Religion vs. Science is a false dichotomy

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One thing I notice about a lot of religious apolgetics is that they sometimes either try to refute some scientifc theory (like evolution) or try to say that scientific naturalism (or materialsim, whatever you want to call it) is inheritly flawed. They then conclude that because they've supposedly disproved scientifc naturalism that means that the only other option is to submit to a celestial lawmaster and follow divine law. We in our society tend to be full of the idea that if science is disproven that means religion is the only answer and if religion is disproven that means science is the only answer.

I am here to say that that is a false dichotomy. There is a third way - intuition. There's nothing wrong with using intuition to determine at least some things about reality. Spinoza and Nietzsche both used a lot of intuition and they seem to have a lot of admirers in the modern day. I will admit that I use intuition a lot.

Religion and science also share something in common - both can't be done entirely in you head. With science you need scientifc knowledge that was gathered by someone else or you need to do experiments yourself. With religion you need to follow a holy book. Also, intution doesn't expect you to follow any rules.

Also, magic isn't really science or religion either. I'm not saying I believe in magic, I'm just saying that I don't think there's anything wrong with believing in it.

Therefore, disproving religion does not prove science to be the only answer and vice versa.

I agree with your conclusion, but not necessarily with your methodology.

To be plain, I don't have a problem with science or religion. My issue is, much like the Church and Galileo, is where science oversteps its bounds.

Evolution is ONE possibility as a means through which creation was accomplished. The nature of how others, I'm assuming non-scientists, argue evolution as evidence against a creator is offensive to me. It's the use of evolution in the promotion of an atheistic agenda in the public (compulsory) school system that denies religion outright that is a problem for me. Public schools are there to teach natural science (among other things, of course), and a true separation of church and state as certain atheists appear to advocate is only accomplished when teachings on such subjects remain neutral. By presenting evolution with such force, the instructor denies the student the right to make up his own mind and, perhaps unintentionally, suggests that there is no room for God in the creation of the earth and the universe. Strong atheists WANT this effect in public schools, and it is that kind of agenda that sets up the battleground for atheistic evolution vs. creationism. If it weren't for a vocal minority crying foul every step of the way, there wouldn't even BE a debate. And yet it is the few that seem to be concerned with how believers raise their kids that attack belief from outside the home: in the schools.

I'm not even saying that ALL atheists are like this. I think most people believe that it's a parent's own business what they raise their children to believe. But if we are being fair and equitable, then evolution should stay out of the agenda of unbelievers to impose unwelcome and unnecessary ideas onto youth.

You're delusional, AngelRho. Atheists are probably no more than 15% of the US population (compare to nearly 80% of the US being Christian) and Christians are the ones who hold political power. It is loony YECs who have been found, time and again, attempting to insert their dogma into public eduction. Claiming that you are being "oppressed" by atheists is completely insane.

Correct. I'm not sure what you mean by intuition, but science and religion are not mutually exclusive. However, certain specific religions (as followed by AngelRho, iamnotaparakeet, and others) are incompatible with science and observable reality.

I completely agree with this: there is no incompatibility whatsoever between science and religion. Misapplication of either one is the problem--it's akin to using the wrong tool for a problem. As a Christian I have never had a problem with science itself. I may not like certain USES of what we have learned, but science itself cannot tell us what we should and shouldn't do beyond the very simple level of "Don't mix these or they'll blow up."

Cut the BS, Orwell. We are not here to talk about each other.



Whatever those numbers might be, they do not change the facts previously stated.



Why is it not already there alongside the dogma of the evolutionist?



Please show where any such claim has been made.

Religion vs. Science is a false dichotomy

...

Religion (throw reason out the window) vs Science (reason)

Religion (virgin births happen) vs Science (virgin births do not happen)

Religion (God is invisible and therefore unknowable) vs Science (the air is invisible but it is knowable - oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc.)

Religious values - Judaism: Worship the God of Judiaism; Christianity: Worship God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost

Secular values - Money, sex, education, and science (Source: TPP)

Religion: Extremist evangelist Jack T. Chick vs Science: Anti-evangelist extremists of Jack T. Chick

Religion: The Texas Methodist Republican Party of Bush, Jr. - All Republicans are saved vs Science: The Illinois Religion-Uncertain Democrat Party of Obama - All Democrats are enlightened and saved too

Religion: There is only one true church and that's the one I belong to (For more on the one true church - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_the_Great (the Stonecutter's Society) vs Science: There are many valid non-profit, tax-exempt churches in the world - http://www.beliefnet.com

Religion: It's us (religion) vs them (science) vs Science: It's us (science/Darwin worshippers) vs them (the non-profit, tax-exempt, full of emotion religions)

. . .

History

Fact: Non-profit religions have persecuted, threatened with torture, and/or killed scientists

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pe ... s_heretics
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/galileo/

. . .

Rebuttal of above by certain non-profit religions based in Europe (2010): The rumor that non-profit religions have ever burned anyone to death for anything is simply idle wives' gossip.

- Non-profit public relations/let's rewrite history/controlled propaganda machines/press releases

...

The above is simplified/over simplified.

---

Final statement about ultimate emotional truth in the form of an old song?

Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
It's good enough for me

It was good for the Hebrew children
It was good for the Hebrew children
It was good for the Hebrew children
It's good enough for me

Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
It's good enough for me

(more)

- Jim Reeves (lyrics) - (Google)

Last edited by pgd on 09 Aug 2010, 1:29 pm, edited 3 times in total.

YEC is not presented alongside the "dogma" of evolution because there is considerable data, both observable and experimental, to back the concept of a 14-billion-year-old universe, a five-billion-year-old Earth, and the evolution of life upon it, while the only "evidence" for YEC involves taking every word of the King James Version of the Christian Bible literally, assuming nothing was ever left out or misinterpreted, and counting generations and ages as given in Scripture, a la Bishop Ussher.

Science classes are in the business of teaching children the sciences, and the scientific method; religious indoctrination is the proper place of churches and parents, not schools. Thanks for playing.

Personally, I find it far more wondrous that my God could have set up, back in the Big Bang, the rules that made this Earth, and the life upon it, possible, than the idea that He must Himself intervene in every single little interaction in order to make a one-time special creation doomed to a span of mere thousands of years before the end, in order to reach a foregone conclusion about humanity. The second seems to me a rather petty attitude for a God to take...

By intuition I mean just believing in something because it "feels" true I.E. where Nietzsche got his ideas.
For example I know I've described myself as an atheist on this site before but I actually prefer to think of myself as an "agnostic pantheist". I'm not sure whether or not god exists, but If god does exist it just "feels" like the most likely god to exist is a panteistic diety that gives no commandments, like Gaia the Greek earth godess. I also feel that the most likely afterlife is reincarnation. If reincarnation turns out to be true I want to come back as a shark.

I don't think you guys are getting the message. Science is like the Democratic Party, religion is like the Republican Party. Some people fully agree with a particular party and a lot of people have "centrist" beliefs. Modorate religion is a religon-science combination that still leaves intuition out of the spotlight, as if it doesn't exist. Intuition is like one of the fringe options like anarcho-syndicalism. Most people don't pay much attention to it but it is still there.

"What is now decisive against Christianity is our taste, no longer our reasons."
-Nietzsche
Nietzsche also said something about how "the intuitive man will live a great life and the rational man will spend his whole life obsessing over logical engimas." but I couldn't find the exact quote.

By no means am I denying science altogether, I am just saying that I don't feel ashamed to use intuition where science has no answer.

For essentially the same reason homeopathy is not taught alongside the "dogma" of pharmacology in medical school.

That is, one is BS, the other is science.


AngelRho's claim was that atheists are using the public school system as a vehicle to push their agenda on all children. AngelRho has made several similar comments in the past.

AngelRho's game plan seems to be this: equivocate science and religion. Science is another dogma and faith, just as religion is. Once doing that, he says science has no greater claim to truth than religions. In short he attempts to pull science down to the murky depths occupied by religious dogma.

The main difference between science and religion is that science most be validated, corroberated and supported by careful empirical observation and experiment. Most importantly, any scientific hypothesis can be falsified by experimental refutation. Nothing can falsify a religious dogma. Science is well glued to physical reality (which is the only reality) and religion is not. Religion is primarily wishful thinking and has no firm connection to reality.

ruveyn

Eh, I don't like it. To me, that sounds like "I'll make up whatever I want to be true and believe that."


Where science has no answer, we need to do more science until we find an answer.

Sometimes that's what it boils down to. Not necessarily though, as intuitions aren't all terrible, we start from them, we just try to apply logic in a systematic manner if possible to deal with them though.


Some questions can't be answered by science. For instance, take this question: "What should we do if science has no answer?". I don't know of a scientific way to answer this, nor do I know of a purely logical way to answer this, however, it seems to me that you've discovered a good intuitive method.

While it is true that I never took a course in homeopathy in medical school, and while I would never prescribe a homeopathic therapy to deal with an identifiable condition, I do think that there is a placebo effect of homeopathic care that should not be discounted.

Further, I am quite prepared to support patients' decisions around alternative therapies where those decisions have been arrived at in a rational, deliberate fashion.

What we are taught in medical school is that medicine is both a science and an art. The one must never be sacrificed on the altar of the other.

The problem is when a person has something seriously wrong, those who believe in homeopathy are still going to take their placebos, even at the cost of real medicine. So, the placebos aren't *that* valuable.


The issue is what you call a "rational fashion", as homeopathy still lacks inherent medical benefits, so the problem is rational and obviously wrong conclusions, and whether we can really acknowledge the existence of such things.


That's a piece of rhetoric. If doctors could sacrifice the "art" of medicine to make it more scientific, they'd do so in a heart-beat, and the reason why is clear. Nobody wants to see anybody die, and the way to avoid that is knowledge, which is more the domain of science than most other subjects.

It's not a "game plan" by any means. I just think that policies in regards separation of church and state in how science is taught is needlessly hostile towards a Christian world-view. Anyone who feels their faith is under attack will likely look for any evidence at all for a counter-attack.

I also think that more often than not most science teachers tend to remain neutral on the existence of God. It seems unfair that, for example, that ID is so quickly discarded as even a remote possibility. Why is that?

Oh wait, I forgot... ID is not "science."

In my opinion, that attitude is shaped by the fact that the case for ID originates from those who ARE religious and has never legally challenged evolution from any successful non-religious point of view. The premise is that evolution does not provide some kind of mechanism by which it can come about, completely ignoring any speculations as to the origins of life. Evolutionists will scream that isn't the purpose of evolution. OK, well, there ya go--it can't be proven. Fine, I can accept that. But without demonstrating those things, the evolution story is still just a story. And, from the Christian perspective, it's deserving of no more or less merit than ID.

The same things CAN be explained by ID, just as both geocentrism and heliocentrism make accurate predictions from the point of view of the earth-bound observer, the difference being we have the means to conclusively refute geocentrism. Evolution vs. ID lacks the same kind of means of refutation. But somehow we want to say one can be taught but the other cannot, with neither being really any more "scientific" than the other. One is an explanation accepted by one group of people, the other is an explanation by another group of people. And neither really poses a problem until one is used to attack the views of the other. Evolution is said to "prove" there is no existence of God and must be taught as such. ID is said to be "evidence" of a creator and is therefore offensive to opponents of religion. Last I checked, proper scientific inquiry wasn't supposed to cater to the likes and dislikes of the observer.

I'm not saying that I support a position on evolution vs. ID. My position is that if the Bible says God created the Heavens and the earth, that's all I really need to know and for the purpose of faith, that's all ANYONE needs to know. Evolution does not on its own refute said creation, nor does it expressly prove that man isn't a special creation of God. Religious people may create a false dichotomy by saying otherwise. But it isn't a false dichotomy if a minority of atheists misrepresent evolution's claims to say that there is no God and that the goal of the public school system is not to remain neutral on the issue, but rather teach a certain theory or group of theories in such a way to suggest that God cannot be.