Is religion merely failed science?

Relax brah

it could be argued that religions originated as primitive attempts to answer questions that now belong to science.

equally modern science’s explanatory successes have rendered religious belief obsolete.

discuss

ancapailldorcha

It would be nice if you made more of an effort than two sweeping statements to be honest. Religion, rightly or wrongly has been intimately associated with human development, warfare, culture, literacy and philanthropy for decades and any sincere attempt at discussion has to respect this.

Jim_Hodge

Religion goes way beyond gaining an understanding of the physical world or universe. It permeates morality and social consciousness among other things. It also developed as a unifying medium within and between societies. Whether it has failed or not is another topic.

Hardly current affair though, 😀

nj27

I think it's more of a survival mechanism which propagates itself by protecting its adherents from a bunch of challenges posed by the environment in which the religion was developed, thus allowing them to have kids they can pass it on to. Lots of the rules read more like some kind of game theory strategy if you remove the Godly elements. I'm actually kind of into religion from that point of view. Also a lot of them are like the Simpsons too in that it's layered and obviously a lot more complex than the caricature which smug atheists like to beat up. It has deeper aspects like Biblical exegesis to appeal to the intellectual members of the religion, but the basic message is accessible to anyone.

J.O. Farmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058215091/is-religion-merely-failed-science

Religion and science are not necessarily incompatible unless you are a religious zealot or an atheist zealot.

Science explains how it doesn't explain why.

For example evolution, science can explain how life came to be as it is today but it can't answer how it originated.

A religious zealot will say evolution is made up, an atheist zealot such as Richard Dawkins will use it to say it's proof of why God doesn't exist. A rationale person will accept we don't know how life began in the oceans but it did. There's no proof it was a creator but equally there's no proof it wasn't.

As such absence of proof is not proof of absence and so science and religion are not incompatible unless you take extreme views.

Strumms

Science people have evidence of what they talk about. Everything is tangible and prove-able.

religion for centuries: “ we haven’t got so much of a shred of evidence for what we believe in, say, advocate and demand others believe in... and when others fail to believe in it we will market them as bad people “

Religion is a coping mechanism and business.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058215091/is-religion-merely-failed-science

No, because science (at it's most basic) assumes that our current knowledge is our best attempt at understanding.

It is open to changes. While extraordinary claims will require extraordinary evidence, science changes to fit repeatable observations.

Religion operates in the dark and refuses change. In fact it goes out of its way to criticise dissenting views.

Religion claims to have the answers without proving it, relying on "faith".

Science will admit that knowledge is our best attempt and we know very little, in the grand scheme of things.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118080944#Comment_118080944

Define an "Atheist Zealot"

How is how a zealot when one's default is the non-existence of a supreme being? You can't go beyond that...

Also the lack of evidence in something is not a reason to move to magical beings.

A scientist will admit they do not know but will not make up a fantastical tale to cover their ignorance of a topic.

Religious leaders on the other hand...

Everyone is an atheist to some extent. Some just don't believe in the final few gods too.

BluePlanet

Religion doesn't employ the scientific method so no, it's not science.

osarusan

Christopher Hitchens: "I have a great respect for religion and for the role it's played in the evolution of the human species. It was our first attempt at cosmology, at philosophy. It was, in many ways, it was our first attempt at literature."

It's not failed science, it's a pre-science attempt to understand why things happen (why babies get sick and die for no apparent reason, why the weather kills people), what's behind these events, and whether whatever's behind them can be controlled or appeased.

It must be/have been a very fundamental desire to put some kind of order to things to generate religions. If you go back say 1000 years, is there any part of the world back then that didn't have their own religion, their own belief in some supernatural power or spirit?

Quin_Dub

I've always seen religion as a tool to "explain the unknown" and as a societal management & control mechanism.

It's both assuages and creates/instills fear.

It assuages fear by being used to explain the unknown or the unpleasant - "Why does the sun rise and set?" and "why did that person die?"

It creates/instills fear as part of a societal control mechanism by the creation of an all-powerful entity that will punish the bad and reward the good - "If you are a bad person , God will punish you"

It has it's value, albeit decreasing over time but it is an entirely human made creation.

J.O. Farmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081056#Comment_118081056

An atheist zealot is someone who not only doesn't believe in a supreme being but goes around telling those who believe any different that they are wrong, they may also make disparaging remarks about fantastical tales and magic things when they don't understand them themselves. They often have a superiority complex about how great they are for not believing in the magic and aren't afraid to show it.

They are generally like religious leaders/ zealots just believing the opposite things.

Now rational people fall in the middle, they will agree on the things science has shown and will be happy to let other people believe whatever they want after that once it not causing them harm even if they don't agree.

Strumms

Most people don’t fear god... a rapist won’t fear god.. but he’ll be in fear of getting caught and made pay for his crimes by law enforcement or say a relative of his victim...in THIS life.

zero proof of heaven / hell or any afterlife. Nobody ever returned from the dead... if it’s there, we’ll find out.

J.O. Farmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081219#Comment_118081219

One might say the rapist isn't afraid of being caught either in this life or he wouldn't be a rapist in the first place.

I don't see how a rapist is representative of most people though. Regardless of religious beliefs or not most people are not or will never be rapists.

J.O. Farmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081277#Comment_118081277

Just to clarify it's not the fear of getting caught in any life stops most people being rapists, it's just wrong and a horrific idea to most people myself included.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081277#Comment_118081277

its just one example, there are tens of thousands of criminals in this state as I type :) over 3,800 are currently incarcerated...

Brucie Bonus

Depends on how you define religion.

You can have belief and faith in the scientifically unproven. A lot of the science we view as fact today was once considered nonsense, but some had a belief and faith in their hypothesis.

Organised religion is a form of control even Jesus didn't support.

J.O. Farmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081315#Comment_118081315

There are millions of people in the country, most don't do bad things out of having good morals for want of a better way of putting it.

It's nothing to do with a fear of retribution from God, the state, or a relative.

Now the criminals you speak of are probably not afraid of any of that either but they have different morals when committing crimes.

Relax brah

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081354#Comment_118081354

Good post.

They all defer, from my perspective I believe they are all philosophers - for example the Buddha didn’t believe in worshipping anything or anyone. Buddhism has no spiritual text or prayer, yet, it is defined as religion.

Ask a Buddhist monk about god and they will tell god is from within. A stark constraint from the likes of Islam for example

Markus Antonius

Religion and Science, one a system of personal or collective beliefs, the other a system of data and consensus, nothing wrong with either apart from the mobs who abuse both as a weapon to control others

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081354#Comment_118081354

Science can't tell me how what we see came into being. It can tell me how it thinks it works but not its origin. Its really not all its cracked up to be

Podge_irl

No matter how far science goes you will always be able to push one step further and ask why and thus the avenue for a religious belief is never closed. Also, ultimately, religion is not a scientific ideal so can neither be proven or disproven by science.

Many of the tenets of religion are borne out of burgeoning science. A ban on eating swine recognized that they are more likely to spread disease at the time and thus those who abstained were healthier.

Pherekydes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081836#Comment_118081836

Religion tells you the whys. It's completely cocksure, but in reality it doesn't have a clue.

But it'll saw your head off for not believing.

techman1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118080944#Comment_118080944

thats a very good summary. There are alot of things that still cannot be answered by science, if the Universe is so large why are we the only living planet, statistically if everything happened by chance it should have happened elsewhere due to the immense size and number of stars and planets yet we have not encountered a smidgeon of life anywhere else. Our radio waves have now travelled over a 100 million light years into outer space since the start of the technological age yet no intelligent life has answered back within that immense distance. Also we have not detected any radio waves from other intelligent planets

This is of course the "Fermi paradox" "Where is everybody" statistically there should be many more intelligent planets and we should have heard from them as some should be far more advanced than us, yet silence. Fermi is one of the fathers of modern physics and was critical figure in the manhattan project

J.O. Farmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081965#Comment_118081965

Well if it wasn't religion they'd find another excuse. Many things are done in the name of religion as an excuse to attack or persecute those don't agree.

Brucie Bonus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081836#Comment_118081836

Religion can tell you based on belief, but it can't tell you for a fact.

Personally I have issues with anyone who believes in a deity being put in a position of authority. To quote Fr. Dougal, "It's all a bit mad Ted".

Grab All Association

jesus walked on water. Walking on water is one of the common delusions schizophrenics have. A lot of these miracles in the bible could be psychosis.

organised religion are just a grift and a way to suppress promiscuous women and marry them off to guys with really tiny tinklers.

On the back of experiencing some injustices both personally and witnessing it in general society in some very extreme ways (which you do if you are a minority) I decided to go back and study law in the hope that I might better understand the "just world" theory which seemed to make all these injustices ok. Y'know, "the only bad things happen to bad people" theory. It only took two weeks to realise I was studying the wrong subject and after a bit of struggling found my way to opening the books on what I believed was just a different kind of law. I thought it might give me greater insight on the subject. It's been about three years now and it hasn't been easy but it's definitely helped clarify some things, especially with regard to that whole "Just World" stuff.

I barely remember the movie "The devils advocate" (which I highly recommend, given the time of year it's appropriate) but it was a little bit like that. Taking hold of all these legalisms and needing to find the loopholes or get out clause. Trying to find that place where it is written. I've two months left to complete the bible and it's actually incredible. I do know where it is written glad to say, and that's definitely been a help to me personally.

Ten of Swords

Moved to After Hours, doesn't belong in CA/IMHO

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081080#Comment_118081080

and plenty of athiests will tell you (they always tell you they are atheists) that they are "spiritual"

Relax brah

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118080835#Comment_118080835

Why was my original response to this post deleted?

Black Swan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118080944#Comment_118080944

I would recommend that you exercise caution when using the word “proof” in conjunction with science, especially with any discussion that relies on the scientific method. Science does not prove, only suggests. For a more in depth discussion of this position read Karl Popper.

Popper can also be useful when differentiating between religion and science. Popper contends that scientific positions (theories, propositions, empirical generalizations, etc) should be falsifiable. In other words, so long as most data continues to suggest support for a position it continues to exhibit utility. When the data no longer suggests significant support, the position may be revised or discarded (falsified).

Generally speaking, religions typically do not exhibit Popper’s falsifiability. Rather they exhibit repetitious affirmations, and to go against a religious position, or what may be labeled as truth, represents a breach of faith, or heresy if it publicly challenges the religion. Where a challenge of falsifiability is recommended in science, such challenges in religion are not.

Larbre34

Religion originated from the attempts of the ignorant to understand the World.

Imagine what it was like to be a person alive 2,000 years ago, 6,000 years, 10,000 years. No history, no context, no enlightenment, no literature or literacy, no science.

You woke up in the morning and your only thoughts were food, shelter, warmth and sustenance for any children and avoiding those things known to cause injury or illness, though you didn't understand the latter in any way. A fever would usually take you by age 35 or 40 and that would be that.

All that you saw; the sun, the night, the snow, the wind, growth, wildfire, infection, death - they were just facts of life, unexplained and inexplicable.

Religion grew out of the need of a basically intelligent humanity, in its infancy and ignorance, to attribute meaning to those powerful phenomena that knew no other meaning. All those prehistoric religions in different parts of the World largely followed that same structure, independently of each other. That says a lot about it.

Later, over centuries, millenia, those solutions became more complex, more intertwined, mixed with the chinese whispers of story telling - and it was only oral tradition early on - and the theories of gods and God and godheads developed. Those with some knowledge tried to influence those without and of course there was strong elements of manipulation and growth of conflict from all of it.

Religion may well be a failed science in that it was the search for answers, but so much of religion includes science that its hard to deny. Look at the teachings of Mohammed, the Kosher traditions - they are all fundamentally about health and sanitation, avoiding contamination in ingredients and cooking and sexual transmission of disease. It all boils down to rituals to stay alive and get your kids into early adulthood, to keep the show on the road. Nothing more.

Strumms

What would happen say if organized religion was banned ? No mass, no religious ceremonies of any kind, no sacraments, no sacred / holy days, ALL places of worship closed down...?

there would of be uproar certainly , in a democracy there should be probably but in 10 / 15 years would people genuinely care ? I think people would just get on with life, their own sense of goodness, spirituality and kindness just getting them through....

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118082086#Comment_118082086

A psychosis that pulled together a bunch of mainly illiterates into a force that the rulers of the day feared and had perecuted.a psychosis that pulled together tribes, languages and nations into a group that changed the world and even had the calendar set from the birth of its leader

I'm not talking Catholicism (that was a later belief system).

tdf7187

Yes it is failed science, but the far more insidious part is that even after the failed science is disproved, it is used as a means of social control. Follow the money, as another poster said...

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118080856#Comment_118080856

I agree with Jim here. Science is an examination of the material world only, not purporting to even attempt to answer questions about whether the non-material/spiritual exists.

Of course contemporary science does assume that all things happen exclusively by material causation - and this is an in-built assumption - but this is a relatively new belief and I do not think this belief was dominant or widespread prior to the publication of Edwin Schrodinger's "What is Life?" in 1944.

In "What is Life?" Schrodinger re-forumlated the fundamental understanding of biology so that it became inseparable from materialism. I think he was mistaken but people rarely stop to question and examine root assumptions once they're been absorbed into culture. Yet assumptions are not 'based on evidence' - they precede and help to determine what qualifies as evidence.

Funnily enough I think Schrodinger would have been living in Clontarf when he wrote this book.

Eamonn DeValera set up an international Scientific Institute in Dublin and tried to attract famous scientists to Ireland. Ludwig Von Wittgenstein lived in Galway for a time.

Another visiting scientist posited that St. Patrick was actually a composite of two historical personages which led Flann O'Brien to write in the Irish Times (quoting from memory), "So far Eamonn DeValera's new Scientific Institute is endeavouring to prove that there were two Saint Patricks and no God."

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081203#Comment_118081203

Where are you running into all these atheist Boogeymen? I don't think I've met someone like that since I was a teenager.

Atheism is just a lack of a belief in a god. Thats all. There's also nothing wrong with thinking all religion is nonsense. Why you feel people should have reverence for something they view as made up rubbish is beyond me.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081080#Comment_118081080

Well no because an atheist is someone who is entirely without theism - they are a-theist, just as a person without any morals is amoral.

If you believe in any god/s at all then you aren't an atheist to any extent, you are a theist.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118082455#Comment_118082455

I find it strange how people seem to think that religion developed purely as an attempt to understand physical phenomena when when most religion concerns itself with topics that would otherwise be considered philosophical.

Religion is a facet of society. Which is why any and every notable society had some form of religion. It gives a common accepted structure which helps development. And the more successful the society, the more complex the religion. In a successful society, people had time to think about things and these were people who, while some may call them ignorant, were obviously anything but. The bible is a few thousand years old, and even those ignorant people back then were able to put together a fairly complex system! The Old Testament is about 3000 years old or something.

Things like the rules against eating pork did have a practical basis as you allude to - it did not store well in those countries. But again, that was something that was developed within society. So some learned fella stuck that in as a rule into their religious code. Because that code was essentially a guide for their life. So you would expect it to be there.

Larbre34

Consideration of the connotations of physical phenomena pre-exist any notion of philosophy as you describe it.

Yes, most religions do concern themselves with the philosophical, of course, but you have to look at a time prehistoric to both. From where did the threads of such religion come. Ancient humanity were concerned with the world around them, long before they were concerned about the nature of themselves. The battle for basic survival in prehistory didn't allow them the luxury of early philosophy, but what they did perceive did lay the building blocks of all spirituality, existentialism, theology and so on.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118082599#Comment_118082599

I'm literally in the middle of Maccabees atm. It's an account of Alexander the Greats conquest of Persia and his peaceful passage through Judea on his way to Egypt and how the Jews (an obscure and insignificant tribe) were granted very specific religious and political privilege's by Alexander. Flavius Josephus even makes a record of this historical interaction which biblically is noted as assisting in the Jewish liberation from Persian rule. (obviously Alexanders successors had different notions) It's definitely a bit of a story. (ironically that's only in the catholic version of the book)

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118081903#Comment_118081903

No matter how far science goes you will always be able to push one step further and ask why and thus the avenue for a religious belief is never closed.

But "We don't know, therefore god did it" is not actually an answer. Postulating the existence of a god actually raises far more questions than it supposedly answers.

Also, ultimately, religion is not a scientific ideal so can neither be proven or disproven by science.

We know the world was not created in seven days, that humanity did not spring forth without precursor creatures, that we are not all descended from two humans, that woman was not created from the rib of a man, that there was no global flood, etc. etc. but when religious dogma is disproven it conveniently becomes "metaphor".

Many of the tenets of religion are borne out of burgeoning science. A ban on eating swine recognized that they are more likely to spread disease at the time and thus those who abstained were healthier.

I'd like to know the recognised benefits of not wearing clothes made from mixed fibres, or not trimming certain parts of one's beard?

Dohnjoe

Religion/spirituality = basic social blueprint* for life before modern governments existed

*Blueprint along the lines of morality, ceremonies, traditions, marriages, births, deaths, etc.

Very little to do with science, which distilled down to it's most basic form is essentially a method for measuring stuff

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058215091/is-religion-merely-failed-science

The main reason religions exist is to asuage the fear of death. Some clever con artists played to this greed for life by concocting a scam wherby they would gain power and a comfortable life, while the gulible would get continuity of life after death.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118086230#Comment_118086230

Cant pull out the text but how do we know the world wasn't created in 7 days, or there wasn't a flood or there were precursors to humans.

Most ancient tribes have a story of a flood. You can say coincidence. I can say a common ancestry and folklore.

Evolution is but a theory and has no scientific basis. Its been a case of fabricating a storyline to fit a shard of bone. Anything to say we didn't need a Creator.

How did the world and all the universe we see and don't see come into being. If there was an all powerful deity, it wouldn't be beyond him to create. He could take as long as he liked.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118082025#Comment_118082025

thats a very good summary. There are alot of things that still cannot be answered by science, if the Universe is so large why are we the only living planet

What basis have you to claim that we are?

Our radio waves have now travelled over a 100 million light years into outer space since the start of the technological age yet no intelligent life has answered back within that immense distance. Also we have not detected any radio waves from other intelligent planets

I'd love to know how it is you think that radio waves can travel over 100 million light years in the space of less than 150 years.

This is of course the "Fermi paradox" "Where is everybody" statistically there should be many more intelligent planets and we should have heard from them as some should be far more advanced than us, yet silence.

"We should have heard of them" - why? We've only been listening for a blink of an eye. If some civilisation 10,000 light years away sent us a message 10,150 years ago we wouldn't have heard it. If they're a bit further away and it reaches here in 500 or 1000 years, will there be anyone still here to hear it? One of the main variables in determining whether such communication could be possible is how long can a supposedly intelligent civilisation last without either destroying itself or being destroyed by something else...

tl,dr: our own galaxy, never mind the universe which contains billions of galaxies, is vast beyond our comprehension and we are extremely conceited to think it revolves around us, as religions do. The universe has been around for billions of years, humanity only for a tiny period in comparison.

Hotblack Desiato

Evolution is but a theory and has no scientific basis.

Utter nonsense.

How did the world and all the universe we see and don't see come into being. If there was an all powerful deity, it wouldn't be beyond him to create. He could take as long as he liked.

Like I said, postulating a god isn't an answer, it just creates more questions.

Who or what created this god? If this god didn't need a creator, why does the universe need one? What was this god doing before they created the universe, and why didn't they do it sooner or later or just not bother? How many other universes did they create? Did they not work out or something and our one is just the latest trial?

techman1

@Hotblack Desiato

"What basis have you to claim that we are?"

the scientific principle obviously, until we find absolute evidence that there is life out there we must assume that there is not.

"I'd love to know how it is you think that radio waves can travel over 100 million light years in the space of less than 150 years."

a light year is the distance that light travels in one year, radio waves like light waves are electromagnetic radiation and travel at the speed of light. Actually you are partly correct they have travelled nearly 150 light years at this stage

""We should have heard of them" - why? We've only been listening for a blink of an eye. If some civilisation 10,000 light years away sent us a message 10,150 years ago we wouldn't have heard it. If they're a bit further away and it reaches here in 500 or 1000 years, will there be anyone still here to hear it? One of the main variables in determining whether such communication could be possible is how long can a supposedly intelligent civilisation last without either destroying itself or being destroyed by something else...

This is the "Fermi paradox" though by the laws of statistics and probability there should be many more intelligent civilisations out there and even if they did wipe themselves out eventually surely they would still be thousands of years of technology and radio transmissions that would be wafting through space and this should have re occured many times in the universe. Yet nothing silence "Where is Everybody" as Fermi asked. Therefore there should be constant radio traffic from all those civilisations whether existing or not the same as we still receive light from stars that have long ago burnt out

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118086230#Comment_118086230

I don’t think they are good answers.

religion is Inherently unscientific and thus you can never disprove it with science. So it becomes are a rather pointless effort to try.

how do we know the world wasn’t made in 7 days!? I mean, I don’t for a microsecond think it was but an omnipotent being could do that then just make it so that it looks to us like it was made billions of years ago. Science and religion these days just live on completely different planes of existence.