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Now someone may report to be an atheist and report that they have a moral outlook that involves respect for fellow man. I guess I won't insist that its Religion
by kiba 7y ago
Now someone may report to be an atheist and report that they have a moral outlook that involves respect for fellow man. I guess I won't insist that its Religion; I simply insist its not Science that is giving them their moral outlook.
When people claimed that god exists, then it is a claim that can be challenged. If someone claimed that Jesus Christ came to back to life, then it is a claim that can be challenged.
Ditto for system of morality where certain aspects can be subjected to empirical testing.
It's intellectually dishonest to say that Christians or some other religion X have no claims that could be subjected to scientific scrutiny.
- tabtab 7y agoScience doesn't create "goals", only describes impacts at best. It has no will or motivation by itself. But I am bothered by the idea the primary reason religious people behave is due to fear of becoming BBQ. What about personal pride in not being a jerk?
- anticensor 7y agoNot science, but scientists do define goals for themselves.
- wellpast 7y agoThe Hellfire fear is a naive interpretation of what most religious people derive from their religion.
- tabtab 7y agoSome groups do claim that "fear of God's wrath" (or Satan's) makes people behave better. I will agree that different sects have widely different interpretations of such.
- kiba 7y agoI am not making any claim that "science" have goals.
- roca 7y agoIf Hell exists then fear of it is healthy. Empirically I don't know any Christians for whom that is a primary motivator. In Protestant Christianity in particular, that's a weak motivator because it is generally taught that all a Christian's sins are forgiven through Jesus, so choosing to commit a sin will not send us to hell. (Patterns of sinful behaviour might, however, rightly cause us and others to question the sincerity of our commitment to Jesus.) Personal pride in not being a jerk is a good motivation, but that kind of motivation can easily turn to self-righteousness. For Christians, a healthy motivation is to consider Romans 6 and understand that if we really believe we are sinners and we really believe our sins are forgiven through Jesus, then we should please him by doing what he wants, out of love and gratitude.
- PavlovsCat 7y ago> If someone claimed that Jesus Christ came to back to life, then it is a claim that can be challenged. True, but doesn't change that science ultimately deals with models we create to explain our observations. They're nowhere near as nilly-willy as, say, scientology, sure. But it's also not 100% objective, everything is filtered through us, or the models and instruments we make. > And so in its actual procedure physics studies not these inscrutable qualities, but pointer-readings which we can observe, The readings, it is true, reflect the fluctuations of the world-qualities; but our exact knowledge is of the readings, not of the qualities. The former have as much resemblance to the latter as a telephone number has to a subscriber. -- Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Domain of Physical Science (1925) > Ditto for system of morality where certain aspects can be subjected to empirical testing. I honestly have no idea what aspects of a moral system one could test empirically, could you give an example? The way I see it, science can tell us that malnutrition in kids can affect their development and how, but it can't tell us whether it's right or wrong to let children starve, for example. It can't even tell us if it's better for people to be healthy or sick, happy or unhappy, and so on. It can at best measure physical reality accurately and even with some predictive power, but that still leaves all the moral questions (I can think of right now) to us.