Unless you have an unusual definition of "religion", it's unrelated to the rejection of the empirical. Some religious people do, some (I suspect most) don't. I'm not going to try to argue that there's anything to it, but if you don't at least aim at the right target then you're pretty sure to miss.
No – some people who claim to be religious are not religious. Religion involves flat out faith - "what's in this book is true, believe it, if you don't you're a bad person". The requirement very much is that you ignore all evidence against the contents of the book - if you pay attention to it and adjust your view from what the book says you're a bad person again.
The bottom line is that religion is based on "you cannot disprove some core part of my faith". Ideas that cannot be tested or disproved are the absolute antithesis of science. The guys argument is in no way a straw man.
Fine, you can have your (highly idiosyncratic) view of religion if you like. Just be careful of equivocation and remember that your arguments won't relate at all to all those millions who believe in and worship God or gods but who are happy to revise their views based on new evidence.
The " no matter what evidence you're given against them" bit. There are some religious people like that [1] but it's not true of religion as a whole. The religious person might disagree with the scientist on the interpretation of the evidence, but many of them (most of them?) agree on the need to revise their position based on new evidence.
[1] Heck, there are plenty of scientific people like that -- as Max Plank observed, "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
The 25th December is a red herring. A (pagan) Roman emperor (can't remember which one) wanted to unify the religions in the empire and basically ordered the Christians to have a party each 25th December or be executed. The version of Christianity that has come down to us is the one that had the party. Natural selection in action!
And yet, it is now a part of the canon of science, in spite of that. I'm still wondering when major religions will not just stop questioning, but actually declare a part of their religion, things like evolution and quantum mechanics.
Most religious people accept those things. They don't need to make them part of their religion because they can get them from science.
Having watched the video though, that's not what is done here. At no point is the phrase "you're an idiot" used, or any synonym for it. Instead, a very reasoned argument is given – religion is predicated on the idea of accepting things that you "know" to be true, or "want" to be true, or "feel" to be true no matter what evidence you're given against them. Science is predicated on immediately dismissing things as false if you're given evidence to show that they're false. These two points of view are mutually incompatible. Ergo, religion and science are not compatible things.
But it's a false view of religion. It's easy to knock down straw men.
There is very little in life which can be proven. Apart from logical proofs such as 1 + 1 = 2 or it is possible to colour a map using only four colours without any two nodes having identical colours, nothing can be proven.
There are extreme forms of solipsism that argue that even those can't be proven. The proof assumes that logic is valid and that there's no systematic bug in the human brain that leads us to think, for example, that if a is identical to b then b is identical to a. If we can't trust logic then we can't prove anything (and can't even be sure that we can't prove anything, and so on, ad infinitum).
Questioning faith: Discouraged. Sometimes even punished.
Actively encouraged in my experience. I've even been invited to preach agnosticism at a local church (which I did, and it went down well). You are mixing with the wrong religious people. Or more likely not mixing with any and getting your view of them from a few nutjobs that hit the media. Remember that it's only the exceptions that make the news. Man bites dog, and all that.
Actually, I'd consider it useful as a small part of psychology and anthropology.
Yes, and I'd add to that philosophy (which is a faculty it sometimes finds itself in). The study of the arguments for and against God has been invaluable over the centuries in honing our ideas of epistemology, including the continuing development of the scientific method.
Just repeat the word "Evidence?" over and over again, really..
To which the well-informed religious person will ask "what counts as evidence?" It's a fundamental point of disagreement between science and religion (or at least the more philosophically-nuanced forms of religion). And its a metaphysical disagreement, so it can't be resolved by appeals to evidence (which would be circular reasoning anyway). Essentially, these forms of religion accept subjective evidence as well as objective evidence (well, actually they recognise that the boundary is fuzzy). That means that these religious people accept all of science and more. As do most scientists, actually, in their everyday lives.
I would say that they are philosophies, but Christianity is specifically guilty of losing any of that philosophy to the institution, which is inherently corrupt and bogus--it's not even about the philosophy any more, it's about having control and power over people
An over-generalisation. True of some branches of Christianity, but far from all.
Here's something that blows the creationist’s mind: vestigial organs/parts. If a creator independently designed each organism, then lots of stuff that shouldn't be there somehow made it into the finished product
Have you every reverse-engineered any code? Congratulations, you've just demonstrated that if God exists then [s]he is a hacker! Ok, some might have to revise their understanding of "perfection", but some of us are already there.:-)
Not just what he said. There are also stories much like his or parts of his all around the middle east at that time. Basically, The Life of Brian is probably the most accurate movie regarding the proliferance of people a lot like Jesus.
Although I'm sure many of the listed scientific luminaries were fully sincere in their faith, it's worth noting that it's only very recently that Atheism as a concept, let alone a life choice, came about.
5th or 6th century BCE, as an idea that was actually expressed in Europe. Very recently in terms of the age of the Earth, I grant, but long enough ago to have been available to the scientists mentioned.
Religion and science can be fundamentally at odds; heard of young earth creationism and Biblical literalism? How about the persistent Catholic belief of transubstantiation? What about the Scientologist's e-meter, or the claim that praying can alter physical reality? It is not fundamentalist atheism to say that beliefs such as these are incompatible with science, but even so, a creationist could do science so long as they don't insert their beliefs in to their work.
I agree with most of what you say, but it's worth noting that transubstantiation isn't at odds with science because the doctrine claims that the substance is transformed but the accidents are not. Those words are used in a technical (Platonic) philosophical sense -- terms of art, if you like -- and it's only the accidents that are observable by science. Because the substance is not observable scientists might consider the doctrine meaningless or irrelevant, but the doctrine isn't actually at odds with science.
The claim that "claim that praying can alter physical reality" isn't quite at odds with science either, but that's a trickier case. It's a falsifiable hypothesis, although to avoid the ravens paradox it has to be stated as the converse claim: praying cannot alter physical reality. That claim remains unfalsified and is preferable to the converse claim on the grounds both of Occam's razor and the fact that no plausible model by which praying can alter physical reality has been identified. That means that whereas transubstantiation is not a scientific claim, the effectiveness of prayer is a scientific claim that mainstream scientific thinking currently rejects (on good grounds) but which is not proven false.
Uh... religion and science ARE fundamentally at odds. One is based on empirical study, the other is the rejection of the empirical in favour of what is effectively make-believe.
Tell a Christian that the world is over a billion years old, and they will tell you that scientists only say that to get funding.
I know some Christians online who would react as you describe, but tell any of the Christians I know personally that the world is over a billion years old and they will say "Yes, I know".
But you recognise the point: it's the same technology. That's why I'd be opposed to it, because even though I know I am an information-sharing saint and am sure you are too, a lot of information is provided by jerkwads.
And if instead of a picture it was a music track or a book? And if you charged the customer for access to it? And you could still delete it after they had "bought" it? And how does that look from the other side of the fence? How is your sort of DRM any different from the "bad" sort?
Perhaps you didn't understand the bit about "However, it does not apply during approach and landing, which is what you are talking about." So for you the advice should be GET SOMEBODY WHO HAS A CLUE TO DO YOUR HOMEWORK THE NEXT TIME YOU BUY A HOUSE.
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Unless you have an unusual definition of "religion", it's unrelated to the rejection of the empirical. Some religious people do, some (I suspect most) don't. I'm not going to try to argue that there's anything to it, but if you don't at least aim at the right target then you're pretty sure to miss.
No – some people who claim to be religious are not religious. Religion involves flat out faith - "what's in this book is true, believe it, if you don't you're a bad person". The requirement very much is that you ignore all evidence against the contents of the book - if you pay attention to it and adjust your view from what the book says you're a bad person again.
The bottom line is that religion is based on "you cannot disprove some core part of my faith". Ideas that cannot be tested or disproved are the absolute antithesis of science. The guys argument is in no way a straw man.
Fine, you can have your (highly idiosyncratic) view of religion if you like. Just be careful of equivocation and remember that your arguments won't relate at all to all those millions who believe in and worship God or gods but who are happy to revise their views based on new evidence.
The " no matter what evidence you're given against them" bit. There are some religious people like that [1] but it's not true of religion as a whole. The religious person might disagree with the scientist on the interpretation of the evidence, but many of them (most of them?) agree on the need to revise their position based on new evidence.
[1] Heck, there are plenty of scientific people like that -- as Max Plank observed, "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Do things become facts? Was it not a fact that the Earth goes around the Sun before we confirmed the hypothesis?
Actually, if [s]he is able but not willing all you have shown is that [s]he is not a utilitarian.
Sorry, but facts without evidence are not facts.
Actually, they can be, we just don't know whether they are or not.
The 25th December is a red herring. A (pagan) Roman emperor (can't remember which one) wanted to unify the religions in the empire and basically ordered the Christians to have a party each 25th December or be executed. The version of Christianity that has come down to us is the one that had the party. Natural selection in action!
And yet, it is now a part of the canon of science, in spite of that. I'm still wondering when major religions will not just stop questioning, but actually declare a part of their religion, things like evolution and quantum mechanics.
Most religious people accept those things. They don't need to make them part of their religion because they can get them from science.
Having watched the video though, that's not what is done here. At no point is the phrase "you're an idiot" used, or any synonym for it. Instead, a very reasoned argument is given – religion is predicated on the idea of accepting things that you "know" to be true, or "want" to be true, or "feel" to be true no matter what evidence you're given against them. Science is predicated on immediately dismissing things as false if you're given evidence to show that they're false. These two points of view are mutually incompatible. Ergo, religion and science are not compatible things.
But it's a false view of religion. It's easy to knock down straw men.
No, not really.
There is very little in life which can be proven. Apart from logical proofs such as 1 + 1 = 2 or it is possible to colour a map using only four colours without any two nodes having identical colours, nothing can be proven.
There are extreme forms of solipsism that argue that even those can't be proven. The proof assumes that logic is valid and that there's no systematic bug in the human brain that leads us to think, for example, that if a is identical to b then b is identical to a. If we can't trust logic then we can't prove anything (and can't even be sure that we can't prove anything, and so on, ad infinitum).
Questioning faith: Discouraged. Sometimes even punished.
Actively encouraged in my experience. I've even been invited to preach agnosticism at a local church (which I did, and it went down well). You are mixing with the wrong religious people. Or more likely not mixing with any and getting your view of them from a few nutjobs that hit the media. Remember that it's only the exceptions that make the news. Man bites dog, and all that.
Actually, I'd consider it useful as a small part of psychology and anthropology.
Yes, and I'd add to that philosophy (which is a faculty it sometimes finds itself in). The study of the arguments for and against God has been invaluable over the centuries in honing our ideas of epistemology, including the continuing development of the scientific method.
Just repeat the word "Evidence?" over and over again, really..
To which the well-informed religious person will ask "what counts as evidence?" It's a fundamental point of disagreement between science and religion (or at least the more philosophically-nuanced forms of religion). And its a metaphysical disagreement, so it can't be resolved by appeals to evidence (which would be circular reasoning anyway). Essentially, these forms of religion accept subjective evidence as well as objective evidence (well, actually they recognise that the boundary is fuzzy). That means that these religious people accept all of science and more. As do most scientists, actually, in their everyday lives.
the holy book incomplete?
That's pretty much a given. I doubt even the most extreme fundamentalist would claim that the Bible records everything that ever happened.
I would say that they are philosophies, but Christianity is specifically guilty of losing any of that philosophy to the institution, which is inherently corrupt and bogus--it's not even about the philosophy any more, it's about having control and power over people
An over-generalisation. True of some branches of Christianity, but far from all.
Here's something that blows the creationist’s mind: vestigial organs/parts. If a creator independently designed each organism, then lots of stuff that shouldn't be there somehow made it into the finished product
Have you every reverse-engineered any code? Congratulations, you've just demonstrated that if God exists then [s]he is a hacker! Ok, some might have to revise their understanding of "perfection", but some of us are already there. :-)
Not just what he said. There are also stories much like his or parts of his all around the middle east at that time. Basically, The Life of Brian is probably the most accurate movie regarding the proliferance of people a lot like Jesus.
Including this bit? Oh, I do hope so :-)
Although I'm sure many of the listed scientific luminaries were fully sincere in their faith, it's worth noting that it's only very recently that Atheism as a concept, let alone a life choice, came about.
5th or 6th century BCE, as an idea that was actually expressed in Europe. Very recently in terms of the age of the Earth, I grant, but long enough ago to have been available to the scientists mentioned.
Religion and science can be fundamentally at odds; heard of young earth creationism and Biblical literalism? How about the persistent Catholic belief of transubstantiation? What about the Scientologist's e-meter, or the claim that praying can alter physical reality? It is not fundamentalist atheism to say that beliefs such as these are incompatible with science, but even so, a creationist could do science so long as they don't insert their beliefs in to their work.
I agree with most of what you say, but it's worth noting that transubstantiation isn't at odds with science because the doctrine claims that the substance is transformed but the accidents are not. Those words are used in a technical (Platonic) philosophical sense -- terms of art, if you like -- and it's only the accidents that are observable by science. Because the substance is not observable scientists might consider the doctrine meaningless or irrelevant, but the doctrine isn't actually at odds with science.
The claim that "claim that praying can alter physical reality" isn't quite at odds with science either, but that's a trickier case. It's a falsifiable hypothesis, although to avoid the ravens paradox it has to be stated as the converse claim: praying cannot alter physical reality. That claim remains unfalsified and is preferable to the converse claim on the grounds both of Occam's razor and the fact that no plausible model by which praying can alter physical reality has been identified. That means that whereas transubstantiation is not a scientific claim, the effectiveness of prayer is a scientific claim that mainstream scientific thinking currently rejects (on good grounds) but which is not proven false.
Uh... religion and science ARE fundamentally at odds. One is based on empirical study, the other is the rejection of the empirical in favour of what is effectively make-believe.
You don't actually know what religion is, do you?
Tell a Christian that the world is over a billion years old, and they will tell you that scientists only say that to get funding.
I know some Christians online who would react as you describe, but tell any of the Christians I know personally that the world is over a billion years old and they will say "Yes, I know".
But you recognise the point: it's the same technology. That's why I'd be opposed to it, because even though I know I am an information-sharing saint and am sure you are too, a lot of information is provided by jerkwads.
And if instead of a picture it was a music track or a book? And if you charged the customer for access to it? And you could still delete it after they had "bought" it? And how does that look from the other side of the fence? How is your sort of DRM any different from the "bad" sort?
Aagh -- replied to wrong post. Next time I'll get somebody who has a clue to do my posting.
Perhaps you didn't understand the bit about "However, it does not apply during approach and landing, which is what you are talking about." So for you the advice should be GET SOMEBODY WHO HAS A CLUE TO DO YOUR HOMEWORK THE NEXT TIME YOU BUY A HOUSE.