Why Mainstream Science is a Religion

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: Gryphon66

originally posted by: spy66

originally posted by: Gryphon66

originally posted by: chr0naut
But science really is vastly different than faith.

Agreed.

/thread

So what that means is that People dont need to have faith in science. That dont add up. All you People who dont understand science must have faith in science sinse you claim you do understand it.

Chr0naut stated that faith and science are vastly different. I agreed, and humorously used the "/thread" marker as that counters the OP's contention succinctly and completely.

For the record though, "having faith" in science is not required. Science speaks from observable, reproducible evidence.

Unless you are using "faith" when you mean confidence. Is that what you mean?

Signed, One of the People

But science and faith aren't mutually exclusive.

For instance, I have a Christian faith AND a love of doing science.

I would suspect that the majority of Christians are similarly not prejudiced against science.

I would have agreed with you 20 or so years ago. I'm not sure that's the case today.

At any rate, the mutuality of science and religion, i.e. two distinct things existing side-by-side, is not the issue.

The issue is the spurious claim that they are one and the same.

They aren't, as you so aptly pointed out.

originally posted by: Gryphon66

The issue is the spurious claim that they are one and the same.

This is not that difficult, folks.

". . . one and the same" implies identically alike. Where did any of us say they were identically alike?

The assertion has persistently been that various sociological and psychological behaviors, attitudes, statements etc. have morphed science in great chunks of the scientific arena into a more or less worshiped RELIGIOUS structure, system, philosophy, construct, etc.

And post after post on this thread has PROVEN EXACTLY THAT with many dozens of posts displaying exactly such attitudes of worship and RELIGIOUS FERVOR in behalf of science.

An 'objective' computer programmed to be strictly objective and given sociologically and psychologically derived definitions of RELIGION could have easily matched such writings on this thread as RELIGIOUS full of RELIGIOUS FERVOR in behalf of science.

Denying facts won't make them disappear regardless of how intensely the denial is operating.

a reply to: BO XIAN

All you're doing now is rambling and projecting your own over emotion and religious zealousness onto others who disagree with you.

a reply to: BO XIAN
SCIENCE AS RELIGION EVIDENCE:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Religion and Science
First published Tue Feb 20, 2007; substantive revision Thu May 27, 2010

plato.stanford.edu...
[Some reparagraphing due to the horribly long paragraphs in the original]

1.2 Religion
. . . What characteristics are necessary and sufficient for something's being a religion? How does one distinguish a religion from a way of life, such as Confucianism? That's not easy to say. Not all religions involve belief in something like the almighty and all-knowing, morally perfect God of the theistic religions, or even in any supernatural beings at all. (Of course a substantial majority of them do.) With respect to our present inquiry, what is of special importance is the notion of a religious belief: what does a belief have to be like to be religious?
.
. . .
.
Someone might propose theories about an omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good being as a key part of a metaphysical system: belief in such theories need not be religious.
.
And what about a system of beliefs that answers the same great human questions answered by the clear examples of religion:
.
questions about the fundamental nature of the universe
.
and what is most real and basic in it,
.
about the place of human beings in that universe,
.
about whether there is such a thing as sin or an analogue, and if there is, what there is to be done about it,
.
where we must look to improve the human condition,
.
whether human beings survive their deaths
.
and how a rational person should act?
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Will any system of beliefs that provides answers to those questions count as a religion?
.
Again, not easy to say; probably not.
.
The truth here, perhaps, is that a belief isn't religious just in itself. The property of being religious isn't intrinsic to a belief; it is rather one a belief acquires when it functions in a certain way in the life of a given person or community.
.
To be a religious belief, the belief in question would have to be appropriately connected with characteristically religious attitudes on the part of the believer,
.
such attitudes as
worship,
love,
commitment,
awe, and the like.
.
Consider someone who believes that there is such a person as God, all right, because the existence of God helps with several metaphysical problems (for example, the nature of causation, the nature of propositions, properties and sets, and the nature of proper function in creatures that are not human artifacts).
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However, this person has no inclination to worship or love God, no commitment to try to further God's projects in our world; perhaps, like the devils, he hates God and intentionally does whatever he can to frustrate God's purposes in the world. For such a person, belief that there is such a person as God need not be a religious belief. In this way it's possible that a pair of people share a given belief which functions as a religious belief in the life of only one of them.
.
It is therefore extremely difficult to give (informative) necessary and sufficient conditions for either science or religion.
Perhaps for present purposes that is not a really serious problem; we do have many excellent examples of each, and perhaps that will suffice for our inquiry.

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: BO XIAN

All you're doing now is rambling and projecting your own over emotion and religious zealousness onto others who disagree with you.

No, BO XIAN is suggesting that some believe their scientific philosophy can replace religious faith.

This replacement of a 'faith based philosophy' with a 'science based philosophy' is actually an equation of 'a scientific philosophy' with a 'religious faith', in the eyes of many.

originally posted by: chr0naut
No, BO XIAN is suggesting that some believe their scientific philosophy can replace religious faith.

This replacement of a 'faith based philosophy' with a 'science based philosophy' is actually an equation of 'a scientific philosophy' with a 'religious faith', in the eyes of many.

ABSOLUTELY INDEED.

It is incredibly fascinating

BOTH as a sociological phenomenon AND as a psychological phenomenon

to OBSERVE folks who are screaming up one side and down the other about how objective science is . . . . yada yada yada

and IN THE SAME DISCUSSION seem to have

ABSOLUTELY 0% CAPACITY to be the least bit objective in this discussion. That's really quite incredible.

As a psychologist, I usually only see THAT LEVEL of DENIAL in seriously emotionally and psychologically compromised, distorted, ATTACHMENT DISORDERED individuals--usually in some sort of interpersonal crisis or context.

Amazing. I wonder if that's been researched. I'm not aware of it, if so. But then I haven't been looking for such research for several decades.

a reply to: chr0naut

In the article I just posted . . .

such attitudes as
worship,
love,
commitment,
awe,
and the like.

THAT REALLY SAYS IT right there.

That's as suitable a criteria for describing and defining a RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVE, ATTITUDE, SET OF ATTITUDES as one might create or find.

Do some scientists worship their science? ABSOLUTELY . . . Often to the neglect of their spouses, children and other social duties and relationships.

Do some scientists love their science? ABSOLUTELY . . . Often MORE THAN they love their spouse, their children and other people and objects in their lives.

Are some scientists MORE COMMITTED to their science than they are to their spouses, children and other people and objects in their lives? ABSOLUTELY!

Are some scientists MORE IN AWE of their science than they are of anything else in their lives? ABSOLUTELY!

Other such factors would affirm the same point similarly.

Essentially, that settles the issue. It's merely a matter of observing whether the critter walks like a duck, quacks like a duck . . . or not.

a reply to: GetHyped

. . . projecting your own over emotion and religious zealousness onto others . . .

You MIGHT profitably invest in a good mirror.

a reply to: chr0naut

Here's a weighty ATLANTIC article on

RELIGION AND SCIENCE:

www.theatlantic.com...

a reply to: chr0naut

Here's another great article that asks: Is Science Religion; Is Religion Science?
.

SCIENCE AS RELIGION 3RD ARTICLE:
.
Is Science A Belief? Is Religion A Science? Recent Research
.
By Richard Mankiewicz | February 27th 2010 12:14 AM
.
www.science20.com...
.
[NOTE: I reparagraphed into shorter paragraphs and used paragraphing spacing as an extra way to focus and highlight.]
.

But what if we turn the question around:”Is science a religion?” or “Is science a belief?” The philosophy of science makes no claims to knowledge about the supernatural or metaphysical and, by not so doing, is left with an enterprise that although hugely successful is also permanently on probation. The only thing scientists can agree upon is the empirical nature of science, but the steps from observations to theory are not without philosophical problems. Thomas Kuhn thinks that scientific paradigms are essentially pictures of the world that are consistent with observations and logically coherent. But such pictures are necessarily always incomplete – at least until such time as we know everything – and our minds seem to struggle to accept this; it seems like there is an aesthetic compulsion to create harmonious images, even if that means filling in the spaces with metaphysical constructs. If both the sciences and religions are mental constructs are they both being sustained by human beliefs? Moving away from speculative into natural philosophy, what do we actually mean by having a belief?
.
Two ground-breaking papers from researchers at UCLA start to shed some light on the nature of belief: “The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief” and “Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief and Uncertainty”. The “fMRI of Belief” concentrates on the initial results whereas the “Neural Correlates” paper looks more deeply at the implications for religious beliefs.
.
Looking at the brain scans, the images showed a distinct increase in activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) for statements of belief versus disbelief. This VMPFC appears to be involved in reasoning tasks that have a high emotional salience, including modulating behaviour in response to changing rewards, selecting goal-based actions and, it seems, in on-going reality monitoring. Thus if our reality is the sum of true propositions then each manifestation of such propositions gets a positive emotional boost, as if to verify that it still holds true. Damage to the VMPFC has been associated with an inability to feel any moral consequences to planned actions as well as to confabulations, where reality-checking has seriously broken down. What was surprising was that this activity in the VMPFC was independent of the content of the propositions: mathematical propositions that were true showed the same signal as religious propositions that were deemed true by believers, as well as irreligious propositions deemed true by disbelievers. What we seem to be witnessing is part of the brain's truth checking system, and that system is powered by emotions.
.
Overall, what the research has uncovered, is that the brain seems to treat propositions and thoughts about propositions in very similar ways to other sensory inputs. Decisions taken about the truth of statements seem mediated by emotional responses, with truth and falsehood eliciting respective feelings of pleasure and pain. This appears to be independent of the content of the statements and applies equally to natural and supernatural claims.
.
This is an important step forward in understanding the neurology of belief. It also suggests that our lexical distinction between knowledge and belief may be much finer than we expected. To the believer, the belief is knowledge, and the brain reinforces this through its pleasure circuits. The mutual incomprehension between religious believers and non-believers starts to make sense. But it also means that an individual's supposed rational internal dialogue is also subject to the same processes. A person's mental map of the universe may thus be deeply flawed and yet trying to change it is a painful process that few are willing to undergo – in some ways we are all addicted to our prejudices.
.
. . .
.

originally posted by: BO XIAN

originally posted by: Gryphon66

The issue is the spurious claim that they are one and the same.

This is not that difficult, folks.

". . . one and the same" implies identically alike. Where did any of us say they were identically alike?

The assertion has persistently been that various sociological and psychological behaviors, attitudes, statements etc. have morphed science in great chunks of the scientific arena into a more or less worshiped RELIGIOUS structure, system, philosophy, construct, etc.

And post after post on this thread has PROVEN EXACTLY THAT with many dozens of posts displaying exactly such attitudes of worship and RELIGIOUS FERVOR in behalf of science.

An 'objective' computer programmed to be strictly objective and given sociologically and psychologically derived definitions of RELIGION could have easily matched such writings on this thread as RELIGIOUS full of RELIGIOUS FERVOR in behalf of science.

Denying facts won't make them disappear regardless of how intensely the denial is operating.

No, it's not "that difficult" ... read your own title again. Why mainstream "science is a religion"

In English the construction "A is B" is called an identity statement.

It's the equivalent in mathematics of saying that A=B.

That's YOUR CLAIM.

Now, you want to restate and waffle and use weasel words like "more or less" in your claim. And no, neither you nor anyone else on this thread has proven even slightly that "science is religion." It's absurd on its face, and it remains absurd.

You've been asked specifically and in general about the supposed "Church of Scientism" and all the other variations on the phrase. You can't deliver, because it doesn't exist. Show us one person, anywhere that claims to worship science. It can't be that hard if your claim is so self-evident, can it?

Just one. "I worship Science." Go 'head.

a reply to: Gryphon66

Evidently the concept that Hinduism and Christianity can both be RELIGIONS

WITHOUT being identical

is a difficult one, for you.

And now the calvacade of "sources" ...

Addressed briefly.

1. Your entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy demonstrates that there is a relationship between science and religion. That does not mean nor prove any of your contentions. In fact, it pointedly disagrees:

The Christian doctrine of creation supports a deep concord between Christian belief and science; yet it is of course compatible with this sort of concord that there also be conflict. Many have claimed that there is conflict, indeed warfare, between religion and science (Draper 1875) (White 1895). This is certainly too strong; but obviously the relation between the two has not always been smooth and irenic.

Notice phrases like "between" (indicating a relationship in two quanitities) "conflict" "warfare" "relation between the two."

So, here we have one source clearly demonstrating that science is NOT a religion.

2. The Atlantic Article: Notice again, as in the Stanford article, the use of the word conflict.

The conflict between religion and science is what naturally occurs to our minds when we think of this subject.

It would, however, be missing the point to think that we need not trouble ourselves about the conflict between science and religion.

In the first place, there has always been a conflict between religion and science; and in the second place, both religion and science have always been in a state of continual development.

Notably conflict between two things occurs when they are not the same thing.

3. Science20 Article: A really interesting article dealing with two recent academic papers analysing how the brain reacts to knowledge processing. Here's a prominent aspect of the author's conclusion:

One theory is that religious people seem unable to expose their religious beliefs to the same kind of reality testing as they would other propositions about the world. But as this research shows, this has nothing to do with their intelligence or ability to be rational in other spheres.

This is similar to the proposition that Chr0naut has made here several times: for some, religion and science reside in their minds "side by side" as it were. However, that still indicates that there is a difference between the two.

Again from the Science20 article:

The philosophy of science makes no claims to knowledge about the supernatural or metaphysical and, by not so doing, is left with an enterprise that although hugely successful is also permanently on probation. The only thing scientists can agree upon is the empirical nature of science, but the steps from observations to theory are not without philosophical problems.

So even though the author of the essay is willing to offer philosophical critiques of science and scientific methods, it's fairly obvious that they are completely aware that science is not religion (as they point out the differences BETWEEN the two quite clearly and repeatedly).



Three strikes.

originally posted by: BO XIAN
a reply to: Gryphon66

Evidently the concept that Hinduism and Christianity can both be RELIGIONS

WITHOUT being identical

is a difficult one, for you.

Not difficult at all.

I've listed several religions, several times.

What a specious and non-rational comment to make. Can you quote me saying that Christianity and Hinduism are the same?

Nope.

Both are religions; neither are sciences.

a reply to: BO XIAN

Let's address this directly.

You claim that science is a religion.

Quote someone saying that they worship science as a god.

Now find a group of people that identify themselves as worshippers of science.

When you can do either of those things, you approach a rational proof of your claims.

In their absence, the irrationality of your false equivalency is blatant and glaring.

originally posted by: Gryphon66

originally posted by: spy66

originally posted by: Gryphon66

originally posted by: chr0naut
But science really is vastly different than faith.

Agreed.

/thread

So what that means is that People dont need to have faith in science. That dont add up. All you People who dont understand science must have faith in science sinse you claim you do understand it.

Chr0naut stated that faith and science are vastly different. I agreed, and humorously used the "/thread" marker as that counters the OP's contention succinctly and completely.

For the record though, "having faith" in science is not required. Science speaks from observable, reproducible evidence.

Unless you are using "faith" when you mean confidence. Is that what you mean?

Signed, One of the People

What Science is, is one thing. How People perceive it is anothter. It is the exact same thing With religion.

People who dont understand science or what they read within science, or images or videos they display, have no ground to state it is objective. Only if you can do the tests and observations by Your selves would you have the grounds to state it is abjective. Its just like asking a beliver in God to ask God to show him self.

originally posted by: spy66

originally posted by: Gryphon66

originally posted by: spy66

originally posted by: Gryphon66

originally posted by: chr0naut
But science really is vastly different than faith.

Agreed.

/thread

So what that means is that People dont need to have faith in science. That dont add up. All you People who dont understand science must have faith in science sinse you claim you do understand it.

Chr0naut stated that faith and science are vastly different. I agreed, and humorously used the "/thread" marker as that counters the OP's contention succinctly and completely.

For the record though, "having faith" in science is not required. Science speaks from observable, reproducible evidence.

Unless you are using "faith" when you mean confidence. Is that what you mean?

Signed, One of the People

What Science is, is one thing. How People perceive it is anothter. It is the exact same thing With religion.

People who dont understand science or what they read within science, or images or videos they display, have no ground to state it is objective. Only if you can do the tests and observations by Your selves would you have the grounds to state it is abjective. Its just like asking a beliver in God to ask God to show him self.

Are you arguing that what things actually are is limited what SOME people perceive (or misperceive) them to be?

That's merely a slight variation on the fallacious "argument from ignorance" coupled with a pallid "argument from authority."

In short, neither are rationally meaningful, both are absurd.

a reply to: BO XIAN

Do some scientists worship their science? ABSOLUTELY . . . Often to the neglect of their spouses, children and other social duties and relationships.

Do some scientists love their science? ABSOLUTELY . . . Often MORE THAN they love their spouse, their children and other people and objects in their lives.

Are some scientists MORE COMMITTED to their science than they are to their spouses, children and other people and objects in their lives? ABSOLUTELY!

Are some scientists MORE IN AWE of their science than they are of anything else in their lives? ABSOLUTELY!

Could you provide specific examples?

A side note: I know many scientists who are devout followers of assorted religions. They would be offended by your false equivalency.

sci·ence
ˈsīəns/
noun
the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

re·li·gion
rəˈlijən/
noun
the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.

These definitions appear to be not identical. There's your first clue.

originally posted by: Gryphon66

Notice phrases like "between" (indicating a relationship in two quanitities) "conflict" "warfare" "relation between the two."

So, here we have one source clearly demonstrating that science is NOT a religion.

You still don't understand the point of the OP. no one is saying the pure act of studying natural and physical empirical observation is religion, but it is those who adhere to the dogmatic doctrine and disallow the honest questioning who have establish a faith-based system and excommunicate anyone who defies. It's constantly demonstrated throughout this thread! People have called me scientifically illiterate solely for the fact that I'm pointing out these weaknesses in the scientific community - that is, their inability to reconsider old theories based on new evidence and the blind zealousness with which they dismiss such empirical evidence.