9 replies to this topic

[mentatpsi]

What man knows and believes will always be manifested from the perception of what it is to be man, the beauty in science is that it seeks an escape from the erroneous by seeking the objectivity in all things, in consistency of natural law.

Religion however seeks to forever be intertwined in fallacy, by forever seeking something greater, it looks within instead and finds security blankets ready for the weaving.

[forever freedom]

Religion requires that humans put their reasoning faculty aside and take things on faith. Science demands no such absurdity.

Edited by forever freedom, 06 July 2010 - 10:20 PM.

[shadowhawk]

What man knows and believes will always be manifested from the perception of what it is to be man, the beauty in science is that it seeks an escape from the erroneous by seeking the objectivity in all things, in consistency of natural law.

Religion however seeks to forever be intertwined in fallacy, by forever seeking something greater, it looks within instead and finds security blankets ready for the weaving.

I disagree:
Here are a few of many sources on science and religion.
http://www.sciencean...igiontoday.com/
http://en.wikipedia....kers_in_science
http://www.amazon.co...75949621&sr=1-2
http://www.catholic....99/9911fea4.asp

Here is a quiz.

1. In 1492 Christopher Columbus proved the world was round, yet faced years of opposition from ministers and churches who believed the world flat.

2. Magellan gained a victory for science by sailing round the earth, disproving all those ministers.

3. The Dark ages were caused by religion and were a time of superstition and technological regress.

4. The Greeks and Romans invented science and advanced scientific thinking greatly.

5. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton fought against the church to air their new ideas.

6. The age of humanism brought us the enlightenment through science wrought by daring skeptics of the Bible.

7. The human body has many organs such as the coccyx (tailbone), appendix and tonsils that are vestigial or left over from our "primitive" state.

The answer to all is “false.” More?

[mentatpsi]

Alright, don't cite catholicism, biggest load of crap ever :P, if the priests of that religion had bothered to read the beginning of the new testament, they would arrive to the conclusion that the very notion of a power which oversees the spirituality of man was not at all what jesus intended. Then again, no one knows what he intended since he wasn't around when people wrote what he supposedly said. How can anyone speak with so certain a tongue to events that arrive to ear by word of mouth. Maybe he didn't even profess to be the son of god but just believed he had wisdom and a revolutionary energy to fight the corruption. No one knows.

Other than that I think you're fine and raise an argument, though you haven't precisely pointed to what you disagree with exactly, though we have discussed it before so I might know a bit of it. The science or the religion part?

Religion and spirituality are not the same thing, especially organized religion.

Science constantly seeks improvement of itself while maintaining the ideal of the scientific method, religion seeks to constantly prove itself, even if it has to go into the grounds of metaphor to add relevance to ancient texts no longer so.

[shadowhawk]

Alright, don't cite catholicism, biggest load of crap ever :P, if the priests of that religion had bothered to read the beginning of the new testament, they would arrive to the conclusion that the very notion of a power which oversees the spirituality of man was not at all what jesus intended. Then again, no one knows what he intended since he wasn't around when people wrote what he supposedly said. How can anyone speak with so certain a tongue to events that arrive to ear by word of mouth. Maybe he didn't even profess to be the son of god but just believed he had wisdom and a revolutionary energy to fight the corruption. No one knows.

Other than that I think you're fine and raise an argument, though you haven't precisely pointed to what you disagree with exactly, though we have discussed it before so I might know a bit of it. The science or the religion part?

Religion and spirituality are not the same thing, especially organized religion.

Science constantly seeks improvement of itself while maintaining the ideal of the scientific method, religion seeks to constantly prove itself, even if it has to go into the grounds of metaphor to add relevance to ancient texts no longer so.

I strongly recommend to you:
“Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It “
from The Teaching Company
http://www.teach12.c...2.aspx?cid=1235
This is not a religious source at all. In fact I disagree with some points but I enjoyed it tremendously.

Science is a process or method not a position. It is almost always wrong in its conclusions but to its credit those who practice the process can correct the conclusions.

As such you do not have a lock on Science and Religious Scientists practice it all the time. Your view sounds more like Scientism than Science. Your “conflict thesis,” has little validity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
http://en.wikipedia....Conflict_thesis
http://en.wikipedia....ientist-clerics

[mattbrowne]

Religions cannot explain the natural phenomena present in our universe.

Science cannot explain the origin of the natural laws. Science cannot tell us anything about the purpose of the universe either.

[mentatpsi]

Religions cannot explain the natural phenomena present in our universe.

Science cannot explain the origin of the natural laws. Science cannot tell us anything about the purpose of the universe either.

So in that regard, science wins, since neither can religion. It's all fanciful imaginings, without method to test truth. Behind every Pseudoscience is a security blanket... was it carl sagan who said that?

And science should be able to explain the origin of natural laws, it would just have immense mathematical complexity and wouldn't be understandable by the lay person.

[mentatpsi]

Alright, don't cite catholicism, biggest load of crap ever :P, if the priests of that religion had bothered to read the beginning of the new testament, they would arrive to the conclusion that the very notion of a power which oversees the spirituality of man was not at all what jesus intended. Then again, no one knows what he intended since he wasn't around when people wrote what he supposedly said. How can anyone speak with so certain a tongue to events that arrive to ear by word of mouth. Maybe he didn't even profess to be the son of god but just believed he had wisdom and a revolutionary energy to fight the corruption. No one knows.

Other than that I think you're fine and raise an argument, though you haven't precisely pointed to what you disagree with exactly, though we have discussed it before so I might know a bit of it. The science or the religion part?

Religion and spirituality are not the same thing, especially organized religion.

Science constantly seeks improvement of itself while maintaining the ideal of the scientific method, religion seeks to constantly prove itself, even if it has to go into the grounds of metaphor to add relevance to ancient texts no longer so.

I strongly recommend to you:
“Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It “
from The Teaching Company
http://www.teach12.c...2.aspx?cid=1235
This is not a religious source at all. In fact I disagree with some points but I enjoyed it tremendously.

Science is a process or method not a position. It is almost always wrong in its conclusions but to its credit those who practice the process can correct the conclusions.

As such you do not have a lock on Science and Religious Scientists practice it all the time. Your view sounds more like Scientism than Science. Your “conflict thesis,” has little validity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
http://en.wikipedia....Conflict_thesis
http://en.wikipedia....ientist-clerics

If I had some money to throw around I might just buy Science Wars by the teaching company, but unfortunately don't. Sounds interesting though.
Regardless, my viewpoint is that there is a lot of speculation done by the faithful, but there cannot be methods to test the accuracy of something not perceived. We keep running into the same arguments, but science has methods which have proven successful at understanding our reality and universe. If it was up to religion to decide our progress, well... there wouldn't be very much ever since Christianity began to favour the "other world" over the material one. Having read a bit of the New Testament... i can now consider myself an expert :D

Edited by mentatpsi, 11 July 2010 - 05:55 PM.

[b0gger]

This documentary explains the nature of religion:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7991385426492181792#

In a nutshell:

"Good" members of society and a good parents pass their genes more effectively. Each of them somehow had to rationalise (explain, come to piece with) the world: the problem of death, and ruling class oppression, cataclysms, plagues. (Some tribes and countries are still governed by "sons of gods".) So it went on for generations since the dawn of times: natural selection selected those who did not fall into cognitive dissonance and fought with those oppressions, but instead breed no matter what - sheeple . So now we (well. most of us) have this "god" area of the brain. It generates the genuine feeling that there is god, that he protects us, that everything is fine and we can breed. This feeling can be summoned after long meditation or prayer (exhausting chanting), dancing or amanita mushrooms.

We can observe evolution of religion archaeologically and by studying primitive tribes:

IN the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico, the archaeologists Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery have gained a remarkable insight into the origin of religion.
Universal Religion has been found in societies at every stage of development. During 15 years of excavation they have uncovered not some monumental temple but evidence of a critical transition in religious behaviour.

Sometimes god's brain area goes awry (the reason for exorcism):

Clifford Hoyt, age 31, suffered serious injuries in an automobile accident in 1999. After he regained consciousness, he told a terrified nurse that he had died and visited Hell. He expounded on the tortures and anguish he experienced in frightening detail. He refused psychological treatment and was released.
Several weeks later, Hoyt's neighbors complained to their landlord that strange music was playing in his apartment at all hours of the night. Upon investigating, the building's owner found Clifford in this condition. Mr. Hoyt was still quite lucid and protested when the landlord attempted to call the police. Concerned for the damage done to his property, he took photographs of the apartment, of which the image above is an example. He left and contacted Mr. Hoyt's family, who contacted authorities.
Clifford claimed that demons from Hell were still trying to capture him. He explained that his body would burn incessantly unless he played music to scare the demons away. He would only leave the house for short periods of time to get minimal supplies, including large blocks of ice to soothe the burning he felt as he tried to sleep.
Doctors attribute Clifford's actions to brain damage suffered in the accident. He currently resides in a mental rehabilitation facility in Maryland.

(clanks are related to this)

Even pigeons are inclined to some sort of rituals:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f15PNrk94kg






Contemporary people need the new mythology:
Who are we, why come we are here. What should we do with all of that.
The new story

Edited by b0gger, 12 July 2010 - 09:44 AM.

[shadowhawk]

mentatpsi
If I had some money to throw around I might just buy Science Wars by the teaching company, but unfortunately don't. Sounds interesting though.

SHADOWHALK
It is a great program. If you ever can this is well worth it. I like many of their studies and always have a study going.

mentatpsi
Regardless, my viewpoint is that there is a lot of speculation done by the faithful, but there cannot be methods to test the accuracy of something not perceived. We keep running into the same arguments, but science has methods which have proven successful at understanding our reality and universe. If it was up to religion to decide our progress, well... there wouldn't be very much ever since Christianity began to favour the "other world" over the material one. Having read a bit of the New Testament... i can now consider myself an expert :D

SHADOWHAWK
I disagree with this. Religion like many subjects does not have the same tasks as science. My background is in History and Philosophy. There is a interest in evidence but they do not practice the Scientific method as does biology for example. Science has its own philosophical issues. This has not kept theists from being at the forefront of science.

http://en.wikipedia....kers_in_science
http://en.wikipedia....nd_philosophers
http://en.wikipedia....ientist-clerics
http://www.asa3.org/
http://www.arn.org/