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Science is not a religion. If scientism means thinking that science is the best tool we have right now to explain reality then I guess yea I'm pro science. But

• al_mandi 4y ago
  Proper religion and science do not disagree. I am a person of faith (which is backed by evidence), and my faith pushed us to seek knowledge. The Islamic Golden age is a testament to that fact. Scientism is not what you defined. From wikipedia (which I take with a big grain of salt) > Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality. Watch this to get a different perspective on the matter: https://youtu.be/If3cNUixEBM https://youtu.be/If3cNUixEBM
  • nnoitra 4y ago
    Yes yes and sperm comes from between backbone and ribs.
    • al_mandi 4y ago
      Sounds like another straw man (answer here by the way https://youtu.be/rvrqwD4I9Nc https://youtu.be/rvrqwD4I9Nc). Did you watch the video I posted earlier?
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • michaelmrose 4y ago
    Faith by definition isn't something which can be backed by evidence otherwise it would by definition just be a type of science. It would be the study of God via experimentation, accumulation of evidence, and logical extrapolation. There are religious folks that are big on logical deduction and extrapolation but they all start with terribly unlikely axioms pulled straight out of their ass or equally made up fictions rendered sacred somehow by the passage of time.
    • al_mandi 4y ago
      > Faith by definition isn't something which can be backed by evidence There is evidence backed belief in the unseen, and there is blind faith. So your claim that by definition faith is without evidence is not correct. Secondly, even science needs to accept certain axioms as a given so that we can build upon them. Scientism is believing that the only way to arrive at truth is through experimentation, which is a false view. There are many things we accept, even though we cannot prove them through experimentation. Watch the lecture I posted to broaden your horizons.
      • michaelmrose 4y ago
        Science chooses minimal axioms and builds the flesh of the world based on the existing bones ready to revise when new bones are discovered. Religion chooses a substantial set of axioms derived from a mixture of philosophy and fantasy dreamt up by our pre scientific ancestors who thought bad smells caused disease then makes many forms of revision sinful. A set of beliefs without ability to revise everything from the ground up will forever be limited.
        • al_mandi 4y ago
          Just because the sets are of different size does not mean one is incorrect. You're also straw manning by talking about pre ancestors and bad smells.
          • michaelmrose 4y ago
            You can't win arguments by playing logical fallacies like they are uno cards. I was pointing out that the same ancestors who dreamt up the axioms you aren't allowed by religious law to fully revise or toss out had understandings limited by the information available in that antique period. Only hundreds of years ago medical professionals believed in the miasma theory of disease and before that both of our ancestors believed that sickness had paranormal causes. The problem with your set of axioms isn't MERELY the size. It's that you are asked to buy them in a box sealed millennia ago by people who if they were transported to our time frame would be regarded as lunatics because they believe crazy shit. Worse you are offered imaginary immortality and the threat of imaginary perdition in order to obtain actual service in exchange for wholly fictional benefits.
  • wruza 4y ago
    I’m only 10:33 into this video and already facepalming so much. The guy starts with explaining logic basics, which is cool, then goes to blaming some people “leading the atheist movement” (whom I never really listened to and agree that they devote too many of their attention to fight religion, but hey everyone chooses their own way) and then summarizes “if you don’t have any moral authority then what’s your moral anchor” backing it by some citation of classics lacking any context. Right after talking about logic and how these atheist leaders manipulate it. Then goes to repeat some worship nonsense. Don’t expect many people to watch this hour long blah blah blah. Edit: beared with it to 19:18 and stopped, sorry, this guy is full of populistic bullshit he tries to refute. Does god exist or not, we will not know ftom this. But you are literally following a fanatic.
    • al_mandi 4y ago
  • eis 4y ago
    You don't need to post the video numerous times. I have commented on it on one of your other replies. > Proper religion and science do not disagree. What makes a proper religion? And can you tell me how it agrees with science? > I am a person of faith (which is backed by evidence), and my faith pushed us to seek knowledge. The Islamic Golden age is a testament to that fact. Well for me personally, curiousity pushed me to seek knowledge but each to their own. My problem is that any religion who believes in an all powerful God quickly runs into logical problems. Here is one quick example and I'd love for you to explain to me where my reasoning went wrong: 1. Assume there is an omnipotent being called God 2. If God is omnipotent then he can create two other omnipotent beings that have the following two goals: 1. destroy the other being 2. protect itself from being destroyed. 3. Clearly both of these created beings cannot both achieve their goals because they cannot both destroy the other and at the same time protect themselves. 4. If these beings cannot do what they were created for then clearly they cannot be omnipotent. 5. If God cannot create such beings then clearly he himself is not omnipotent
    • al_mandi 4y ago
      > What makes a proper religion? And can you tell me how it agrees with science? One that is backed by proofs and evidence. Islam does not disagree with science. Your argument is not very different from can God create a rock so heavy that He cannot cary it? The answer is simple, it's a logical absurdity to even go there. God told us about his Attributes, and we are not to hold Him or His Attributes to our worldly logic.
      • eis 4y ago
        > One that is backed by proofs and evidence. I have seen zero proofs for the existance of god. Not in your video or anywhere else. If such proof existed then that would be the biggest scientific breakthrough in history and it would be the absolute focus for science to understand more. > Your argument is not very different from can God create a rock so heavy that He cannot cary it? The answer is simple, it's a logical absurdity to even go there. God told us about his Attributes, and we are not to hold Him or His Attributes to our worldly logic. Yes it's the same argument. I can't follow your logic though. You just claim that we cannot comprehend the concept of god. You say that logic cannot be applied. If we cannot comprehend god and have to give up logic then why would we follow the word of certain people who claimed that god spoke to them? How can we tell apart a true prophet who really was contacted by god from a random imposter? To tell those apart would mean we already know what god would or would not say. But if god does not have to follow logic then how can we deduce what is correct or not? As you see once you leave the realm of logic the whole house of cards falls. Another thing you could deduce from your argument btw is that god created humans intentionally in a way that they cannot comprehend. Isn't that painting god in a pretty bad light?
• tresqotheq 4y ago
  >Science is not a religion. What is the difference between a holy man who claims to have the word of god, and a scientist who claims to have followed the "scientifc method"? Modern human believes the latter. That is the difference.
  • dr_hooo 4y ago
    You have to believe the claims of the former, while you can verify the claims of the latter yourself.
    • tresqotheq 4y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32621532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32621532
  • craftsman 4y ago
    The difference between the two claims is whether they are verifiable.
    • tresqotheq 4y ago
      Tell me, how many scientific "claims" that you rely on a day to day basis, have you verified personally? Or How many such claims can be verified with a single average person's limited resource?
      • wizofaus 4y ago
        Why do you think that matters? You might as well ask "what makes you trust your own perception when you verify scientific claims"? As it happens, literally every time you switch on a light you are, in fact, verifying multiple scientific theories. Not to mention interacting with your phone or computer to type your HN comments.
        • tresqotheq 4y ago
          >what makes you trust your own perception when you verify scientific claims" Because it is with my own perception that I sense the rest of the world with it. So that is all that one should care. Let me know if you don't get this. I ll elaborate..
• swat535 4y ago
  The “war” between religion and science as you are attempting to draw here, is in fact a fantasy, an illusion, the fruit of a tragic misunderstanding. First, in a very real sense, the modern physical sciences came from religion. The great founders of science—Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, etc.—were, without exception, trained in ecclesially sponsored schools and universities. It was under the aegis of the church that they took in their physics, their astronomy, and their mathematics. More specifically, they learned in those institutions two essentially theological truths necessary for the emergence of the experimental sciences—namely, that the universe is not God and that the universe, in every nook and cranny, is marked by intelligibility. If nature were divine—as indeed it is considered to be in many religions, philosophies, and mysticisms—then it could never be an apt subject for observation, analysis, and experimentation. And if nature were simply chaotic, void of form, it would never yield up the harmonies and patterned intelligibilities that scientists readily seek. When these two truths, which are both a function of the doctrine of creation, obtain, the sciences can get underway. Second, when science and theology are properly understood, they are not in conflict, since they are not competing for primacy on the same playing field, like opposing football teams. Utilizing the scientific method, the physical sciences deal with events, objects, dynamics, and relationships within the empirically verifiable order. Theology, employing an entirely different method, deals with God and the things of God—and God is not an object in the world, not a reality circumscribed within the context of nature. As Thomas Aquinas put it, God is not ens summum (highest being), but rather ipsum esse (the act of being as such)—which is to say, God is not a being among beings, but instead the reason why there is an empirically observable universe at all. In this way, he is like the author of a richly complex novel. Charles Dickens never appears as a character in any of his sprawling narratives, yet he is the reason why any of those characters exist at all. Accordingly, the sciences, as such, can never adjudicate the question of God’s existence nor speak of his activity or attributes. Another type of rationality—not in competition with scientific rationality—is required for the determination of those matters. And this brings me to my third point: as parent said, _scientism_ is not science. Sadly rampant today, especially among the young, scientism is the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge. The undeniable success of the physical sciences and the extraordinary usefulness of the technologies to which they have given rise have produced in the minds of many this conviction, but it represents a tragic impoverishment. A chemist might be able to tell us the chemical makeup of the paints that Michelangelo used on the Sistine Ceiling, but he couldn’t, qua scientist, tell us a thing about what makes that work of art so beautiful. A geologist might be able to tell us the stratification of the earth below the city of Chicago, but he could never, again qua scientist, tell us whether that city is being justly or unjustly governed. There isn’t a trace of the scientific method in Romeo and Juliet, but who would be so stupid as to assert that that play tells us nothing true about the nature of love. In a similar way, the great texts of the Bible and the theological tradition are not “scientific,” but they nevertheless speak the profoundest truths about God, creation, sin, redemption, grace, etc. Both the cause and effect of scientism, sadly, is the attenuation of the liberal arts in our institutions of higher education. Rather than appreciating literature, history, philosophy, and religion as conduits of objective truth, many today relegate these to the arena of subjective feeling or subject them to withering ideological criticism. My fourth and final point is this: Galileo is one paragraph in one chapter of a very long book. The great astronomer is often invoked as the patron saint of heroic scientists struggling to free themselves from the obscurantism and irrationality of religion. The censorship of his books by the Church, and the great scientist’s virtual imprisonment at the behest of the pope, is taken as the dark paradigm of the Church/science relationship. Obviously, the Galileo episode was hardly the Church’s finest moment, and in point of fact, John Paul II, expressing real contrition, explicitly apologized for it. But to use it as the lens for viewing the play between faith and science is crucially inadequate. There have been, from the earliest days of the modern sciences, thousands of deeply religious people involved in scientific research and investigation. To name just a handful: Copernicus, revolutionary cosmologist and a third order Dominican; Nicholas Steno, the father of geology and a bishop of the Church; Louis Pasteur, one of the founders of microbiology and a devout Catholic layman; Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics and an Augustinian friar; Georges Lemaître, formulator of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins and a Catholic priest; Mary Kenneth Keller, the first woman in the United States to receive a doctorate in computer science and a Catholic religious sister. I believe it is fair to say that all of these figures understood the fundamental points that I have laid out in this article and therefore saw that they could be utterly devoted to both their science and their faith.