1. Stop being so smug.Mike at Frenquency Illusion has posted a response titled "Five things that would make Christians seem nicer." I suppose I agree with #5, but the other points seem rather weak.
2. Don’t assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you – we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.
3. Admit that the debate about God’s existence is complex – and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.
4. Admit that the scientific method – which by its nature relies on induction rather than deduction (starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis) – is as open to abuse as any religious belief, and is neither objective nor infallible.
5. Try to deal with the actual notions of God seriously believed in by millions of people rather than inventing strawmen (or spaghetti monsters) to dismiss the concepts of God – and deal with the Bible paying attention to context and the broader Christological narrative rather than quoting obscure Old Testament laws. By all means quote the laws when they are applied incorrectly by “Christians” – but understand how they’re meant to work before dealing with the Christians described in point 3.
1. Stop taking the missionary position. Don't come to my door. Don't go abroad and convert vulnerable people to Christianity. Stop evangelizing.Thoughts?
2. Stop defending the bits of your bible that are obviously wrong. When you argue about the age of the Earth, evolution, and other stuff that science is far better at explaining, you destroy your credibility for the moral and spiritual teachings of Christianity. And isn't that the important stuff?
3. Stop asking for so much money. It seams like all Christian media is 100% focused using people's religiosity to separate Christians from their money. You already get the Mother of All Tax Breaks for some reason. You already have all those fancy churches. Enough already. Was Jesus really all about getting more money?
4. Stop being so un-American. The constitutional separation of church and state is the most unique and American of ideas. It's the thing that protects your sect from other sects that would use the power of government to advance their sectarian interests. Do what you want in your own home and church, but in the American political arena, there is no higher power than the U.S. Constitution. Accept it.
5. Stop being so un-Christian. Instead of your constant culture war with non-Christians, turn the other cheek. Instead of working so hard to gain political power for your own interests, instead render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. Instead of judging others, instead let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
Via @mike_elgan.
20 comments:
How can you agree with #4 on the first one? You can't put the scientific method on the same level as religious belief, that doesn't even make sense. That's essentially saying that magical thinking is just as valid as science because they are both "open to abuse." Nonsense.
I expected this sort of response, but I'm also confused because I'm not sure I understand the logical jumps you're making.
Can you explain how "admit[ting] that the scientific method ... is as open to abuse as any religious belief, and is neither objective nor infallible" serves to "put the scientific method on the same level as religious belief," because I don't see how the first point leads to the second.
That said, the history of science is rife with various abuses which provide evidence for the first point. Many defend this point by claiming that those instances, such as eugenics, are not "real science," but I don't see how this is any different than someone trying to dismiss the crusades by saying that it isn't "real religion."
Ok, on further reflection, I think I misinterpreted what he meant by "open to abuse." The first time I read it, I thought he meant open to criticism. I'm a knee-jerking idiot.
lolz
Via Jose:
PZ Myers Response:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/09/advice_for_atheists.php
PZ Myers killed my blog (St. Eutychus):
http://st-eutychus.com/2009/pz-meyers-killed-my-blog
Jason, the difference is that science is descriptive, whereas religion is both descriptive and proscriptive.
Science said "Hey, if we sterilize people who have undesirable genetic qualities, then those qualities will become less prevalent in every succeeding generation." Eugenics happened when someone said, "Hey, I think that's a good idea."
Conversely, "Witches exist," and "We should kill people we suspect of being witches," are both part of religion.
Responding to point #4 directly, see above re: descriptive/proscriptive. Comparing science to religion is like comparing the blueprint of a house to a mission statement. Also, this person is clueless about the scientific method. The scientific method involves cycles of hypothesis and observation: running experiments to test hypotheses, then refining (or throwing out and making brand new) hypotheses to explain the new data.
As for not being objective, well yeah, and the Earth isn't a sphere. But it's a hell of a lot more objective than any other human institution. Take it away, Greta Christina!
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2007/04/the_slog_throug.html
Roi des Foux:
You talk about science as if it is practiced in some void. The reason it is open to abuse is that it is practiced by humans. Whether or not religion or science are technically descriptive and/or prescriptive are irrelevant.
But you do raise an interesting point. If science is only descriptive, then it can't say anything about whether or not eugenics is bad or wrong. All that it can say is that eugenics in general, or some practice of eugenics in particular, is failing in its application.
So, maybe we do need religion after all, since science can only tell us how things are and not how they should be -- at least, by your definition.
Hey what about humanism
By Roi des Foux's definition, if humanism prescribes values, then it is a religion and not scientific, because science can only describe.
Jason, you're making a severe logical error. I said that religion contains value judgements and science doesn't. That does not mean that every belief system that makes value judgements is therefore a religion. The definition of "religion" is kind of fuzzy, but I think that the vast majority of belief systems commonly considered as religious have a (descriptive) belief in metaphysical things, typically one or more gods and/or a soul that survives bodily death, as well as (proscriptive) beliefs about what we should do based on the desires of god(s) and/or the nature of the soul. Humanism, communism, capitalism, and chocolate-is-awesomeism all contain value judgements without appeal to anything metaphysical.
As for how I talked about science, I didn't talk about it being practiced in a void, I didn't say it wasn't open to abuse, and the proscriptive/descriptive thing has nothing to do with that point. All I said that it's not perfectly objective, but it's more objective than any other human endeavor. Science is designed to screen out personal bias and to be as objective as possible. People aren't perfect, so they don't do it perfectly, but I still believe that it's more objective than any other human endeavor. And I also think that the least objective belief systems tend to be religious (though certainly not all of them), so any attempt to make an equivalence between the abusability of religion and science is completely batshit insane.
"so any attempt to make an equivalence between the abusability of religion and science is completely batshit insane"
I suppose there's no need for me to respond then.
That was made in reference to #4 from the original list. From my reading of the third paragraph of your first comment, I thought that you believed that science was able to be abused (which we agree on), and from the second paragraph of that same comment that it is not on the same level as religion (which we also agree on). Did I misunderstand what you were trying to say?
As to #4:
Disagreed.
Good science begins with a hypothesis and the (mutually exclusive) inverse of the hypothesis.
Example Hypothesis: Jason is taller than Bob.
Example inverse hypothesis: Jason is not taller than Bob.
Then evidence is collected to determine which hypothesis is more likely, or hopefully to rule out one in order to prove the other. So, the results are NOT biased to the hypothesis, they ARE objective.
Second, while science is clearly subject to abuse, it is not AS subject to abuse as religion, because there is a good system for disproving the abuser.
Finally, I agree that science is fallible. That is precisely what makes it more trustworthy than a static system that claims perfection.
I think points #1 and #2 are good.
I think that #1 is no more applicable to non-theists than theists (actually I think it's less applicable, but I'm aware that I might be biased). It might belong on a list of things that would make people seem nicer, but not one about atheists in particular.
#2 represents a complete misunderstanding of what's going on.
Christian: (Evangelizes to some "undecideds").
Atheist (to undecideds and Christian): That's not true, for reasons X, Y, and Z.
Christian: Quiet! I wasn't talking to you.
Providing a alternate explanation doesn't necessarily assume that the original assertion is directed at you. If it would make me seem nicer to not compete with Christians in the marketplace of ideas, I have no interest in seeming nice.
Maybe we're talking about different kinds of abuse...
When I say abuse I'm talking about harm inflicted on humans, and I dare say that, since science has allowed us to create deadly weapons and perhaps even destroy our planet without meaning to via global warming, science may very well be many times more harmful than religion.
I would go back to the idea of proscriptive vs. descriptive. Science made the atom bomb, but science didn't tell humanity to nuke Japan. That's something that people decided to do based on their values. Science made the polio vaccine, but science didn't tell humanity to eradicate that disease, we had to decide whether or not to do that on our own. In other words, I don't blame science for the tools it gives us, I blame people for how they use those tools.
When I think of abuse of science, I think of people allowing their biases to influence the interpretation of the data (if not outright fabricating data to match their desired conclusion). The quintessential example of this would be Tobacco Institue researchers. They falsely "proved" that tobacco wasn't harmful in exchange for money. However, other scientists can look at their data, and perform experiments of their own to verify or falisify that hypothesis, limiting (but not completely eliminating) such abuses.
When I think of abuse of religion, I think of religious leaders who don't really believe what they claim, but they're out there preaching because it gets them money, sex, and power. There isn't a mechanism of independant verification of their claims, so people can claim god says whatever they want and are limited only by what they can get people to believe.
If science cannot be blamed for the way it is used, then it doesn't seem as if it should get credit either. Ergo, by your logic, religion produces more good than science, since science cannot produce good but can only be an instrument to the production of good.
I certainly agree that science shouldn't get any more credit than as a tool. However, that argument is tangential to what we were talking about (abusability of religion vs. science), as well as something I disagree with, depending on how you mean it. If by good you mean "let's add up all the good works religion has done" then yes, the good works that religion has done are certainly greater than zero, which is the good works done by science (and all other tools). But if you mean "let's add up all the good and ill done by religion and see how it balances out", then in my opinion religion has done (and still is doing) much more harm than good. In any event, I think it's a nonsensical argument, like saying that Henry Kissinger is responsible for more good than knives are.
I don't understand why you athiests spend so much time on God if you don't believe in Him. u spend more time on God then some christians, please just accept that some people do believe in God. to be honest i think you all need to get a life!!!! in Jesus Christ :-) only then will u be satisfied and not have 2 spend your days trying to blaspheme and go against a God that you claim not to believe. just saying you'll never succeed, no one has and no-one will. There is a God! Jesus still loves you even through all ur doing so you might aswell give up because love never fails!
Dear Saved,
We don't spend any time on God, we spend time on people who believe in God. It's a common mistake.
Love,
Jason
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