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"However, I think that anyone who dismisses religion as worthless is blind or stupid." We've learned a great deal about our world and our nature since the prim

"However, I think that anyone who dismisses religion as worthless is blind or stupid." We've learned a great deal about our world and our nature since the primary texts of the most established religions have been written. People who dismiss religion are not denying the value and wisdom in it, but are bringing to our attention that this wisdom is discoverable, and maybe better understood, outside of religion. More importantly, religion comes with dogma, which causes a great deal of harm and suffering. Much more relevant than "worth" is the fact that religion can be a very dangerous weapon in the hands of people who cannot dissociate the wisdom from the dogma.

sophacles 14y ago
There is a lot of dogma in the sciences too. To paraphrase Khun: A lot of scientific revolutions and advances happen not because everyone realized they were wrong, but because the old guard slowly ages out of relevance (and eventually die off). You can see this in the current culture wars surrounding sustainability and factory farming. Arguably dogma about the best approach is hindering progress and perhaps even causing great harm.
- Retric 14y ago
  Progress is not the same thing as perfection. Praying does not a 3GHz CPU make, but people tend look for progress in terms of last year and ignore things that happened say before they where born. In practice a lot of published research is junk, but most religions are hundreds if not thousands of years old, on those timescales science is a wondrous new idea. On a long enough timescale we may run out of reasonable experiments to run, but should 'science' and 'religion' actually become indistinguishable it will be a lot closer to the truth than talking snakes.
- yannickt 14y ago
  What you are describing is simply human fallibility. There is no dogma in science. Science does not mandate that anything be set in stone, never to be questioned, doubted or disputed. And when the "old guard" is made irrelevant, that happens through the scientific method itself.
  - sophacles 14y ago
    I'm sorry, but "this is the way it is, because it is the way it is no matter what you say" is dogma, whether on a short or long timescale. Just because it doesn't stick for hundreds of years in a row doesn't change that it is dogma for a generation or two. If it affects funding despite evidence, and what papers get published even if there is good evidence at odds with the model, how is it not dogma? Does changing the label of the same set of actions make it better somehow? Also, there is a bit of irony in the statement "there is no dogma in science" as it is a fairly dogmatic statement :)
    - yannickt 14y ago
      What I mean is there are no articles of faith in science. There is no equivalent of "Jesus was born of a virgin". Science doesn't tell you that "E=MC2" is never to be questioned. The phenomenon you describe exists, but I don't think you will find justification for it in a scientific text. But you will find justification for religious dogma in the religious texts themselves.
      - sophacles 14y ago
        The articles of faith can be looked at as axioms of the worldview. For instance "bible = word of god/statement of truth" is a basic axiom. Similarly in science you do get certain axioms: * occam's razor * reductionist analysis is the best path to truth * this new theory is more elegant even though it currently unanswers certain questions. They are axioms without empirical proof, that are argued fairly strongly fairly regularly. NOTE: I don't disagree with them, just pointing out that there are non-empirical axioms that are fairly dogmatically taught and followed. One frequently under fire is reductionism, particularly in medicine and other biological areas.
        yannickt 14y ago
        The difference is that science doesn't tell you to dogmatically follow axioms per se. For example, the constancy of the speed of light is an axiom of Einstein's theory of relativity. Evidence that disproves said constancy would eventually lead to revising the theory, just as Newton's axioms were eventually replaced by Einstein's relativity. That's not dogmatic following. On the other hand, the virgin birth of Jesus (for example) is a dogma of Christianity. From what we know about our world, a virgin birth is not possible, not with the technology that was available at the time the Bible was written. Christians still accept this tenet of Christianity at face value, despite the ample evidence against it (evidence they would never ignore in other aspects of their lives). That's dogmatic following.
- mikeash 14y ago
  The difference is that science at least eventually converges on the correct answer. Religion is basically a random walk that never converges on anything in particular. Modern science may not be correct, but it's almost universally more correct than science of 100 years ago. When it comes to religious topics, we can't even say what "more correct" would even mean, let alone say that modern religion is more correct than religion from the past.
  - cantankerous 14y ago
    Metaphysical beliefs notwithstanding, there is a decent amount of convergence on interpersonal interaction between the world's major religions (i.e. mutual respect, Golden Rule). From a non-religious standpoint, this could be because these teachings promote healthier societies compared to an alternative where similar teachings aren't promoted.
    - mikeash 14y ago
      They might agree on vague general statements of things like mutual respect and the golden rule, but when it comes down to implementation, they don't seem to agree very much at all.
    - alecco 14y ago
      That BS religious propaganda. There are many good counter examples. And on the other hand, many wars current and past have intolerance from religious groups as a main component of causes. http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/428275_339614779393795_187145274640747_1114321_1010229669_n.jpg http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/428275_339614...
      - cantankerous 14y ago
        I'm not sure whether to be upset or take it as a complement that my idle random thoughts would be called propaganda. Rest assured, I'm not trying to denigrate atheists, or Sweden for that matter. The observation was that in less developed societies there are bad religions, good religions, and better religions that promote social cohesion. It was not a statement about modern society and religion vs. morality and lawfulness. Sorry if I offended you.
bmelton 14y ago
Without hoping to encourage any sort of flamewar, I couldn't agree with that statement more. I used to consider myself 'agnostic', because I did not know, nor did I care to know, whether there was a God in heaven, or even a heaven at all. In fact, I would have accused any man that told me they did know (whether atheist, christian or whatever) that they couldn't possibly. Even the bible reiterates that statement, with phrases like "no man can truly understand God", and all the rhetoric about faith being unprovable, that's the point of faith, that you can believe it without proof. I've since grown (or shrunk, depending) into the viewpoint that religion is a detriment to mankind, and now identify more with humanists than anybody else. I don't think that a belief in a moral system is wrong, but I think the reliance on anything other than one's self to get something done is naive, and I think that the biggest harm belief in a god does is to limit one's own potential. Ignoring any of the myriad of issues I have with organized religion on the whole, that is the problem I have with the very premise of religion. That said, to answer the great-grandparent, I do not have a problem reading works by religious people, and I consider them just as valuable as works by anybody else, except where the work is primarily religious and/or preachy.

sophacles 14y ago

There is a lot of dogma in the sciences too. To paraphrase Khun: A lot of scientific revolutions and advances happen not because everyone realized they were wrong, but because the old guard slowly ages out of relevance (and eventually die off). You can see this in the current culture wars surrounding sustainability and factory farming. Arguably dogma about the best approach is hindering progress and perhaps even causing great harm.

Retric 14y ago
Progress is not the same thing as perfection. Praying does not a 3GHz CPU make, but people tend look for progress in terms of last year and ignore things that happened say before they where born. In practice a lot of published research is junk, but most religions are hundreds if not thousands of years old, on those timescales science is a wondrous new idea. On a long enough timescale we may run out of reasonable experiments to run, but should 'science' and 'religion' actually become indistinguishable it will be a lot closer to the truth than talking snakes.
yannickt 14y ago
What you are describing is simply human fallibility. There is no dogma in science. Science does not mandate that anything be set in stone, never to be questioned, doubted or disputed. And when the "old guard" is made irrelevant, that happens through the scientific method itself.
- sophacles 14y ago
  I'm sorry, but "this is the way it is, because it is the way it is no matter what you say" is dogma, whether on a short or long timescale. Just because it doesn't stick for hundreds of years in a row doesn't change that it is dogma for a generation or two. If it affects funding despite evidence, and what papers get published even if there is good evidence at odds with the model, how is it not dogma? Does changing the label of the same set of actions make it better somehow? Also, there is a bit of irony in the statement "there is no dogma in science" as it is a fairly dogmatic statement :)
  - yannickt 14y ago
    What I mean is there are no articles of faith in science. There is no equivalent of "Jesus was born of a virgin". Science doesn't tell you that "E=MC2" is never to be questioned. The phenomenon you describe exists, but I don't think you will find justification for it in a scientific text. But you will find justification for religious dogma in the religious texts themselves.
    - sophacles 14y ago
      The articles of faith can be looked at as axioms of the worldview. For instance "bible = word of god/statement of truth" is a basic axiom. Similarly in science you do get certain axioms: * occam's razor * reductionist analysis is the best path to truth * this new theory is more elegant even though it currently unanswers certain questions. They are axioms without empirical proof, that are argued fairly strongly fairly regularly. NOTE: I don't disagree with them, just pointing out that there are non-empirical axioms that are fairly dogmatically taught and followed. One frequently under fire is reductionism, particularly in medicine and other biological areas.
      - yannickt 14y ago
        The difference is that science doesn't tell you to dogmatically follow axioms per se. For example, the constancy of the speed of light is an axiom of Einstein's theory of relativity. Evidence that disproves said constancy would eventually lead to revising the theory, just as Newton's axioms were eventually replaced by Einstein's relativity. That's not dogmatic following. On the other hand, the virgin birth of Jesus (for example) is a dogma of Christianity. From what we know about our world, a virgin birth is not possible, not with the technology that was available at the time the Bible was written. Christians still accept this tenet of Christianity at face value, despite the ample evidence against it (evidence they would never ignore in other aspects of their lives). That's dogmatic following.
mikeash 14y ago
The difference is that science at least eventually converges on the correct answer. Religion is basically a random walk that never converges on anything in particular. Modern science may not be correct, but it's almost universally more correct than science of 100 years ago. When it comes to religious topics, we can't even say what "more correct" would even mean, let alone say that modern religion is more correct than religion from the past.
- cantankerous 14y ago
  Metaphysical beliefs notwithstanding, there is a decent amount of convergence on interpersonal interaction between the world's major religions (i.e. mutual respect, Golden Rule). From a non-religious standpoint, this could be because these teachings promote healthier societies compared to an alternative where similar teachings aren't promoted.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    They might agree on vague general statements of things like mutual respect and the golden rule, but when it comes down to implementation, they don't seem to agree very much at all.
  - alecco 14y ago
    That BS religious propaganda. There are many good counter examples. And on the other hand, many wars current and past have intolerance from religious groups as a main component of causes. http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/428275_339614779393795_187145274640747_1114321_1010229669_n.jpg http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/428275_339614...
    - cantankerous 14y ago
      I'm not sure whether to be upset or take it as a complement that my idle random thoughts would be called propaganda. Rest assured, I'm not trying to denigrate atheists, or Sweden for that matter. The observation was that in less developed societies there are bad religions, good religions, and better religions that promote social cohesion. It was not a statement about modern society and religion vs. morality and lawfulness. Sorry if I offended you.

bmelton 14y ago

Without hoping to encourage any sort of flamewar, I couldn't agree with that statement more. I used to consider myself 'agnostic', because I did not know, nor did I care to know, whether there was a God in heaven, or even a heaven at all. In fact, I would have accused any man that told me they did know (whether atheist, christian or whatever) that they couldn't possibly. Even the bible reiterates that statement, with phrases like "no man can truly understand God", and all the rhetoric about faith being unprovable, that's the point of faith, that you can believe it without proof. I've since grown (or shrunk, depending) into the viewpoint that religion is a detriment to mankind, and now identify more with humanists than anybody else. I don't think that a belief in a moral system is wrong, but I think the reliance on anything other than one's self to get something done is naive, and I think that the biggest harm belief in a god does is to limit one's own potential. Ignoring any of the myriad of issues I have with organized religion on the whole, that is the problem I have with the very premise of religion. That said, to answer the great-grandparent, I do not have a problem reading works by religious people, and I consider them just as valuable as works by anybody else, except where the work is primarily religious and/or preachy.