good but as I pointed out mankind and science has bought mankind to the edge of extinction which seems to out weight any good science has done and I don’t see much hope in science finding solutions to the problems facing mankind that it has helped create.

What is needed is for mankind to mature to the point where it can use science to benefit and not harm. Science is set up to provide knowledge, not maturity. I ask; as you look around where can mankind turn for such maturity? Only one thing even claims to provide that maturity and that’s religion.

Yes, I know many will say that look at all the damage done by religious fanatics but I would say the problem is not with religion just as the problem is not with science. If you use a sledge hammer to try and fix a broken watch you do a disservice to both the hammer and the watch. Both science and religion are being used for purposes they were never intended to be used for.

To me it’s funny that at the time mankind needs maturity the most, mankind is using science to try and crush the one thing that could provide that maturity, religion. Even you imply that if religion is a relative harmless past time, kind of like model trains or collecting postage stamps, what’s the problem. I would ask; what’s the good?

Truly we live in a time where religion needs to sweep the earth and help us start asking the right questions;
What does it really mean to love your neighbor as yourself?
Do I really want an economic system that keeps 2/3 of the earth starving?,
Do I really want to keep dumping pollution out the back door ‘cause it’s easier and cheaper than cleaning it up?
Do I really want to keep making and using weapons of mass destruction?
Do I really need to be governed by people that divide and conquer taking power to themselves and freedom away from all?

If mankind could become mature without religion, I would say great, more power to you. The problem is, take a look around does it seem like mankind with all his science is maturing? Once again some will say; if most of mankind is religious where is the maturity? To which I would say if mankind was really religious where is the “love your neighbor as your self”? No, mankind is not religious they just give it lip service and it has no real affect in their lives!

Mankind by using science and religion hand in hand could usher in a Golden Age but by pitting science and religion against each other mankind is being brought to the edge of extinction!

PS Sorry about being so long winded.