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PostPosted: Mon Dec 02, 2002 12:13 pm 
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heres a list
*alot of wars crusades jihads. etc
*northern island conflict
*palistinian conflict / Zionism
*the haulicaust
*al quida
*witch burnings
*pro-life groups
I could live without these things should religion be baned?

In less enlightened times, religions formed the core around which stable societies were created. Christianity held Europe together during the Dark Ages (and then restricted its growth during the Renaissance), Islam created one of the most enlightened civilisations of that period.

Now it's an excuse for war, WWII Hitler wanted the perfect race the jews weren't what he thought to be the perfect race so he started a war to eliminate them, the most obvious one is 11th Sept, Bin Laden claiming to be alahs messenger, it just doesn't do humanity any good to have religions.

Do we really need religion anymore.

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 02, 2002 1:09 pm 
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Take a good like at most athiests.

If people don't have a real religion per se, most of them will just make up another, just as stupid dogma to justify their actions. The problem is not religion but mob/xenophobic thinking.


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PostPosted: Mon Dec 02, 2002 2:02 pm 
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Religion is responsible for the generation of advanced society and rational thought. Religious beliefs socialize people and make them more willing to follow moral imperatives. Before religion arose men were savages - religion, the belief in a god, raised us above, for it gave men a reason to be good, act in a way that benefits society. Religion, far from being superstition, was a method of enforcing social order on the population thought up by very intelligent people. True, many atrocities have been committed in the name of religion. But relgion gives many men a sense of purpose, of destiny, without which we dissolve into purposeless selfishness and nihilism. Men who truely try to transcend religion must ask themselves day to day what their true goals are, why they exist. Lacking a satisfactory answer to the "meaning of life," they become bitter, cynical, and do NOTHING. I believe that the development of religion was a critical part of the development of modern intellectual society.

I am an atheist, so I believe my opinions on this are less biased than most. I don't proclaim that I don't believe in God to most people, and I don't believe I'm an asshole about it, because I see the necessity for religion, and do not condemn people for being weak-minded simply because they believe there is something more than this world. Very few things are uniformly bad or good - religion would not have become as entrenched as it is if its effects on society were universally negative.

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 02, 2002 8:01 pm 
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Might as well paint a big bullseye on the thread, eh?

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On 2002-12-02 13:02, veritron wrote:
Religion is responsible for the generation of advanced society and rational thought. Religious beliefs socialize people and make them more willing to follow moral imperatives. Before religion arose men were savages - religion, the belief in a god, raised us above, for it gave men a reason to be good, act in a way that benefits society. Religion, far from being superstition, was a method of enforcing social order on the population thought up by very intelligent people. True, many atrocities have been committed in the name of religion. But relgion gives many men a sense of purpose, of destiny, without which we dissolve into purposeless selfishness and nihilism. Men who truely try to transcend religion must ask themselves day to day what their true goals are, why they exist. Lacking a satisfactory answer to the "meaning of life," they become bitter, cynical, and do NOTHING. I believe that the development of religion was a critical part of the development of modern intellectual society.


I doubt this. Religion didn't lead immediately to the development of complex societies; the archaeological record seems to indicate that religion predates civilization by several thousand years. I think religion was developed as a way to attempt understanding of (what was for the people of that era) the incomprehensible, not as a framework to hang a moral or societal system around. Note that the monotheistic concept of punishment and reward is almost completely absent from most early religions; while it was commonly believed that souls ended up in various places upon death, in early religions the criteria upon which this hung were rather simple. In ancient Greek mythology, for example, dead spirits wandered the banks of the Styx unless they had been buried with enough money to pay for the boat ride over. Early gods were not looked upon as judges, but rather elementals; spirits of nature that governed various aspects of the world. Morality was usually absent from the gods' actions; why would it be expected of their worshippers?

The reason the rise of monotheism is considered so important in philosophical circles is that it marks a shift in the purpose of religion; rather than being basically glorified nature spirits, gods--now God--took the role of a judge over human behavior. Paying respect to the forms of religion was still important... just ask any fundamentalist Christian... but, for the first time, moral behavior was a major part of religious obligations.

The rise of religious systems marked a change in motivations, true, but the core motivating factor was still the same: fear. Ever heard the phrase "fear of God"? That wasn't picked by accident; the whole point of monotheistic systems is that one must do what God (or his priests) says, or else God/Satan/Azazel/whoever will kick one's ass for eternity. The rest of monotheistic moral systems is based around justifications for that; variations on "it's for your own good", mostly. People do not generally wonder about the meaning of life, atheistic or not; being a second-generation lapsed Catholic, I can testify to this.

As to the rise of modern intellectual society--all periods of technological and intellectual development have been characterized by shifts in religious thought. The Renaissance was arguably centered around a revival of pre-Christian belief systems (though the predominant religion was still Catholicism, Greek and Roman--particularly Platonic--ideals were enjoying a resurgence). I'll leave interpretation of the current period up to others, so as to stave off a catfight, but I think it's pretty obvious that Christian ideals didn't have much to do with it.

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I am an atheist, so I believe my opinions on this are less biased than most. I don't proclaim that I don't believe in God to most people, and I don't believe I'm an asshole about it, because I see the necessity for religion, and do not condemn people for being weak-minded simply because they believe there is something more than this world. Very few things are uniformly bad or good - religion would not have become as entrenched as it is if its effects on society were universally negative.


Well, I don't consider myself an atheist exactly, although my religious beliefs are somewhat unusual by American standards. Irony springs eternal, I suppose.

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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Pyromancer on 2002-12-03 02:10 ]</font>


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PostPosted: Mon Dec 02, 2002 11:52 pm 
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You know what? Thanksgiving turkeys are an outdated tradition. And I bet they didn't even have turkey at the first Thanksgiving. And my uncle choked on a turkey bone once, so turkey is obsolete.

This is the reasoning The End 007 is following in his attack on religion; he just emphasizes the harms more.

That said, I might as well throw out my piece on the worth of religion...

As far as religion goes, though, it's just mythology with a set of enforced social guidelines attached (I emphasize the "enforced" merely because nearly all myths contain some form of social guidence, at the very least by way of example). And mythology is, at the core level, stories about god or gods, which are in turn merely a personification of the value system inherent in our lives (by which I mean, The Way Things Work as we do not understand them).

So, I'd have to argue that, until we see a significant leap in the capabilities of the human conciousness, religion serves the same purpose as other myths--a substitute for a better explanation of the things we don't get. Or, for that matter, for the things we do get, sort of.

My $.03 (inflation)...sorry about the short post, I've hell of work to do before bed (assuming there is bed in my future tonight).


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 1:25 am 
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let me start by saying, "what pyro said, but less coherent"

The religions of today provide a framework for easy to digest answers based on, as pyro said, myths, for the questions of what's right and wrong, and why it's right or wrong, and what will happen to us if we don't obey these structures.

and yeah, apart from the hiccup of a genocide or a holy war here and there, it's done OK, if you don't count the supression of ideas by the churches to keep themselves in moral power...

but really, if parents actually took the time to think about it themselves and come up with better reasons than 'because i say so" and "god will kick your ass if you don't" then religion wouldn't NEED to be our moral babysitter, and it could get back to it's REAL job, asking the questions that science probably will never have the answers for.

like "ok, so every thing exists. that's cool, but WHY, and WHERE did it come from?"

"do we have souls, and if so, where do they go when we die?"

these are questions about SPIRITUALITY, and in my book at least have absolutely nothing to do with Morality. Just as i believe that the existence or lack thereof of a God has nothing to do with morality.

perhaps we need to go back to the days where myths were just stories cavemen made up and told each other around campfires because the were bored, but realise that we now DO know how the seasons work, and it's not the work of some little forest sprite...

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 4:06 am 
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Well, how about if we define religion?
What does it take to be a religion?

Do you need to explain what happens when people die?
Do you need to have a moral construct?
Do you have to believe in anything supernatural?
Do you need to have a set of morals/guidelines?
Do those morals need to come with a punishment for breaking them?

I can think of a religion that is lacking any one of those thigns, and it's still a religion. But I'm not sure having any one of those qualities alone makes a religion.

Religions occupy and odd place, between "society"(1), mythology(2), and philosophy(3). Even if we wante dto get rid of religions, I don't think we really could. So long as we incorporate all three of those elements into our culture, religions are sure to arise. And I don't think we could successfully remove any of those three from our culture.
Then, if religion is an unavoidable artifact of our culture, then it is possible that the negative effects that seem to be caused by religion are merely concurrent with, not caused by, religion. And thusly, we're barking up the wrong tree.

In other words, we need to prevent genocidal wars by preventing genocidal wars, not by preventing religion.

(1) In this case, I'm meaning "A set of rules that allows large groups of people to beneficially live together"
(2) "A set of explanations for natural phenomena given and believed independent of evidence"
(3) "A general method of considering and solving problems"

Yes, these are very rough definitions, but thsoe are the concepts I'm trying to express.


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 1:06 pm 
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hmmm, those three concepts work OK for me, but do they really need to belong to a single institution? if so then that means one must find one institution where all three answers/philosophies coincide with one's own beliefs, feelings, ans sensebilities.

and then it's also easier to label people "i'm a christian," "i'm a bhuddist,"

whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, i'm yet to be convinced either way. Does this type of labeling lead to elitisim? "we christians are better than you bhuddists"

but, once again, this is quite likely not a result of religion, but of people in general, perhaps.

the problem is, society has lived for so long with the old religions and their dogma that it's become hard to tell where one leaves off and the other begins...currently, i see most religions seem to incorperate myth/spirituality, politics, and morality.

now these three can feed off each other in a bit of a loop, myths can give us moral lessons in the form of stories, in order for politics to be beneficial at all, there must be some level of morality involved. i feel the problem comes into it when religion, and Churches, get directly involved with politics...that's when society hits the dangerous "I'm right because God's on my side!" shouting match, and people start sticking pointy things into each other.

Human error, and Human Selfishness...no system will be perfect, because it involves people.

am i making sense? or am i just rambling again?

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 3:26 pm 
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Religion isn't bad, it's the humans that created it and use it.

If you look at the beginnings of practically any religion, you can see how it started with the best of intentions. However, when you throw in the Human factor the intentions get shifted and skewed. How else can you explain the idea that everyone is following God's plan when they kill each other like the Crusades and the like?

Unless God is a sadistic bastard and enjoys fucking with us...which isn't such a far-out there idea.

But even with the perversion of the religions to work for the benefit of a select few (Priests mostly) there's one thing that is needed for religion to work....Faith.

You can have a religion that's completely out there, Scientology comes to mind for me, but if you've got the faith to believe in the Dogma then you're good.

I was a Christian. I had Faith, but it was a forced Faith upon myself because I was trying to find reason and structure for my life after my parents' divorce and my attemped suicides. Christianity worked for me, but when I stopped blindly following the Dogma, the Faith was lost. Most of the way for Religion to work and for Faith to be kept up is through some form of Ignorance.

Now I'm not saying that anyone that follows a religion is Ignorant. I'm know that practially all of you here in this forum have to have some massive brain power to be asking questions like this. But for Faith to work, it has to be Blind. If you question it it'll falter and then you are no longer a believer.

Now I don't consider Buddhism to be a religion, it's more a way of life. Religion is a way to live plus the attempt to answer those questions that we can't readily answer. That's why I agree with Pyro's statements on the idea of Religion being created to answer those questions that we had no clue about until Science came in and started answering those questions.

As for the beginning question of Should Religion Be Banned? I'd say no. However we need people to not follow so blindly and if they do open their minds and hearts, then we could figure shit out and in that case, Religion would falter without the Blind Faith base.

I'll leave this thread with a quote from my Psych Teacher, Loren Wingblade: "Don't let Science be your Religion; Don't let Religion be your Science."

That just seemed to stick with me.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 9:10 pm 
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On 2002-12-03 14:26, Uncle Pervy stated:
Religion isn't bad, it's the humans that created it and use it.

If you look at the beginnings of practically any religion, you can see how it started with the best of intentions. However, when you throw in the Human factor the intentions get shifted and skewed. How else can you explain the idea that everyone is following God's plan when they kill each other like the Crusades and the like?

Unless God is a sadistic bastard and enjoys fucking with us...which isn't such a far-out there idea.

But even with the perversion of the religions to work for the benefit of a select few (Priests mostly) there's one thing that is needed for religion to work....Faith.

You can have a religion that's completely out there, Scientology comes to mind for me, but if you've got the faith to believe in the Dogma then you're good.

I was a Christian. I had Faith, but it was a forced Faith upon myself because I was trying to find reason and structure for my life after my parents' divorce and my attemped suicides. Christianity worked for me, but when I stopped blindly following the Dogma, the Faith was lost. Most of the way for Religion to work and for Faith to be kept up is through some form of Ignorance.

Now I'm not saying that anyone that follows a religion is Ignorant. I'm know that practially all of you here in this forum have to have some massive brain power to be asking questions like this. But for Faith to work, it has to be Blind. If you question it it'll falter and then you are no longer a believer.

Now I don't consider Buddhism to be a religion, it's more a way of life. Religion is a way to live plus the attempt to answer those questions that we can't readily answer. That's why I agree with Pyro's statements on the idea of Religion being created to answer those questions that we had no clue about until Science came in and started answering those questions.

As for the beginning question of Should Religion Be Banned? I'd say no. However we need people to not follow so blindly and if they do open their minds and hearts, then we could figure shit out and in that case, Religion would falter without the Blind Faith base.

I'll leave this thread with a quote from my Psych Teacher, Loren Wingblade: "Don't let Science be your Religion; Don't let Religion be your Science."

That just seemed to stick with me.




Hmmm, your experience was similar to mine. My sister has been a born-again Christian for years now. During a very difficult period in my life where I was fighting a lot of serious depression I (briefly) became a Christian (which I hadn't been since I abandoned Catholicism years earlier). However, once I started thinking and questioning again, I lost my faith. Now I consider myself an atheist Zen Buddhist humanist taoist pantheist - that's about as succinctly as I can put it.


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 10:51 pm 
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On 2002-12-03 14:26, Uncle Pervy stated:
I'll leave this thread with a quote from my Psych Teacher, Loren Wingblade: "Don't let Science be your Religion; Don't let Religion be your Science."


Admirable sentiment; impossible application. Science, while grounded a bit more on repeat testing than religion, is still essentially an act of faith.

Consider a fundamental property of kinematics: at the apogee of its arc, a projectile has a vertical velocity of zero. Everybody uses this. It's just plain true to the vast majority of the world. It's also wholly dependant on belief.

Consider the instant whereat Vy (vertical velocity) is zero. We cannot measure the instant, nor can we capture it with imaging technology (the best we have still cannot take two photos of an object in flight where the object's position is the same; they can come close enough to fool the human eye but not precise graphics computers). Yet, that instant is there. If it weren't, it would be very difficult to do basic kinematics problems, much less more advanced physics (with the exception of theoretical physics wherein that instant does not exist; consider these a different and contradictory set of beliefs, rather like Christianity and Buddhism), so we take the historically grounded principle, accept it, and build with it.

Let's take a quick look at Hasufin's definition of religion:

Quote:
(1)"A set of rules that allows large groups of people to beneficially live together"
(2) "A set of explanations for natural phenomena given and believed independent of evidence"
(3) "A general method of considering and solving problems"


Now apply those to my example of the idea that a projectile at the top of its arc has an upward velocity of zero.

1. Self-explanatory. Toss out any basic tenent of modern physics (this being actually a result of one of the "Big Four" kinematics equations they teach in just about any high school physics course) and the modern science based off of it goes out the window. We require the assumption for any sort of modern technology; we cannot coexist as effectivly without said technology.

2. As demonstrated, this belief is indeed independent of evidence. The phenomena does seem to be there naturally, though.

3. As number one, self-explanatory. That's what science in general, and kinematic physics in specific, are, after all.

To conclude: accept Hasufin's definition of religion, and modern science is a religion. Thus, anyone attempting to prove religion responsible for the various harms listed in The End 007's inital post needs to be able to prove modern science directly responsible as well (only one counter-example needed to disprove, remember--if this is unprovable, so is the postulation that religion has caused the aforementioned harms). Of course, an alternate definition could negate this argument, but I think it would need an accompanying objection to the existing definition--I'm no theologist, but it seems to me Hasufin has effectivly defined the function, if not the nature, of religion with his three criterea.

Again, just my $.03. Really more of an attempt to make life harder on the other debaters, actually...sorry about that. Must be the lack of sleep.


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 11:11 pm 
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I'm sorry, Treespeaker, but that example really isn't valid. It isn't like someone claimed out of nowhere that the velocity of a projectile is zero at its maximum just because it sounded like a cool idea. That's basically the way religion works. People make up explanations for things, out of nowhere (sometimes claiming divine inspiration), and people believe them out of blind trust.

In Science, on the other hand, things must either be backed by a sufficient amount of evidence or else lead to conclusions that are confirmed experimentally. The example you give falls into the second category. The mathematical model that implies the velocity of an projectile at maximum height is zero also implies certain things about the motion of projectiles that we can - and have - confirmed experimentally.

In Science, there are no "superfluous" beliefs - i.e. beliefs that are not either directly evident or part of a model of the world that leads, directly, logically, and as simply as possible, to conclusions that are directly evident.

Science, of course, can't actually prove anything for certain, or answer any fundamental questions about the nature of the universe or existence. Rather, Science's job is to produce models which help us better describe reality as we see it. As such, Science is wholly different in purpose than religion, or for that matter philosophy.

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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: IcyMonkey on 2002-12-03 22:14 ]</font>


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Religion is a topic I often discuss with my friends, seeing as most of them are very Christian, and I am... not. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm atheist. What I have done is basically made my own ideas and conjectures about it. I believe something made the universe, something caused it to happen. I think there is a "god", but I doubt it is anything like what we have imagined.

In regard to the usual western religion, namely Christianity, I have done some study. I've read the bible (yes, the whole thing), and some things don't make sense to me. The main one is why anyone could take it as gospel, as the saying goes. I doubt the events told of in the bible would have stayed the same very long if it had been passed down verbally. I once asked my friend who wrote the first parts of Genesis, as there was no written language then. He responded, "Moses." I asked how did Moses know what happened? He said God told him. How is Moses any different than a modern day cultist, really? He claims to have heard the word of god. He was alone when the burning bush thing happened to him, and he went alone to Mount Senai (not sure if I got the spelling right). He could have made it up and just had good publicity. Every event told of in the bible <i>could</i> have happened, but I think it was just people embellishing the tale. The Red Sea? If that had actually happened, it splitting when Moses commanded, what do you think it would have ended as if it was passed through 1000 people, verbally? Anyways, that's enough of that.

Another logically unsound idea is Heaven and Hell. How to get there, for one thing. There are 10 things, count 'em, 10, and if you do any one of them, you go to Hell. But if you don't, you go to Heaven. Ok, flawed, but it could be believeable. The thing that doesn't make sense to me is why Lucifer, if he is God's foe, would carry out his work? In Hell, you are (supposedly) tortured for your sins, by Lucifer, or overseen by him. Why? If someone did something God saw as bad, wouldn't Lucifer see it as good? Wouldn't the overall result be the same, no matter where you ended up? If you are good, you are rewarded by God, if evil, rewarded by Lucifer. Logically, that's the way it should work.

Frankly, I'm not much of a blind-faith type of guy. Asking me to accept something because a lot of people say it's true will not work. Science, as has been discussed in earlier posts, would also operate on blind faith if not for one aspect: logic. All of todays scientific theories are based on logical conjectures. That vertical velocity thing seems to me like one of those 'duh' rules. Of course there's no upward motion, it's at the top of the arc. Science has logic holding it up, while religion has the ever-shakey faith.

I think we do need religion, the way we need family, society. I may not like it, but that's the way it is. However, I think that following an ancient religion blindly is not what we need. We should examine and hypothesize, like taking a scientific view to religion.

And that, folks, is my 2 cents (approx. $0.012 US currency).

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First, I'd like to be clear that I wasn't intending to propose the three elements (society, mythology, and philosophy) as the definition of religion. Rather, I meant that religion is the inevitable result of having all three of those elements in our culture.

That said, it does seem to work. I cannot find anythign that I would call a religion that does not incorporate all three elements (some to a greater or lesser degree, but including all three), and I cannot come up with anythign that DOES incorporate all three that I would not call a religion. So, I'll hypothesize that religion is a cultural construct that incorporates society, mythology, and philosophy together.

Now IcyMonkey, recall I said mythology isindependent of evidence. Not that evidence could not exist, but that whether or not it existed would have no effect.
Science *can* be used as a religion. It does not have to be (much as some forms of Buddhism are religions as they include mythology, some forms do not include mythology and thus are not religions)
To a high school student, the veracity of basic laws of physics are immaterial. The equations work, end of story.
When you get to college, you realize that we have been unable to prove some of the most basic laws of motion, and we know that many other laws (especially relating to electromagnetics, I'm told) are outright wrong. But, just as celestial navigation was based on the theory that the Earth was the center of the universe and yet the math still worked, our laws of physics work even though the model may be wrong. It exists as mythology - we use it and we trust it, even though some of it IS flawed, and the rest of it MIGHT be flawed.
But if we acknowledge that these laws are not as certain as we wish they were, then science is only a philosophy, as it does not incorporate mythology.

Religion exists as a social construct. Taken out of its context, it isn't much of anything. Science is a religion for high-schoolers, but a philosophy for physicists. Christianity is a set of mythology to an atheist, but to a Christian, it is very firmly a religion.

Or, to paraphrase David Brooks, "What do you call a duck with lips?" "I don't know, but it's not a duck."

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On 2002-12-03 22:11, IcyMonkey wrote:
I'm sorry, Treespeaker, but that example really isn't valid. It isn't like someone claimed out of nowhere that the velocity of a projectile is zero at its maximum just because it sounded like a cool idea. That's basically the way religion works. People make up explanations for things, out of nowhere (sometimes claiming divine inspiration), and people believe them out of blind trust.

In Science, on the other hand, things must either be backed by a sufficient amount of evidence or else lead to conclusions that are confirmed experimentally. The example you give falls into the second category. The mathematical model that implies the velocity of an projectile at maximum height is zero also implies certain things about the motion of projectiles that we can - and have - confirmed experimentally.

In Science, there are no "superfluous" beliefs - i.e. beliefs that are not either directly evident or part of a model of the world that leads, directly, logically, and as simply as possible, to conclusions that are directly evident.

Science, of course, can't actually prove anything for certain, or answer any fundamental questions about the nature of the universe or existence. Rather, Science's job is to produce models which help us better describe reality as we see it. As such, Science is wholly different in purpose than religion, or for that matter philosophy.
(snipsnip)


A) No source is really accurate, you know that. More accurate, maybe, but not accurate.
B) Science has always been full of prejudices and dogma already, stop trying to dress it up like some logical BS.
C) We are all prejudiced in large ways. You're just dressing up your own in a different way with science. I really don't see a large contradiction between religion and science, merely a small shift in your own definition of 'simplest explaination' from 'spontaneously created matter compressed into a geometric point' to 'god.'


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2002 4:48 pm 
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If I roll a ball, it will eventually come to a stop. Therefore, all objects are inherently at rest, and will always come to a rest if there is no force acting on them. All objects thus contain a force which brings them to rest in resistance to other forces.

That's fairly logical. You can see it in day-to-day life--I defy any of you to give an object a shove and watch it keep on moving forever. It's backed by logic and experiance.

It's also untrue. As I pointed out before, "obvious" truths (like this one) were accepted for thousands of years because they were pretty clearly grounded in reality. They then turned out to be completely and totally inaccurate. How then can people claim religion is based on assumption while science is based on logic? Seems to me this "logic" is really just the same sort of assumption (although I will concede that it tends to have a bit more plausibility than most religions).

Again, though, I pose the questions:

1. If we accept the definitions/criterea proposed by Hasufin, can we legitimatly say that science is not a religion?

and

2. If science is a religion, can we hold religion responsible for the harms proposed in the first post?

I would hold that the answer to both is no. Science is by the definitions a religion, and it is based on assumption (the current argument for not declaring it a religion in this debate being that it is based on logic rather than assumption), so I would say that we have to call it a religion. And since I think that there's no way to claim modern science responsible for all of the harms from The End 007's post, I don't think we can blame religion for them.


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2002 5:01 pm 
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Don't try to evaluate whether what you use as science and religion and philosophy are true enough - use their principles in real life, and see whether you get good results. You can learn just as much from religious dogma as you can from science. Seriously though - "Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, etc. etc" actually are good rules to follow because you function more easily in society if you follow those rules. If you want to fit in and understand how a society works, you have to understand its religious beliefs or it's all meaningless. Yes, there's bullshit and unusable crap built into religion - just use what works and ignore what doesn't and you'll be fine. The real difference between the two is that Science tries to answer the question "how" and Religion tries to answer the question "why."

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PostPosted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 4:50 pm 
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Quote:
On 2002-12-04 10:40, Kills Commies wrote:
A) No source is really accurate, you know that. More accurate, maybe, but not accurate.
(snip)


I won't deny it (although if my teacher says that there is a quiz tomorrow, there is a quiz tomorrow, which says to me that he's pretty darn accurate), but I'm not sure how this proves that we can't deliniate science from religion. Our definition of religion isn't "something which is inaccurate," nor is our definition of science "something which is entirely accurate," so this argument strikes me as tangental to the point. Very nice, somewhat accurate, and not all that relevant.
Quote:
(snip)
B) Science has always been full of prejudices and dogma already, stop trying to dress it up like some logical BS.
(snip)


Again, I wouldn't nessicarily disagree. On the other hand, some examples to support your point wouldn't hurt (reference some of the current debates over the best geometrical model of time, for instance--I can think of few better examples of physicists splitting up into dogmatic camps). Without a reason to believe your allegations, I doubt anyone here is going to bother weighing the point on either side of the debate.
Quote:
(snip)
C) We are all prejudiced in large ways. You're just dressing up your own in a different way with science. I really don't see a large contradiction between religion and science, merely a small shift in your own definition of 'simplest explaination' from 'spontaneously created matter compressed into a geometric point' to 'god.'


Definitions good. Allegations unsupported by definitions bad. I agree, but as an objective reader I won't buy your argument.


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PostPosted: Fri Dec 06, 2002 3:12 am 
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actually, something mention earlier sparked a question which may be completely irrelevant to this discussion.

can science answer the 'why' of it all. does it even try?

anyway, treespeaker makes some interesting points about science being a religion. by Hasufin's definition, science can be counted as a religion.

but even if that IS true, and even if science ISN'T responsible for any holy wars or geocide or any other funtastic passtimes, other religous orders may have been.

if science is a religion, then it is a part of the group of structures callede religions. some of which have been terriblt bloody affairs whch demand human sacrifice, canniballisim, et cetera.

so like anything, religions have their bad points and their good points. get rid of the bad/easily identifiable as wrong parts of religions, and keep the parts that promote harmony and the advancement of a society's spirituality and diversity.

don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

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PostPosted: Fri Dec 06, 2002 10:07 pm 
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As I said before, Science is very, very good at answering the "how" of it all. In sickening, mind-numbing detail. It has yet to provide a satisfactory "why."

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