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Religion is Make-Believe

William Rea said:
Science doesn't generally concern itself with those things but, the scientific method can be applied to make sense of them. All that religion can offer is dogma and a promise for an imagined future.
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Are you suggesting you can apply scientific method to morality? Or what?
 
ecofarm said:
1. Pondering the unknowable is part of human nature. Regardless of the chosen form of expression (luck, fate, curses, karma, religion, etc), it's something that we all take part in. Thus, metaphysical pondering and expression is part of human nature.

2. The suppression of metaphysical expression is low class because anyone that's had an extra dime in their pocket (or thought in their head) has pondered the unknowable.

3. The suppression of metaphysical expression is authoritarian because it says "you can't think about these things!"


I say: Ponder the unknown! Develop theories about it. Search your inner values and things we cannot know, and find a way to express those thoughts to others.
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Unknown and unknowable are very different things. The search to understand the unknown I get. That's exploration, science, and learning in general. But the unknowable seems rooted entirely in fantasy. I don't ponder the unknowable. I know of nothing that is unknowable. I certainly agree that it's human nature to ponder and seek out the unknown. But to invoke unknowability seems like just a cover when the unknown turns out to be unreal. The unknowable used to be things like natural disasters or the movements of the sun and moon. Now we know them.

Likewise, I don't see anyone suppressing thought here. The OP presents the idea that some ideas should rightly be labeled fictional and given significantly less weight than they do now. No one is being denied their thoughts. Rather, more thought is being added to the conversation. The same way that no one was suppressed or censored by the realization that phrenology was complete nonsense, there wouldn't be any kind of censorship from acknowledging that bronze age myths are just silly stories that have very little to teach us in the modern world.

As our understanding of physics grows, we discover that there are no metaphysics. This is not stifling thought. It is the addition of more thought.

stonewall50 said:
Are you suggesting you can apply scientific method to morality? Or what?
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Of course you can. It's not difficult at all. Though attempts are usually met with religious apologists proclaiming that you can't prove that murder and rape are inherently bad and the only way to do so is with an authority to tell you that they are bad. That no one wants to be murdered or raped and that our bodies and minds come with an innate aversion to those situations doesn't seem to make a difference to them.
 
For the most part I agree, but science and religion can co-exist. Its not one or the other. And religions can use science - at least soft science to better inform itself as in biblical scholarship etc.

CrabCake said:
There are many things that cannot be explored by science but that are of profound significance. The concepts of justice and morality, right and wrong, good and evil, and ideals of government such as democracy and concepts like human rights cannot be studied through verifiable experiments. Such ideals are based on mixes of societal forces and innate moral dispositions and science find itself without any tools to reach useful conclusions about these questions. Sure, you can study the effects of these ideas and systems, but nothing can scientifically tell you what is moral or just or "right". Those things fall outside the scope of science and you will need to approach such questions with other tools. Those tools may include secular humanism and other secular philosophies, or theological and religious systems.

Religion is concerned with morality and spirituality. Science is concerned with the physical universe. So, if you want to make a meaningful argument against religion, using science as the alternative is nonsensical. The two disciplines don't overlap. You could try again with a claim for why secular humanism, or some other non-religious moral system you prefer, is better than religion. But "religion is wrong because of science" is a silly argument.
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CrabCake said:
Of course.

That would be a valid claim. But "religion is wrong because of science" is not.
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calamity said:
Would it not be better if people just admitted that basic fact?

Religion is made up mumbo jumbo used to give comfort or explain things that are not easy to understand. It's not based on anything tangible or verifiable through experimentation. It's a belief system nothing more or less.

We have Mormons, Muslims, Christians, Scientologists, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Animists, Pagans, Wiccans, Satanists and a whole bunch of hybrids in between. They can't all be right, but most are definitely wrong. It's safe to say, none have it right. And, not a single one of their supernatural beliefs can be proven to be real.

It's time to call religion what it is--make-believe.
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I think an enormous amount of history was witnessed by a society that did not have the technological ability to explain it. They did their best. But how do you explain things that your mind has never fathomed? The words were not even invented then.

Then, let mankind find a way to manipulate it on the good-hearted yet weak minds of society, for personal gain, then you got "religion."

I actually believe that events happened in our ancient past that could have been better explained had they happened today.
 
ecofarm said:
I'm referring to the unknowable.
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As I said, there is essentially nothing that is shown to be unknowable. When we assume that the unknown cannot be known, we get into a lot of trouble.
 
Paschendale said:
As I said, there is essentially nothing that is shown to be unknowable. When we assume that the unknown cannot be known, we get into a lot of trouble.
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Unknowable at present time and regarding metaphysics. Presuming one can know all there is about metaphysics, at any time, is stupid. Do you not grasp the subject itself?
 
ecofarm said:
Unknowable at present time and regarding metaphysics. Presuming one can know all there is about metaphysics, at any time, is stupid. Do you not grasp the subject itself?
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Unknowable at the present time just means unknown. And as above, there is nothing to suggest the existence of metaphysics at all. I understand the subject and concept. But that doesn't make the things it discusses real. There are no ghosts or vampires or nature spirits or psychic phenomena or energy vortexes or anything like that. Fortune tellers are charlatans and no one can contact the souls of the dead. All of these are not unknowable. They have been examined and are known.

You have yet to show anything that falls within the realm of metaphysics and not within the realm of physics. Stories of invisible beings that can't be observed and yet somehow affect us in mysterious ways are not metaphysical. They're just stories. Please, show some things that are metaphysical and not physical.

This is, of course, a bit of a tangent. You said that thinking about magic and the like is a part of human nature. I disagree. I think it is only an expression of our ignorance and curiosity. Dreaming up metaphysics was simply an attempt to answer questions. It was addressing the unknown, as there is no unknowable (quantum mechanics and uncertainty aside), and it was simply a wrong answer. Curiosity and seeking the truth are part of human nature, but that's not what the thread is about. The thread is about accepting that a wrong answer is wrong and losing our emotional attachment to it.
 
That makes no sense. We don't know what we don't know. We shouldn't assume that the unknown can't be known but I think its equally invalid to assume that all the unknown will eventually be known. This is the leap of faith that many atheists make.


Paschendale said:
As I said, there is essentially nothing that is shown to be unknowable. When we assume that the unknown cannot be known, we get into a lot of trouble.
Click to expand...
 
CrabCake said:
There are many things that cannot be explored by science but that are of profound significance. The concepts of justice and morality, right and wrong, good and evil, and ideals of government such as democracy and concepts like human rights cannot be studied through verifiable experiments. Such ideals are based on mixes of societal forces and innate moral dispositions and science find itself without any tools to reach useful conclusions about these questions. Sure, you can study the effects of these ideas and systems, but nothing can scientifically tell you what is moral or just or "right". Those things fall outside the scope of science and you will need to approach such questions with other tools. Those tools may include secular humanism and other secular philosophies, or theological and religious systems.

Religion is concerned with morality and spirituality. Science is concerned with the physical universe. So, if you want to make a meaningful argument against religion, using science as the alternative is nonsensical. The two disciplines don't overlap. You could try again with a claim for why secular humanism, or some other non-religious moral system you prefer, is better than religion. But "religion is wrong because of science" is a silly argument.
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Science has debunked about 90% of the nonsensical explanations for events written in the bible. That's a good start.

The Bible had rules for how to sell slaves, subjugate women and kill insolent children. Morality is not its strong suit.
 
Paschendale said:
As I said, there is essentially nothing that is shown to be unknowable. When we assume that the unknown cannot be known, we get into a lot of trouble.
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Tricky business. If a supernatural being exists is probably unknowable. However, that the ones described by the worlds religions does not exist, I believe, has been proven. That is, if you consider 90% or more of the claims being either debunked or too absurd to be true as "proof."
 
Logicman said:
This is just the same old cyber-dysentery from the man who STILL hasn't been able to bust the resurrection.
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Resurrection is absurd. It defies what we know about the biology of life and death. It would be incumbant on you to prove it is not an absurd fable.
 
calamity said:
Would it not be better if people just admitted that basic fact?

Religion is made up mumbo jumbo used to give comfort or explain things that are not easy to understand. It's not based on anything tangible or verifiable through experimentation. It's a belief system nothing more or less.

We have Mormons, Muslims, Christians, Scientologists, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Animists, Pagans, Wiccans, Satanists and a whole bunch of hybrids in between. They can't all be right, but most are definitely wrong. It's safe to say, none have it right. And, not a single one of their supernatural beliefs can be proven to be real.

It's time to call religion what it is--make-believe.
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Sounds like a cry in the wilderness from someone who needs validation of his position, for fear he is risking his eternal life by being wrong.
 
LowDown said:
Suppress one religion and another will spring up. You'll never be rid of it.

Besides which, I don't see the benefit of atheism. Aren't officially atheistic states famous for killing millions of their own citizens for little or no reason?
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Atheism is no belief in gods. I'm not quite atheist since I believe they may or may not exist. This would be agnostic. However, whether or not something god-like exists doesn't mean it needs to be worshipped. I'm definitely anti-worship.
 
Paschendale said:
Unknown and unknowable are very different things. The search to understand the unknown I get. That's exploration, science, and learning in general. But the unknowable seems rooted entirely in fantasy. I don't ponder the unknowable. I know of nothing that is unknowable. I certainly agree that it's human nature to ponder and seek out the unknown. But to invoke unknowability seems like just a cover when the unknown turns out to be unreal. The unknowable used to be things like natural disasters or the movements of the sun and moon. Now we know them.

Likewise, I don't see anyone suppressing thought here. The OP presents the idea that some ideas should rightly be labeled fictional and given significantly less weight than they do now. No one is being denied their thoughts. Rather, more thought is being added to the conversation. The same way that no one was suppressed or censored by the realization that phrenology was complete nonsense, there wouldn't be any kind of censorship from acknowledging that bronze age myths are just silly stories that have very little to teach us in the modern world.

As our understanding of physics grows, we discover that there are no metaphysics. This is not stifling thought. It is the addition of more thought.



Of course you can. It's not difficult at all. Though attempts are usually met with religious apologists proclaiming that you can't prove that murder and rape are inherently bad and the only way to do so is with an authority to tell you that they are bad. That no one wants to be murdered or raped and that our bodies and minds come with an innate aversion to those situations doesn't seem to make a difference to them.
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Blah blah blah. You can go to the extreme...but what about gray areas?
 
ecofarm said:
Unknowable at present time and regarding metaphysics. Presuming one can know all there is about metaphysics, at any time, is stupid. Do you not grasp the subject itself?
Click to expand...

If it's unknowable then how do you know that it exists?
 
CrabCake said:
Of course.

That would be a valid claim. But "religion is wrong because of science" is not.
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Can we say that large parts of religion are wrong because of science?
 
calamity said:
Resurrection is absurd. It defies what we know about the biology of life and death. It would be incumbant on you to prove it is not an absurd fable.
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It's documented history, sport. The fable is yours for thinking it's not real.
 
Logicman said:
It's documented history, sport. The fable is yours for thinking it's not real.
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It's documented in a book of make-believe history. Yes. That's true.
 
Paschendale said:
Unknown and unknowable are very different things. The search to understand the unknown I get. That's exploration, science, and learning in general. But the unknowable seems rooted entirely in fantasy. I don't ponder the unknowable. I know of nothing that is unknowable. I certainly agree that it's human nature to ponder and seek out the unknown. But to invoke unknowability seems like just a cover when the unknown turns out to be unreal. The unknowable used to be things like natural disasters or the movements of the sun and moon. Now we know them.

Likewise, I don't see anyone suppressing thought here. The OP presents the idea that some ideas should rightly be labeled fictional and given significantly less weight than they do now. No one is being denied their thoughts. Rather, more thought is being added to the conversation. The same way that no one was suppressed or censored by the realization that phrenology was complete nonsense, there wouldn't be any kind of censorship from acknowledging that bronze age myths are just silly stories that have very little to teach us in the modern world.

As our understanding of physics grows, we discover that there are no metaphysics. This is not stifling thought. It is the addition of more thought.



Of course you can. It's not difficult at all. Though attempts are usually met with religious apologists proclaiming that you can't prove that murder and rape are inherently bad and the only way to do so is with an authority to tell you that they are bad. That no one wants to be murdered or raped and that our bodies and minds come with an innate aversion to those situations doesn't seem to make a difference to them.
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The study of the "unknowable" is probably called Philosophy. Religions, IMO, are a sort of philosophy, except most do not entertain discussion of counterpoints. God's existence, according to the commandments, is clearly not debatable if you belong to that family of religions. However, as we discuss it here, it's clearly a philosophical discussion.

I see no way of knowing god exists. Even if he came and told me he's real, I'd have to question the reality of it. It's not like delusions are uncommon, after all.
 
calamity said:
The study of the "unknowable" is probably called Philosophy. Religions, IMO, are a sort of philosophy, except most do not entertain discussion of counterpoints. God's existence, according to the commandments, is clearly not debatable if you belong to that family of religions. However, as we discuss it here, it's clearly a philosophical discussion.

I see no way of knowing god exists. Even if he came and told me he's real, I'd have to question the reality of it. It's not like delusions are uncommon, after all.
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According to Stephen Hawking Philosophy is dead.
Philosophy has failed to keep up with science in a way, however the need to question still exists and i say this because of this article right here.

Universe Shouldn't Be Here, According to Higgs Physics

which is what 4 mathmaticians physics and other scientific minds said would happen years ago.

Roger Penrose laid it out plainly. all science has a maximum limit of possibility which is 10^50. anything smaller than that is well considered scientifically impossible.
Dr. Penrose calculated the entropy levels of the big bang.

According to Penrose, the odds against such an occurrence were on the order of 10 to the power of 10^123 to 1.
This number is so astronomical that there is no name for how large it is.

after figuring this out he wrote this.

Concerning this mind-boggling number Roger Penrose comments:

"This now tells how precise the Creator's aim must have been, namely to an accuracy of one part in 10 to the 10^123rd power. This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even write the number down in full in the ordinary denary notation: it would be 1 followed by 10123 successive 0's." Even if we were to write a 0 on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe- and we could throw in all the other particles for good measure- we would fall far short of writing down the figure needed.1

It takes far more “faith” to believe that this happened by chance than to believe that it was instigated by an incredibly powerful mind. The latter inference does not require blind faith!

It’s important to recognize that we're not talking about a single unlikely event here. We’re talking about hitting the jackpot over and over again, nailing extremely unlikely, mutually complementary parameters of constants and quantities, far past the point where chance could account for it.

In a brief moment in time Stephen Hawking stated such.

If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in 100 thousand million million, the universe would have collapsed before it ever reached its present size."

In a later piece he recanted this, but given the development that he was correct that the universe should have collapsed on itself speaks volumes to what people have been saying for years.

The big bang and random chance of generations of life and the universe is complete bull hockey.
 
Even if religion was wiped out, or never invented, you would still have differing beliefs and people claiming one another were immoral for not believing as they do.

The problems you have with religion, calamity, is really with humanity. It's just that religion gives people excuses to be the way they are.
 
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