Christianity: Friend or foe to science?

[Jimmy Higgins]

Is Christianity a friend or foe of science? Some of the greatest minds in science were Christians. Some of the worst obstructionists to science were Christians.

Looks like the answer is "both".

Looks to me like the answer is "the question entails a category error".

Christianity isn't the kind of thing that has friends or foes; And for that matter, science isn't the kind of thing that has them, either. The rules and observances of dead religions are never coming back; If every trace of Christianity were lost in some cataclysm, there could never again be a Christian religion. If we ever make contact with extraterrestrial life, it's a certainty that the aliens won't be Christians, even if (as seems plausible) they have their own religious beliefs. Their religions and ours would be mutually incomprehensible.

Darn it, I wrote an awesome paragraph providing details and examples, but sadly, I also thought of a single sentence to summarize the whole thing.

Religion is going to be conflicted with science because religion is declarative, not demonstrative. It can agree, but just by its own nature of being nothing but declarative, it is doomed to conflict with science. And because science is demonstrative, that really tells us we can set religion aside. We can always use philosophy for the "spiritual" stuff.

 

[abaddon]

According to Joseph Campbell, myth has 4 functions:
1) mystical -- about experiencing wonder at the universe and relating self to Mystery;
2) cosmological -- about forming an image of the universe, telling the patterns in the cosmos to know one's place in the whole;
3) sociological -- is for supporting the social order;
4) pedagogical -- about learning to live a fully human life in the world.
(see https://fractalenlightenment.com/36315/life/joseph-campbells-four-basic-functions-of-mythology)

The cosmological function causes problems with science, when the more atavistic religionists insist that their creation myths are factual. Then also the sociological function gets annoying if some absolutists think their religious rules must be forced on everyone.

Smart religionists allow that new information must inform the cosmological function. They'll base their mythic narratives on the scientific description of the universe instead of ancient pre-scientific misdescriptions.

And smart secular activists would encourage this instead of enabling fundies by siding with them (and their overly literal take on scriptures) against the "liberal" religionists. Religion isn't going to go away, but it is inevitably going to change. So a far cleverer strategy than "get rid of religion" would be to encourage the changes towards more science-friendly religiosity.

 

[bilby]

Religion isn't going to go away

Are you sure?

I suspect it will. But it's going to take a little while. Religion, like famine and war, is rapidly declining. All three are characteristic of a world of shortages and hardship, two things which have largely disappeared from the developed world, and are on the run almost everywhere else.

Religion is basically dead in Western Europe. People there still describe themselves as Christians, but they only attend churches for ceremonial reasons - weddings and funerals, and (becoming less and less common) christenings.

The latter persists only because of pressure from the aging population of religious people (granny wouldn't be happy if we didn't get the baby baptised).

Churches in England when I was a child almost invariably had elderly vicars. Today, they almost invariably have vicars from the former colonies (mostly Africa and the Caribbean) - there simply aren't enough English born people who care sufficiently about religion to go into the priesthood. The crisis is well understood by the Anglican church hierarchy, but has been successfully hidden, not only by importing vicars from the developing world, but also by slashing their numbers and amalgamating churches.

Huge numbers of churches have closed; Yet the remaining ones are almost empty on any given Sunday, and their tiny congregations are all old people.

Religion, particularly Abrahamic religion, is a response to suffering and struggle. Neither is necessary today, and they are disappearing so fast that few people really believe that they're going away. But they are - with occasional setbacks and reverses, sure; But the overall trend has been clear since the end of WWII, and has been accelerating and broadening to include places that were, even in my lifetime, thought to be irredeemable sinkholes of poverty, or violence, or both.

It's noteworthy that the poorest and most violent places are also the most religious; I used to think that the religion was a cause of poverty and violence, but I am now almost certain that the causality is the exact reverse. Give people comfort and safety, and they discard religion en masse.

It's fairly unimportant how atheists interact with theists in discussions of science vs belief; If we want to see more atheism and less theism, the solution is just to be kind to each other - to provide for those who have shortages, to care for those who cannot care for themselves. Peace, prosperity, universal healthcare, and the welfare state are all that's needed to turn around poverty stricken and violent shit-holes like Northern Ireland, Ethiopia, or Alabama.

You just need to give it a few generations for the folks who grew up with the old ways of living to die off, or at least become outnumbered by young people who are sick of nonsensical enmities and who don't have to fight for survival.

 

[abaddon]

Religion isn't going to go away

Are you sure?

Changes in religion will look like the demise of religion to persons who define all religion as traditional religion.

Changes are the demise of the religion that one's familiar with. But if the basic pattern of religiosity (mainly devotional practices to a Something Bigger than one's personal self) continues, then people who are expecting very specific things (church attendance, an ancient cosmology still being used for its mythology, et al) will see those specific things change and conclude religion's "going away".

I define religion more broadly in an effort to not reduce it to the most salient counters to my own belief-system.

There are the traditional religions -- with church-goers, scripture-believers, sky-daddy-worshiping theists, people giving their money away to priests and gurus.

Then there's also nontraditional religions -- non-theistic spirituality; non-scripture-based beliefs; believers who don't go to churches; religious naturalists; et al.

Some of these might select the label "spiritual but not religious" which means they don't want to identify with a traditional religion. So they prefer the word "spiritual" to get across "I'm not a churchy sort of religious" but it's still a variety of religious. They'll select "None" if asked what denomination they affiliate with -- no surprise since we're much more isolated and uprooted in the modern world (or "individualistic" if you prefer to frame it that way).

Maybe, for some, being unaffiliated with a traditional religion is a halfway stop to being fully irreligious. And maybe for others it's a halfway stop to another spirituality or religion (possibly a new one that's in the making).

 

[excreationist]

Religion isn't going to go away

Are you sure?

I suspect it will. But it's going to take a little while. Religion, like famine and war, is rapidly declining. All three are characteristic of a world of shortages and hardship, two things which have largely disappeared from the developed world, and are on the run almost everywhere else.

Religion is basically dead in Western Europe.

Well now there are new denominations that are growing:

And most of the world isn't Western Europe - countries that are growing often involve a lot of Islam, etc.

Muslim population growth - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Between 2015 and 2060, Muslim population is projected to increase by 70%. This compares with the 32% growth of world population during the same period

 

[bilby]

In the 1850s, the Church of England embarked on a massive campaign of church building, because they could see that the population was growing very rapidly, and were certain that all these new English people would be Christians.

A century later, this assumption was looking quite shaky; Population was still growing exponentially, but congregation sizes were leveling off.

A half century after that, the population was still growing, but churches were closing in huge numbers, and congregation sizes had plummeted.

The projected growth in Islam is much the same. It's as unthinkable to the Imams today that all these new people with Muslim parents might not be Muslims themselves, as it was to the Bishops a century ago that the growing English population might not share their parents' Christianity.

 

[bilby]

Well now there are new denominations that are growing

Yeah, but they're tiny.

A 6% growth rate sounds impressive, but 6% of fuck-all is fuck-all. Meanwhile a 3% decline in CofE membership is 3% of a much larger starting number.

I can't immediately find figures for total congregations, but the numbers of churches is given by wikipedia; The following assumes (perhaps incorrectly) that a "church" in each case has roughly a similar number of congregants:

Vineyard claims "more than 100" churches in the UK; Adding 6% (six churches a year) isn't exactly a massive change.

The CofE has 16,000 churches; If they're losing 3% (480 churches per annum), that's completely swamping the half dozen new evangelical Vineyard churches that are opening.

There's a MASSIVE difference between 3% of the Church of England, and 6% of Vineyard, and it's in exactly the opposite direction from that implied by that graph.

For every new Vineyard church that opens, EIGHTY Church of England churches close.

 

[WAB]

I think religion will survive as long as America survives. Well, then again maybe bilby is right and I hope he is.

A person who was a friend of mine in NY when I was a youth (long time ago) posted a thing on Facebook that said: "The world would be a much better place if everyone had these." referring to a photo of a pistol and a bible.

It may be hopeless.

 

[excreationist]

@bilby
Yes Christianity is declining a lot in the UK but you basically said that religion is going away - but Islam is a religion... and it seems to be growing...

 

[bilby]

@bilby
Yes Christianity is declining a lot in the UK but you basically said that religion is going away - but Islam is a religion... and it seems to be growing...

It seems to be, but in fact Islam isn't growing in the UK, except by immigration (which doesn't change the worldwide numbers of Muslims).

Children born in England to Muslim parents become, like those born to Christian parents, rapidly disinterested by religion of any kind, as they learn about reality in school, and observe the general absence of religiosity amongst their peers, and in society generally, and note the complete absence of disastrous consequences of that atheism.

Of course, the first couple of generations typically claim to share their parents' religion, just as their Christian counterparts did; And obviously the imams and priests in both cases like to count everyone who's ever set foot in their mosque or church as a life member of the religion.

And with Islam there's a cultural driver towards retaining membership of the faith, as a response to, and for protection from, racism and islamophobia.

The actual religiosity of British muslims is in a rapid decline, even if that's not reflected by the numbers of people ticking "Muslim" on the census. If you look at typical Friday mosque attendance, and/or the number of people who observe the daily prayer rituals, you can see that Islam isn't rising in the UK, but rather is "hollowing out" just as Christianity did in the mid-twentieth century - the numbers are being propped up by the "we don't want to upset the grandparents" approach.

In the 1950s, Christianity seemed to be firmly entrenched and almost universally supported by the British people. But it was a false appearance based on the pretence of the public, and on the hyper-optimistic accounting practices of the church hierarchy.

Both Christianity and Islam in the UK are rapidly departing from the mainstream, with the vast majority of people in both religions becoming increasingly atheistic, and a tiny number of diehards in both religions reacting to this by becoming more vocal, and more fundamentalist. Hence the rise of the new churches, as the old ones collapse.

 

[excreationist]

@bilby
Yes Christianity is declining a lot in the UK but you basically said that religion is going away - but Islam is a religion... and it seems to be growing...

It seems to be, but in fact Islam isn't growing in the UK, except by immigration (which doesn't change the worldwide numbers of Muslims).

I thought the question of whether religion is going away was about the world as a whole, not just the UK. e.g. post #65: "Between 2015 and 2060, Muslim population [world-wide] is projected to increase by 70%. This compares with the 32% growth of world population during the same period"

 

[SIB]

Many people, including Christians, see Christianity as science's foe. Christianity is seen as based on faith while science is based on carnal unbelief which can destroy faith in Christ. Needless to say, many people criticize Christianity for its perceived opposition to science. But is Christianity really a foe to science? Most Christian apologists answer with a resounding no. They cite the many great scientists who have been Christians as evidence that Christianity poses no threat to legitimate science. In fact, apologists see the rise of modern science as to Christianity's credit.

But what do Christians say about Christianity in relation to science? Do they like science and have interest in its discoveries? Is science good or bad in their estimation? Do any of them fear science and see it as a threat to their faith? How many of them are scientists or plan to become scientists?

Answers would be greatly appreciated!

For me, its really isn't not believers vs non believers. Heck, most people believe in something more.
It really is irrational (atheist/theist) vs rational.

 

[Learner]

Foes to science come under different guises.

Lucy's a dude? Lucy then becomes Lucifer?
Footprints without feet?

 

[pood]

Foes to science come under different guises.

Lucy a dude? Lucy becomes Lucifer?

The very first words out of the mouth of your video’s narrator, “when it comes to missing links between apes and humans,” already debunk the debunker as yet another creationist fraud. First, humans are apes, and second, scientists do not think in terms of “missing links” now, if they ever did. That is popular misconception of how evolution works.

But since he put the stupid in the very first words out of his mouth, no need to bother watching the rest to see where else he falls down and goes boom.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Sometimes foes and can be friends and friends can be foes. Aren’t you limiting yourself to think in these opposing terms?

And sometimes does can be trends.

 

[Learner]

Sure, you don't have to watch what his particular explanation points are. So there'll be no actual countering points to his, coming from you. Fair enough pood, your position is acknowledged.

 

[pood]

Sure, you don't have to watch what his particular explanation points are. So there'll be no actual countering points to his coming from you.. acknowledge pood.

Why should I watch it? He already effs up on the very first words out of his mouth! Anyway, I dislike watching videos of anything. Got a transcirpt of his nonsense?

 

[pood]

So, yes, I did counter the very first thing he said. The very first clause of his very first sentence.

 

[Learner]

So, yes, I did counter the very first thing he said. The very first clause of his very first sentence.

The few words you managed to critique of a mere sentence, is as far as you're willing to go (which I can accept). I mean with the little you were critiquely inputting as a counter to very few words... where do you "counter" the explanation (the whole video ) that "fraudulent manipulation of data" was used to create the false appearance of the Australopithecus named Lucy?

 

[pood]

So, yes, I did counter the very first thing he said. The very first clause of his very first sentence.

The few words you managed to critique of a mere sentence, is as far as you're willing to go (which I can accept). I mean with the little you were critiquely inputting as a counter to very few words... where do you "counter" the explanation (the whole video ) that "fraudulent manipulation of data" was used to create the false appearance of the Australopithecus named Lucy?

I see no need to go further after reading a single clause — the very first clause of his presentation, in which this dunderhead misreperesents two big things — to know he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and is not trustworthy.