Except they don’t even read their own book.
They certainly don’t practice what is in there.
Only whatever their pastor cherry-picked from it.
Not even that.
The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.
The less you know, the less you know you don’t know.
Yeah I’m not so sure about this haha. I work in academia, and there is quite the abundance of closed mindedness and dogmatism.
Yeah no one seems interested in my perpetual motion machine.
In this Lemmy we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
I don’t think Lemmy is a closed system.
I think that’s just the comfortable position for humans. Questioning what you know to be true is hard, and the more fundamental the fact the more uncomfortable it is to doubt. Which is also why religion is so attractive.
I work in academia, and there is quite the abundance of closed mindedness and dogmatism
Are we talking about discrimination against young or foreign academics not getting grants and degrees because of bias about who should be the ones leading research and hesitancy to invest time, money and political capital into new tech, or are we talking about “They didn’t want to read my paper about how I think the sun pooped out the Earth and why this is evidence for God”?
Seriously, that’s a loaded claim, you need to provide some context and nuance there, I haven’t met many actual scientific-minded people who are dogmatic, that is usually the exact accusation thrown out by theists who are butthurt that evolution exists and can’t be disproven.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science
Read this. I used to favour Popper, but I now quite like Kuhn. Kuhn is based.
My point is that the scientific endeavour according to Kuhn is not an inherently critical one(as it is with Popper, for example). Science is based on dogmas, positions and suppositions that are not questioned within a paradigm.
Also, if something can’t be disproven, it isn’t science.
I am sure you know what I’m saying here, but thank you for the required-by-law pedantry that occurs every time anyone says anything.
Ah ok, so you seem to have misconstrued what I’ve said here and have added in your own assumptions and straw men. That’s ok, it happens to the best of us (myself included).
I’m definitely not trying to equate science with religion in every way. I just think it’s fair to acknowledge that science, being a human endeavor, isn’t immune to things like gatekeeping, resistance to new ideas, or institutional biases. That doesn’t mean science as a whole is bad or anti-progress. We’ve achieved incredible feats with science; we certainly didn’t “pray” our way to the modern automobile, or to the smartphone. All I’m saying is that, like any field, it has its challenges. And those challenges and weaknesses can be more than people or scientists like to imagine. I’m simply pointing out that dogmatism can exist anywhere, even in spaces that pride themselves on being open to new information.
The fact that you’re immediately jumping to extremes of either systemic biases in funding or absurd pseudoscience, kind of proves my point ironically. I’m a researcher at a nationally recognized university, and trust me when I say that there are many like you who seem to get their jimmies all riled up the second that someone so much as mentions that “scientific research may fall victim to dogmatism and other forms of human egoistic thought - just like religion”. It’s a strange phenomenon I’ve observed when people associate their entire identity with their specific scientific endeavors. And I get it too (and to say I don’t fall victim occasionally would be a lie). It is difficult for your ego to let go of 30 years of hard work and research, even when new data / evidence comes out to prove you wrong. It’s not easy to say “yup the research I associated my identity with the last 30 years? That’s actually all wrong”, but a good scientist is one who doesn’t attach ego to their work and remains perfectly objective. Much harder said than done- trust me.
Ah ok, so you seem to have misconstrued what I’ve said here and have added in your own assumptions and straw men.
No I literally just asked you a question which direction you’re coming from, and the fact that you had to respond with this reactionary, defensive BS instead of using the opportunity to distance yourself from the kooks tells me you don’t have good-faith stake in this and my second option is probably true. No way I’m wasting my time reading further or engaging. Have a good one kook. Go ahead and say whatever you want, you’re blocked.
Reminder other readers: science is not dying, science is in a good shape other than US funding, we are making amazing discoveries every day around the world. The academic world isn’t perfect but it’s working. There is no coverup or conspiracy. Whatever sensational BS you guys read on the headlines, it’s not true, I promise, please talk to people who actually work in science and academia before trusting headlines.
Religion: I don’t know everything…but my god does!
Psh that guys a hack MY book is better
But God puts thoughts in brain means I know everything!
This isn’t true at all. It all depends on the person. People could fit into:
Religion - I know everything. Religion - I don’t know enough. Science - I know everything. Science - I don’t know enough.
You know, some people even love both religion and science!
I’ve met scientists who say God exists and the universe is billions of years old. Their perspective is definitely a bit different. They see themselves as discoverers of God’s work but their academic work was just as valid as their atheist colleagues. Most often they were the first to criticize their church and continued to believe. Blew my mind.
Their academic work is only valid if it doesn’t incorporate their religion. Because faith has no value in science.
Yeah, there are also Christian scientists who do lots of research and studies and come to the conclusion that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. Because they challenge modern science with valid questions that get ignored, they are considered quacks. Like why you can listen to 20 different scientists who are all respected in the field, and get 20 vastly different answers on how old the earth is. You don’t come up with 20 different answers (as though they are truth) by using the scientific method. Which would have to mean at least 19 of them are only guessing.
lol, actually, good science would be on the left side of the image, at least after giving an answer to a question. Good science will actually prove something, then give the answer, then have no reason to continue to find another answer for it (whatever the issue is.) If you are giving a different answer year after year (like say for the age of the earth), then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?
Only thing I’d say about the christian scientists who say the earth is billions of years old, is that they’d have to deny the scriptures of their faith in order to believe that. Seems like an odd thing to do. Either they really believe it and not what their faith (religion) teaches, or they just want acceptance from non Christians.
I guess in the end, if you are on the right side of the image, (in the religious or science realm), maybe you should consider the other sides arguments. Maybe its just that they actually figured out the answer and have no need to continue searching. Maybe they don’t have the answer, maybe they do.
lol, actually, good science would be on the left side of the image, at least after giving an answer to a question. Good science will actually prove something, then give the answer, then have no reason to continue to find another answer for it (whatever the issue is.) If you are giving a different answer year after year (like say for the age of the earth), then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?
That’s not really the take of the modern philosophy of science. All modern schools of thought when it comes to science have the acceptance of falsehoods embedded into their nodels. I’ll give a few examples:
Karl Popper famously stated that science cannot prove that anything is true, only that something is false. Thus, any scientific theory that’s still accepted is regarded as not yet being proven wrong. Science is just a cycle of giving theories, proving them wrong, giving new ones to account for the problem of the old one and so on, ever getting closer to the truth, but never arriving.
Thomas Kuhn wrote about scientific paradigms, which are models of the field in question that every scientist uses (for example Aristotelian motion, which was surpassed by Newtonian mechanics, which were surpassed by Einstein’s relativity). During the period of “normal science”, scientists are using their established methods until they end up with too many problems they cannot resolve, at which point it is accepted that the paradigm cannot hold up, and a scientific revolution needs to bring forth a new paradigm, that is incomparable with the old one. Some knowledge is lost in this process, but we move on until the next crisis.
Paul Feyerabend wrote about countet-induction, which prevents science becoming a dogma. An example he gives is Copernicus going completely against the science of his time with his heliocentric system. The Ptolemaic system was as cutting edge science back then as quantum mechanics is today.
All in all, findings being continuously disproven and replaced by new ones is not bad science, it is science. Achieving actual, “true”, positive knowledge of the world, documenting it and saying “that’s it, we solved this problem, we’re done” is not something modern science event attempts at.
*“Achieving actual, “true”, positive knowledge of the world… is not something modern science event attempts at.” * -Well, that there is the problem. And if that’s the case, and modern scientists believe this, then why are they always talking about something as if they know it for a fact?
“Karl Popper famously stated that science cannot prove that anything is true, only that something is false.” -Well, he is wrong, of course you can prove things to be true.
If you’re science is replaced, then you never proved anything, and should not speak as if you know for sure what you are talking about. But modern scientists talk this way all the time.
We pretty confident in the age of the Earth and have been pretty confident in its age for quite some time if you asked 20 scientists they will all give you pretty much the same answer. I don’t know where you’re getting this belief that the age of the Earth is in debate.
I like nature, history, discovery shows and documentaries. But they are always giving different ages of the earth, (ages of various plants, animals, events, etc.) Like, vastly different. So no, there is no overwhelming agreement, other than they may all say a long time ago.
I cannot speak to the quality of the documentaries you’re watching since you don’t actually list them.
But I can assure you we are extremely confident we know the age of the Earth. In fact we have known the age of the Earth with high confidence longer than we’ve known age of the universe that contains it.
The ages of various life forms on the earth are much more nebulous but the age of the actual rock that makes the planet up, is known.
We know the age of the universe? Please, that’s ridiculous. We don’t know, we have done math, and made guesses. If we have an age for it, it’s just a theory.
Go look it up. This is known stuff. It isn’t a guess it’s based on evidence.
then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?
That’s the point of science. Humility and requestioning yourself everytime someone gives new input, instead of sticking to some old text that some human wrote and multiple other humans over a long period of time, translated; all using lossy translation techniques.
This mentality is similar to what you will see from many people in places of power (no matter how small), trying to evade criticism using the same social power that they need to be responsible about. Just that in case of religion, one has found a scapegoat, so unassailable that it can be reused indefinitely.
You can see, which approach is more desirable by simply considering the following facet of the result that we have when we have a science majority vs a religion majority…
- In times when religious organisations were in power, those who criticised them were killed and their works destroyed to as much of an extent as possible
- In times when scientific thought was prevalent (scientific organisations don’t get social power owing to their lack of charisma, which stems from the very basic attribute of the modern philosophy of science - that one can be wrong) the religious organisations criticising science are not destroyed until almost extinction, but are allowed to question all results and have the opportunity to aggregate their views.
- You will always see some kind of religion vs another
- You might see “science-ism” vs some other religion
- You will see political orgs (which represent one of the peaks of social power in the current age) vs some politico-religional orgs trying to destroy and silence the other
- You will not see science trying to silence a religion
- You will see businessmen trying to use scientific results as a stepladder to social power. You will also see them fail in the long term, simply due to the nature of science.
Well, religion is based on faith and history (but at a certain point falls back on faith since you aren’t there in the past), and science should be based on empirical evidence. So both realms can’t operate exactly the same, although they can cross over.
Many people do research on many faiths, and their research convinces them that a particular one is correct. They can live the rest of their life believing that particular faith is correct, and stick with it, even if they are open to being proven wrong.
And with science, if you actually prove something true, you do not have to act as though you have not. Now, if you only have a theory, then yes, you should be questioning it until it can be proven. I think modern science has disregarded the scientific method as not required anymore to make claims about what we “know”.
I think modern science has disregarded the scientific method as not required anymore to make claims about what we “know”.
Yeah, that’s one of the pretty big problems I see happening in the current scenario.
People becoming way more hand-wavy about having been proven wrong, which sometimes seems (we can’t know whether it actually is) outright disingenuous.The religion related scenario I painted was probably possible due to how long it lasted. Maybe we will have to wait for this one to last long enough to know whether what it yields is as undesirable or more.
For now, at least I don’t see it going in the same direction as the religion power, simply because it’s not the science people that are holding power, but other politics oriented ones. So if it were to go in an undesirable direction in the far future, it would have to be in some other direction.Yeah, I think both religion and science have taken a back seat to just plain ol’ greed and power.
The science guys will always do science.
Even if the patronages stop.
Even if other’s start killing them for it.
Even if the whole society calls them a heretic.
The quest for truth defines them.
Just don’t mistake them for science bros
I’ve seen a lot of conservative (the American Republican model) Christians but I have also seen what I consider to be “true” Christians, with a strong faith and love for everyone, and part of that faith often involves confronting reality, thinking about solutions to problems, helping the poor and weak. I agree with you that it’s not all black and white. A lot of Christians don’t believe in the literal text of the Bible for its supernatural claims, but instead they read it (and other religious texts, there are a lot of religious people who do some multi-track drifting) for its morals and guiding principles, which can all be interpreted in different ways, and there is a lot of discourse in religious circles about the meaning and morals of texts, about finding ancient wisdom or reinterpreting old texts to better suit modern standards. It can be a very research intensive way of life to be religious and have faith. I’d argue that if you have any principles at all that you stick to, that counts as faith.
Well honestly, (since you mention Christians), if they are true, they’d have to say it is the only way. Not because they are bigoted, but because all the various religions disagree. But, that view (that Christianity is the only way) may have been achieved by doing lots of research. I think its kinda foolish to say all the religions are different paths to God if they disagree with each other. Any religious person who says all faiths are valid paths to God, are either fools, or liars. Some of the popes have said that, and that would make them not Christian.
You have to accept that religions can be wrong about some things to have the view that they’re all different paths to God.
Plus everyone should turn a critical eye to their own religion, every holy text and every doctrine has both wheat and chaff.
If two faiths flat out contradict each other, they can’t both be right.
Faith A says that God doesn’t care what you do or believe. Faith B says that God does care what you do and what you believe.
Both can not be correct. Can they both be paths to God? That’s the thing, because of their statement, they’d have to believe in different Gods. So they would not be on two different paths to the same God. If they were, then God would not be stable, and in the case of faith B, God would be a liar.
If you reduce an entire religion down to a single axiom, then sure, they can be entirely contradictory.
But religions aren’t like that, they are each a thousand different beliefs, rituals, and directives. There are enough similarities in message to see a commonality between them.
Like you said, it’s all the same path to God, some paths are a bit more meandering than others, and some claim that there are no other paths.
“But religions aren’t like that” Yeah, some religions are like that.
Religions are a single axiom and nothing else? Which ones?
I don’t think you need to be so black and white. you can pick and choose what goes into your faith, and still remain 95% christian. I guess to me the label just doesn’t matter very much. also if the Pope claims that to accept all faith is christian, then that is very much what Catholic Christianity is. the Pope also plays a guiding and interpreting role, and you can choose to go with his interpretation or not.
Correct. You can have minor disagreements about some things that aren’t clear. But if the bible and the pope disagree on whether all faiths are valid, then biblical Christianity and catholic Christianity are not the same faith. If the pope says biblical Christianity is valid and true, and the bible says that what the pope is teaching is false, then he just invalidated himself. See why saying all faiths are valid can’t work?
I agree. Western Christianity is a perversion of the religion imo. To be fair a large part of biblical text has absolutely nothing to do with the teachings of Christ and that confuses a lot of people. A lot of them seem to be quite contradictory to what he was saying.
If anyone is into reading interesting books these helped to clarify Christianity for me. I do not consider myself a Christian ( maybe in my next life) but Jesus was a radical cat and what he did at that point in history was revolutionary .
Leo Tolstoy , The Kingdom Of God Is Within You. This one may turn you into a Vegan Anarchist so watch out
Swami Sri Yukteswar, The Holy Science
Tao Te Ching , Lao Tzu …this one has nothing to do with Christianity but helped me understand what God ( the Supreme Being , God Head, Jah, Allah or whatever you want to call the source) was in simple terms. It’s a quick read
Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of A Yogi.
That Tolstoy book sounds interesting, I’ll have to check it out.
There are versions of the Bible where Big J’s words are written in red text, that’s what I would recommend to people so they focus on the part that matters (for Christians)
Tolstoy was an interesting individual…and a great writer. Enjoy
That’s how you know to not take them seriously
Edgy 14yo post
Yeah, your username speaks for itself
Ok edgy 15yo
Look at your fucking username before you blabber about edgy 14 yr olds
Sometimes religion: “it requires faith, therefore we can and should stop learning.”
Religion is an absolute rotting cancer
I feel like it depends on the person.
I get the sentiment, but check out the length of the Taoist cannon, it would challenge even some modern day myth lengths like Marvel super hero comics.
Here I thought that the Taoist canon was only the Tao Te Ching (which is pretty short).
canon = approved literature
cannon = large gun that fires grapeshot, etc.
Now I can’t help thinking about what a Taoist Megaman villains gallery would look like
Ennui man, Hubris man?
There is also an idea in philosophy of science called “pessimistic meta induction”. Basically the concept is that science is a continually evolving process where we get increasingly accurate understanding about how things work. However since science progresses by falsifying previously held beliefs we can speculate that all of our current scientific theories are technically false.
It’ll end up like the Bohr model. Someday we’ll miss the elegant simplicity of everything just being vibrating strings.
This meme was made by a “know it all”.
Both have a lot of books involved
Out of concern for how much the “Bible Belt” throws in with Israel’s Zionist bullshit, I did some basic searches on the topic, and the discussion was a bit different than I thought it’d be.
People need a place to belong. For many, they have communities in cities that fit. For rural areas, it’s one thing to say “Stop listening to that televangelist ordering you to deposit your savings”, but you’d need something else to take that place - something to believe in.
That’s where more progressive preachers, people similar to the current pope, are shaming themselves for not stepping up enough, recognizing people’s needs and being genuine voices of compassion; not trying to be the economic “immigrants pay taxes” or scientific “colleges fuel cure research” voice, but the “Be good to your neighbor” voice.
So even though I’m not a believer, I’m at least seeing the way churches can bring communities together rather than leave all one’s connections to Facebook. The important thing is what sort of voice is unifying them - because by god, there’s a million ways to pervert the message of any major religion into one of hate.
Life is hard people are desperate for some source or strength. Makes sense.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that atheists don’t claim to know everything? Come on…
This is about the perspective of science on knowledge. Are you seriously trying to tell me that all scientists are despicable know-it-alls?
I don’t think that’s the message
