Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

You guys have this argument all screwed up. We all know you can't put the same level of scientific testing to religion because of one simple reason previously stated.

Science, past the theoretical and mathematical concepts, relying on testing. We can talk and talk all day, but the matter is that you can put any major concept of religion into scientific testing. Without testing, without data, it's a discussion of theory.

We can put CERTAIN elements of bible events to scientific recreation, but that doesn't prove most current contexts, especially modern miracles. (Many of which are well documented. The Catholic church has few dubious miracles. For a religion that still has exorcisms, they do a damn good job of investigating "legit" miracles.)

But again to my main point, you guys are completely wrong in this discussion.

You shouldn't be thinking about testing religion on scientific standards, as it's impossible. Now, if you used philosophical standards... *wink wink*

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

No.

#1: Can we observe him?
#2: Can we observe his actions?
#3: Can we observe any effects of his actions?
#4: Is there any actual evidence to suggest that he exists?

Going after a hypothesis is secondary to answering those questions. If something isn't even observable in any way, it does not exist in the empirical sense. Extradimensional existence that has no effect on our World is irrelevant. You'd be just as right to be arguing that Mister Mxyzptlk exists in the 5th dimension and we just can't see him.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

Listen, its very easy. There is one term that brings it all together; "moot point."
Its like many have said, it will not work to hold that kind of concept to a scientific standard because it is just that, a concept. No one said, "I believe that noahs arc existed so therefore it is a scientific fact." Even in a previous question about allowing guns in schools. You can believe it, but to claim it as scientific fact does not coincide because it was not tested through those means.
If you really want to know why it doesnt receive the same kind of scrutiny then do an 'experiment'. Go up to as many religion geared individuals and you can and try to 'scientifically' prove to them that God doesn't exist just to see what their reaction will be. To 'prove' my point ill go along with something that was said earlier about being able to "insert God here." You could go all day trying to prove evolution to me but you will get nowhere because of one simple bit of logic. Say, "evolution happened through mutations in genes" and ill say "God made those mutations happen", can you scientifically prove that God did not do that? The answer is no, you cannot and until you can then i will not change my opinion. Moot point.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

the "you can't prove or disprove it" argument is just a weak excuse to believe in something that makes you feel better. it has no relevance, no sense, and no reason to exist. anything i can imagine, going down this road, has the same legitimacy as a god from any religion with millions of faithful followers, then. good point.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

To you, as a clearly non-religious person. To a religious person with faith, God has relevance, sense and a damn good reason to exist.

Just because you elect to not follow their belief system doesn't make their belief system irellevant, nonsensical and pointless, just irellevant, nonsensical and pointless TO YOU.

You'd take the same general tack in answering objections to your belief system, but that doesn't make the system equally legitimate.

I'm not actually sure why this thread got revived or why this angle on the discussion is still going on. I thought this sort of thing was put to rest back when I pointed out

You're pointing to a container of vanilla ice cream, clearly labelled "Vanilla Ice Cream" and criticizing it for not being chocolaty enough. If it was claiming to be chocolate ice cream, you'd have a really good and well-founded objection that it wasn't chocolatey enough, but since it never claimed to be chocolate, the degree to which it is or isn't chocolate is TOTALLY IRELLEVANT.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

I think it's a gross oversimplification to just make the argument that science and religion should stay out of each other's faces because they are distinct realms of thought. Yes, religion at its core is a construct, and as such it is impossible to scientifically determine the legitimacy of religion at the most fundamental level. However, this does not mean that the two things are really distinct. Religious ideals usually lead to religious assertions about the how the natural world is structured, and when this line is crossed, science definitely has the right to get involved.

Assertions pertaining to such things as the age of the universe, or the existence of intelligent design, definitely fall within the scientific method to test. And, should these things be scientifically shown to be most likely false (which they pretty much have been), then this still says a lot about the religion itself as a construct. Logically, if natural observations result from religious concepts, and those natural observations are false, then it's an easy logical jump to conclude that there's something wrong with that construct of religion in the first place. Of course, this falls far from actually proving the existence or non-existence of a God, but it does suggest that the particular treatment of such a God that a particular religious construct has used is somewhat flawed.

The major problem, though, is not that science should not be allowed to test certain aspects of religion, but it is more that science is inherently flawed. Testing and repeated testing only yields statistics - we can only say that things are most likely true, but we can never really show that anything is definitely the case. After all, 99.9999999% is still not 100%. And, for this, science can never really show that a certain religion is definitely flawed, but only that a flaw most likely exists.

So, yes, the existence of God or gods is definitely not really something that science can ever say anything about, but there is something to be said about what certain religions say that the existence of such a God translates to in terms of our world. And, there are plenty of intelligent scientists who use this concept to talk about certain aspects of religion. There are also a considerable number of intelligent religious people who argue for religion in the context of science. I've seen and read books that argue for religion in scientific terms, and while I personally didn't find many of the arguments satisfying, there was still an impressive amount of scientific detail.

The point is, I reiterate, that at their most basic levels, science and religion are separate, but as we look past this basic level, then there is a noticeable overlap. So I think it's just being lazy (and, to a degree, politically correct, which to me is even worse than being lazy) to just nonchalantly throw this argument away as "irrelevant."

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

When you have hundreds and, in most cases thousands of years of scripture, teachings, dogma and generations upon generations of followers, that argument holds some weight. When something is the "generally accepted norm" you often find yourself needing to prove otherwise.

Ironically, this is the case with science. Many theories still hold significant weight just because they are widely accepted as true, but not proven factual. E.G. gravity. You need to disprove them completely, or at least enough so to make it seem outstandingly unlikely, to disprove them.

It's not the strongest argument, but when your best argument against a point contrived on the concept of belief and opinion is "thats stupid" then you don't have much sway, do you?

Is sounds like your agreeing with me. Are you agreeing with me?

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

Criticizing a religion for failing to stand up to scientific rigor is only relevant if that religion has made any claim that it does in fact stand up to scientific rigor.

Otherwise, you're straw manning the religious claim by misrepresenting it as "Scientific claims we can expose the flaws in" when it has never suggest that is what it is.

This has nothing to do with political correctness, this has to do with apples and oranges.

I'll direct you, once more, to the claim I quoted above, especially in regards to the "intelligent religious people" versus "religious people" distinction I drew.

When you say that you've seen all these cases of religious people trying to use science to prove their beliefs, well yes, I've seen them too, I've read several books on christian apologetics, and looked into several "scientific" proofs for ID and so forth. The reason you find these things not very compelling is that they aren't very compelling. They tend to either try to justify after the fact, or just stretch credulity much further than the broadest extrapolation.

As regards your specific examples of "the age of the universe, or the existence of intelligent design" I'd suggest that for one, most realistic proponants and opponents of ID differ primarily in their conception of whether "Things just happened" or "Things were made to happen" actually represents the proper application of Occam's Razor, rather than any more formal disagreementm and for two, the only religious people who disagree over the actual age of the universe are, in my opinion, idiots.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

While religious claims are not scientific claims, whenever you make any remark about an observable phenomenon, there is implicit scientific content in your statement. As was repeated ad nauseum throughout this thread - many religious ideologies escape the realm of testability, but this by no means means that some of the specifics of what such ideologies claim manages to do the same. Anything really that relates to concrete ideas in our natural world is subject (rightfully) to scientific scrutiny. It's not like comparing apples with oranges, it's like comparing vanilla ice cream with a chocolate/vanilla twist ice cream and remarking "hm, I don't know about the chocolate in this, but the vanilla smells a bit strange."

Of course, this falls down to whether or not you believe in science as an ideology - but then again, science is founded upon the simplest set of assumptions we can come up with, and is also founded upon observable, repeatable experiments, so Occam's Razor really doesn't favor religion or ID at all...

I'm actually not quite sure what you were getting at in the last paragraph, Devonin... I think you missed a punctuation mark or something because I couldn't really understand what the structure of the sentence was (the one with Occam's Razor) <.<... and most religious supporters (Christians especially) disagree wholeheartedly with the scientific perspective on how old the Universe is (it comes with the territory), so I'm not sure where you are getting that from.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

My statement goes like this: People who support ID intelligently tend to claim that the unliklihood of the universe existing by pure chance means that a creator is the simplest explanation. People who oppose ID intelligently tend to claim that the characteristics implicit in a creator are too complex and advanced, and that random chance is the simplest explanation.

They both think they are correctly applying Occam's razor to the question of the creation of the universe.

I disagree. I think you'll find that "The earth is 4000 years old" people are in the miniscule tiny minority of most religious people. The true converging of religious and scientific ideology is best expressed as "The process happened as it appears to, but guided by God's divine plan" I think very few people seriously believe the 7 days genesis creation story as anything other than a good allegory for the process that led to the evolution of humans. Creationism and Evolution are perfectly compatible unless you have an unnecessarily critical view of religion, or an unnecessarily cynical view of science.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

unless you consider the Bible from a purely literalistic standpoint, which a larger portion of Christians than you seem to believe -do-, in which case you are by necessity making claims that can be put to scientific test and scrutiny (ex: noah's flood, literal creationist theory--which is what i was taught -in science class- to be a scientific truth for much of high school).

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

Yes, because I believe, based on 15 years in catholic school, and association with a large number of christian, that not nearly as many people as you seem to think believe in a literal interpretation of the old testament.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

As has been stated many times before, but seemingly ignored, religion and science are mutually exclusive and have no reason to overlap at all. Science deals with the realm of testable things; as religion, by definition, requires faith in something that is untestable, there's no way that science can attempt to do anything regarding religion. Science deals with facts, not faith.

By the same token, religion shouldn't try to interfere with science. Having ID taught as science in schools is ridiculous. Science is something that is proven with a reasonably degree of certainty, and continues to reinvent itself with the addition of new evidence. Religion assumes, and nothing further can be done about it. There's nothing wrong with having ID in schools; it should just never be discussed in a science class, because ID is not true science. It's merely a cover for creationism.

Now, to clear some things up. Someone earlier used the incredibly weak example (by their own admission) of gravity being something that is likely, but not 100% certain. Gravity is accepted fact; once something has been tested again and again and stands up to the rigor of every applicable test, it's safe to say that it is the truth. In fact, gravity is governed by a set of laws that cannot be broken. A law is a simple statement/description of what is happening; gravity is gravity, and that's that.

It's worth noting that the word "theory" as used in scientific circles means something incredibly different from its usage in common parlance. A scientific theory consists of an assertion that is backed up by a large body of evidence and is generally accepted as an accurate explanation of a natural phenomenon. "Theory" in common usage means a hypothesis...basically a guess. This confusion has resulted in ID proponents trying to put ID on the same lavel as evolution, with the rationale that both are just "theories."

Basically, by definition, science and religion should have nothing to do with each other, and indeed one should not attempt to try and examine one with the other. Doing so leads to nowhere. If both sides left each other alone, the world would be much better off.

One last thing, to address the original question. Religion cannot be subject to scrutiny beyond what is present in scripture (obviously there can be various interpretations of different statements, etc.); on the other hand, science should be subject to heavy scrutiny (and indeed thrives on it). The only way for science to be science is if there is continuous testing and attempts to discover more.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

Being "relevent" doesn't matter. Thinking that it would be good for him to exist also doesn't matter. I think it would be good if I had telekineses, but does that mean I do?

I pointed this out in that thread the other day. It is a logical fallacy to believe in something just because it can't be proven wrong. It is also, again, a logical fallacy to believe that something exists just because it would be good or feel "right" for it to exist. If there is no evidence why believe in it?

Yeah, faith, I know, but why place faith in that? Why not place faith in the stories of Oddyseus or Heracles? Peter Parker or Clark Kent? What makes that particular ancient religious texts worthy of being taken seriously while other ancient literature is scoffed as entirely fictional?

Wait.

Are you saying that people who believe in God are more likely to be right than those who believe in Russel's Teapot? Do you honestly think this is true? All are equally (un)likely due to the lack of any sort of evidence in either camp.

What about the pseudoscience of intelligent design and all the hogwash they try to concoct to "prove" religious things "scientifically"? Are we not allowed to talk ill of their ilk? "OMG LOOK AT THIS BANANA IT FITS MY HAND PERFECTLY there's no way the banana could have developed this characteristic through evolution"

Just to make things clear, I'm not wholly against believing in a divine presence. I just can't stand it when people try to act like it's rational or logical to believe in these things; it's not, that's why it's FAITH. I also can't stand organized religion, and frankly, if there is a god of any kind, I can assure you with great confidence that he is unlike any god in any religion or that anyone has ever thought of. This Great Creator everyone likes to talk of so much is defined as being outside the realm of human understanding, so why would you venture to think that you or anyone else on this planet could know what they're talking about when referring to him?

There are plenty of things we don't know and likely never will about the specific origins of life on Earth, nor the specific way in which evolution went down the paths that it has. There was a spark that initiated life from essentially nothing. What is this spark? Where did it come from? Can you prove that an extradimensional intelligence did not cause it? I don't personally believe it myself, but I don't think science will ever definitively be able to say, at least not as far as it being a good enough answer to make the godfreaks give in to the possibility of there being no God and no afterlife.

Gravity is not "widely accepted as true, but not proven factual". You are a fool if you think otherwise.

In that section you quoted, I was saying that this potential divine presence definitely does not exist within our Realm, if he exists at all. Because of this, I feel it is more than reasonable to say "God does not exist", because speaking purely literally, he is not real if he does not exist within this realm that we call the Universe. Semantics, a little I suppose, but I think it's perfectly reasonable logic. I'm willing to admit that it's possible that there is some sort of divine intelligence, they just don't exist within our Universe.

The unlikeliness of said chance is irrelevant. The Universe and life exist, so the intensely small chance of it happening randomly doesn't matter. It's like... if someone had a one in a million chance at winning the lottery, and won it. You wouldn't look at this guy's winnings and think "wow, there's no way he won the lottery; he must have gotten that money in some other way because the chances of him winning are simply too low!"

It's like, throughout the entire Universe, we're here to observe what we have. We wouldn't even be here to think of questioning how small the chance is unless the small chance goes through. I just don't understand how people can think like that. How can it matter how small a chance there is of you physically existing if there is actually a chance and given potentially infinite time and chance?

And it's not random either. The first spark of microbial life was random chance, but evolution, mutation, and survival of the fittest took us the rest of the way to what we are. That's why the watch example is a poor one. We didn't start out as a watch. We started out as a microscopic living cog, and that cog met other mutated cogs and the cogs worked together in a way that helped them survive and procreate and millions of years later, they were a timepiece.

Religion says: god created man in his image from dirt
Science says: we evolved from apes

Religion says: Jesus was crucified, died, then rose from the dead.
Science says: It is not possible to be dead for that long of a time, then miraculously revive for "no reason".

Religions attempt to define the physicial world in one way or another. That's where it overlaps with science.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

why was my post deleted?



people nowadays need proof for everything, mostly atheists towards creationism and god.

The old testament was written by a king so that he could control his kingdom better by telling them he was a representative of god. What actually happened over 2000 years ago was probably entirely different from what was written. Maybe Jesus did in fact exist, but perhaps he wasn't as miraculous as people believed him to be.