What Religious belief are you?

[Bornerdogge]

Yes, but what's your point?

[mrgumby]

Oops...sorry...I was replying to Chriwi's last post...

[chriwi]

I see how your comment rfers to my previous post, but even then still am not sure what point thiswill make regarding belive or logic.
Whatever you can never be sure what will happen next also when it seems to be determined scientiffically, so you have to belive everything will be fine or not do anything or just not care about what might happen, especially when it is very unlikely.
.

[Bornerdogge]

I just remembered this famous quote by R.P Feynman:

I had a conversation about flying saucers some years ago with laymen. You see, because I'm scientific they think I know all about flying saucers!

So, I said, I don't think there are flying saucers.

My antagonist said. Is it impossible that there are flying saucers?! Can you prove that it's impossible?

I said, No, I can't prove it's impossible. It's just very unlikely.

That they say, is very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible, then how can you say it's unlikely?

But, that's the way it is, scientifically. It is scientific only to say what's more likely or less likely, and not to be proving all the time what's possible or impossible.

To define what I mean, I finally said to him. Listen. I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the result of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence rather than the unknown rational efforts of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Don't you think this statement could also very well apply to religious beliefs?

[Kasuha]

If you mean that religional beliefs are rather result of irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than result of real existence of something supernatural then I think you are right. But that's - yet again - scientific method. Religions are not based on science (even if they use it).

[mrgumby]

Religions do not use science.

Religions ABuse science.

[Kasuha]

Religions do not use science.

Religions ABuse science.

I'd say... both. There's sure a lot of science abuse in various religions, but let's not forget that numerous medieval monasteries were centers of science at that time and we'd not be where we are now without them.

Plus, usually, abuse is understood as "use for evil purposes" which counts as use, too. And I believe no representative of a religion would commit they are doing anything evil.

[Bornerdogge]

let's not forget that numerous medieval monasteries were centers of science at that time and we'd not be where we are now without them.

Hm, from what I know they merely copied old books... Of course this is extremely important as we would have lost large amount of knowledge from the antique if they hadn't... But they didn't do actual "research" as we understand it, and they censored the writings that didn't agree with their religious point of views...

[Kasuha]

In fact, they were performing research, too. Why would they just copy books if they weren't using them?
You can get some more information on wikipedia, for example.

[Bornerdogge]

Sure they did some research (thanks for the link!), but almost nothing compared to what had been done before in the Antique, was being done in the Arabic world, and was to be done afterwards (Renaissance, Enlightenment etc.)

[chriwi]

But even the greek and arabic had their religions. Even if medevil christians were not fond of scientiffic research, religions not necessarily contradict reserch.

[Bornerdogge]

Well it's difficult to compare... On the one hand you have these Arabic (for example) scientists, who did a lot of revolutionary work, and lived in a period and place deeply influenced by religion... But that's very different from today's "intelligent designers" who intend to "prove" creationism with "scientific" methods! I think it's what mrgumby wanted to say by "religion ABuse science"...

[Kasuha]

I'm not saying religions don't abuse science, at least in my eyes. I just think we should not forget that world's religions supported science in the past - the main reason being (IMO) that religions were rich so they had time to spend on things not directly related to not dying from hunger. In that time it might even have looked like abuse of money of poor people on totally useless things like looking into the stars or drawing strange things on paper.

[mrgumby]

Historically, religions (especially Christianity) have used their own corrupted version of real science for their own purposes, and where this didn't work they suppressed science with every means at hand. Ask Galileo......

The creationist or "intelligent design" people are merely the latest incarnation of the trend.

They say "I believe this, therefore evidence is irrelevant."

They are, of course, entitled to believe anything they wish to believe.

They are NOT entitled to attempt to force others (children for instance) to agree with them.

[Bornerdogge]

They are, of course, entitled to believe anything they wish to believe.

They are NOT entitled to attempt to force others (children for instance) to agree with them.

Sadly I can't recall many examples of people not trying to force others to agree with them... If more was done against such people (think about creationists in schools in the USA), they simply wouldn't have the means to massively convince other people, and the problem could be solved...