History Religion of Science: A Brief History

[Zero]

Originally posted by wuliheron
And you apparently have a negative philosophy which contradicts the facts.

Show me a fact, just one...something conctrete...please!

 

[kat]

Originally posted by wuliheron

The more capitalistic the country, the more intensely fundamentalist. The heirarchies of the Catholic church tend to do best in the underdeveloped countries where the disparity between rich and poor, royalty and peasents is pronounced. Calvinism does better in wealthier capitalistic societies where people are encouraged to rise above their social class and the sciences are supported more.

There are at least four hundred definitions of socialism, but for our purposes here I will give a simplified definition. Essentially, socialistic countries are distinguished from capitalistic ones by the fact that the government owns much of the foundations of the economy such as the chemical and energy industries, and provides guaranteed basic support for everyone. For example, they provide food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and education. Most european countries are socialist in such respects.

Whereas the US guarantees only a few years of welfare support at around $16,000.00 a year for a family of four, the average in europe is around $22,000.00 a year and is unlimited. In the US, some eighty plus percent of the population is religious while in europe the percentages tend to be reversed. When people feel they can trust each other to provide morality religion looses much of its appeal.

I think your numbers for welfare in the U.S. are too high. The last study I reviewed concerning this had U.S. family of four at under 6k a year, and under 10k if you are including supplemental food stamps.
Also where are you getting a 20% religious-80% non-religious figure for Europe from?

 

[wuliheron]

Originally posted by kat
I think your numbers for welfare in the U.S. are too high. The last study I reviewed concerning this had U.S. family of four at under 6k a year, and under 10k if you are including supplemental food stamps.
Also where are you getting a 20% religious-80% non-religious figure for Europe from?

The statistics for welfare I obtained from Utne magazine, which is not likely to inflate such figures. However, I have heard them criticized as not accounting for differences in cost of living.

The non-religious/religious statistics was a mistake on my part. I ment to say Fundamentalist/Nonfundamentalists. Recent statistics gathered show a clear progression and preference for Fundamentalist religions in the most capitalistic countries, less fundamentalist ones in less capitalistic countries, and Atheism in communist countries. In other words, the more capitalistic and classist a country, the more religious.

If you want, there are also a number of interesting statistics correlating crime and religion as well. However, religious statistics and how meaningful they are admittedly difficult to tabulate. One study of people in the US claiming to attend church regularly, for example, demonstrated they often lie about such things.

Here is one of the better websites I know of on the subject:

http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/atheism.html#related

They claim there are an estimated one million atheists in the US and 18 million in europe.

 

[Psychodelirium]

Originally posted by Royce
...Presumably apples didn’t fall from trees prior to Newton’s discovery of gravity or surely someone else would have noticed a few thousand years earlier...

[?]

Einstein... discovered first Special and then General Relativity by proving that everything was relative doing away with most of Newton’s work...

...Schrodinger... invented or discovered Quantum mechanics by putting a cat in a box with a “diabolical device’...

Now of course everyone understands Relativity the gist of which seems to be that no one can tell how fast he is going unless he looks out a window and no one canever know what time it is even if they look out the window as all of their clocks will be wrong. He also did away with Newton’s gravity by showing that space was bent, twisted and deformed by matter and everything tended to run down hill as a result.

Dare I go on?

Good Goddess almighty. Someone needs to hit the books.

 

[Alexander]

Originally posted by wuliheron
Considering at least eighty percent of the US alone is religious, evidently a great deal.

Eighty percent in US still believe in mythology? This is well behind of other idustrialized countries.

 

[Alexander]

Originally posted by Hurkyl
Many a religous person would disagree. They have seen evidence of the splendor of God, and you too would be perfectly capable of seeing that evidence if you would only have faith.

Interesting twist.

If you see an apple falling down, the the only thing which prevents you from seeing the evidence of apple falling up (in the direction of heaven) is the faith that apples fall up, not down.

As soon as you get strong faith that apples fall up - you start seeing them falling up everywhere.

 

[wuliheron]

Originally posted by Alexander
Eighty percent in US still believe in mythology? This is well behind of other idustrialized countries.

That's a conservative estimate, and the vast majority of them are fundamentalists. You know, religions that say women are inferior to men, evil must be fought by all means possible, etc. A good percentage of the Atheists I know in the US are just as fundamentalist, but with different beliefs. Ted Kazinsky, the unibomber, was an atheist who believed technology is evil. Others I know believe capitalism is the source of all evil, but most seem to believe religion is the source of all evil. Evil is perhaps the most destructive myth ever invented.

 

[FZ+]

Evil is perhaps the most destructive myth ever invented.

Indeed. Both I fear modern society has long developed an addiction to the premise of a simplistic system of good vs evil, them vs us. It would be very hard to break such a thing, which is ingrained in so much of world culture.
Then again, it is reassuring that not every atheist is an unibomber..

 

[wuliheron]

Originally posted by FZ+
Indeed. Both I fear modern society has long developed an addiction to the premise of a simplistic system of good vs evil, them vs us. It would be very hard to break such a thing, which is ingrained in so much of world culture.
Then again, it is reassuring that not every atheist is an unibomber..

According to some statistics, atheists in general are peaceful, law abiding citizens in comparison to the religious. That's not to say Atheism doesn't have its own drawbacks, especially fundamentalist atheism. Just that many of the arguments put forward in favor of religion are highly questionable.

 

[Hurkyl]

If you have to believe before you can see it, what is to say that you aren't imagining it out of your need to see it?

Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't it the case that most of the experimental evidence for scientific concepts relies on believing other scientific concepts? For instance, how can we take the missing electron neutrinos as evidence that neutrinos have mass without believing the theoretical derivation of the laws of neutrino mixing? How can we take the redshifted light from distant galaxies as evidence of universal expansion if we don't first believe General Relativity is right? And how can we take any scientific experiment evidence for anything if we don't first have faith in statistical reasoning?

 

[FZ+]

Maybe we don't have faith in statistical reasoning, but simply conclude that one theory has a larger consistency with the data than the alternative? Hence we don't believe our current system of knowledge to be true, we simply state that it fits the data best out of all the known possibilities?
Does that make sense?

 

[wuliheron]

Originally posted by FZ+
Maybe we don't have faith in statistical reasoning, but simply conclude that one theory has a larger consistency with the data than the alternative? Hence we don't believe our current system of knowledge to be true, we simply state that it fits the data best out of all the known possibilities?
Does that make sense?

Does it ever, there are lies, damn lies, and then statistics!

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by Hurkyl
Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't it the case that most of the experimental evidence for scientific concepts relies on believing other scientific concepts? For instance, how can we take the missing electron neutrinos as evidence that neutrinos have mass without believing the theoretical derivation of the laws of neutrino mixing? How can we take the redshifted light from distant galaxies as evidence of universal expansion if we don't first believe General Relativity is right? And how can we take any scientific experiment evidence for anything if we don't first have faith in statistical reasoning?

Yes, you are wrong. You've mentioned this before (as have others). The experiments, observations, calculations - all of the evidence - of all scientific theories are available to you if you choose to look at them. So no, you do NOT need to rely on belief in order to get up to speed on science. It may be a lot to learn, but you can learn it if you choose to (and are smart enough).

Contrast that with religion, for which there IS no evidence for you to investigate on your own.

 

[Royce]

Originally posted by russ_watters
Yes, you are wrong. You've mentioned this before (as have others). The experiments, observations, calculations - all of the evidence - of all scientific theories are available to you if you choose to look at them. So no, you do NOT need to rely on belief in order to get up to speed on science. It may be a lot to learn, but you can learn it if you choose to (and are smart enough).
________________________

Where ,pray tell, are we going to learn it? From books, other people,
in classrooms? That will still be taking someone elses word for the truth. Faith that they are telling the truth and giving us fact that they themselves got from some other source. Unless we individually perform every experiment that has ever been done and perform all the valid and invalid math maniplulations that has been done ourselves we are still relying on the word and integrity and accuracy of others. That is we believe them without visible proof the we our selves have collected. That is an act of faith. Nothing wrong with it. Its unavoidable but it is not the almighty logical physical undeniable absolute truth that all of you make it out to be.

_____________________

Contrast that with religion, for which there IS no evidence for you to investigate on your own.

____________________________

You are doing just exactly what I'm complaining about 3 thousnand years of study, debate and writings don't exist? Go to any library in the country and look at the religious and the philosophy section. Then tell me that we have no evidence or are you really that blind and biased that you cannot see anything but what you want to see.
Which is exactly what you accuse us religous people of being. Read the post in just this one thread and see how many time it is claimed that science has all the hard physical evidence and relion has none.
Possibly you will detect a biased unfounded attitude. It is not just you its all of the scientific community.

 

[Royce]

Zero, I hate to admit it but your right. Humor does get lost here as well as a number of other things.

I am going to say this one time and then I'm through beating my head against this brick wall and am going to move on.

The scientific, community has no PROOF either, not personally nor collectively about most of the modern theories. There is no PROOF that SR, GR, or QM are complete or wholly correct. That is why they are theories. We have evidence that supports some of what the theories imply but no complete proof. we can not even understand much less explain what we have learned about QM. It is still bound up in the Great Mystery, we can only speculate. That is not PROOF.

 

[Alexander]

Royce, it sounds like you don't understand how science works. At all.

Do you have any education/ experience in science? (particularly in physics - GR, SR and QM - because you sound like an expert in these fields)?

Russ and FZ seem to know much more about physics than you do. Why don't you listen to those who knows the object of discussion better?

So, what is your area of knowledge/expertise and how much expertise in physics do you have?

 

[FZ+]

Alex: Royce is partially right. It is not possible really to have evidence that GR etc is wholly correct. We can say that it matches all our evidence to date, but we can't speculate on whether we have taken all possible evidence. Because we can't say the GR etc is complete or wholly correct, we continue to test it any way we can. But scientific proof is not the same as a complete proof - scientific proof is about the balance of available data, as we know in science that nothing is proved beyond doubt.
But we can gain understanding or explanation through science.

 

[Royce]

Originally posted by FZ+

But we can gain understanding or explanation through science.

But we can gain understanding and explanation through religion also.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by Royce
But we can gain understanding and explanation through religion also.

No, you really can't. Not understanding of physical processes.

 

[Royce]

I'm not sure I agree, Zero, but I won't go into that. FZ+ did not limit "understanding or explanation" to physical processes.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by Royce
I'm not sure I agree, Zero, but I won't go into that. FZ+ did not limit "understanding or explanation" to physical processes.

Of course you don't agree. Anything real contained in religion is coincidental, or irrelevant to the point of religion.

 

[FZ+]

Royce: I didn't say "only science". I simply refute your iimplication that science does not bring knowledge or understanding, which is frankly nonsense.

we can not even understand much less explain what we have learned about QM. It is still bound up in the Great Mystery, we can only speculate.

This is very wrong.

 

[Royce]

Originally posted by FZ+
Royce: I didn't say "only science". I simply refute your iimplication that science does not bring knowledge or understanding, which is frankly nonsense.


This is very wrong.

Of course it is wrong and I did not mean to imply that. I'm as much a science buff as anyone here. I was refuting the science KNOWS anything as absolute truth, is completely fact based and has a monopoly of fact, truth, understanding and explanation.
Many seem to think that religion or spiritually is pure myth, belief in absolutes and is purely faith based and has no evidence or reason to support anything it says. Any evidence that a religionist may give is immediately dismissed as delusion, lies or can be explained by science.
Just as Zero tried to explain healings as lies and spontaineous remission. Spontaneous remission is not an explanation. What caused it? Could it possibly be faith or prayer? I don't know.
I am willing to say I don't know and realize that ther are more things going on than can be explained by science only. "They" are not willing to admit that that there is anything that is not science.
That to me is being closed minded and just the opposite what any real scientific thinking person should be.
I am not really as devout or dedicated or zealous as my writing and responses may make me appear. I am that devoted to trying to keeping and open mind and judge each new bit of knowledge or information on its own merits. I am not always successful. I too have prejudices and blind spots.

 

[drag]

Greetings !

Sorry for this late response, I was absent for
a few days.

Originally posted by Royce
No, science is not religion, despite the fanatics and zealots, but it is to us laymen and the public including students of science a system of belief. Belief in science and scientist that is, at least to us, without visable proof. We are taking someone elses word for it. Yet we call the scientific proof. That my friend is FAITH, faith in science and scientist.

Science does not (at least we probably can't prove it)
uncover absolutes. Science makes LIKELY conclusions.

Likewise, scientists and scientific texts are NOT
absolute sources of credible scientific data, they
are LIKELY sources of credible scientific data.
The simple difference is that faith regards unlikely
things.

Live long and prosper.

 

[Royce]

Yeah, Drag I agree and some religious sects absolutely believe in absolutes but not all or even most. Read around in the Physics Forum as well as here. We all are saying "I believe" when talking about physical sciences. This indicates to me that both science and religion are belief systems. Since you nor I can perform experiment on particle accelerators we have to take others words for what they find. This is have faith in them and science.

 

[drag]

Actualy, when I speak of science I say "think"
rather than "believe" because of the simple
difference I indicated above(unless I'm not
certain about my info).

Peace and long life.

 

[Royce]

Originally posted by drag
Actualy, when I speak of science I say "think"
rather than "believe" because of the simple
difference I indicated above(unless I'm not
certain about my info).

That's a pretty fine distinction. They can mean the same thing or nearly so depending on how they're used. I see and concede your point and it's a good one. I could, however say the same thing about religion but I don't think that it would be quite as valid.

 

[Royce]

First, let me say that I was raised in a not particularly religious or devout family of protestants. As an adult I was babtized by and a member of a free will babtist church. As a young adult I was an atheist or agnostic depending on the day. I have been facinated by science since I was seven or eight and someone explained that the stars were other suns but far away. I have been a student of science ever since. I believe in science and the scientific method but I believe also that; "There is more under the stars, Horatio, than is dreampt of by your philoaophers."

We seem to be going around in circles here, repeating our positions over and over again. I am amazed at the reponse to the original post and that it has gone on so long. Thankyou.
Mentor, I think it's time to close this thread and move on.

 

[wuliheron]

Obviously beliefs are thoughts and thoughts can be beliefs. The real distinction, imo, is an attitudinal one. As Lao Tzu said, "Belief is a colorful hope or fear." The Pale Buddha said something similar, "The past is only a memory, the future is only a dream."

 

[Royce]

Obviously! I can not hope to change your thoughts or your believes, nor my own for that matter, I can only hope to change your or my atitudes about our thoughts or beleives. Well put, wuli, Thank you.
(It of course was obvious to me only after you said it.)