- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
You must log in or register to comment.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that atheists don’t claim to know everything? Come on…
What you know about a few cultures built around one monotheistic religion does not generalize to all religion.
Yeah cause other religions are so progressive and constantly evolving for the better lol
Plenty of people claiming to be on the side of science think they know everything too.
Nobody likes to work with those people and they generally don’t do very well in their careers. Sometimes you get an exception but it’s pretty rare. Most technical people I’ve met are very curious people and in my experience, the most likely to actually update their views with more information.
The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.
The less you know, the less you know you don’t know.
Religion: I don’t know everything…but my god does!
But God puts thoughts in brain means I know everything!
Psh that guys a hack MY book is better
Except they don’t even read their own book.
They certainly don’t practice what is in there.
Only whatever their pastor cherry-picked from it.
Not even that.
People who think Science and Religion are opposed to one another don’t understand either one.
What is science? Observing how to world works and learning from that.
What is religion? Philosophy (Here how you should behave, and how to live a good life)
Science has no reason to argue with religion, because religion is not scientific. There is nothing that can be proven or disproven.
Religion has no reason to argue with science, because whatever religion believes about the origin of the world, science just seeks to better understand that world. Knowing how electrons move is not an affront to God.
Arguing Science vs Religion is like arguing Painting vs Music. Sure, they’re both art but they are completely different and do not overlap. There are plenty of scientists who follow one religion or another.
Good points. Lemmy has a bit of an anti religion echo chamber.
Pointing out the extremes of one and cherrypicking the other. Both sides have done a lot of good and bad.
I like your view of religion as a spiritual guide for morality. Most people are too narrow minded when it comes to religion. They purley hate and focus on the byproducts of the zeitgeist, cultural norms from times past. Instead they should read between the lines and try to understand the actual message it’s trying to convey.
Lol do you live in a cave or something, religious organizations used to straight up torture and kill scientists if they made any claims that were not in line with what the religion claimed, read up on what they did to the early astronomers who were figuring out that the sun and not earth is the center of or solar system, and that’s just one instance, I can point to a million other atrocities that today’s society views as barbaric done by organized religion. Religion has nothing to do with living a good life, it’s about centralising power and control over the masses and making them obey your commands.
Lol do you live in a cave or something,
religiousPolitical organizations used to straight up torture and kill scientists if they made any claims that were not in line with what thereligionpolitics claimed, read up on what they did to the early astronomers who were figuring out that the sun and not earth is the center of or solar system, and that’s just one instance, I can point to a million other atrocities that today’s society views as barbaric done by organizedreligionpolitics.ReligionPolitics has nothing to do with living a good life, it’s about centralising power and control over the masses and making them obey your commands.I guess all politics are bad and we would be better off if banned all politics.
People using religion as an excuse does not mean all religion is bad and that the people doing these things are not culpable for their actions. You are dismissing the people who chose to do these things and blaming Religion instead. Don’t let them get away with that. Blame the person for being a piece of shit.
There are just as many scientist that are religious in some fashion as scientist that are not. If religion was antithetical to science you wouldn’t have scientists with religious beliefs.
There are aeronautical engineers who think the world is flat. Human beings aren’t rational creatures, so it’s not surprising that there are scientists that are religious, but acting like it’s some bad apples who give religion a bad name is also not correct. Might I remind you the vatican itself has helped hide multiple crimes committed by the clergy over the years, everything from shielding child raping priests by moving them around to burying the bones of the native American children that were kidnapped from their families and brutalized in church grounds. Point me to any country on the map that’s a theocracy and I’ll show you how they brutalize their population. I’m not against religion, but religion shouldn’t be allowed to interfere in other people’s lives, should not have any say in how a goverment runs and how laws get passed and should be forced to pay taxes like any other business. Religious people with power over others are a danger to society.
This take is funny AF as an aero astro engineering PhD because, no, you don’t graduate as a flat earther. People are not rational, as exhibited by the fact that you’re super jazzed to provide turndown service to high school kids to bang it out all night long in your house and you think it’s an A+ idea.
Go think about your life bro. Your shit is fucked up.
I even agree with you about religious perspectives, but holy hell you got some issues going on. You should get help.
Yah, that’s not the problem, it’s the fact that religion is designed to push itself where it isn’t, and it claims to be able to solve not just the moral problems, but the logical and societal problems as well.
If religion was just fucking “philosophy” we would all be fine with it, there would be no conflict. Science isn’t trying to invade people’s homes and tell them what they can and cannot do as consenting adults. Science isn’t trying to give people an excuse to be passive about injustice. Science doesn’t condone slavery and hate and violence and organize mass numbers of people to adopt hateful views.
There is material HARM that comes from religious ideology because it’s trying, and has BEEN trying to supplant logic and reason and the scientific process since science became a thing.
This is not a “two sides” issue and I strongly resent the framing as such. Religion is trying to drag the world down to a state of willful ignorance and subservience to magical-thinking as an entity, and science is just a word to describe a process for investigating the universe. They are not equivalent. Do better.
Science isn’t trying to invade people’s homes and tell them what they can and cannot do as consenting adults. Science isn’t trying to give people an excuse to be passive about injustice. Science doesn’t condone slavery and hate and violence and organize mass numbers of people to adopt hateful views.
People have tried to use science to do all these things. Eugenics was used as an excuse to push horrific policies.
The problem with blaming “Religion” is you are excusing the people who are doing the horrible shit. Instead of blaming the person who is being a homophobic shitbag you blame religion, dismissing the agency of the individual and excusing their terrible behaviour because “religion make them do it.” Don’t fall for it. Don’t let them hide behind religion and use it as an excuse. Blame the person for being a piece of shit and treat them accordingly as someone who has willfully chosen to do so.
There is material HARM that comes from religious ideology because it’s trying, and has BEEN trying to supplant logic and reason and the scientific process since science became a thing.
And scientists have never done material harm by performing unethicall experiments citing “logic and reason” as an excuse… Clearly all Science must be bad then because some “scientists” are pieces of shit.
This is not a “two sides” issue and I strongly resent the framing as such
The meme in the OP is framing it as a “two sides” issue and that is what I am arguing against. I agree that this is not a “two sides” situation. This is a “two completely different things that have nothing to do with each other” situation.
They are not equivalent.
I have been explicitly saying that they are not the same at all. I used an analogy of Painting and Music which are not equivalent because they are two completely different things. My entire point is people shouldn’t be comparing the two or conflating the two.
Using science to “argue” against religion makes as much sense as using religion to “argue” against science: none. They do not operate in the same spheres, they do not seek to answer the same questions. They do not share and of the same purposes or goals. People need to stop treating them like they have anything in common.
You are still trying to weigh these two ideas against each other like they are neck-and-neck in a race, and again, I am saying your dichotomy is bullshit, and you should feel bad.
If you think experiments with eugenics is anywhere comparable to the thousands of years of wars fought in the name of some God or another, or the constant and unending hate that religion is using right now to justify abusing children, if you think that people make some choice like “will I use science or religion to figure this out” if you think that they are anywhere close to the same thing, you are too dense to have this conversation.
You are scared of death, I get it. We all are. Religion offers comfort, but no evidence of anything other than people like to tell stories about things they’re scared of.
I have been explicitly saying that they are not the same at all.
I didn’t fucking say you’re saying they’re the same, I am saying you’re fucking EQUATING them against each other, and you’re doing it with a fervor, and if you say you’re not, you’re either lying or unaware of what you’re doing. Again, go watch some actual atheist debates and understand that you’re not treading new ground here, you’re falling into the exact same mental fallacy that many so-called “religious intellectuals” get in. You don’t need religion or God to have a better world, a better personal perspective of the universe or anything else.
Using science to “argue” against religion makes as much sense as using religion to “argue” against science: none.
Okay here is where the crux of your stupid argument is. What exactly do you think is happening? Do you think science is waging war on Christianity? Do you believe science is trying to “kill god”? Do you think people adopt science for the same reasons they adopt religion? Do you think that if “both sides just stopped fighting it would be better”? Because if you say yes to any of these questions, again, you are radically misinformed or your perspective is tainted by religion and you are not being honest with yourself.
Science is, and I say this fucking again, a system for finding truth. It’s not designed to attack religion, it’s not competing for anything, you can indeed have both spirituality and religion and science in your life without conflict. But that’s not what Christians and theists broadly do, is it? They’re the ones trying to burn textbooks and trying to get schools to teach creation. Science is not invading churches and forcing them to teach motherfucking geology.
They do not operate in the same spheres, they do not seek to answer the same questions. They do not share and of the same purposes or goals. People need to stop treating them like they have anything in common.
I’m glad you agree, now why are you doing it?
You are still trying to weigh these two ideas against each other like they are neck-and-neck in a race
I am not. How is repeatedly saying they have nothing to with each other treating them like they are in a neck-and-neck race? One is running down a track and the other is painting a picture. They have nothing to do with one another
if you think that people make some choice like “will I use science or religion to figure this out”
Again, if they have nothing to do with one another, why would I think “people make some choice like ‘will I use science or religion to figure this out’” ? That makes as much a thinking people use some choice like “I will use math or art to figure this out.” I have said repeatedly they are not the same and you keep arguing as if I have been claiming otherwise.
I am saying you’re fucking EQUATING them against each other
No more than the meme is, and I am pointing out the pointlessness of doing so.
You don’t need religion or God to have a better world
Never claimed you did.
What exactly do you think is happening?
I think people on the Internet who don’t properly understand Science or Religion try to use one to argue against the other without realizing it makes no sense and is useless.
It’s not designed to attack religion, it’s not competing for anything, you can indeed have both spirituality and religion and science in your life without conflict.
That is exactly what I said, yes. I’m glad we agree.
But that’s not what Christians and theists broadly do, is it?
If you think the majority of Christians and Theists are trying to burn books and force creationism is schools then you will be shocked when you find out how many Christians and Theists actually exist in the world. The majority of Americans are Theists. The fact that some sect is trying to force creationism in schools, and it’s not there by default, would be evidence that that is not a broadly held opinion by thesists. Afterall, if the majority of people wanted it it wouldn’t be that hard to implement.
now why are you doing it?
Where specifically did I do it?
I was raised devout and my parents wanted me to become a pastor, I know a little about religion and what it looks like out there. This is why I know the motivations of the Christian Right and the threat they pose to everyone on Earth. It’s a dangerous fucking death-cult.
I said already what your error of framing was, how you have been using the weakest, most neutral language here because you’re afraid of pushing away theists and think that being like “both sides don’t understand each other” that you will make more progress to get people to get along.
Maybe you could get a bite in a Christian forum, but it’s inappropriate in this community because most of us are not religious and see it for the threat it is. Religion is a threat to us all, it’s a scourge, a cloud of locusts that consumes the world around it. We don’t need to be told that the people who practice it are misguided and don’t understand science. We need someone to tell THEM that, because we’re the ones being attacked.
I’m six teen and this is deep.
As long as religion makes unprovable claims, it has no place next to science.
The only religion that is science-proof is sun worshipping.
Most scientists want humanity to explore the cosmos beyond the Solar system. Turns out there’s planets all over the place!
As long as religion makes unprovable claims, it has no place next to science.
Like I said: they are completely different things. I agree there is no reason for the two to interact with one another. As such there is no reason to do things like compare the size of their literature (as a random example).
I would encourage you to watch some of the “atheist call-in” shows on youtube so you understand better just how serious the brainwashing in religion is, and how it has a base motivation to attack and drown out systems of thinking like science and reason.
You’re not in here supplying people with a way to harmonize conflicting belief systems, because science isn’t a fucking belief system. Anyone who has already been through this journey already knows this, this is why you’re getting hammered in the comments here.
You’re not in here supplying people with a way to harmonize conflicting belief systems, because science isn’t a fucking belief system.
Correct. I am also not trying to do so. I am literally saying the two have nothing to do with one another and that’s why using one to argue against the other it pointless.
The people disagreeing with me seem to really want to use science to argue with religion, which ignores the fact that that’s not how science works, it is not a useful persuit for science, and religion doesn’t care.
The people disagreeing with me seem to really want to use science to argue with religion
Science does not seek to argue against religion, it seeks nothing, it’s just a word to describe a system for finding truth if that’s what you’re after.
So the reason you’re seeing people using science to attack religion is because YOU STARTED IT BY EQUATING THEM. This is itself an attack on science.
You have the right premise that they shouldn’t be used to seek the same answers, but you are approaching from a dense mindset that science is a “group” actively out trying to fight religion and that we people of science need to also do our part to understand religion. This fallacy is why you’re getting attacked here and why people are saying things like “I’m 16 and this is deep” it’s because this is a tired trope, some teenager who was raised theist suddenly realizes that scientific ideas have merit but desperately wants to make them both work so he doesn’t offend his parents so he tries to make a “separate but equal” argument. It’s tired.
You don’t need religion, but religion says you need it and it actively tries to attack other systems for understanding the world. It’s a net negative in our modern world and entirely optional, and science broadly wouldn’t care one way or another if it disappeared tomorrow or if more people started believing in God, because again, it’s not a “side” and I cannot fathom why you’re being so self-contradictory in your efforts here.
Science does not seek to argue against religion, it seeks nothing, it’s just a word to describe a system for finding truth if that’s what you’re after.
That is what I said, yes. Glad we’re on the same page.
So the reason you’re seeing people using science to attack religion
The thing we both agreed science is not meant for. Go on.
is because YOU STARTED IT BY EQUATING THEM.
The meme was equating them. I pointed out the pointlessness of that.
you are approaching from a dense mindset that science is a “group” actively out trying to fight religion
Strange, I am seeing so many replies treating Religion as a “group” actively out to fight science. Can we agree that both of these are wrong?
it’s because this is a tired trope
Science and religion have nothing in common is a tried trope? Because a lot of the response I’m getting seem the think they have something in common and anything relevant to say about one another.
You don’t need religion
Never said you did.
religion says you need it and it actively tries to attack other systems for understanding the world
And here we go treating Religion as a “group” again. I thought that was bad? Or is it only bad if you think someone is doing that to Science?
science broadly wouldn’t care one way or another if it disappeared tomorrow or if more people started believing in God
I agree. That’s what I’ve been saying. What are you arguing with specifically?
I cannot fathom why you’re being so self-contradictory in your efforts here.
What contradictions? You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I have been arguing for religion at some point. I have done no such thing. I have simply said “arguing science vs religion makes no sense and is a waste of time” and for some reason you assumed that meant I must be arguing for religion when I have done no such thing.(Other than pointing out religion is not a monolithic group I suppose. Pointing out the flaws in a claim is hardly the same arguing for the opposing viewpoints)
And here we go treating Religion as a “group” again. I thought that was bad? Or is it only bad if you think someone is doing that to Science?
Jesus fucking christ, religion IS a group, it is an organized group seeking political power and social control. Science is a tool for finding truth.
I don’t get how you can pretend to have this neutral position and still make weird defenses like this. It’s dishonest. You are lying about what you’re trying to communicate here and I cannot stand dishonesty so we’re done.
I am done trying to pick apart who or what you’re actually condemning, I highly encourage you to re-read how you opened this fucking thread and what everyone’s pushback has been about and understand your failures to communicate, make this a learning experience.
Watching Matt Dillahunty can be infuriating sometimes with how dense the callers can be. Dogma and indoctrination are a hell of a drug.
Science isn’t out there making rules for owning slaves. And so that line about philosophy is utter bs. Philosophy also doesn’t lay out rules for owning slaves.
Science isn’t out there making rules for owning slaves.
Okay, I just said science and religion do not overlap so saying religion does something science does not just further supports my argument.
And so that line about philosophy is utter bs
Philosophy is not science
Philosophy also doesn’t lay out rules for owning slaves
Depends in the philosopher:
Aristotle, in the first book of his Politics defends slavery …
“Where then there is such a difference as that between soul and body, or between men and animals (as in the case of those whose business is to use their body, and who can do nothing better), the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master. For he who can be, and therefore is, another’s and he who participates in rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have, such a principle, is a slave by nature.”The fact that people can have a religious book that has rules for owning slaves, while they themselves are opposed to owning slaves, indicates they are taking the “philosophy” they find useful from the book and not strictly adhering to everything in it.
You don’t need to tell us about this. Religion needs to learn this.
“you don’t need to tell us not to be anti-religious because of Science, you need to tell people not to be anti-Science because of religion.”
My dude, I’m telling both. Which group is more common in this comment section?
Which group is more common in this comment section?
Lemmy is a predominantly young, leftist or liberal community, religion is going to be a minority here in all regards. When you come in “both siding” religion broadly, you’re asking a lot of people who already have discarded religion to accept some part of it without giving a good reason or argument why.
You don’t need religion to come up with morality, philosophical ideas about nature or anything else religion claims to have the monopoly on. It’s fine if people want to have belief for themselves about higher powers or spirituality, but again, that shouldn’t even be placed on the same table as actual systems of reason and logic and material science.
When you come in “both siding” religion broadly
I am not “both siding”, I am saying they have nothing to do with each other.
you’re asking a lot of people who already have discarded religion to accept some part of it
Where did I do that? I simply said there is no point and no reason to try to use science to argue against religion. The fact that people seem to find that offensive makes me think there are a lot of people wasting their time trying to use science to argue against religion.
People who think Science and Religion are opposed to one another don’t understand either one.
This was your first paragraph, you are starting with the thesis that someone like me, who has defended truth from religious attacks for decades, that I simply “misunderstand” the people who are screaming that God doesn’t want us to get vaccines or learn about cosmology.
Science is on the defense against a powerful, hateful, spiteful ideology that has been wearing us all down for millenia. Religion is fucking HOSTILE so no, you need to focus your statement against the actual antagonist here. This isn’t a place to use this pathetic neutral language, we have active fucking book-burnings happening in the USA right now, as schools become defunded even more than they already are.
To put it bluntly, Science wouldn’t give any shits about religion if religion would stay in their lane.
While there’s plenty of atheists who have taken up the charge of destroying religion as much as they possibly can, with limited success, Science has, to my knowledge, never tried to influence religious teachings. Religion, conversely, has tried to stop, slow or otherwise discredit, scientific research, and understanding.
It seems to me that if religion would stay in its lane, this problem wouldn’t exist.
Science has, to my knowledge, never tried to influence religious teachings
The meme I was responding to seems to be specifically trying to use Science to discredit religion.
Religion, conversely, has tried to stop, slow or otherwise discredit, scientific research, and understanding.
And I argue strongly against any idiots trying to do that. However It’s incredibly disingenuous to claim “Religion” as a whole does this. Many scientist are religious in some for or another, so it’s not the concept of “Religion” that tries to discredit scientific research, it’s specific groups using religion as an excuse. The AntiVax MAGA crowd aren’t trying to stop vaccines for religious reasons, they’re doing it for political reasons. Some of them might try to use religion as an excuse (despite their religious literature saying nothing that would oppose vaccines) because they do not actually understand either religion or science.
What is religion? Philosophy
I wish people just saw religion as a metaphor, but they really do believe there is a god and act accordingly even though there is no evidence of any gods existing.
This pokes at one of my biggest gripes with it, if there is a big guy with pearly gates upstairs, and doing good in life is a reward, does that mean you only do good things because your paid? It cheapens the entire philosophy and moral compass they proport to have.
On that topic. Religions does have philosophy, but it requires more effort than just showing up to what ever service you attend, I personally only know 3 religious people who have even read Aquinas (which is sad, because his work is a good read even if christiantiy aint your jam). For everything else religion is a crutch, its easier to scare kids into not steal things and acting with good-enough morals than it is to plonk a tomb of Plato or Confucius in front of them and tell them there will be a quiz on ethics at dinner.
even though there is no evidence of any gods existing
This is that Science arguing with Religion thing that I already said doesn’t actually make sense.
Religion has no reason to argue with science,
Well, that sounds good on paper. It would be nice if over the centuries, religion wouldn’t have ceaselessly attacked and persecuted scientists. If religion was “only philosophy”, there wouldn’t be so many religious zealots not only denying but actively trying to ban the teaching of evolution at schools. Nope… religion is anti-science. It has to be, because science is the one thing that has gradually taken away religion’s authority over the minds of people. Religion is a mind virus, science is the cure.
Again, there are plenty of scientist who follow one religion or another:
According to the poll, just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/
It doesn’t make sense to claim religion is by default anti-science when scientists are just as likely to be religious as not. If religion was as anti-Science as you claim then no scientists would be religious.
People who don’t understand science or religion are anti-science, and they use religion as an excuse.
Citing a study about science in the USA, a very religious country, as if that in any way reflected the world of science as a whole… well, okay then.
Yes, and a lot of Science has historically happened in the USA, a very religious country.
I get the sentiment, but check out the length of the Taoist cannon, it would challenge even some modern day myth lengths like Marvel super hero comics.
Here I thought that the Taoist canon was only the Tao Te Ching (which is pretty short).
canon = approved literature
cannon = large gun that fires grapeshot, etc.
There is also an idea in philosophy of science called “pessimistic meta induction”. Basically the concept is that science is a continually evolving process where we get increasingly accurate understanding about how things work. However since science progresses by falsifying previously held beliefs we can speculate that all of our current scientific theories are technically false.
It’ll end up like the Bohr model. Someday we’ll miss the elegant simplicity of everything just being vibrating strings.
This meme was made by a “know it all”.
Yeah I’m not so sure about this haha. I work in academia, and there is quite the abundance of closed mindedness and dogmatism.
I work in academia, and there is quite the abundance of closed mindedness and dogmatism
Are we talking about discrimination against young or foreign academics not getting grants and degrees because of bias about who should be the ones leading research and hesitancy to invest time, money and political capital into new tech, or are we talking about “They didn’t want to read my paper about how I think the sun pooped out the Earth and why this is evidence for God”?
Seriously, that’s a loaded claim, you need to provide some context and nuance there, I haven’t met many actual scientific-minded people who are dogmatic, that is usually the exact accusation thrown out by theists who are butthurt that evolution exists and can’t be disproven.
Ah ok, so you seem to have misconstrued what I’ve said here and have added in your own assumptions and straw men. That’s ok, it happens to the best of us (myself included).
I’m definitely not trying to equate science with religion in every way. I just think it’s fair to acknowledge that science, being a human endeavor, isn’t immune to things like gatekeeping, resistance to new ideas, or institutional biases. That doesn’t mean science as a whole is bad or anti-progress. We’ve achieved incredible feats with science; we certainly didn’t “pray” our way to the modern automobile, or to the smartphone. All I’m saying is that, like any field, it has its challenges. And those challenges and weaknesses can be more than people or scientists like to imagine. I’m simply pointing out that dogmatism can exist anywhere, even in spaces that pride themselves on being open to new information.
The fact that you’re immediately jumping to extremes of either systemic biases in funding or absurd pseudoscience, kind of proves my point ironically. I’m a researcher at a nationally recognized university, and trust me when I say that there are many like you who seem to get their jimmies all riled up the second that someone so much as mentions that “scientific research may fall victim to dogmatism and other forms of human egoistic thought - just like religion”. It’s a strange phenomenon I’ve observed when people associate their entire identity with their specific scientific endeavors. And I get it too (and to say I don’t fall victim occasionally would be a lie). It is difficult for your ego to let go of 30 years of hard work and research, even when new data / evidence comes out to prove you wrong. It’s not easy to say “yup the research I associated my identity with the last 30 years? That’s actually all wrong”, but a good scientist is one who doesn’t attach ego to their work and remains perfectly objective. Much harder said than done- trust me.
Ah ok, so you seem to have misconstrued what I’ve said here and have added in your own assumptions and straw men.
No I literally just asked you a question which direction you’re coming from, and the fact that you had to respond with this reactionary, defensive BS instead of using the opportunity to distance yourself from the kooks tells me you don’t have good-faith stake in this and my second option is probably true. No way I’m wasting my time reading further or engaging. Have a good one kook. Go ahead and say whatever you want, you’re blocked.
Reminder other readers: science is not dying, science is in a good shape other than US funding, we are making amazing discoveries every day around the world. The academic world isn’t perfect but it’s working. There is no coverup or conspiracy. Whatever sensational BS you guys read on the headlines, it’s not true, I promise, please talk to people who actually work in science and academia before trusting headlines.
Also, if something can’t be disproven, it isn’t science.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science
Read this. I used to favour Popper, but I now quite like Kuhn. Kuhn is based.
My point is that the scientific endeavour according to Kuhn is not an inherently critical one(as it is with Popper, for example). Science is based on dogmas, positions and suppositions that are not questioned within a paradigm.
Yeah no one seems interested in my perpetual motion machine.
In this Lemmy we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
I don’t think Lemmy is a closed system.
I think that’s just the comfortable position for humans. Questioning what you know to be true is hard, and the more fundamental the fact the more uncomfortable it is to doubt. Which is also why religion is so attractive.
Edgy 14yo post
Ok edgy 15yo
Look at your fucking username before you blabber about edgy 14 yr olds
Yeah, your username speaks for itself
I often see this sentiment on the internet, but I wonder what definition people who hold this view are using for “religion” to reach this conclusion. I have found that the definitions of “religion” and “faith” in use by people are so varied or vague that they are almost pointless to use. The way I define them, everyone is religious and faith is a necessity.
life presents a dilemma to me: I would like to conclusively know everything about the universe and reality before deciding what choices to make, but I do not have that luxury. I must make decisions daily with what amounts to almost no information. Faith is not an optional part of life. Some people recognize that necessity and others do not. It is merely a question of who and what you place your faith in.
Rather than use the word “religion”, I would be much more interested in asking about people’s worldviews. Wikipedia gives this description: One can think of a worldview as comprising a number of basic beliefs which are philosophically equivalent to the axioms of the worldview considered as a logical or consistent theory. These basic beliefs cannot, by definition, be proven.
I have boiled this down to two essential questions about the nature of life/existence/reality that can be graphed on a quadrant:
The horizontal axis is the duration of existence. The difference between a worldview with an infinite existence and a worldview with a finite existence is immeasurable. If I believe in an infinite petsonal existence, then my actions have infinite consequences which I must experience the results of. Short of infinite personal existence, I may believe that life/the universe will exist forever, but that I will personally cease to exist when I die. In this case, my actions may still have infinite consequences (for future generations) but I will not personally experience them. A purely finite/temporal worldview would mean that I believe that everything will end in the heat death of the universe or similar life ending event. In this case, it ultimately doesn’t matter what I, or anyone else does in life, everything will end the same way for everyone and all life.
The vertical axis represents the nature of our existence. Is the source of life personal or impersonal? If I believed a completely impersonal worldview, then I would believe that we are essentially just biologically pre-programmed to live our lives based on the DNA that we have been built from and that person hood/personal agency is a construct of the mind with no higher meaning. If I believed in a completely personal worldview, then I would believe that I am created by a personal being that is also interested in a personal relationship with me, and I am created as a reflection of their person hood.
These are foundational questions about the nature of reality that demand an answer. Every choice I make in my life should reflect the answers to these questions. But where are the answers?
In our current society, it seems to be accepted that science and religion are diametrically opposed and cannot co-exist. I have observed, especially on the internet, that if I espouse to be religious, then it is assumed that I believe in flying spaghetti monsters and think the earth is flat. I believe that intellectually honest people will find that they are actually in more similar circumstances than they realize. It would be foolish for me to disregard scientific observation and experimentation, but it would be equally foolish for me to disregard the limitations of those observations and experiments:
It is impossible to take a zero-trust approach with science (never trust, always verify). I don’t have access to a Large Hadron Collider to observe the Higgs boson for myself. I don’t have access to the LUX-ZEPLIN to experiment with dark matter. I don’t have access to the LIGO Lab to observe gravitational waves. I trust that these experiments are conducted correctly and that their findings are correct, but by doing so I am placing my faith in the scientists performing the experiments. I do so also knowing that complete objectivity is impossible. I have a personal bias. My own life experience and observations skew the way I see the world. I assume this is the same of other people, scientists included. Even if I had access to all the equipment necessary, and dedicated my entire life to scientific experimentation, I would only be able to conduct a tiny fraction of experiments necessary to explore just a few of the questions about the nature of the universe. At the end of my life, I would likely have more questions about the universe than when I began. Even if I had the time, ability, and equipment necessary to conduct all necessary experiments to explore my questions about the universe, I would be making a fundamental assumption that I am actually able to observe everything. I have no idea if there are other dimensions that I will never be able to observe or experiment with. I simply have to accept by faith that these do or do not exist. Even if I assumed that everything is observable, and I had the capacity to conduct all necessary experiments, I would still have an impossible problem from a practical standpoint: I need to make decisions on a daily basis. I don’t have a lifetime to wait and scientifically determine the nature of the universe before I make a decision about how I want to live my life. I am living it right now. The fundamental truth about the universe matters in the decisions that I have to make right now.This is why faith is a necessity. I look around, and I see that I am just one of over seven billion people on this Earth, and that Earth is just one of eight planets orbiting our Sun, and that our Sun is just one of billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, a galaxy that is so vast, even travelling at the impossible speed of light, would take me thousands of lifetimes to traverse, and that galaxy is just one of possibly trillions of galaxies in what is just the observable universe. One thing is for sure. I am very small, in every sense of the word. To sit here, and read this paragraph again, and then think that I really know-it-all would make me one of the most arrogant beings in the universe. I know very little, and I live by faith.
Most people use “religion” to mean “organized religion” in particular, and many people further take it to mean christianity and christianity-like religions. Religion is a word that is hard to define, but I think that although there are many edge cases, most people mostly agree on what is and what isnt a religion. My point here is that, just because they are not definable in a strict sense, does not mean the words “religion” and “faith” are “pointless”. They very much have meaning.
Many words are like that: no clear definition but they refer to real things or ideas. For example, existentialism, postmodernism, artistic styles (such as cubism or impressionism), etc. And even many terms in the sciences are like that. None of the words mathematics, physics or philosophy have clear-cut definitions. Hell, i can take this to the extreme. Even words like water or gold do not have a clear definition, in the way that lay people use them. Seawater is water even though it is made up of more than just H2O. 95% ethanol is never called water, even though 5% of it is water.
My point is that memes like this use religion as a strawman because they don’t actually want to discuss the foundational concepts expressed by the meme. Which is what I addressed, in my admittedly very lenghy, response.
Tldr?
The TLDR is that science requires a much faith as religion, and that people aren’t willing to take ten minutes to read more than a couple paragraphs and contemplate the fundamental nature of reality, because you know, it’s not as important as a meme…
Trust and Faith are not the same thing. A belief is not the same as a fact. Language is a terrible way to talk about this, which is why science uses math.
While trust and faith aren’t perfect synonyms they are closely related: https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/trust
As for math, are you familiar with Gödel’s incompleteness theorems?
This isn’t true at all. It all depends on the person. People could fit into:
Religion - I know everything. Religion - I don’t know enough. Science - I know everything. Science - I don’t know enough.
You know, some people even love both religion and science!
That’s how you know to not take them seriously
I’ve met scientists who say God exists and the universe is billions of years old. Their perspective is definitely a bit different. They see themselves as discoverers of God’s work but their academic work was just as valid as their atheist colleagues. Most often they were the first to criticize their church and continued to believe. Blew my mind.
Their academic work is only valid if it doesn’t incorporate their religion. Because faith has no value in science.
Yeah, there are also Christian scientists who do lots of research and studies and come to the conclusion that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. Because they challenge modern science with valid questions that get ignored, they are considered quacks. Like why you can listen to 20 different scientists who are all respected in the field, and get 20 vastly different answers on how old the earth is. You don’t come up with 20 different answers (as though they are truth) by using the scientific method. Which would have to mean at least 19 of them are only guessing.
lol, actually, good science would be on the left side of the image, at least after giving an answer to a question. Good science will actually prove something, then give the answer, then have no reason to continue to find another answer for it (whatever the issue is.) If you are giving a different answer year after year (like say for the age of the earth), then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?
Only thing I’d say about the christian scientists who say the earth is billions of years old, is that they’d have to deny the scriptures of their faith in order to believe that. Seems like an odd thing to do. Either they really believe it and not what their faith (religion) teaches, or they just want acceptance from non Christians.
I guess in the end, if you are on the right side of the image, (in the religious or science realm), maybe you should consider the other sides arguments. Maybe its just that they actually figured out the answer and have no need to continue searching. Maybe they don’t have the answer, maybe they do.
We pretty confident in the age of the Earth and have been pretty confident in its age for quite some time if you asked 20 scientists they will all give you pretty much the same answer. I don’t know where you’re getting this belief that the age of the Earth is in debate.
I like nature, history, discovery shows and documentaries. But they are always giving different ages of the earth, (ages of various plants, animals, events, etc.) Like, vastly different. So no, there is no overwhelming agreement, other than they may all say a long time ago.
I cannot speak to the quality of the documentaries you’re watching since you don’t actually list them.
But I can assure you we are extremely confident we know the age of the Earth. In fact we have known the age of the Earth with high confidence longer than we’ve known age of the universe that contains it.
The ages of various life forms on the earth are much more nebulous but the age of the actual rock that makes the planet up, is known.
We know the age of the universe? Please, that’s ridiculous. We don’t know, we have done math, and made guesses. If we have an age for it, it’s just a theory.
Go look it up. This is known stuff. It isn’t a guess it’s based on evidence.
then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?
That’s the point of science. Humility and requestioning yourself everytime someone gives new input, instead of sticking to some old text that some human wrote and multiple other humans over a long period of time, translated; all using lossy translation techniques.
This mentality is similar to what you will see from many people in places of power (no matter how small), trying to evade criticism using the same social power that they need to be responsible about. Just that in case of religion, one has found a scapegoat, so unassailable that it can be reused indefinitely.
You can see, which approach is more desirable by simply considering the following facet of the result that we have when we have a science majority vs a religion majority…
- In times when religious organisations were in power, those who criticised them were killed and their works destroyed to as much of an extent as possible
- In times when scientific thought was prevalent (scientific organisations don’t get social power owing to their lack of charisma, which stems from the very basic attribute of the modern philosophy of science - that one can be wrong) the religious organisations criticising science are not destroyed until almost extinction, but are allowed to question all results and have the opportunity to aggregate their views.
- You will always see some kind of religion vs another
- You might see “science-ism” vs some other religion
- You will see political orgs (which represent one of the peaks of social power in the current age) vs some politico-religional orgs trying to destroy and silence the other
- You will not see science trying to silence a religion
- You will see businessmen trying to use scientific results as a stepladder to social power. You will also see them fail in the long term, simply due to the nature of science.
Well, religion is based on faith and history (but at a certain point falls back on faith since you aren’t there in the past), and science should be based on empirical evidence. So both realms can’t operate exactly the same, although they can cross over.
Many people do research on many faiths, and their research convinces them that a particular one is correct. They can live the rest of their life believing that particular faith is correct, and stick with it, even if they are open to being proven wrong.
And with science, if you actually prove something true, you do not have to act as though you have not. Now, if you only have a theory, then yes, you should be questioning it until it can be proven. I think modern science has disregarded the scientific method as not required anymore to make claims about what we “know”.
I think modern science has disregarded the scientific method as not required anymore to make claims about what we “know”.
Yeah, that’s one of the pretty big problems I see happening in the current scenario.
People becoming way more hand-wavy about having been proven wrong, which sometimes seems (we can’t know whether it actually is) outright disingenuous.The religion related scenario I painted was probably possible due to how long it lasted. Maybe we will have to wait for this one to last long enough to know whether what it yields is as undesirable or more.
For now, at least I don’t see it going in the same direction as the religion power, simply because it’s not the science people that are holding power, but other politics oriented ones. So if it were to go in an undesirable direction in the far future, it would have to be in some other direction.Yeah, I think both religion and science have taken a back seat to just plain ol’ greed and power.
The science guys will always do science.
Even if the patronages stop.
Even if other’s start killing them for it.
Even if the whole society calls them a heretic.
The quest for truth defines them.
lol, actually, good science would be on the left side of the image, at least after giving an answer to a question. Good science will actually prove something, then give the answer, then have no reason to continue to find another answer for it (whatever the issue is.) If you are giving a different answer year after year (like say for the age of the earth), then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?
That’s not really the take of the modern philosophy of science. All modern schools of thought when it comes to science have the acceptance of falsehoods embedded into their nodels. I’ll give a few examples:
Karl Popper famously stated that science cannot prove that anything is true, only that something is false. Thus, any scientific theory that’s still accepted is regarded as not yet being proven wrong. Science is just a cycle of giving theories, proving them wrong, giving new ones to account for the problem of the old one and so on, ever getting closer to the truth, but never arriving.
Thomas Kuhn wrote about scientific paradigms, which are models of the field in question that every scientist uses (for example Aristotelian motion, which was surpassed by Newtonian mechanics, which were surpassed by Einstein’s relativity). During the period of “normal science”, scientists are using their established methods until they end up with too many problems they cannot resolve, at which point it is accepted that the paradigm cannot hold up, and a scientific revolution needs to bring forth a new paradigm, that is incomparable with the old one. Some knowledge is lost in this process, but we move on until the next crisis.
Paul Feyerabend wrote about countet-induction, which prevents science becoming a dogma. An example he gives is Copernicus going completely against the science of his time with his heliocentric system. The Ptolemaic system was as cutting edge science back then as quantum mechanics is today.
All in all, findings being continuously disproven and replaced by new ones is not bad science, it is science. Achieving actual, “true”, positive knowledge of the world, documenting it and saying “that’s it, we solved this problem, we’re done” is not something modern science event attempts at.
*“Achieving actual, “true”, positive knowledge of the world… is not something modern science event attempts at.” * -Well, that there is the problem. And if that’s the case, and modern scientists believe this, then why are they always talking about something as if they know it for a fact?
“Karl Popper famously stated that science cannot prove that anything is true, only that something is false.” -Well, he is wrong, of course you can prove things to be true.
If you’re science is replaced, then you never proved anything, and should not speak as if you know for sure what you are talking about. But modern scientists talk this way all the time.
I’ve seen a lot of conservative (the American Republican model) Christians but I have also seen what I consider to be “true” Christians, with a strong faith and love for everyone, and part of that faith often involves confronting reality, thinking about solutions to problems, helping the poor and weak. I agree with you that it’s not all black and white. A lot of Christians don’t believe in the literal text of the Bible for its supernatural claims, but instead they read it (and other religious texts, there are a lot of religious people who do some multi-track drifting) for its morals and guiding principles, which can all be interpreted in different ways, and there is a lot of discourse in religious circles about the meaning and morals of texts, about finding ancient wisdom or reinterpreting old texts to better suit modern standards. It can be a very research intensive way of life to be religious and have faith. I’d argue that if you have any principles at all that you stick to, that counts as faith.
I agree. Western Christianity is a perversion of the religion imo. To be fair a large part of biblical text has absolutely nothing to do with the teachings of Christ and that confuses a lot of people. A lot of them seem to be quite contradictory to what he was saying.
If anyone is into reading interesting books these helped to clarify Christianity for me. I do not consider myself a Christian ( maybe in my next life) but Jesus was a radical cat and what he did at that point in history was revolutionary .
Leo Tolstoy , The Kingdom Of God Is Within You. This one may turn you into a Vegan Anarchist so watch out
Swami Sri Yukteswar, The Holy Science
Tao Te Ching , Lao Tzu …this one has nothing to do with Christianity but helped me understand what God ( the Supreme Being , God Head, Jah, Allah or whatever you want to call the source) was in simple terms. It’s a quick read
Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of A Yogi.
That Tolstoy book sounds interesting, I’ll have to check it out.
There are versions of the Bible where Big J’s words are written in red text, that’s what I would recommend to people so they focus on the part that matters (for Christians)
Well honestly, (since you mention Christians), if they are true, they’d have to say it is the only way. Not because they are bigoted, but because all the various religions disagree. But, that view (that Christianity is the only way) may have been achieved by doing lots of research. I think its kinda foolish to say all the religions are different paths to God if they disagree with each other. Any religious person who says all faiths are valid paths to God, are either fools, or liars. Some of the popes have said that, and that would make them not Christian.
You have to accept that religions can be wrong about some things to have the view that they’re all different paths to God.
Plus everyone should turn a critical eye to their own religion, every holy text and every doctrine has both wheat and chaff.
If two faiths flat out contradict each other, they can’t both be right.
Faith A says that God doesn’t care what you do or believe. Faith B says that God does care what you do and what you believe.
Both can not be correct. Can they both be paths to God? That’s the thing, because of their statement, they’d have to believe in different Gods. So they would not be on two different paths to the same God. If they were, then God would not be stable, and in the case of faith B, God would be a liar.
If you reduce an entire religion down to a single axiom, then sure, they can be entirely contradictory.
But religions aren’t like that, they are each a thousand different beliefs, rituals, and directives. There are enough similarities in message to see a commonality between them.
Like you said, it’s all the same path to God, some paths are a bit more meandering than others, and some claim that there are no other paths.
“But religions aren’t like that” Yeah, some religions are like that.
Religions are a single axiom and nothing else? Which ones?
I don’t think you need to be so black and white. you can pick and choose what goes into your faith, and still remain 95% christian. I guess to me the label just doesn’t matter very much. also if the Pope claims that to accept all faith is christian, then that is very much what Catholic Christianity is. the Pope also plays a guiding and interpreting role, and you can choose to go with his interpretation or not.
