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Again, what is the ratio of scientists on Earth to the ratio of religious people on Earth? Compare that ratio to the ratio of people killed by science and religion, respectfully.
So, do numbers matter, or don't they? You can't have it both ways, by saying that numbers don't matter and then trying to rationalize the huge numbers of deaths caused by religion by saying there are more religious people on earth than scientists. Pick a position and defend it, don't choose two positions and swing back and forth as you find to be convenient.
I do note that you left something out. Religion claims to be a force for morality. If this is so, why don't we see religion saving more lives, rather than creating death and anguish.
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Science does not "make sense" as much as it finds patterns and analyzes the natural world.
That is exactly what science does. It makes sense of the world by finding patterns and analyzing them. It then goes beyond that to find underlying reasons, makes predictions, and becomes something that we can use. But thanks for agreeing with me.
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Science also brought us nuclear bombs, germ warfare, global warming, etc.
All bad things to be sure. But nuclear power can be used for benevolent purposes such as generating electricity, germ warfare is the flip side of understanding germs and curing disease, global warming is bad, but science is looking for solutions.
Nobody ever claimed that science was exclusivly a force for good, whereas religion claims this all the time.
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And who said "a world without science" anyway? I never did. Science has its place and religion has its place as well.
Science does, religion is largely useless.
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Most REAL scientists (read: not wearing fedoras and making angst ridden youtube videos) understand this.
Nonsense. Some do. Others don't. That is simply an opinion.
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Again, when you remove literalist interpretation of creation myths (which were never meant to be taken literally anyway) there is no war between science and religion being waged anywhere but in the heads of Dawkin's Witnesses and religious fundamentalists, both of whom are equally lost causes.
But people DO take creation myths seriously, and it does conflict with science. There are congressmen who deny climate change for religious reasons. People fight against abortion because they believe that itty bitty clumps of cells have souls. The fact is people deny science for religious reasons, so it is quite clear that there is a war of ideas going on.
Rock of Ages is a good read and is intended to make one think. I have recommended it plus several of Gould's other books on this forum but not sure anyone took it up.
Who here can correctly say they do not owe their lives to science?
Then who here can correctly say they owe their lives to religion?
loaded question. Because if you used "false hope" to "get your mind back into control" then it did work. And it is as real as putting a cast on. And for some, the injury is so bad they need a cane for the rest of their life. And that's ok.
The problem arises when people try and tell us "we all have to have "THIS CANE" or we are wrong.
loaded question. Because if you used "false hope" to "get your mind back into control" then it did work. And it is as real as putting a cast on. And for some, the injury is so bad they need a cane for the rest of their life. And that's ok.
The problem arises when people try and tell us "we all have to have "THIS CANE" or we are wrong.
False hope and lies would only work in the short term. The placebo effect is definitely statistically real, but so is the idea that things that "scientifically work" should surpass a mere equivalency of efficacy with the placebo effect. False hope is beloved by many, but also seen by many as an insult. And an insult can hardly ever "placebo" you to betterment.
We all can do as we see fit if it's not physically damaging to others or other legitimate types of damaging, but we all also have the right to say "we all SHOULD use this cane or we are wrong," and then explain why.
Makes it very difficult to reply to you. It would be nice if you would learn how to use the QUOTE function correctly. Everyone else can. Plus putting your comments within MY quotes makes it look like I said things I never did. But at least you are replying to something I wrote this time rather than ignoring it, so I should treat that as a step forward at least.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
You have some mistaken notion that religion is somehow responsible for stifling scientific advances.
I expressed no such sentiment in the post you were replying to, so once again you appear to be replying to positions that have very little to do with the content of the post you are hitting the reply button on.
That said however: Quite often it is the case. One need only observe the behaviors of religious creationist nut jobs in school boards of places like Texas, the mangling of text books they engage in, and the court cases they take in places like Denver. In fact the religious during such court cases very openly tried to change the definition of science itself at a very fundamental and damaging level.
Meanwhile advances like Stem Cell research are hindered for very little reason other than religious concerns about when some "soul".... which no one has taken any time at all to evidence the existence of.... might enter the zygote at conception.
And once the Muslim world was the forerunner of the scientific world. And it was religious immans that put out the word the manipulation of numbers was some sort of evil. And almost overnight in relative terms was the Muslim world destroyed in scientific advancements.
The list goes on, but suffice to say that the discourse between religion and science has been a one way discussion involving the steady erosion of the former by the latter, and the push back against this erosion has been very vocal and very damaging to our progresses.
And when you have the religious pumping out this kind of propaganda nonsense as in this image here you very much are going to undermine scientific progress by undermining its uptake and perceptions in the minds of Christians. Watch the 2 or 3 hour long talks by Catholic Biologist Kenneth Miller on You Tube as he speaks VERY well and VERY strongly on the effect religious has had, and is continuing to have, on Science in the US and the position of the US in the world leader board of Science and Scientific Progress.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
Other science! That's right! We have textbooks that tell us "we now know"
This is not an issue of science at all, but the vagaries of the functionality of the educational system. Your concerns are well taken, but entirely misplaced by blaming science for this. Scientific progress is slow. But the speed at which Scientific Progress trickles down into the Text Books at University Level, let alone High School level, is much slower. And I agree this is a bad thing and needs to be monumentally improved. But achieving this has all kinds of issues, not just in the US but in the EU and more.
It is WORSE in the US of course as the content of text books is disproportionately controlled by local school boards, which are generally made up by publicly elected representatives that do not even know the subjects upon which they presume to manipulate the content of. As such you have religiously motivated players attempting to remove swaths of history and science that they are uncomfortable with from those text books in order to stultify the education of our youth to leave their ignorance prime and fertile ground to sow the seeds of religion.
But even in massively secular countries, the process of trickling current science down into the text books is painfully slow. It is comical to watch you moan about religion being blamed for things that YOU feel it is innocent of (but I have explained how it is not) but in the next breath you complain that science is to blame for this.... when it has nothing to do with it. It is entirely the processes involved in our education systems that are to blame here, not science.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
Exactly. Only they graduate from college, and go into the world of accreditation, and realize that nothing they study will matter because they have to convince a bunch of people hostile to their ideas to believe them.
And that is a GOOD thing. I think "hostile" is an emotive and misplaced word here that you choose just for effect. But yes, the reality is when you bring a new idea into the world of peer review, the methodology of science is one that does not take it on face value.... regardless of who you are and what your past achievements may or may not be..... but evaluates it on their own merits. If you want to portray that as "hostility" then so be it, but labeling it thus takes nothing away from the utility of that approach. The way science SHOULD be done, and mostly is, was described well in an anecdote that went as follows:
“I have previously told the story of a respected elder statesman of the Zoology Department at Oxford when I was an undergraduate. For years he had passionately believed, and taught, that the Golgi Apparatus (a microscopic feature of the interior of cells) was not real... Every Monday afternoon it was the custom for the whole department to listen to a research talk by a visiting lecturer. One Monday, the visitor was an American cell biologist who presented completely convincing evidence that the Golgi Apparatus was real. At the end of the lecture, the old man strode to the front of the hall, shook the American by the hand and said - with passion - 'My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years.'”
That one anecdote shows you how science, and individual scientists SHOULD be acting. If there is "old school boy" favortism like you described in your own anecdotal quote, then that is not the fault of science but individual scientists, and where caught actually engaged in it they should be treated accordingly. But I do not believe it happens that often and your own quote does not claim it does, just that there is a danger it might. And in a global communication age it is LESS likely to happen because where it does, someone on the other side of the planet with no vested interest in looking after his mates, will tear the Paper apart if it is indeed worthless. The method of peer review is no longer handing your paper down to your mate down the hall. Your ideas in todays world get peer reviewed and torn apart as readily as does a message put out on twitter.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
Ultimately, science is blaming religion for something it has little to do with. And that's what's ticking me off.
Then prepare to be ticked off because I have detailed about how it very much has a lot to do with these things.
You should make it a habit to log off CD when you are not in front of your computer and have company over. Your grandkids are posting under your name .
Since you clearly have decided to dodge and ignore my last reply to you, I will skip forward to your subsequent post instead.
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Originally Posted by victorianpunk
Yes, people have done awful things in the name of religious legalism. That is not disputed. All I am saying is that plenty of people have been murdered and tortured in the name of science as well.
I have always thought it was too simplistic to throw out "They did it in the name of" commentary. And the theists have been waiting with drooling mouths for a case they can point to where someone kills "in the name of atheism" too so they can cite it with abandon.... and quite a few of them jumped on two recent multiple murders to try and do just that, but they failed.
A more mature discourse would be reached however by observing the tenets of a religion, of atheism, or science, and see if one can follow an actual causal link between those things and the horrific actions someone engaged in in their name.
And this is where rhetoric like yours would fail. Because there is nothing in science or the methodology of science that is a causal link to the kinds of events you cherry pick to present to us. Rather science is the merely the value free methodology of evaluating data that comes before it. Nothing more. HOW that data is compiled is a different subject where we have to have a moral discussion. And an ongoing moral discussion. And BOTH our successes and failures in engaging in that discourse are ours as a species, not that of science or someones attempt to call science evil.
You say "Science needs data" but it says nothing about how that data should be compiled. That decision lies elese where. The medicine of organ transplant needs organs too. It says NOTHING about how the organs should be obtained. It is WE as a moral species that decide that should be obtained only from the recently dead, or from donors. If WE as a species decide tomorrow that for every 10 people needing organs we should kidnap and eviscerate one young healthy human being..... then that moral choice lies at OUR feet. Not at the feet of medicine and medicine would become no more or less good or evil for us having made that choice.
Atheism too is essentially nothing more than a lack of belief in god. So it is impossible to form a causal link between THAT and actions performed by people claiming to be doing it in the name of atheism.
With religion however the playing ground for this evaluation is not so clear set. We very much CAN link the actions of people to tenets of their religion. Islam is the low hanging fruit of this of course, but it is not the sole example. The multiple parents in the US for example who watch their children die painfully of easily treatable medical conditions, SOLELY because their concept of an after life, and their gods opinion on medical intervention.... is a DIRECT causal link between their dogma and their actions.
The people who stand in the way of investment into protecting our environment and preventing climate change also contain people who are doing so solely because they think the time table towards the End of Days is such that any such investment into a long term future is a waste of resources and superfluous to requirements for that time table. The list goes on, and no small length but suffice to say the attempt to conflate the evils done "in the name of" religion with that of science, or atheism, or other such things.... is doomed to failure and something many have to grow and mature past into a higher level of discourse that is actually relevant.
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