Sciences vs. Religion

There's probably as much anti-clericalism on the other side as there is religious people becoming violent, Mal4mac.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-clericalism

And we don't have to look far to see atheists tampering with science, imposing their ideologies on it, and retarding it's progress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

For every crazy religious crackpot there is a crazy secular atheist pushing a dumb pseudo-science agenda. Biblical literalists push Creationism and guys like Erich von Daniken peddle their ancient astronaut jibberish. The problem isn't religion. The problem is pseudo science. People don't know how science works or lack critical thinking skills and that needs to be addressed with better education.

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Originally Posted by Melanie

Why am I not surprised that an atheist, would label their beliefs "a good argument" while labeling Christian's beliefs as "imposing their beliefs on others". Dawkins is certainly imposing his beliefs on others.

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The majority of Christians aren't imposing their beliefs, but it is doubtful the new atheist movement would have even started if all religious people kept their views to themselves.

I live in Europe in a quite secular country, and I have never felt the need to argue or even be slightly irritated by religious beliefs; for every religious person I know is liberal with his or her beliefs, talking about them only with those interested, as hopefully I do with my lack of religion. Unfortunately, there are places where religion is used to combat homosexuality, stem-cell research, abortion, or indeed even kids wearing t-shirts at a college. (It is equally annoying, incidentally, when one goes around telling others they'll burn forever in hell.) The imposing people mal4mac is speaking of are a minority, but they are a vocal one: he didn't imply every religious person imposes his beliefs.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

For every crazy religious crackpot there is a crazy secular atheist pushing a dumb pseudo-science agenda. Biblical literalists push Creationism and guys like Erich von Daniken peddle their ancient astronaut jibberish. The problem isn't religion. The problem is pseudo science. People don't know how science works or lack critical thinking skills and that needs to be addressed with better education.

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These are problems common to all, but there are other problems specific to religion, that have nothing to do with science or pseudo-science. This is highlighted by the ejection of atheists from the LSE Fresher's fair. Many religious people cannot stand satire directed against their religious figureheads, but liberal atheists are happy to accept satire aimed at atheists with good grace; they might argue against the satirical argument, but they will not stoop to physical aggression, like the religious stormtroopers of the LSE.

I think that science never has hindered the reality of any heaven religion because science in many times discovers the truth systematically depending on facts and the religion purpose itself is fact, thus if we ask a question:
Because of what there are many different doctrines or different ways of belief ?
No doubt, the matter has its ideological ideal thoughts, which depends on logic, therefore logic is considered the pillar of thoughts as someone has said: because I think, I am a part of the existences..

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Originally Posted by Melanie

Dawkins is certainly imposing his beliefs on others.

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How so? Keep in mind that writing books, articles, etc., engaging in public debates, giving public lectures, appearing on talk shows, etc. is not "imposing beliefs on others," and this is all I've ever seen Dawkins do. That's hardly on the level of The Crusades, or any of the other thousands of examples of religious people violently forcing their beliefs onto others. It's not even the type of force that the religious exert when they attempt to outlaw homosexual marriage, for which there is no secular argument against.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

For every crazy religious crackpot there is a crazy secular atheist pushing a dumb pseudo-science agenda.

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And you have statistics to prove this? I'm fairly sure if we starting trotting out examples the religious crazies would be the atheist crazies by a landslide. There are no doubting there are crazies on both sides, but one side generates the crazy inherently in its core beliefs.

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Originally Posted by AncientSunlight

Unfortunately, there are places where religion is used to combat homosexuality, stem-cell research, abortion, or indeed even kids wearing t-shirts at a college. (It is equally annoying, incidentally, when one goes around telling others they'll burn forever in hell.) The imposing people mal4mac is speaking of are a minority, but they are a vocal one: he didn't imply every religious person imposes his beliefs.

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I wonder if those types aren't actually the majority in America, where gay marriage is still illegal in most states, and all of those states also happen to be the most conservative politically and religiously. Many people seem to forget that the imposing of such beliefs does include political policy, and how anyone can say that the religious don't impose their beliefs on people while looking at the conflict in the Middle East, down to the (trivial only by comparison) "debate" on gay marriage in the US is just being blind or ignorant.

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Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli

If you think of "science" (derived from a Latin verb, scire) as "knowing and understanding the world), then this activity could also describe a purpose served by religion.


For Western Civilization, I think that the separation began with the ancient Greek mathematicians/physicists, though the distinction occurred much earlier in prehistory. Certainly we can see people thinking "scientifically" about the world in, for example, the experimentation that led Eratosthenes to calculate the circumference of the earth with great accuracy. He was able to do so by assuming that the world corresponded in some way to mathematical (geometrical) ideas, and he was intelligent enough to figure out a simple experiment to test that correspondence.

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One must wonder whether or not having the lexicon to distinguish between the types of knowledge mightn't have played an hand in the latter (and to some extent, in your analogy regarding Ἐρατοσθένης and Einstein, since Einstein had the benefit of standing upon the shoulders of a scientific "lexicon" formed over the course of several millennia). Your point regarding the comparitors "knowledge" and "understanding" being drawn from the verb "scio" rather than from the noun, "scientia," would seem to give the Greeks similar "shoulders" upon which to stand (and from which to build), since "ιδέα" (the germ of thought), "ιδείν" (the ability to see, from whence springs the secondary concept of metaphysical knowledge), "oida" (to know as fact, or, more literally, to become conscious or learnéd, as from "εἶδος"), and "γνῶσις" (knowledge derived from fact alone) are all distinct concepts. As amusing as one might think it that the early (Christian) Church Fathers 'borrowed' the word "gnostic" from the same Greeks who, just a millennium before, had used the word derisively as being anti-Hellenist¹, one must still wonder why the Church (and here I refer primarily to what would grow into the modern Roman Catholic tradition) was unwilling or unable to suffuse its views with the same linguistic distinctions (thought, belief, Faith and fact) as had their predecessors. Is it possible that if the Articles of Faith or Canon in the Judeo-Christian tradition had made allowances for a differentiation between professing "knowledge" and encouraging "Faith," that the modern Church(es) might have gained wider acceptance in the secular world, or am I searching a darkened room for a black cat which isn't even there?



¹Yes - I'm aware that the later Gnostics used the definition, "inquire into" rather than "knowledge," just as the Greek tradition stole it from the Hebrew, דַּעַת, which leans more toward the noun, "understanding."

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

How so? Keep in mind that writing books, articles, etc., engaging in public debates, giving public lectures, appearing on talk shows, etc. is not "imposing beliefs on others," and this is all I've ever seen Dawkins do. That's hardly on the level of The Crusades, or any of the other thousands of examples of religious people violently forcing their beliefs onto others. It's not even the type of force that the religious exert when they attempt to outlaw homosexual marriage, for which there is no secular argument against.

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If one finds it acceptable to blame Christianity for the Crusades, then it should be acceptable to blame atheism for anything done by an atheistic state. Here is a list of states following state atheism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

And you have statistics to prove this? I'm fairly sure if we starting trotting out examples the religious crazies would be the atheist crazies by a landslide. There are no doubting there are crazies on both sides, but one side generates the crazy inherently in its core beliefs.

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I haven't seen the original source, but here is a comment from another Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_atheism

Theodore Beale has argued that approximately 148 million people were killed from 1917 to 2007, which is three times more than the deaths from war and individual crimes in the whole 20th century, by governments headed by leaders who were atheists.

Based on that information, one should be more worried about the atheist crazies.

Seems to me the stat that would matter most is the number of people atheists, Christians, etc. are responsible for killing for religious reasons, either because of the victim's religion or the killer's.

I consider atheism to be a religion. So when an atheist kills, it is for religious reasons.

But regardless of whether one thinks atheism is a religion or not, if atheists think it is fine to blame a religion such as Christianity for the Crusades rather than blame the politics of the time, then I think it is fair to blame atheism for North Korea, the Khmer Rouge or the violence done by any atheistic state whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Based on that information, one should be more worried about the atheist crazies.

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We've already been over this before, but in almost every case of "atheist crazies" the "crazy" was generated by political and not atheistic ideologies; which is not the case for the vast majority of "religious crazy" in which the crazy is directly promoted in the tenets from which the religion derives. There's a difference between "religious crazies" (killing in the name of religion) and crazies who happen to be atheists (killing in the name of political ideology). The lesson to be learned that any ideology, be it political or religious, can very easily lead to genocide. What do you think would've happened if those during the time of Crusades had had access to modern weapons of mass destruction and a worldwide population similar to today? Plus, the issue was really the NUMBER of religious VS atheist crazies, not "the number of people killed by" religious VS atheist crazies.

Finally, there's also the increasing evidence that the most peaceful, happy nations in modern society also happen to be the most secular: One Study and Another.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I consider atheism to be a religion. So when an atheist kills, it is for religious reasons.

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Do you also consider a tomato a vegetable? Because both considerations are equally wrong. See here:

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People feel the need to squeeze the argument onto a single course by saying "Any P, by definition, has property Q!", on exactly those occasions when they see, and prefer to dismiss out of hand, additional arguments that call into doubt the default inference based on clustering.

So too with the argument "X, by definition, is a Y!" E.g., "Atheists believe that God doesn't exist; therefore atheists have beliefs about God, because a negative belief is still a belief; therefore atheism asserts answers to theological questions; therefore atheism is, by definition, a religion."

You wouldn't feel the need to say, "Hinduism, by definition, is a religion!" because, well, of course Hinduism is a religion. It's not just a religion "by definition", it's, like, an actual religion.

Atheism does not resemble the central members of the "religion" cluster, so if it wasn't for the fact that atheism is a religion by definition, you might go around thinking that atheism wasn't a religion. That's why you've got to crush all opposition by pointing out that "Atheism is a religion" is true by definition, because it isn't true any other way.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

For every crazy religious crackpot there is a crazy secular atheist pushing a dumb pseudo-science agenda.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I'm fairly sure if we starting trotting out examples the religious crazies would be the atheist crazies by a landslide. There are no doubting there are crazies on both sides, but one side generates the crazy inherently in its core beliefs.

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Well, as a member of the CheshireCat religion, here's a word from our Leader:

"We're all mad here...you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags it's tale when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad. We're all mad here."

Now, with that said, continue on with this "sane" discussion of Science vs. Religion :D

Cheshire Cat religion, eh? I'm more of a Pastafarian.

Melanie and MorpheusSandman - what a shame to see how misguided you are. I hope that soon or late, you're blessed by reading the True Word, which is contained in the LolCat Bible.

YesNo - for the benefit of those if us with limited intellectual resources, would you please define "religion" and tell us under whose auspices the Crusades were carried out? Thank you.

My Flying Spaghetti Monster could beat up your LolCat with all noodles tied behind his eyes... unless your LolCat is Garfield, and then my Spaghetti deity is in serious trouble.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

My Flying Spaghetti Monster could beat up your LolCat with all noodles tied behind his eyes... unless your LolCat is Garfield, and then my Spaghetti deity is in serious trouble.

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My Ceiling Cat cannot even say, "Flying Pesghetti Monster."

:redface: