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Is Science a Religion?
Yes 30%  30%  [ 8 ]
No 70%  70%  [ 19 ]
Total votes : 27
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 Post subject: Is Science a Religion?
PostPosted: Mon Aug 11, 2003 12:41 pm 
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1. Science has no higher being, therefore it can't be a religion.


Major religions such as Buddhism and Confucianism do not have a higher being, yet are still considered religions.

2. Science does not require faith or belief

Have you seen the big bang? How do you know that the universe didn't just pop out of someone's head fullly formed? What you have figures stating that the universe is expanding? But how do you know that the universe was always expanding? How can you know that the universe wasn't expanding until about 100 years before you started recording those figures?

Science is based on BELIEF that the process that happen now, happened the same way in the past (Uniformitianism)

3. Science does not go start holy wars or have fanatics like other religions do

Science does have fanatics. That mad Nazi doctor (name escapes me right now) did horrible things in the name of science. Just like other did in the name of Christianity.

As for holy wars, I do not believe that all religions have had one.



That is all I have right now. Will probably post more later.

(btw, I am a firm believer in science, yet I still believe it is a religion)

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 11, 2003 1:20 pm 
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Well, before we can truly classify anything as a religion, we must define the word religion itself. Now, the definition must include a few things:

1. Must not be circular. You must be able to define any ambiguous terms within your definition without coming back to them requiring definition itself. I.E.: Religion is the act of practicing one's faith. Now one must define faith as something not requiring religion, otherwise it is a circular definition and will not work.

2. It must include all religions and disclude anything that is obviously not a religion.
I.E. It must include things like Judiasm, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Confuscianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, but disclude things such as communism and capitilism as they arent religions.

Now, I know people who have spent years and never came up with a satisfactory answer, so it becomes exceedingly difficult to truly classify what a religion is in the first place. Also, there may be more requirements to the definition, but I don't have my World Religion and Philosophy notes laying around. I'll hunt them down to double check in a bit.


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 Post subject: Re: Is Science a Religion?
PostPosted: Mon Aug 11, 2003 1:20 pm 
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DaiDreamer5 wrote:
1. Science has no higher being, therefore it can't be a religion.


Major religions such as Buddhism and Confucianism do not have a higher being, yet are still considered religions.


Neither Buddhism nor Confucianism are religions, IMHO. They are philosophies.

As for this debate, I'm betting it's just going to degenerate into meaningless argument over semantics. Really, whether science is a religion depends on your definition of the word "religion".


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 Post subject: Ummm.....
PostPosted: Mon Aug 11, 2003 2:17 pm 
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While it is true that Confuscianism has no higher being, there is the natural order of things. I would certainly classify this as being a philosophy, and not a religion.

Buddhism, on the other hand, has several higher beings. They're called Buddhas. As well s those who have postponed their nirvanato help others achieve it. They are called Boddhisattvas. One Buddha in particular, the Buddha Amida, has been compared to Christ rather heavily. Several forms of Buddhism (Pureland and Jodo Pureland are the two biggest) say that one only needs to call on Amida Buddha using the Nembuttsu and when you are reborn, you will have achieved nirvana. I would say that Buddhism definitely is classified as a religion.

[edit] I just realized something. I'm talking about Japanese form of Mahayana Buddhism. Since I don't have any study in Teravada buddhism, it might be considered closer to philosophy than religion, but I doubt it. [/edit]

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 11, 2003 2:27 pm 
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Well, Boddhisatvas aren't truly higher beings in the same sense that God is. They are merely spiritual guides. A Buddhist doesn't worship anyone thing in particular, and the Boddhisatvas are merely sought after for teaching and not revered as a higher being per se. Now, Confuscianism is more than just a philosphy. It deals heavily with the afterlife and anscestor worship. The Confuscian afterlife is a mimic of the real world, with a diety as the emporer. The longer one is in the afterlife, the more powerful they become, thus the anscestor worship. The further back the anscestor can be traced, the more power that can be channeled with help from him.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 11, 2003 5:07 pm 
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It really depends on what sect of Buddhism you're talking about. Zen Buddhism, for example, doesn't involve anything supernatural at all, is atheist/agnostic, and is totally compatible with science. Most modern Buddhists (Zen Buddhists included) look upon reincarnation and such as more of a metaphor than an actual feature of reality.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2003 3:41 pm 
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Religion is a basis of faith, right?

I have faith in science.

-H-Kat

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2003 4:19 pm 
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Might be interesting to consider not so much the definition of a religion, but the convictions one upholds or adopts as part of following a religion.

In this respect, I am definitely a member of the Church of Science.

And for those of you arguing that science can't be a religion, you need to read more Asimov. The Foundation series makes extensive use of science as religion and if you look closely he had used it at least as a subtext in almost every novel he wrote.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled tangential ranting and pedanticism.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2003 4:28 pm 
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The only instance I can remember of Science being a religion in Asimov is in the Foundation series (and that's really Math as a religion). His Robot novels were logic puzzles disguised as stories. And the Empire series I never read. I've read some of his rarer work, and many many of his short stories, nothing is ringing a bell except that.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2003 9:33 pm 
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Not to hijack, but the Temples in the middle Foundation series books are pure science-tabernacle.

The remainder of them it's more an interpretation, I have often seen the questions raised up in the light of "What do I do in this existence without something to be God for me?"

Again, interpretation...

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 Post subject: Eh, no.
PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2003 2:33 am 
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I dunno. Science certainly CAN be a religion, if you want to try to make it one. But it isn't (or at least the ideal isn't). The whole, you know, teaching on authority vs. critical thinking, or knowledge by revelation vs. the use of the hypothetical-deductive method and empirical data kinda make me think it's a bit different from a religion.

Date: like data, only BETTER! So I changed it to make it suck again.


Last edited by Abunai! on Sat Aug 16, 2003 10:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2003 1:10 pm 
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Don't be an idiot. The defining trait of religion, I think we'll agree, is faith; by contrast, the defining trait of science is the requirement for proof. There are plenty of elegant theories that haven't made it into the scientific mainstream for precisely that reason.

Someone mentioned the Big Bang; well, such an unintuitive notion would be laughed right out of astronomy if it wasn't pointed to by the evidence. No faith required, although, of course, it's possible to believe scientific theories on faith without looking at the evidence.

Oh, you want a definition of "faith"? My dictionary says "unquestioning belief that does not require proof or evidence", which seems to me as good a definition as any.

P-M


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 Post subject: One... last... post... ::collapses into unconsciousness::
PostPosted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 3:04 am 
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Hyurg... I want to post responses to some of the above, but it is late and I am leery because the last time I tried to respond to this thread the forums died. So here goes whatever falls out of my head; whenever I get back online I'll come back and see if I can't do better.


IMHO, and to the following extent, science is a religion (or, at least, is no better than one).

Its "higher being," or "god," or even just "that which it accepts on faith" is a Predictable Universe in which certain Laws always have and always will hold sway. The Divine Truth of this Universe and its Laws can be revealed to us through the oracles of Logic and Empirical Evidence.

In their ideal form, the temple and scriptures of Science are built solely upon the twin pillars of Reason and Proof. However, as with any human religion/institution/creation, the reality is far from ideal.

There are false prophets and misguided zealots, charlatans and madmen who mislead the unwary and create schisms within the community of believers.

However, every once in a while a True Holy Man (I'm sorry, Holy Person...) rises up, and leads the faithful onward into wondrous new territories, to sights unseen and worlds undreamt of by their forebears.

Then that Man's (Person's) words become Dogma, and when future Holy Ones (ha - gotcha!) arrive they are spat upon and derided because the blasphemy which they speak is not in accordance with the Revealed Law Which Has Been Handed Down To Us.

But occasionally, some of the more fortunate ones become seen as Inspired (quite often after having been martyred, or at least died in obscurity) and their work goes on to become the new Factual Dogma, for while the previous Holy Texts were not wrong, per se, we have since achieved New Insight into their secrets.

The champions of science are driven by a fervor no less conceited, self-important, and well-meaning than the most fiery of religious proselytizers. They rest content and assured that they are doing their god's work in spreading the knowledge of It and Its Laws to the ends of the earth and the corners of the world. At the same time they remain ever-vigilant against the threat of heretics within their faith, but even moreso against those who would spread lies which do not agree with their Enlightened Worldview and its Eternal Laws.

Battle lines are drawn, and wars are declared against Ignorance and the Heathen Infidels which know not the Blessed Light of Reason, that they and their False Gods of Superstition and Magick may be cast down and broken so that those who once knelt at their altars might be brought into the fold of the One True Universe and its Laws. (For their betterment, of course; for are not Facts superior to Stories, Myths, and Legends? And if our Facts are subject to change upon occasion, it is merely a reflection upon our poor inadequacies as finite beings, and in no way impugns the grandeur or glory of that Universe Which Gave Us Life.)

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 Post subject: What can I say? I got tired of seeing references to it in Sci-Fi novels and not knowing what the heck they were talking about...
PostPosted: Mon Sep 15, 2003 3:43 pm 
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I realize this thread is a bit old, but I was finishing this book at work Saturday (rather dull in the beginning, but gets far more interesting later on. It’s one of those books like Emperor’s New Mind that no one agrees with completely, but everyone think you should read anyway), and one paragraph near the end caught my eye:

Julian Jaynes wrote:
We sometimes think, and even like to think, that the two greatest exertions that have influenced mankind, religion and science, have always been historical enemies, intriguing us in opposite directions. But this effort at special identity is loudly false. It is not religion but the church and science that were hostile to each other. And it was rivalry, not contravention. Both were religious. They were two giants fuming at each other over the same ground. Both proclaimed to be the only way to divine revelation.

In other words, they are really after the same thing- making sense of the universe- although they go about it in different ways. So whether or not you consider science and religion different aspects of the same thing depends on whether you place more emphasis on the goal, or the method. Like Icy said before, it's a matter of semantics :)

Personally, I’ve always considered religion, along with many artistic endeavors, to be subsets of science, in the broad sense. Mostly because I think the term "science" admits of a more flexible interpretation than "religion". I group in art because much of it is an attempt to find new ways to communicate ideas, feelings, etc., or to express oneself, and hence to understand oneself better, which comes under the banner of "understanding the universe". Of course, then there is the usual definition of Science, which is limited to analyzing and predicting repeatable phenomena. (Although at the more speculative theoretical levels, it practically becomes an art itself. Really, what else can one call most higher mathematics but an unusually structured art form? Just because its systems occasionally turn out to be unexpectedly useful in manipulating the physical world, that doesn't mean that possibility is what motivates most of its theorists).

Yevaud333 wrote:
And if our Facts are subject to change upon occasion, it is merely a reflection upon our poor inadequacies as finite beings, and in no way impugns the grandeur or glory of that Universe Which Gave Us Life.

:D

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 7:51 am 
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WI just put down the best explaination to date of this whole debate.

MUCH HEART.

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 Post subject: I need a book for the slow Saturdays at work
PostPosted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 4:46 pm 
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Hey MiB, now that I'm done with Origin of Consciousness, which book of Sheldrake's was that you were talking about? He seems to have several...

[/irrelevant tangential note]

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PostPosted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 5:41 pm 
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The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature.

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 Post subject: theories, not *neccesarily* belief
PostPosted: Sun Sep 28, 2003 8:01 pm 
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Maybe I am quibbling here, but I'd just like to bring something up about the first post; Science is not based off belief at all, just theories and hypothisises (sp?) that can be altered and amended if need be. So scientists don't so much believe in the big bang, as they consider it to be the best theory they have found so far to explain the phenomenon they percieve. its like the old creationism vrs evolution arguement: i can choose to believe whatever I want, but for the sake of passing my biology course, I think the evolutionary theory is conveniant to understand.
just a minor point :wink:


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