Is religion merely failed science?

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.

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).

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."

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.

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.

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.

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".

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?

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.

What basis have you to claim that we are?

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.

"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

"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

Well if we knew the answer all those questions, we'd be God 🤣.

But in all honesty HD, discussing anything with you that you disagree with is a monumental waste of energy. You're against everything you don't believe in and are about as open to different opinions as a closed book.

For the record, why is evolution called a theory if its more than that. Its just a theory written by a man who wanted to refute any idea of a creator and believed by those who hold the same view. Its just a theory and unprovable.

Just my 2 cents, but Religion, imo, was created to control the masses and put natural occurences that couldn't be explained at the time as the work of a God, so people would worship (read: donate). It has no place in a modern society, and I would be all for removing it from protected status, as it's a personal decision that shouldn't interfere with anyone else in any way, shape or form, ie: no time off for religious purposes.

So you want to cancel time off for Christmas and St. Patrick's day and Easter Monday, it's about the only time most people not in school get off for religious reasons.

Even then there is no requirement to actually believe in any religion nevermind Christianity or even the pagan gods which might have originally been worshipped around these times.

Jeez, it's 2021. Evolution is a scientifically proven theory.

But we know there are many planets with similar conditions to the early Earth - if life began here, why not there? We cannot dismiss that possibility (some would say, probability).

Yeah, it's partly correct that 100,000,000 does not equal 150 🤣