Should religion and science be regarded as NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria)?

[Fraggle Rocker]

I would contest the idea that science is the child of religion. I believe science is the child of doubt. Science and reason was doing just fine prior to Christianity's rise.

As Lt. Cmdr. Data said [and I don't have the exact quote at hand],

The most elementary statement of science, in fact the very basis of science, is "I don't know."​

I'm not convinced that the religious myths possess much literal truth though. It's more that they are reactions to something a lot less cognitive and a lot more emotional, a non-verbalized feeling.

Jung insists (using modern language) that they are instincts that we are all born with, passed down in our DNA. Motifs common to our entire species, or "archetypes" as he calls them. Each culture dresses them up with accretions from their own experiences so they end up looking like different "religions," but they all come from the same place. And this is why they are so powerful. Something which we have "known" since birth feels more true than anything we come to know later in life through learning and reasoning.

I agree very strongly with you about that [that it's wrong to just wave religion away.] It's one of the places where I often collide with the atheists. (Despite my being an atheist myself.)

It won't go away until people like my family, who were born without that gene, become more numerous and those who are born with it die off.

Considering that the primary goal of the religious is obviously to kill people whose religions are slightly different from each other, I wish we had a way to send them off to their own planet where they could do just that and not catch us in the crossfire or the fallout. Maybe one with no oxygen.

Yes. Even when we aren't talking about hypothetical transcendental realms, even when we are directing our attention right here to our actual lives in this place, there are still going to be whole areas of subjective experience (such as art) that are best addressed in ways other than science. I'm definitely not an advocate of the kind of hard-scientism that insists that all other forms of human awareness are atavisms that must give way to science, which is destined to replace them all.

Science is merely a search for the truth using logical reasoning and empirical observation. Since we all have brains and various sense organs, I don't understand why that's not the best way to approach the entire universe.

The Yogi have the best right brain data, science has the most rational left brain analysis, but the two never really know how to interface..

Sounds like they need the help of a musician. We have to be able to use both hemispheres expertly.

 

[spidergoat]

I think digging deeper than the bible , would be a tremendous help here

the bible just condenses Ancient History

science is about knowledge , Ancient History , OUR Ancient History ( Sumer ) and the knowledge of , would bring a different perspective , about god

But it's a poor reference book for history. Any serious Biblical scholar will tell you that.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

But it's a poor reference book for history. Any serious Biblical scholar will tell you that.

Even the historical veracity of the "slavery" in Egypt and the "exodus" therefrom has recently been called into question. It's now asserted that the Jews and other peoples who were brought in to staff the Pharaoh's projects were simply guest-workers who sent their salary home to their families or brought their families with them.

This challenges one of the foundations of Judaism and, to a lesser extent the other Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Islam and perhaps Baha'i and Rasta. The Covenant, which defines much of Jewish faith, culture and attitude, is said to be a contract the Israelites made with God in order to escape from "bondage" in Egypt.

 

[Syne]

The objects of science and religion are necessarily non-overlapping magisteria, even just by definition. The natural sciences cover tangibles, and religion is primarily concerned with explicit intangibles.

But the notion that people should somehow be able to divorce themselves from their most cherished ideals in some strata of life is a bit ridiculous, whether theist or atheist.

I'm not exactly sure how that is supposed to work, exactly - this operating outside of naturalistic parameters thing. It seems to me that if God is to affect the world, he must interact with its naturalistic physical parameters. And if so, then there should be evidence of such interaction that is accessible to scientific investigation.

You must first subscribe to the notion that a god interacts in a manor that disrupts or alters naturalistic physical processes to make such an argument. But it isn't logically consistent to use the absence of evidence for such a notion to then imply anything other than a god doesn't interact in such a manor. From this absence, it just doesn't follow that a god would be accessible to scientific investigation. Quite the contrary.

And I might also mention that NOMA doesn't seem to be very successful in stopping religious fundamentalists from going out of their way to tell homosexuals, believers in evolution, atheists and the like that they will be going to Hell to burn for eternity. Such attitudes don't seem very reasonable to me.

What does Hell mean to someone who claims they think it is nonsense. Why would anyone be offended with nonsense?

This challenges one of the foundations of Judaism and, to a lesser extent the other Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Islam and perhaps Baha'i and Rasta. The Covenant, which defines much of Jewish faith, culture and attitude, is said to be a contract the Israelites made with God in order to escape from "bondage" in Egypt.

Can you provide any reference to support that the Covenant was made to 'escape from "bondage" in Egypt'? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_%28biblical%29#Mosaic_covenant

In the Jewish and Christian Bible God establishes the Mosaic Covenant with the Israelites after he has saved them from slavery in Egypt in the events of The Exodus. -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_covenant#Judaism

The foundations of Judaism are just fine.

 

[Tero]

Depends on what the goal is. For theists, one thing, for atheists, a different kind of proof.

 

[Balerion]

The objects of science and religion are necessarily non-overlapping magisteria, even just be definition. The natural sciences cover tangibles, and religion is primarily concerned with explicit intangibles.

That's a lovely thought, but it's also entirely divorced from reality. Religion makes factual claims. It offers explanations for natural phenomenon. It legislates morality, sexuality, and gender roles. It even tells you what not to eat, and when not to eat it.

It mandates genital mutilation, racism, slavery, and genocide. It's hard to imagine a way religion could be any more concerned with the tangible.

And this says nothing of the cardinals blaming floods and terrorist attacks on homosexuality, the Mullahs issuing fatwas against cartoonists and writers, the Christian missionaries convincing the poor and uneducated in Africa of the "dangers" of contraception in AIDS-ravaged Africa, or any of the countless other serious and quite tangible items religion concerns itself with.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

But the notion that people should somehow be able to divorce themselves from their most cherished ideals in some strata of life is a bit ridiculous, whether theist or atheist.

Atheism is not one of our "most cherished ideals." Except for those of us who are professional philosophers like Dawkins, we never think about religion until someone brings it up. My wife and I go through elaborate, heartwarming family Christmas and Easter celebrations with scarcely a moment's thought to the origin of those now-secular festivals.

I go for weeks on end during which the only times I think about religion are when I log onto this website.

Absence of an ideal is not equivalent to absence as an ideal.

You must first subscribe to the notion that a god interacts in a manor that disrupts or alters naturalistic physical processes to make such an argument. But it isn't logically consistent to use the absence of evidence for such a notion to then imply anything other than a god doesn't interact in such a manor. From this absence, it just doesn't follow that a god would be accessible to scientific investigation. Quite the contrary.

Your logic is sound, but that's not how the Abrahamic religions are practiced. Abrahamists believe in the miracles recounted in the Bible, in which the fantastic creature known as God emerges from his invisible, illogical supernatural universe and uses his fantastic powers to disrupt the behavior of the natural universe. This is usually out of sheer petulance.

This god spent millennia strewing evidence all over the landscape. Where is that evidence? We've found fossils of the first cultivated plants, the DNA of the first domesticated wolves, cats and horses, the foundations of the first cities, the arrowheads of the first humans in the Americas, even the detritus of settlements at the depths of the Ice Age which are now twenty miles offshore under a hundred feet of seawater. But there's no evidence of the remarkable Flood, which BTW covered the earth with more water than exists. The Romans were the most compulsive recordkeepers of the Ancient World, yet none of their journalists recorded any of Jesus's miraculous doings, including his recovery from the brief illness we now call "death."

Abrahamists believe that all these things occurred. For a scientist, or any scholar for that matter, to believe these claims invokes the Rule of Laplace. These are extraordinary assertions, to put it mildly, and they must be supported by extraordinary evidence before we are under any obligation to treat the claims themselves, or the people who present them, with respect.

What does Hell mean to someone who claims they think it is nonsense. Why would anyone be offended with nonsense?

The claim itself is nothing more than an annoyance. Trash talkin' like "cut your hair, hippie." The offense comes when they assume because we are destined for Hell that they are better than us, and therefore have not just a right but a God-given duty to save us from that fate. Ban rock'n'roll, burn down the taverns, run the hookers out of town, throw the drug dealers in jail, re-educate the gay people out of their perversions, deny women control over their own bodies--or better yet, keep them wrapped up like mummies and always in the company of a male relative.

When Christians, Muslims and Jews start advocating for laws to be enacted that require me to live according to their religious laws because this is the only way they can save me from going to Hell, that is when I begin hating them.

And this started on the day I was born.

Can you provide any reference to support that the Covenant was made to 'escape from "bondage" in Egypt'?

This is what several Jewish friends have told me, but apparently they slept through those lessons. Sorry.

The foundations of Judaism are just fine.

No. They are based on belief in an invisible, illogical supernatural universe from which fantastic creatures emerge to disrupt the behavior of the natural universe. There is no way this sort of Stone Age bullshit can be called "just fine" in the 21st century.

 

[wynn]

When Christians, Muslims and Jews start advocating for laws to be enacted that require me to live according to their religious laws because this is the only way they can save me from going to Hell,




that is when I begin hating them.

How can you hate - and yet believe yourself to be civilized?

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

How can you hate - and yet believe yourself to be civilized?

To be civilized does not require that we love each other. We're allowed to have our feelings for the very good reason that there's no way to repress them--except for drugs, which don't always work, especially in the long run. We can try to change them but that's a slow process at best and a vain one at worst.

Hatred is often justified. I hate the man who shot my cat. I hate the man who alienated the affections of my first wife and ran off with her. I hate the man who lied about me and got me fired from a good job. I hate the man who lied to America and told us that the people of Afghanistan and Iraq were to blame for 9/11 instead of his family's business partners, the people of Saudi Arabia.

There's nothing wrong with that. All of those people harmed me (or in one case my entire nation and two other nations in the bargain) in major, life-changing ways that can never be atoned.

All that civilization requires is that we tolerate each other and in addition afford each other the minimal care and respect that members of a herd-social species must exchange in order for the herd to prosper. (As I have written in these pages, I suggest that we transcended our gorilla/chimpanzee pack-social instinct and became herd-social in the Electronic Era, if not the Industrial Era or even the Iron Age.) Paramount in that list is the First Rule Of Civilization: You may never kill anyone except in defense against an immediate lethal or near-lethal threat--in other words, the other guy voluntarily seceded from civilization first. Without that rule we'd all have to put so much attention, effort and other resources into protecting ourselves from each other that the surplus resources that make civilization possible would not exist.

But we also don't get to steal each other's stuff, impair each other's ability to care for themselves and their family and other colleagues, to earn a living and in various other ways to contribute to civilization. In other words, members of a herd don't knock each other down when looking for tasty leaves to graze on, they all cooperate to protect the young when the lions show up, and when they get in a quarrel they don't inflict serious injuries.

We don't have to like each other. We certainly don't have to like people who think they have an obligation to change us.

The worst of the Christians and Muslims believe that they have an obligation to make everyone behave according to their own standards, because they were handed down from a supernatural creature of whose existence no respectable evidence exists. These people are not only rude to us, they are deluded and proud of it. This is certainly hateful.

But we still don't get to shoot them. Even though every three or four generations they go on a rampage and start shooting everyone who disagrees with them.

 

[wynn]

To be civilized does not require that we love each other. We're allowed to have our feelings for the very good reason that there's no way to repress them--except for drugs, which don't always work, especially in the long run. We can try to change them but that's a slow process at best and a vain one at worst.

Hatred is often justified. I hate the man who shot my cat. I hate the man who alienated the affections of my first wife and ran off with her. I hate the man who lied about me and got me fired from a good job. I hate the man who lied to America and told us that the people of Afghanistan and Iraq were to blame for 9/11 instead of his family's business partners, the people of Saudi Arabia.

There's nothing wrong with that. All of those people harmed me (or in one case my entire nation and two other nations in the bargain) in major, life-changing ways that can never be atoned.

All that civilization requires is that we tolerate each other and in addition afford each other the minimal care and respect that members of a herd-social species must exchange in order for the herd to prosper. (As I have written in these pages, I suggest that we transcended our gorilla/chimpanzee pack-social instinct and became herd-social in the Electronic Era, if not the Industrial Era or even the Iron Age.) Paramount in that list is the First Rule Of Civilization: You may never kill anyone except in defense against an immediate lethal or near-lethal threat--in other words, the other guy voluntarily seceded from civilization first. Without that rule we'd all have to put so much attention, effort and other resources into protecting ourselves from each other that the surplus resources that make civilization possible would not exist.

But we also don't get to steal each other's stuff, impair each other's ability to care for themselves and their family and other colleagues, to earn a living and in various other ways to contribute to civilization. In other words, members of a herd don't knock each other down when looking for tasty leaves to graze on, they all cooperate to protect the young when the lions show up, and when they get in a quarrel they don't inflict serious injuries.

We don't have to like each other. We certainly don't have to like people who think they have an obligation to change us.

The worst of the Christians and Muslims believe that they have an obligation to make everyone behave according to their own standards, because they were handed down from a supernatural creature of whose existence no respectable evidence exists. These people are not only rude to us, they are deluded and proud of it. This is certainly hateful.

But we still don't get to shoot them. Even though every three or four generations they go on a rampage and start shooting everyone who disagrees with them.

Explain, please, why hatred is
1. necessary,
2. good.

 

[kx000]

Hate is necessary because it is a perfectly rational emotion. So long as liars exist I will hate. Its good to be honest, you know what I mean.

 

[Big Chiller]

Hate can be good or bad that means hate is sometimes needed.

 

[wynn]

Hate can be good or bad that means hate is sometimes needed.

Do tell more here - http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=2935023#post2935023

 

[GeoffP]

One could hate the haters. But then one would be a hater.

I hate people like that.

 

[kx000]

Hate can be good or bad that means hate is sometimes needed.

Give me a situation in which hating someone rationally would be a negative thing. Hate is great.

 

[Syne]

The objects of science and religion are necessarily non-overlapping magisteria, even just by definition. The natural sciences cover tangibles, and religion is primarily concerned with explicit intangibles.

That's a lovely thought, but it's also entirely divorced from reality. Religion makes factual claims. It offers explanations for natural phenomenon. It legislates morality, sexuality, and gender roles. It even tells you what not to eat, and when not to eat it.

It mandates genital mutilation, racism, slavery, and genocide. It's hard to imagine a way religion could be any more concerned with the tangible.

And this says nothing of the cardinals blaming floods and terrorist attacks on homosexuality, the Mullahs issuing fatwas against cartoonists and writers, the Christian missionaries convincing the poor and uneducated in Africa of the "dangers" of contraception in AIDS-ravaged Africa, or any of the countless other serious and quite tangible items religion concerns itself with.

The reality is that all of the above are perpetrated by people. Now you can make the hasty generalization that religion is the greatest commonality between such people, but considering that similar things have been done by those with secular worldviews, this would be unwarranted. You need to differentiate religion from the religious. It is completely true that "religion is primarily concerned with explicit intangibles", but:

"the notion that people should somehow be able to divorce themselves from their most cherished ideals in some strata of life is a bit ridiculous, whether theist or atheist."​

Your argument is completely about how people chose to apply their beliefs to reality, not about religion in and of itself. The same can be said of science. Is science to blame for harmful applications? Should we spurn scientific progress because it regularly comes with harmful and unforeseen consequences?

These are not relevant to what domain is proper for each. Domain is logically dictated, regardless of personal preference.

But the notion that people should somehow be able to divorce themselves from their most cherished ideals in some strata of life is a bit ridiculous, whether theist or atheist.

Atheism is not one of our "most cherished ideals." Except for those of us who are professional philosophers like Dawkins, we never think about religion until someone brings it up. My wife and I go through elaborate, heartwarming family Christmas and Easter celebrations with scarcely a moment's thought to the origin of those now-secular festivals.

I go for weeks on end during which the only times I think about religion are when I log onto this website.

Absence of an ideal is not equivalent to absence as an ideal.

I never implied it did. But it is something about religion that you may find to be contrary to your ideals, and it would be ridiculous to expect you to act contrary to that. Would you refrain from voting for a measure which would remove ID from being taught as science in public schools? That is no less you acting on your ideals than a Christian voting against such a measure while acting on their own. Democracy ensures both are equally protected, regardless of where such ideals originate.

In actuality, many atheists are quite vocal about freedom from religion (an absence) being their highest ideal. While atheism itself may not be an ideal per se, the worldview does include a fairly specific set of ideals. But the exact same can be said of religion, where an absence of considered immoral behavior is ideal.

You must first subscribe to the notion that a god interacts in a manor that disrupts or alters naturalistic physical processes to make such an argument. But it isn't logically consistent to use the absence of evidence for such a notion to then imply anything other than a god doesn't interact in such a manor. From this absence, it just doesn't follow that a god would be accessible to scientific investigation. Quite the contrary.

Your logic is sound, but that's not how the Abrahamic religions are practiced. Abrahamists believe in the miracles recounted in the Bible, in which the fantastic creature known as God emerges from his invisible, illogical supernatural universe and uses his fantastic powers to disrupt the behavior of the natural universe. This is usually out of sheer petulance.

...

Abrahamists believe that all these things occurred. For a scientist, or any scholar for that matter, to believe these claims invokes the Rule of Laplace. These are extraordinary assertions, to put it mildly, and they must be supported by extraordinary evidence before we are under any obligation to treat the claims themselves, or the people who present them, with respect.

As I said above, the practice does not determine the logical domain. And as JDawg, you make hasty generalizations. Not all Abrahamic religions have the same view of miracles.

Undoubtedly, a modern Jewish believer will be far less prone to attribute extraordinary events to a supernatural intervention, but his belief in God's power will not allow him to deny the very possibility of miracles occurring.

A Hasidic saying has it that a Hasid who believes that all the miracles said to have been performed by the Hasidic masters actually happened is a fool, but anyone who believes that they could not have happened is an unbeliever. The same can be said of miracles in general. -http://www.myjewishlearning.com/beliefs/Theology/God/About_God/Miracles.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle#Nonliteral_interpretations_of_biblical_accounts​

What does Hell mean to someone who claims they think it is nonsense. Why would anyone be offended with nonsense?

The claim itself is nothing more than an annoyance. Trash talkin' like "cut your hair, hippie." The offense comes when they assume because we are destined for Hell that they are better than us, and therefore have not just a right but a God-given duty to save us from that fate. Ban rock'n'roll, burn down the taverns, run the hookers out of town, throw the drug dealers in jail, re-educate the gay people out of their perversions, deny women control over their own bodies--or better yet, keep them wrapped up like mummies and always in the company of a male relative.

Once again, democracy ensures that everyone have the right to vote their conscience. And a Christian assuming they are "better than" should have no more merit to you than the wealthy claiming moral superiority. The only merit is what you willingly grant it, nothing more.

Nosce te ipsum.

When Christians, Muslims and Jews start advocating for laws to be enacted that require me to live according to their religious laws because this is the only way they can save me from going to Hell, that is when I begin hating them.

And this started on the day I was born.

Seems you have a chip on your shoulder. Would oligarchy be preferred? What if your minority isn't the one in power?

Can you provide any reference to support that the Covenant was made to 'escape from "bondage" in Egypt'?

This is what several Jewish friends have told me, but apparently they slept through those lessons. Sorry.

The foundations of Judaism are just fine.

No. They are based on belief in an invisible, illogical supernatural universe from which fantastic creatures emerge to disrupt the behavior of the natural universe. There is no way this sort of Stone Age bullshit can be called "just fine" in the 21st century.

I was referring to your claim that a refuted Jewish slavery in Egypt would void the Mosaic covenant, which you have conceded. Either pay attention to the context or don't erect a straw man.

As I've already addressed above, not all Abrahamic religions, nor even all subscribers to ones that generally do, ascribe literal reality to accounts of miracles. So your argument is not one of logic but only hasty generalizations and straw men.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Explain, please, why hatred is 1. necessary,

I'm not sure "necessary" is the right word. Hatred is a natural emotional response to, among other things, people who deliberately harm us. We already know what happens when we attempt to repress emotions. They fester inside us until they build up enough pressure to explode.

So a more correct way to restate the premise you question is: "Hatred is a natural emotion, and it is necessary to tolerate natural emotions because the alternative is always worse.

2. good.

I'm positive that I have never said that hatred is good, so you're asking that question of the wrong person. But what I did just say above is that tolerance of hatred is better than its repression.

Of course if we can educate young people to understand each other and the world, we can often forestall hatred as they learn that the things their parents taught them to hate are actually not evil. For example, teaching children that people who don't look like them aren't really a whole lot different from them has proven to be a very effective way to greatly reduce the incidence of racial hatred.

But not all hatred can be so easily mitigated--if the word "easily" is even appropriate considering how long we've been working on racism and how much further we have yet to go. If someone kills your cat, runs off with your wife, gets you fired under false pretenses, or starts a war against the wrong people in order to protect his favorite petro-despots, I don't think there's any reason to try to talk you out of hating him.

The Christian principle that we should turn the other cheek and forgive our enemies was formulated to attenuate the blood feuds and tribal rivalries that endured for generations to the point that the people didn't quite know what they were fighting over anymore. But at the level of hatred as a direct response to an experience, rather than something taught by one's parents, it's a lot easier--and a hell of a lot more sensible--to forgive someone for the "sin" of hating some asshole who did permanent damage to his life, than to forgive the asshole himself.

Or in my case, the "sin" of hating people who believe they have the right and the duty to force everyone to live according to the rules of their own religion.

BTW: going back to my contention that we must not repress emotions. I regard religious faith as an emotion since it is the result of instinctive programming. (Putatively; we may have to wait a few more decades before our brains are completely mapped and correlated with our DNA. ) This is why I have never suggested repressing people's religion, i.e., why I support Freedom Of Religion no matter how angry it makes me. Over the course of human history we have seen plenty of attempts by people to stifle one religion or another, or even all religion, and they always end up worse than they started.

The Europeans and the people of the Antipodes seem to be making enormous progress toward freeing themselves from religion by perfectly peaceful means. Somehow, some day, we'll find their secret and accomplish the same thing over here.

 

[James R]

GeoffP:

It seems to me that if God is to affect the world, he must interact with its naturalistic physical parameters. And if so, then there should be evidence of such interaction that is accessible to scientific investigation.

But why do you suppose such interaction is accessible to scientific investigation? I alluded to this before without being specific enough: at what level is God operating that I can detect His influence?

It doesn't much matter at what level God is operating. If there's no way to distinguish his actions from what we'd expect in the normal course of events as determined by entirely naturalistic processes, then there seems to be no need to posit the existence of God as an extra hypothesis. Occam's razor.

Returning to the previous example I gave, if your claim is that being prayed for helps sick people because God answers those prayers, then it is relatively straightforward to test whether prayed-for people have statistically better health outcomes than non-prayed-for people.

The same approach is applicable to just about any claimed influence of God in the world.

I guess that the testing thereof is a little bogus, because one can refer to the idea that "God can decide what prayers he takes." Why? Well, He's a supernatural being, frankly.

Don't you find it strange that God just happens to decide to answer or not answer prayers in such a way that the outcomes are indistinguishable from what we'd expect if there was no God?

What scale underlies the decision of a fickle, divine being in the response to prayer? Do you have to be a very nice person? Do you have to really need it?

Apparently, neither factor comes into play. Bad things happen to good people. Those most in need have no better "luck" than those who have the least need.

From an explicitly statistical perspective, you might argue that those being prayed for should expect some statistically greater result - without getting into issues of power; and what is our a priori expectation of power, again? - but, power aside and without any understanding of scale, it's always possible to resort to the perception of the whim of a fickle deity.

I agree with you that theists always have the ad hoc escape clause of "God moves in mysterious ways". That does nothing to prove God, of course. What it does is to make God non-falsifiable. It is an attempt to exempt God from the usual standards of scientific proof and disproof. However, this doesn't really put God outside of scientific inquiry. We come back to question matter of evidence for God. If there isn't any, then Science doesn't require the maintenance of the God hypothesis; in fact, Occam's razor rules it out as unhelpful.

I do note this one: "do not put your God to the test" used to be a pretty popular saying.

In other words "Believe in God despite a complete lack of evidence for his existence. Replace Reason with Faith. Just Believe, and don't worry that you're believing in something without any evidentiary grounds for your belief. Trust The Church (or whoever tells you to Believe in God)."

Now, if you want to construe the above as a reason not to believe in the naturalistic output of a divine being... OK. But one has to reiterate that such a being could function entirely outside expectation. I think it a bad idea.

It seems to me that we're almost on the same race track here, except when it comes to the last hurdle.

Why do you think its a good idea to believe in a God for whom there is no reliable evidence?

Is it that you claim there is some kind of evidence that you regard as convincing, other than evidence that a scientist would find convincing? If so, what is that evidence? Personal gut feeling?

Don't you think that a commitment to what is true is important?

Oh, I used to, but reality is subjective at this level. Does it particularly matter?

It depends what you value in life, and that's a somewhat individual thing. I guess some people can live with the cognitive dissonance that goes with having certain ideas about what counts of evidence in science and other ideas about what counts when it comes to religion. Personally, I have issues with that. How about you?

Frankly, I'll settle for "innocuous". Where a belief meets with this essential moral goalpost, I have no objection. Where it doesn't, it requires societal correction - or smothering.

Then we're reduced to arguing about whether religion is a net positive or negative influence on people and/or societies. And that is a question that doesn't turn on whether there is a God or not.

I don't consider my outlay of time and energy relative to religiosity or not religiosity as egregious, particularly in comparison to every other source of wastage or consumption. I just ate a banana split, and I didn't even need one. Now, you might have a more solid point for the regular churchgoer; but if she spent her time parasailing or mismanaging a small eastern Asian country into the ground instead, would it be time any less well wasted? Where religiosity cuts into the basic responsibilities of life, I could see it as a waste, naturally. Are you arguing for a general increase of efficiency? If so, on what basis religion and not the parasailing? Hell, there are many much more afunctional behaviours, in the best case. What are the relative debits and gains in terms of psyche, personality and sociality? It's not such a clear wastage.

When it comes to individuals, maybe it doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things whether they want to spend their time parasailing or praying or writing symphonies. But in terms of net human happiness, some activities seem to me to be more useful than others. So, I guess I'm arguing for a general increase in happiness, which is probably not the same thing as an increase in "efficiency". I'm far from convinced that religion is a net positive for happiness; worse - I fear it is a net negative.

As for Hell, the popular concept actually appears to be founded on a massively misunderstood geographical issue in Judaism. But let's consider it: if it promotes social support and altruistic behaviour, where's the problem? If you're arguing that pathologically religious behaviour could do with restriction, I don't think any sensible person could disagree with you.

I think the notion of Hell is a tremendous drain on the human psyche. Maybe not yours, but then I think you probably don't really believe in Hell.

If you want to speak of gross generalities - such as evolution - then there could be no disagreement. But the testing of God is going to come down to specifics, if we use tests such as the prayer example you gave above. Let's put it this way: I'd be happy to change my opinion here and support the idea that such a test could be done, but how would you do it? What test is required?

Such tests have been done. It's just an ordinary scientific test, best done with a double-blind, randomised protocol. Select random groups of people. Group A is the control group - nobody prays from them. Group B is the test group - people pray for their good fortune (or whatever). Obviously, some reasonable time limit must be imposed so we don't have to wait an indeterminate amount of time for God to respond (or not). Compare the outcomes of Group A with Group B. Apply normal statistical methods.

Or in the larger scale, what philosophical distinction can be made that overrides the fundamental supposition of supernaturalism? What's the point?

I don't understand this question. Philosophical distinction between what and what else? Why is there a supposition? Why is that fundamental? What's the point of what?

Well, I don't see why hate is necessary either, but it seems a pretty likely outcome on both sides. Such issues can be dealt with socially without the need to go after anyone's fundamental belief system, which generates the hate.

I'd like to think that people are reasonable beings. You don't think that's the case?

Is it necessary to "win" a war against religiousness? Is it conversely necessary that the religious of the world 'should' win a war against science?

It might be very important to win the "war", either way. If our aim is to maximise human happiness and minimise suffering, then we need to ask whether religiosity is likely to help or hinder that aim. And we need to ask the same question about science, of course.

We do have the benefit of some history to refer to already. So we may ask "What good has science/religion done for us so far?"

Coming back to the point of this thread, on your view we can have our cake and eat it too, keeping both science and religion as separate areas of human activity. But even if you're right and science has no business stepping on religion's turf, we still need to evaluate whether religion is a net positive to society. It's the only rational thing to do.

I'm aware that my own biases are showing clearly here. You might argue that maximising happiness is not a worthy goal (i.e. utilitarianism is bad), or at least not the foremost goal we ought to pursue. You might also argue that rationality itself is not all it's cracked up to be. In both cases, I can only say that you're likely to have an uphill battle convincing me if you want to make these arguments. But who knows? I have changed my mind about a number of things in the past. These ones are fairly fundamental to who I am right now, though.

 

[SciWriter]

I can show that the magisteria already overlap.

1. Suppose that there is an imagined supernatural notion that is supposed to have effects upon the natural, even luckily being that the notion’s effects are to be found anywhere and everywhere. Science, as it goes about its normal fact-finding business, probes and examines anywhere and everywhere, ever only finding the natural, that is, no violations, no super-beyond-anything happening at all. The conditions thus look exactly as they would if there were no supernatural notion.

There is then inadvertent overlap; it’s unavoidable. OK, that’s an easy one, even a double-demise, for the notion couldn’t be proved in the first place and so, thus, even further, is of no concern of any consequences from disbelief. People make more informed decisions lately, good probability being enough, as there cannot be complete and perfect information.

2. Now, nonexistence of a notion, effects or not, can also be shown if the notion is self-contradictory; no square circles; no design without Design as a first cause, etc. I leave this to the readers.

3. So, onto the tougher case that occurs if the nonscientific magisterium retreats [giving up] to a new position that there are no effects, there being no intervention at all but for the notion having just created the universe and not intervening any further. Now, note that science is still but doing its own thing, investigating more and more fundamental realms, such as even proving that the quantum level is a random and indeterminate chaos, that there can be no local hidden variables within it; thus, finding even that a near ‘nothing’—the quantum fluctuation or tunneling—is the causeless bottom ‘something’ that is as simple as it gets, this ‘something’, by the way, being the natural state of affairs, rather than a total nothing that could not be, confirming the thought experiment that a total nothing couldn’t do a darn thing, it not even being able to be ‘there’ to make anything anyway, plus, that there cannot be never-ending causes beneath causes, and that therefore the causeless bottom must be of maximum non-specifics rather than any order, much less a perfect order.

Thus, and, too, the causeless bottom needed no creation. The notion is not only cut off at the source but is not even required since the normal state is ‘something’. The great philosophical question of ”Why is there something rather than nothing” is squashed, for not anything can become of nothing. Science even then finds, as a bonus, that the universe appeared from a state of zero energy, this being, of course, within the unavoidable and tiny quantum uncertainty, plus, that the negative energy of gravity matches the positive energy of matter, equaling a mass density of ‘zero’, and, further, that every time we try to measure what an atom does, we get a different answer, this then again being the answer that that realm is causeless.

Furthermore, that realm is of discrete operations—the quantum leaps even wiping away the notion of any universal continuity. Another bonus found is that the ‘laws’ of point-of-view invariance automatically appear [are not handed down] in any model that does not single out a special moment in time, position in space, or direction in space, such as back at the Planck time of the Big Bang, the universe having then no distinguishable place, direction, or time, meaning that it had no structure and, thus, that the conservation laws apply.

Further, it can be shown that human and societal behaviors, morals, laws and values look just as they can be expected to look if there are only the natural goings on. Science, in its quest for truth, has inadvertently stepped on the turf of the nonscientific magisterium. There is much overlap.

 

[wynn]

Fraggle -

I had alreay started a thread for the topic of hatred, see there: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=113644