I was having an im conversation with
And I, the unabashed liberal, proceeded to defend religion as an attempt to make sense of the world that predates science, and provides answers (of unverifiable quality) that science is incapable of providing, for instance, where the world comes from. Both are sensemaking social constructs. Both have their own, usually separate, institutions and communities. And, for that matter, both types of community and institution have done bad things (the inquisition and skinner boxes/molgrim experiments) and both have done good things (public service including education, health care, and housing, granted all with a religious slant, and say, penicilin and the internal combustion engine).
I’ll summarize andrew’s side with a few quotes that I’m taking the liberty of reposting (and will edit if you want me to, Andrew). Here is his view when he’s had the time to carefully compose his thoughts, I’ll be more careful about reposting im conversations in the future, mi amigo.
Religion had its purpose, gave society the initial well being, be good to your neighbor laws, but it is time for us to find a new way to be moral and ethical, without relying upon religion to justify it.
Reason/science should supply what we need in this regard.
In response to the question if science can answer the origins of the universe and if there is an all powerful being:
Not currently, but those questions aren’t worth asking if youve thought about them enough (when compared to more relevant, pragmatic questions such as social issues and foreign policy in which religion plays a large role, and in my view most often negative) religion can’t explain them either, not the way youre asking science to explain it, with the burden of proof.
And, so, gentle readers, I ask you to share your take on religion, science, and their interrelations.
First point – hopefully more to come
i think if intelligence was injected into people, and religion sucked out, the world would be a better place.
I think at first thought, this sounds totally and utterly likely. But, as I continue to think about this, it seems less and less likely that would be the case. The first thing that really comes to mind are all of those Prime Directive episodes of the various Star Trek series. You cannot influence a society’s natural development externally. Advancing a culture’s technology/ideology from the outside could and arguably most likely annihilate that culture. Let’s say we did inject the world with this “misc.intellect”. For the sake of argument, I won’t argue the questions of “Well, who decides what’s intelligent?” or “Are we talking about all manner of the different types of personal and social intelligence?” for now, because that is another ball of wax entirely. We’ll just call it a misc.general.intellect buff. Ok, so everyone gets it. Great, now we’re all raving geniuses. But do we possess the experience that one gathers as we accumulate opinions and stances and skills? The intellect isn’t enough, and just can’t be foisted upon the masses, even if it were biologically/psychologically possible. People need the context of that intelligence, those stances… the experience garnered from the learning to really be able to affect positive change. And that can’t be rushed, forced or coerced.
Also, if everyone just magically gets this radical intellectual boost… what about the working class of the world? What if the laborers and fast food workers and the people who do all the jobs no one else wants to do suddenly become smart with everyone else? Everyone would want the jobs that reward intellect with challenge and prestige. Society would totally and utterly collapse in on itself, regardless of even factoring the absence of religion into this. Besides, even if you could suck out religion, you’d still have faith in its place. If you sucked that out, would life even be worth living? What price is too high for a world free of injustice and hatred and inequality?
Re: First point – hopefully more to come
Statements such as this weren’t meant to be part of a logical argument in any way, so it really won’t stand up to analysis. It was more of an IM converation speak where basically it expresses that if suddenly people stopped making decisions based on their religious beliefs and instead relied about logic and reaon, the world would be better for it. At least thats what I believe.
Re: First point – hopefully more to come
Oh no, don’t get me wrong. In the abstract, I totally agree. It’s just a shame so many people, either by circumstance or choice follow anything blindly, regardless of how much “sense” it makes.
While I think IM conversation fragments don’t express my argument in the best way, the gist is still correct. I also believe science is a form of religion, its just that true science doesn’t rely on dogmatism to substantiate itself.
edits:
“Religion had its purpose, *gave society* the initial well being, be good to your neighbor laws, but *it is* time for us to find a new way *to be moral and ethical, without relying upon religion to justify it.
Reason/science should supply what we need in this regard.”
In response to the question if science can answer the origins of the universe and if there is an all powerful being:
Not currently, but those questions aren’t worth asking if youve thought about them enough (when compared to more relevant, pragmatic questions such as social issues and foreign policy in which religion plays a large role, and in my view most often negative) religion can’t explain them either, not the way youre asking science to explain it, with the burden of proof.
Also, next time you decide to quote me in a public way from a private conversation, please let me know first. 😛
So, borrowing from other comments on this post, when you say religion, what do you mean? Do you mean unproven assertions of values, like “murder is bad, lying is bad, adultery is bad, mixing meat and dairy is bad, circumcision is good, respecting your parents is good, caring for the sick and hungry is good, etc”, the explanatory mythos “In the beginning, the world was without form & void”, communities of faith, some combination (possibly all) of the above, or another unlisted option?
Religion, on the whole, tells us that we must unquestionably accept a certain untestable metaphysical framework for understanding the universe. Fundamentally, I can’t accept as good a rigidly dogmatic mythology formulated thousands of years ago by primitive nomadic tribes without enough sense to get the fuck out of the desert. Still, I see some value in using myth to understand life, death, and the whole shebang, so long as we recognize a myth for what it is—a lovely ficitious story that distills a complex human experience into a more intelligible form.
Science tells us that there’s no harm in questioning our beliefs. If they are true, then a little more experimental verification certainly can’t hurt. If they are false, we’ll eventually discard them as frauds, and good riddance—we are better off without them clouding our understanding of the universe. At the core of all this question is the rather obvious realization that we, even in the 21st century, don’t know much about the nature of things.
“Devil’s Advocate”
Science presents a very complicated view of the universe, which does a great (and progressively better) job of explaining the way the world is. It does not, however, come with any implied or explicit values system to shape it, save, perhaps that the satisfaction of curiosity is good. Was the discovery of nuclear fission a good thing? What do you think the former residents of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Chernobyl would have to say about it? Fission is a product of science.
Religion does come with explicit and implicit values systems attached. Strong ones. They say what is important and what is not. Not everyone likes to ponder moral complexities. And while it doesn’t take much to convince people that murder is not cool, customs surrounding property ownership, paying taxes, and decent treatment for enemy combatants, for example, may be murkier.
There is value there.
It’s hard to play Devil’s Advocate when you agree strongly with someone. =)
i think you would need to clearly define religion and the elements of it to which one would be opposed. after all, atheism is a religion isn’t it? so in order to remove religion you are then forcing people to define their lives via the absence of a higher authority or spirituality in general and a lot of the cultural belief systems in place uphold and enforce a moral code. if it were suddenly removed, would the moral code remain intact in the same fashion?
i am against forcing one’s beliefs upon someone else, or enforcing varying moral codes upon someone else and this seems to be where people are generally against religion in that you can’t logically define an opposition to what is considered morally inappropriate behavior outside of the concept of it being offensive or wrong to a higher power (or unnatural).
Science is largely based on theories many of which can not be proven as absolute fact just like religious mythology. Also, like religion it is always evolving and changing. Science has been able to advance more quickly based on the rapid advance of thechnology its own advances contribute to. Religion advances with society, but more slowly as it has no internal mechanism to rapidly expand its advancement rate. To deny that religion has progressed doesn’t make sense to me as the church is nowhere near where it was in the middle ages, or even where it was in the 60’s.
hrm. guess that’s my random jumbled thoughts from work.
Having gone from devout Catholicism to bitter atheism between 3rd and 6th grade, I had a bit of an experience with moral upheaval. And in my atheist phase, I did some stupid stuff on the order of petty theft/shoplifting. Never got caught for it. That’s something that’s embarrassing to me, though not hard for me to admit. And I looked at what I was becoming, determined I didn’t like it very much, and tried to reformulate myself in a way that I would like what I was becoming. That involved inventing my own moral code. It’s been tweaked since, but I like who I’m becoming much better these days.
Some of the people I know who have been raised atheists have clearer notions of right and wrong than people raised with external moral authority figures, which i find pretty interesting.
And your ‘jumbled thoughts’ sound pretty clear/good to me.
Nerf paladins.
STFU. Nerf Shamans ftw! lol
Haha – Warriors are a little overpowered now IMHO. 55 warlock representin’
I’m a retired warlock. There was a paladin guild out there that refused to party with warlocks. It’s discrimination, I tell ya! Down with organized religion!
ftw = ???
“4 teh win”, I assume.
I am curious what sort of ethics would be generated by “reason/science alone”.
I suspect some axioms would be needed.
Let me start you off with a few
Mike’s axioms for a moral/ethical system derived from reason/science alone
I’ll post more if I think of them.
(waits for someone to mention game theory, tit-for-tat and the invisible hand)
“I am curious what sort of ethics would be generated by “reason/science alone”.”
The first thought that comes to mind here is eugenics.