New Science Routinely Criticized and Demonized. Why? (priests, Baptists, Satan)
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It's interesting that for the religious hallucination conjectured as "hell", the closest physical approximation we have is our lovely sun, a life-enabling star without which we would be nothing.
It's interesting that for the religious hallucination conjectured as "hell", the closest physical approximation we have is our lovely sun, a life-enabling star without which we would be nothing.
I think it's interesting and symbolic that the original gods of Hawaii were natural gods, i.e. Sun, Moon, thunder etc. but shortly after Missionaries arrived in the Islands from New England in the USA, Hawaii's royal rulers officially cast the ancient Hawaiian religious system aside. That's kinda how it goes isn't it?
SPREAD THE WORD!
Last edited by Melvin.George; 12-07-2009 at 05:55 AM..
This is a deflection from my question it is not any kind of answer.
My point was that you're claiming all sorts of problems for "scientism", but the objections are really the same for any sort of morality. You claim religion provides something better, but the evidence doesn't bear this out. I'd much rather look at the evidence rather than some hypothetical examples of how maybe sometimes religion might prevent some of these problems, in theory.
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However if you must know your claim of individual revelation would need some backing that it is divine or it is just a personal matter relevant only to you. Any individual can claim divine revelation, but for it to be valid there needs to be corroboration. In certain cases there also needs to be evidence that you are in connection with something that can not be explained by nature. Further this claimed revelation is inconsistent with existing revelations of all major religions I'm aware of. This makes it an "extraordinary supernatural claim" so I would need extraordinary proof and you don't have it.
If the church has to gather objective evidence and find consensus to back up it's claims of morality, why can't non-religious moral systems use the same approach? It seems that you're just adding "and it's OK with god, too" to the whole process and claiming that something makes it superior.
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Scientism has never been the official ideology of any nation so far as I know.
Does it even really exist? I mean, in the sense that you're using it here - are there any significant number of people who think that science alone is a good basis for morality? I've never heard the claim. I've heard that science can explain the basis of some parts of morality or similar claims, but I've never read or heard anything about it being or providing a moral code on its own.
In case you haven't seen it, what I'm after is something along the lines of The Thermodynamic Law Party, except for real.
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However philosophies that contain atheism, and often elements of sympathy to scientism, have killed millions of people and ruined societies.
How is atheism related to scientism? You've already admitted that many of the issues you have with scientific morality have come from religious believers.
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There's the Cultural Revolution of China, the Anti-clerical regime in Mexico, and Enver Hoxha in Albania. And I chose those because they are not "merely" Marxist regimes, they are specific periods that were intent on rationalizing or anti-religion rather than just being Marxist. I'm not sure the Mexican regime even was Marxist.
Again, do any of these have anything to do with drawing morality strictly from science? Or are they just non-religious political movements?
My point was that you're claiming all sorts of problems for "scientism", but the objections are really the same for any sort of morality. You claim religion provides something better, but the evidence doesn't bear this out. I'd much rather look at the evidence rather than some hypothetical examples of how maybe sometimes religion might prevent some of these problems, in theory.
What I mean is that in Catholicism, or several other denominations or ethical codes, there are clearly rules against experimenting on people against their will. I do not see how you even hypothetically get that from science and therefore it's a criticism of scientism that does not apply to other systems.
Also that people may go against principles I don't think implies principles are unimportant or not able to influence behavior. The Catholic Church was much more against eugenics than about any atheist or science-revering group. As they were more against euthanasia or experimentation on the disabled than almost all atheists. The only atheists I know of who objected to those things were not scientists, they were objecting on the basis of equality not reason. Equality is in many ways a very irrational thing to believe in when you get down to it.
I understand if you don't get what I'm saying or don't want to get it. Maybe I should repeat here what I'm actually talking about. Scientism is simply the belief that science or the scientific method is the sole arbiter of truth and falsity. It is not a system of morality as such, which is why I stated several morals can't be gleaned from science, but by claiming science is the only valid source of answers it tends to dovetail into morality. Or, as I've tried to indicate, negate much in morality.
Also possibly I veered close to equating scientism to atheism, it's just that many atheists here seem to be hyper-rational scientistic (as opposed to scientific) types. Atheism does not inevitably mean scientism although the form of atheism I see most online tends to be of scientistic kind. Now if this was a place full of romantic libertarian atheists or existentialists or something else I probably would have been better at avoiding anything confusing the two. Still I'm not sure I'm as confusing or difficult as you seem to think. Although maybe I'm wrong on that.
However philosophies that contain atheism, and often elements of sympathy to scientism, have killed millions of people and ruined societies.
As if the catholic church's crusades didn't slaughter untold thousands, all in the name of "repentance" for the brainwashed zombies' [soldiers] personal "sins".
Some jewish writers have deemed these catholic atrocities as the "first holocaust", and say it laid the foundation for the nazi version.
As if the catholic church's crusades didn't slaughter untold thousands, all in the name of "repentance" for the brainwashed zombies' [soldiers] personal "sins".
Some jewish writers have deemed these catholic atrocities as the "first holocaust", and say it laid the foundation for the nazi version.
I would be very wary of the material on the website to which Tantalust has linked. It is run by an agnostic who appears to be pushing an agnostic, Unitarian Universalist "one world religion"-type agenda under the guise of "religious tolerance." There may be "truth" there, but it is likely mixed in with a lot of propaganda.
Although they claim inclusiveness to all religions including "Christianity," it appears to be an apostate Christianity in the vein of Matthew Fox/Basil Pennington/Leonard Sweet/Robert Schuller.
As if the catholic church's crusades didn't slaughter untold thousands, all in the name of "repentance" for the brainwashed zombies' [soldiers] personal "sins".
Some jewish writers have deemed these catholic atrocities as the "first holocaust", and say it laid the foundation for the nazi version.
There are similarities between a few Nazi policies and Catholic policies on Jews, but Catholicism never took the racial idea of it. Hence you do not see anything like the "Holocaust" until after you get racial ideas, racial ideas that largely came from pseudo-science and pseudo-anthropology. Jews in the Papal States I think were mistreated but the Roman Jewish community exists to this day.
The highly anti-Catholic apostate Catholic Joseph McCabe estimated Catholicism killed three million over a period of ten centuries or more. Even if we credit him this we get a figure roughly equal to what the Cultural Revolution did in a decade or so.
And this isn't even really comparing like to like as his figure likely includes wars rather than just internal repressions like the Cultural Revolution. The Crusades were a badly ran war caused by rival claims among two expansionist powers. The Spanish Inquisition and Albigensian Crusade would be closer, but would get you much lower numbers.
Militant atheists do not hide their arrogance and their superiority; they proudly exhibit it whenever they have the opportunity. Their web sites are replete with pride, impertinent comments, tangible sarcasm and copious ridicule of religion. The following are just a few examples of their arrogant and condescending attitudes and statements.
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