is it ethical to attack a scientific theory because it goes against a religious belief i say no.
is it ethical to attack a scientific theory because it goes against a religous belief
- Thread starter pjdude1219
- Start date
in general
in general ethics should be kept to what is humanistic...like love, passion, care
and religion and science kept away from ethics.
Attacking a scientific theory on religious grounds is irrelevant. Religion doesn't enter into whether or not a theory is valid.
???? Ethics has nothing to do with it - doesn't even enter the picture. What in the world even made you suppose it did????
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
It isn't ethical, it's foolish. It represents a failure to understand the nature of science and the scientific method.
Beyond unethical
Well, given that both rational and irrational people must share the planet, is it really fair to refute a theory by calling it Satanic or evil?
Think of political issues like gay rights or evolution. Apparently the First Amendment means we must give special consideration to certain religious outlooks. No? It's not the First Amendment? Well, what, then, the Americans with Disabilites Act?
Why should we hold off rational policy in order to accommodate the irrational response?
For what rational reason did twelve states in 2004 write gender discrimination into their laws? None whatsoever.
The outcome of the irrational backlash against rational results is unethical to say the least. Disgusting is a better word for it.
Read-Only said:
Well, given that both rational and irrational people must share the planet, is it really fair to refute a theory by calling it Satanic or evil?
Think of political issues like gay rights or evolution. Apparently the First Amendment means we must give special consideration to certain religious outlooks. No? It's not the First Amendment? Well, what, then, the Americans with Disabilites Act?
Why should we hold off rational policy in order to accommodate the irrational response?
For what rational reason did twelve states in 2004 write gender discrimination into their laws? None whatsoever.
The outcome of the irrational backlash against rational results is unethical to say the least. Disgusting is a better word for it.
Of course! It's the very foundation of the basic freedoms of speech.
Would you or anyone expect that everyone should instantly believe all scientific theories? Have any scientific theories ever been wrong?
Baron Max
Pet peeve. You can't 'refute' a theory by this method. You can only make a piss-poor attempt to.
Thanks for listening. As you were.
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
If you have come to understand something by methods that are not part of current scientific methodology and what you understand differs from what a scientific theory says, of course it can be ethical to disagree with the theory. And this is not restricted to religious people. Athiests have disagreed with theories saying that we are completely determined, for example.
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
Their have been scientific theories of racial superiority, that animals are merely machines and have no consciousness with which to feel no pain and that the universe has always been here (steady state). Religious and non-religious people who perhaps for various reasons and different methods for determining what is true have objected to these theories. This was not unethical or their parts.
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
Science comes off not so well on the former. It was not too long ago that Gays were considered mentally ill and this was backed up by research and data. It was in the DSMI and perhaps 2.
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
And you are absolutely right here. Scientific theories have turned out to be wrong and people, some of whom were religious, disagreed with these theories. There are more ways of arriving at the truth than following scientific methodology - which is a vastly looser and more complicated set of processes than most people realize.
It would not surprise me if neuroscientists decided that humans were simply biochemical machines. (wait, hasn't that already happened) I object to that theory. Is it unethical to do that?
I am with you on this one Baron whether you like it or not.
It’s not iherently uethical to say “I don’t believe your theory because my religion says otherwise,” although it is usually pretty stupid.
But in my experience the religious people usually realize that trying to refute a theory with “my religion says otherwise!” is a losing proposition, because the scientists will usually have some evidence to support their theory. So, lacking any real evidence to refute the theory and realizing that their religious beliefs alone make a pretty poor argument, the religious people often resort to making up lies to support their position. And that is definitely unethical. For example, the christians who like to attack evolution by repeating the lie that there aren't any transitional-form fossils, even though there are so many transitional fossils that paleontologists often can't even agree on exactly where to draw the line between one species and another. Or who lie about the 2nd law of thermodynamics, etc.
But in my experience the religious people usually realize that trying to refute a theory with “my religion says otherwise!” is a losing proposition, because the scientists will usually have some evidence to support their theory. So, lacking any real evidence to refute the theory and realizing that their religious beliefs alone make a pretty poor argument, the religious people often resort to making up lies to support their position. And that is definitely unethical. For example, the christians who like to attack evolution by repeating the lie that there aren't any transitional-form fossils, even though there are so many transitional fossils that paleontologists often can't even agree on exactly where to draw the line between one species and another. Or who lie about the 2nd law of thermodynamics, etc.
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
I think that what you call irrational also includes intuitive reactions that have been good. Did white abolitionists have proof that current racial superiority theories were wrong? I doubt it. I am sure that many of them were following gut feelings that afroamericans were as human as they were, despite a lot of theories that said otherwise.
Since religious people includes not simply the monotheists I think we should also remember that there is a bias in scientific theory towards reductionistic explanations are deeper or more true than others. They are somehow ultimate. This has led to lots of connotations of scientific theory that I find offensive (some of which have not withstood the test of long term scientific method, some are still running strong). In this light criticism of things like biochemical reductionism of human problems into chemical imbalances in the brain as the deepest explanation - and the concomitant industry making a technology out of this theory deserve criticism. My criticism is not backed up by my own lab work and while I would point to some outsider scientists who also have problems with certain kinds of reductionism, the truth is I arrived at my beliefs through experience and intuition. Any conscious reasoning (which is what most people seem to think is the only way to be 'rational') is after the fact and used to argue. Does this mean my objections are immoral?
That depends on whether or not you consider psychology a "science." Many physical scientists wouldn't, especially if you're talking about psychology in the 1950s when the DSM was created.
Are we talking about objecting to pseudoscientific conjecture, or objecting to theories based on well-established empirical data? I'm not really familiar with them, but I doubt very seriously that the racial superiority theories that you're talking about were backed up with anything resembling actual scientific data.
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Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
I am pretty sure that neurologists and biochemists were involved in the DSM and homosexuality as a mental illness - note the term, this was not simply psychologists by psychiatrists on the front line and a whole host of scientists from a variety of fields behind the front line doing research, creating chemicals for treatement, analysing data, etc. - was still in the DSM in the 70s.
I also mentioned in another post that steady state theories of the universe were
the top ones for a while. This rankled some religious people because in the Bible there is a beginning. Well, they ended up right on this one. Or better put scientists now think there was a beginning. (don't get me wrong, I think using the Bible, for example, as an authority text is moronic, but religious people are not simply monotheists. Also the argument runs way beyond bible thumpers vs. scientists. People here are making a case that trusting intuition and arguing against a scientific theory is IMMORAL. Not simply an epistomological problem - which I also think is silly - but a moral error. I think that is dangerous thinking.)