#religion-vs-science

[thepersonalwords]

God does not take sides. He is always on the side of the winner

Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

We have done better. We are better.

[webweabings]

GOD SAID, LET NEWTON BE! AND ALL WAS LIGHT

"Paul Davies; // Guy Kawasaki; // "Flammarion engraving", Unknown (1888); // "Portrait of Jean Mielot", by Jean Le Tavernier (1456); // "The New science: 3 complete works: Where is science Going?, The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics, The Philosophy of Physics", by Max Planck; // "Science, Philosophy, and Religion", by Albert Einstein; // Allan Sandage in "Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomer's Quest", interviewed by John Noble Wilford; // Louis Pasteur; // AWAKE experiment, CERN (2019); // Eckhart Tolle; // Voltaire; // "A Brief History of Time. ch 11", by Stephen Hawking; // St. John Cristal Casket; // Ralph Waldo Emerson; // Robert Winston; // "George Baker", Unknown artist (17th century); // "Cours de philosophie à Paris. Grandes chroniques de France", Unknown artist (14th century)

[firefly5000]

Your faith isn't a FACT! Learn the difference.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.

- Werner Heisenberg, physicist (not the crystal meth chemist king pin)

[thesorcerersapprentice]

Image Text: “A belief in magic does not make people irrational, and [...] the contrast between magic and science is not between irrationality and rationality; rather, people work with various forms of logic that are argued from radically different premises." - Magic: A History by Chris Gosden.

[thislittlekumquat]

Right but they have a point in regards to the belief in this figures not being based in any sort of fact or evidence,

That’s the difference, the atheist worldview is by far more accurate

We mock flat earthers for being wrong but not other provably false beliefs?

With all due respect, and I mean that, the concept of any sort of divinity is by definition unprovable. Modern science runs into the issue of unprovables quite often. When I was in college, my professors all worked quite hard to ensure that we understood that there are very few absolutes even in science. Many things that we take for granted as "laws" actually have the formal title of "theory", because they haven't been proven, but there's so much evidence in favor of them and the way we operate under the assumption of their truth continues to provide results, that they are essentially, but not truly, laws. Evolution, for example, is not a law as defined by science, but rather a theory.

So, that's one thing to consider. Another thing to consider is that there is not only value in things we can prove or disprove with modern science. I can't scientifically prove that my spouse loves me. I can't scientifically explain why I like my favorite band, or my favorite novel. And yet these are things I know, and they're true in the sense that they form my world, my experiences, and my life. If you try to prove every single thing you believe in, or that you prefer, or that you experience, you'll never be satisfied. To practice science and to live life ethically and happily, you need to understand what science is, what its limitations are, and how to prioritize it as a concept and as a way of knowing. Science, nor indeed any system of knowing, cannot be the be-all, end-all of your thoughts and opinions. I am a scientist and a historian by education, and having both allow me to understand that many of the conundrums we face today are not unique to us, and many of the things we assume our ancestors did not know, they did in fact know (Ferdinand and Isabella and basically all of Europe knew that the world was round. They even knew that Columbs' calculations were wrong about the size of the sphere. They gave him money for other complex geopolitical reasons, and they were his last ditch effort, since every other wealthy patron he approached knew he was wrong and turned him away).

I suspect that the impulse to deny divinity derives in the majority of cases from a sense that the human institutions of religion are frequently abusive and cause as much suffering as they do comfort to their adherents. This is a fair assessment, and you're not wrong to make it. But on an individual basis, there is nothing less intelligent or foolish about feeling that a divine something exists. I am not arguing that religious people are better than atheists. Speaking as a former angry teen atheist myself, I am simply commenting on the fact that it has been a facet of the formal atheist movement for centuries to assume that it's more rational to be atheist. Even if it were, who is to say that rationalism makes one a better person? You're on tumblr, so I assume that there's something here that moves you. Is it a fandom? Is it photography? Is it art? Is it music? None of these are rational pursuits.

So I reject the idea that divinity is demonstrably fake, because it isn't, by definition, and I reject the idea that even if it was demonstrably false, it makes one a better or smarter person to be an atheist. I think it's completely fine to be an atheist, but one must temper one's sense of self-importance with the experiences of others.

P.S. I screenshotted the post because I found it ironic that OP used the word "stigmata", which is a very particular devotional concept and image in Roman Catholicism, among other Christian sects, and a very mystical one at that, in their username, while simultaneously professing to find people who are religious to be stupid and backwards. I think there's something going on there, and it amused me. But I did not bother OP or the person who reblogged it onto my dash, nor did I tag the post in any way to lead people to my post. So I wonder why you, anonymously, felt as if their point is any more valid than mine.

[geminiagentgreen]

Peter Atkins & John Lennox debate "Can science Explain Everything?"

Personally, I find Atkins to be quite...insufferable. Lennox has such respectable character and handles this (i.e. Atkins' frankly childish) conversation.

Lord, thank you for Lennox, and please forgive Atkins of his sins.

[lightedpath]

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

All praise is due to Allah, Lord of all the worlds.

The Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

Master of the Day of Judgment.

You alone we worship, and You alone we ask for help.

Guide us on the Straight Path,

the path of those who have received Your grace; not the path of those who have brought down wrath upon themselves, nor of those who have gone astray.

[barneysbigstompers]

Wont ever forget when teaching SCIENCE was illegal bc of religion

[pyrotechnicdarts]

i still love this btw. the fact that cybertronians have only recently found out that they can in fact die of old age. they spent 4 million years at war and then when it finally ends and everyone is eager to spend the rest of eternity in peace they find out that their species is not actually immortal and the only reason they didnt know it before is because their species hadnt even existed long enough for anyone to die of old age. especially with how it ties into the later-revealed-to-be-false belief that mortilus was the one who turned against the other gods

[fadran]

There are a lot of different kinds of stupid people; right now, I'm going to talk about two of them.

They're categorically connected, in the sense that their views are directly perpendicular, intersecting at a single point of Ultimate Stupidity: the idea that Religion can disprove Science, and the idea that Science can disprove Religion.

Now, I should note that I'm not religious. I was raised LDS, but have ultimately landed somewhere between Atheist and Agnostic now that I'm older and have a mind of my own. I should also note that this is Tumblr, the gayest site in the universe (by volume), and that I see a lot of religious trauma and persecution translate into hatred; and, frankly, I have nothing to say against that. I'm a straight white male, so I've never really been attacked for who I am or what I believe, and I certainly don't have any direct religious trauma - I only want to clarify that nothing I'm trying to say here is meant to attack anyone in particular or any specific institutions.

So, onto the first Stupid Person Archetype: "Religion Disproves Science."

I doubt I have to describe what I mean here. You see it all the time on Twitter (previously known as X); conspiracy theories and far-right extremists who reply to NASA or Bill Nye or whoever else is saying whatever really simple scientific facts happens to be relevant at the time. Climate Change, Vaccines, Evolution, etc. Things like "What you're ignoring is the simple TRUTH that JESUS LOVES YOU and GOD CREATED THE UNIVERSE IN HIS IMAGE" or whatever the fuck it is people think actively disproves... well, anything.

It's always completely circular logic. Why is this proven fact false, you say? It's because the Bible said so. What makes you think the Bible is a source of reliable fact and logic? Because it disproves these facts that I don't want to believe. If I'm going to try to debate someone's opinion on a particular subject and they try to cite The Bible, a hodgepodge of dozens of metaphors and traditional stories, then there's no debate to be had. They claim that it's the "truth," that it's "reason," that it's "logic," but it's just not because the Bible is not a scientific journal. It was not peer-reviewed. None of the experiments have clearly-defined parameters, and they certainly haven't been repeated in separate studies. If you're claiming that The Bible is the ultimate truth, then we're playing on two separate fields, and there's no point in even trying. If you claim that The Bible provides empirical or otherwise reliable evidence, then I can easily disprove you.

Now - allow me to turn your focus to the other Stupid Person Archetype: Science Disproves Religion.

When people claim that their religion is a greater truth than putting actual effort into trying to learn more about the world, they're just getting what they think from an echo chamber; they're just deluded. But when people claim that Empirical Evidence and cold, hard rigour can somehow... disprove something entirely inobservable, like God or Faith or the Soul? I'll sometimes tell people that this second archetype is even dumber than just believing God is real and Science is anti-truth propaganda, because you cannot claim to have a focus on the scientific method - hypothesis, observation, cross-references, peer-review - and say that you know for a fact that something strictly unknowable is true or untrue.

I would also like to point out that people will turn to Philosophy for answers, which is... still not great, but better. A lot of people will cite the Epicurean Paradox (God cannot be Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent all at once) or maybe the Ontological Argument (which I dare not utter here); and this is fine, I guess. At the very least, you're drawing your own conclusions from something well-regarded by educated individuals the world over; but I would urge you again to not regard this as the One and Only Truth.

God cannot be proven or disproven. The is the point. There is no Faith without Uncertainty, there is no Doubt without Uncertainty. That is the singular point that these two utterly foolish views cross through, the Interception of their Folly. What you believe is based on your experience and the conclusions you arrive to in your own mind, and thus limited to you and you alone. To claim a "Truth" is to claim to assert your own Belief over someone else's, and that is something no one can ever Truly do.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

This is atheism in a nutshell: one person says, "there's a god." An atheist says, "can you prove that?" They say, "no." The atheist says "I don't believe you."

That's it. That's all it is.

You see, if you took every holy book, every holy book there's ever been, every religious book, every bits of spirituality and hid them or destroyed them, okay, they went away. Then you took every science book and destroyed that, in a thousand years' time, those science books would be back, exactly the same. Because the tests would always turn out the same.

Those religious books would either never exist or they'd be totally different. Because there's no test.

[techniche]

The Science Cult: Cosmology, Ethics, Legitimation

Science has become an ideological toolkit for acclimatising people to their own subordination and bring about the un-free, mind-controlled societies of the coming brown age. It fulfills the functions of religion and, like all religions, began in a spirit of inquiry into the cosmos only to evolve into a massive dogma taught as truth.

First, science™ provides an explanation of the universe and humanity's role in it. Second, it dictates how people ought to think and act, under the threat of apocalypse (eg. "climate change™", pandemic etc). Third, it identifies global problems that legitimise the existence of global elites who claim to be solving those problems through ever more intrusive controls over people's lives (eg. carbon taxes, mandates etc)

[keithanime]

Religion And Goal Posts

I find it amusing and sometimes even frustrating how religion has a tendency to move the goal post whenever it comes to explaining something to us. Like nature, for example.

Religion: You hear that sound? That's thunder! Thunder occurs when god strikes his hammer... Science: Actually, we found out that the sound of thunder is caused by the lightning... Religion: Oh yeah? Well, do you know what causes lightning? It is when god... Science: Actually, we learned that lightning is created when the negatively charged tiny particles of ice... Religion: Oh yeah? Well, do you know where those ice come from and who created those ice? It is god, when he... Science: Actually, we discovered that the ice is formed when the warm moisture... Religion: Oh yeah? Well, do you know...

And it goes on and on and on... If you're familiar with the "god of the gaps" then you probably know what I mean. As long as science doesn't have an answer [for/to something], religion's answer is and will always be god: it's because god did it, it's because god created it, god made it happen, etc.

[cynicalclassicist]

May as well put out again the irony of the pope giving the POTUS stuff on science.

That said, most Christians in the US are very much anti-science, as proven by them being pro-Trump. And Trump follows the evangelical doctrine, which is whatever gets the rich more money is inherently good.

this is just the silliest thing ever, the POPE gave the president a science essay 👀