We associate intelligence with those who can make good arguments. Our faculty of reason evolved not to help us solve problems but to help us advance socially. Lots of rationale people are fundamentalist Christians. Some creationists have a Ph.D. in a scientific field from a credible institution. Even non Christians can be irrational, too. Linus Pauling won two Nobel Prizes, one in Chemistry and the other in Peace. Yet he believed that large amounts of Vitamin C prevented cancer, despite all evidence to the contrary. He even died of cancer, claiming to the end that he would’ve gotten it earlier had he not ingested so much Vitamin C. Why does anyone fail to recognize their own irrational thinking? We just can’t.
This is the pure Enlightenment and the cry of the atheist secularists and scientistic.
It's great, isn't it?
Yes, it's a powerful tool. Powerful tools can be used for good and evil. I'm not saying religious people are brimming with wisdom and know what they're doing, while secularists aren't. I think religions are a product of memetic evolution. They exist because, over time, religious societies are more stable and do less crazy shit. And that's why our societies tend to drift towards religiousity.
The kind of people who led us to the French revolution, communism, fascism ...
They also led us to major scientific and technological advances including computers and the internet. You forgot that fact. You wouldn't have been able to post that if it weren't for those atheists.
Why do we need to chose? Why can't we have both? The conflict between religion and science was invented by religious people. If you dismiss the wisdom of religion, then why do you think that this assertion makes sense?
Just to be clear. I reject Stephen Jay Gould's, non-overlapping magisteria. Gould is a secularists and formulated the religious project in scientific terms. As if it's possible to conduct experiments to figure out what God wants.
I don't think religion is a science. I don't think religious beliefs are about epistemology or understanding what is true. The magisteria of religion is complete fantasy. But that doesn't make it worthless. Religious "beliefs" exists to create tribes. They are shared narratives. It's good if they are paradoxical and make no rational sense. Because their point isn't to explain the world. The only thing they explain is human psychology and how to satisfy basic and shared human psychological brain farts. And since humans are primarily emotionally driven creatures, that makes religion important.
Actually hatred for Jews has its roots in belief in the Christian God.
That doesn't give science and scientism a free pass. I think the fundamental divide between religion and science is this, religions state that the greatest mysteries of life are unknowable, while science says they're knowable. I know that followers of either team behave in the exact opposite way.
I think Dan Harmon formulated it best. "Religions are about our relationship with the unknown". It's a way to manage not knowing what will happen in the future or why anything we do matters. Humans are fundamentrally control freaks. We are pattern seeking and are desperate to know. Religions put a lid on that impulse. They create various myths and stories, which essentially tells the faithful that someone or something else is on top of this, so you can stop worrying.
Secularism on the other hand leads to us continually thinking we have it all figured out. It makes us arrogant and ignore catastrophical results, because that just can't happen. It pushes society towards the extreme.
And just to be very very clear here, religion is dead today. In the west it died at the end of the 19'th century as secular education spread. Today even religious people think about God is scientific terms. Hence Gould's statement. Evangelical Christianity is the apex of this perverse blend of religion coupled with scientific assureadness. Today religion is like a dodgy break on an extremely fancy new car.
Yes, science and secularism has made us rich. The world is materially better off than it's ever been. But it's also materialistic. The religion of our age is consumerism. Almost the entire market today is about trading things nobody needs. Capitalism has created a high information super stressed society and we buy stuff to manage the stress.
One of the smartest people I know has thrown all chairs out of his home, so he has to sit on the floor. He's also self-made rich btw. He does yoga everyday. He has enough money to never have to work again. Why does he do this? It's to remind himself that he doesn't need all the shit he keeps buying. He's on purpose removed some comforts from his home, simply as this reminder. That's religion to me. It's a set of psychological tools to remind us to sometimes stop obsessing about that thing we really really desire, and accept that things don't always work out the way you thought it would.
It ignores basic truths about human thinking.
Well some human thinking evidently involves fear mongering against anybody who openly doubts some pet dogma.
The question is whether religion makes this impulse better or worse. I'm going with better.
I also want to make it clear that I think Christianity (and Islam) are the worst religions we've ever devised. They do the job. But I think we can do a lot better than that. Let's avoid falling into the trap of black-and-white dichotomies. I see this as shades of grey. I see zero conflict between science and religion.
