All religions are anti-science

[Legion]

You have not shown any religion opposes or rejects science and scientific methods and principles.

All of them do, as far as I can tell. They all appears to entail the suspension of disbelief in natural law and supplant it with a belief in the supernatural.

Life after death? Unproven.

Invisible superbeings? Unproven.

Does that help you to understand why I hold that all religions are antiscience?

Feel free to correct any misapprehensions, if you can.

Your contention is simply dismissed.

Then why are you still here?

 

[Legion]

The root of your problem is that you simply don't know what science is. You have some secret, personal definition of "science" that isn't science and you somehow expect people to accept that religions run counter to science simply because you are confused.

I have posted definitions in this thread, and sourced them. ITN dismissed Wikipedia outright. That isn't a logical position, is it?

 

[Legion]

You're an anti-God idiot. I have no time for you. You'll out yourself as the idiot you are very quickly. That's the way the world works. In b4 you jump through hoops upon hoops to try and verify your wrong human-based theories.

As I always like to say, "no proof, no truth". If you could change my viewpoint by offering a reasoned rebuttal, you would have.

 

[IBDaMann]

If something I say is challenged, I feel an obligation to support my position or abandon it.

I challenge your understanding of science. You have made errors stemming from not understanding what science is.

You should abandon your erroneous conclusion of "all religions are antiscience" until you achieve a solid understanding of science ... and of religios assumptions.

 

[Legion]

I challenge your understanding of science. You have made errors stemming from not understanding what science is. You should abandon your erroneous conclusion of "all religions are antiscience" until you achieve a solid understanding of science ... and of religios assumptions.

In order to challenge it, you'll need to provide an alternative viewpoint that discredits my contention. Can you do so, or not?

So far, you seem to be arguing by repetition. Telling me that I'm wrong isn't a logical argument. Telling me that I have made errors based on misunderstanding "what science is" isn't a reasoned argument.

The sum of my assertion is that all religions are antiscience.

Can you refute it logically, or not?

 

[IBDaMann]

I have posted definitions in this thread, and sourced them. ITN dismissed Wikipedia outright. That isn't a logical position, is it?

Wikipedia is not an authoritative source. I dismiss it summarily.

All wikis are awash in errors. People who cite Wikipedia are also citing all the errors contained therein. If your argument rests on a Wikipedia article then your argument is dismissed.

I don't know if you have ever played Scrabble but the first thing that must happen before play begins is an authoritative source must be forthwith agreed, e.g. Webster's Dictionary, 3rd edition. No player gets to claim his word is supported in some other reference once play has started. The same is true for discussions. Progress cannot be made if both parties are not in agreement over authoritative sources for arguments.

Science is a different matter. Science is falsifiable and stands on its own. If a warmizombie is arguing Greenhouse Effect, any eighth grader with zero credentials can nonetheless cite the Stefan-Boltzmann law and call bullshit. This special status held by science is achieved by having survived the scientific method at least through the null hypothesis. This renders science as authoritative and places burden upon others to show it false.

 

[Legion]

Wikipedia is not an authoritative source. I dismiss it summarily. All wikis are awash in errors. People who cite Wikipedia are also citing all the errors contained therein. If your argument rests on a Wikipedia article then your argument is dismissed.

Lots of generalizations and no examples given to substantiate them, I see.

If you can show the Wikipedia citations I gave are themselves false, do so.

If not, you are guilty of a logical fallacy.

I don't know if you have ever played Scrabble but the first thing that must happen before play begins is an authoritative source must be forthwith agreed, e.g. Webster's Dictionary, 3rd edition. No player gets to claim his word is supported in some other reference once play has started. The same is true for discussions. Progress cannot be made if both parties are not in agreement over authoritative sources for arguments.

We aren't playing Scrabble, and I sourced the definitions of religion and antiscience from the Merriam Webster online dictionary.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antiscience

Science is a different matter. Science is falsifiable and stands on its own. If a warmizombie is arguing Greenhouse Effect, any eighth grader with zero credentials can nonetheless cite the Stefan-Boltzmann law and call bullshit. This special status held by science is achieved by having survived the scientific method at least through the null hypothesis. This renders science as authoritative and places burden upon others to show it false.

I am not taking the position that science is infallible. In fact, I argued in this thread www.justplainpolitics.com/showthread.php?149816-Is-quot-science-quot-the-theology-of-leftists that scientism meets the criteria for a religion.

The position I am taking is that all religions are antiscience. It does not follow that somehow I believe that science is always right and religion is always wrong.

Do you need a moment to review?

 

[IBDaMann]

In order to challenge it, you'll need to provide an alternative viewpoint that discredits my contention. Can you do so, or not?

This is not correct. Any mathematician would be standing by expecting you to provide some sort of proof by induction. Anyone who says "All X exhibit characteristic Y" need to answer the fundamental question "How do you know there isn't one or more x element of X that don't exhibit characteristic Y?"

You have not answered that question. I have asked it. You have not answered it. The reason you have not answered is because you don't know that all religions reject science. The reason you don't know that all religions reject science is that it is not a true statement. You can't "know" something that is not true.

So far, you seem to be arguing by repetition.

That would be you. You made a claim that was false. Into the Night gave you some correct examples of religions that are not anti-science. Your statement was falsified. You repeated your claim as though it had not been falsified. Game over.

Telling me that I have made errors based on misunderstanding "what science is" isn't a reasoned argument.

Nor is alerting you that a $20 bill has fallen out of your pocket. The correct word for that is "helpfull."

The sum of my assertion is that all religions are antiscience.

By repetition. It is still false.

Can you refute it logically, or not?

You were given counterexamples. Yes, your assertion has been falsified. Repeating it will not transform it into a true statment.

 

[IBDaMann]

If you can show the Wikipedia citations I gave are themselves false, do so.

You don't understand how this works. I alone determine what I accept. I summarily dismiss Wikipedia. Period.

I am not taking the position that science is infallible.

This statement makes no sense. The concept of infallibility is not applicable to science. You really should learn what science is.

In fact, I argued in this thread www.justplainpolitics.com/showthread.php?149816-Is-quot-science-quot-the-theology-of-leftists that scientism meets the criteria for a religion.

Great. I had never heard that term before. I don't know what "scientism" is or how it applies here.

The position I am taking is that all religions are antiscience.

Yes, this is what you are repeating. We can all agree on that, right?
You haven't provided a single example of any science model that, say, Christianity rejects. We can all agree on that, right?
You have not provided an accurate definition of "science." We can all agree on that, right?

What are you expecting from people, beyond validation that your false argument is somehow instead true?


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[IBDaMann]

Life after death? Unproven.

Irrelevant. What science model does this violate? Hint: Science predicts nature. It doesn't have anything to say about the supernatural.

Invisible superbeings? Unproven.

What physics do these invisible superbeings either prevent or alter?


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[Matt Dillon]

As I always like to say, "no proof, no truth". If you could change my viewpoint by offering a reasoned rebuttal, you would have.

I already did, but you're oblivious.

 

[Legion]

This is not correct. Any mathematician would be standing by expecting you to provide some sort of proof by induction. Anyone who says "All X exhibit characteristic Y" need to answer the fundamental question "How do you know there isn't one or more x element of X that don't exhibit characteristic Y?"

This imaginary math master you allude to isn't here. You are. Can you convince me that I'm wrong with your own reasoning and logic?

You have not answered that question. I have asked it. You have not answered it. The reason you have not answered is because you don't know that all religions reject science. The reason you don't know that all religions reject science is that it is not a true statement. You can't "know" something that is not true.

How philosophical you wax. Don't religionists pretend to "know" that if they die a martyr to their religion they will be rewarded in an unknown "paradise" populated with invisible beings (or 72 virgins)?

That's unproven, isn't it? I'd say that is an anti-scientific position. There are many more.

You made a claim that was false. Into the Night gave you some correct examples of religions that are not anti-science. Your statement was falsified. You repeated your claim as though it had not been falsified.

So you say. Are you assuming the burden of ITN's arguments as your own?

Game over.

You keep saying that, yet here you still are. It's appearing as if you don't find your own pronouncements convincing.

Nor is alerting you that a $20 bill has fallen out of your pocket. The correct word for that is "helpfull."

I don't think it is.

It is still false.

So you say. Convince me.

You were given counterexamples.

By yourself? List them, and cite your sources.

Yes, your assertion has been falsified. Repeating it will not transform it into a true statment.

So you keep saying, as if by repetition you can make it a true statement.

 

[Legion]

I already did, but you're oblivious.

Where? Cite this alleged reasoned rebuttal.

Naturally, I will completely understand if you can't.

 

[Legion]

Irrelevant. What science model does this violate? Hint: Science predicts nature. It doesn't have anything to say about the supernatural.

Is it your contention that a belief in the supernatural as a matter of fact isn't antiscience?

What physics do these invisible superbeings either prevent or alter?

Since there's no evidence whatsoever that they exist or not, your question is specious.

 

[Legion]

I had never heard that term before. I don't know what "scientism" is or how it applies here.

Now you know what scientism is, and you should know how it applies here if you read what I posted. Do you need me to help you?

 

[Legion]

Should anyone else be laboring under the misapprehension that I am "defending science" in this thread, let me state that I am not.

My assertion is: All religions are antiscience.

That's it.

For the binary thinkers who believe that I must be anti-religion because I posit that religion is antiscience, I am not.

Additional insight may be gleaned by reading this:

Scientism is the promotion of science as the best or only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values.

Scientism exists in contexts where there is insufficient empirical evidence to justify a scientific conclusion. It includes an excessive deference to the claims of scientists or an uncritical eagerness to accept any result described as "scientific".

This can be a counterargument to appeals to scientific authority. It can also address the attempt to apply "hard science" methodology and claims of certainty to the social sciences, which Friedrich Hayek described in The Counter-Revolution of Science (1952) as being impossible, because that methodology involves attempting to eliminate the "human factor", while social sciences (including his own field of economics) center almost purely on human action.

"The belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry",or that "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective"[5] with a concomitant "elimination of the psychological [and spiritual] dimensions of experience".

Tom Sorell provides this definition: "Scientism is a matter of putting too high a value on natural science in comparison with other branches of learning or culture."

Paul Feyerabend, who was an enthusiastic proponent of scientism in his youth, later came to characterize science as "an essentially anarchic enterprise" and argued emphatically that "science" merits no exclusive monopoly over "dealing in knowledge" and that scientists have never operated within a distinct and narrowly self-defined tradition. In his essay Against Method he depicted the process of contemporary scientific education as a form of indoctrination, aimed at "making the history of science duller, simpler, more uniform, more 'objective' and more easily accessible to treatment by strict and unchanging rules."

"Science can stand on its own feet and does not need any help from rationalists, secular humanists, Marxists and similar religious movements; and non-scientific cultures, procedures and assumptions can also stand on their own feet and should be allowed to do so ... Science must be protected from ideologies; and societies, especially democratic societies, must be protected from science. In a democracy, scientific institutions, research programs, and suggestions must therefore be subjected to public control, there must be a separation of state and science".

Scientism is also used by historians, philosophers, and cultural critics to highlight the possible dangers of lapses towards excessive reductionism in all fields of human knowledge.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

 

[IBDaMann]

This imaginary math master you allude to isn't here.

Irrelevant. Math is not subjective. Anyone can ask, anyone can demand you provide an answer.

You claim all religions reject/deny (some) science. I will ask the question: How do you know all do? Now you may seek a mathematician if you like and ask how one goes about proving an "in all cases" theorem.

I have given you an example of one that does, but Into the Night has given several examples that do not. Your statement is FALSE.

Don't religionists pretend to "know" that if they die a martyr to their religion they will be rewarded in an unknown "paradise" populated with invisible beings (or 72 virgins)?

The bottom line is that you are making the wrong claim.

If you were instead claiming that all religions make assumptions and then claim to "know" what they are merely assuming, then you would be spot on. However, you are claiming that these assumptions actively reject/deny science. This is completely unfounded, as is evidenced by your continued inability to provide even one example, much less prove that it must always be the case.

Again, I refer you to science. All science models include assumptions that are, by definition, not "known". Your argument becomes one that declares all science to be anti-science. Absurd.

So you say. Are you assuming the burden of ITN's arguments as your own?

There is no longer any burden except on your part to reformulate your theory that Into the Night falsified. The game is over for your previous claim.

I don't think it is.

You don't find correcting your errors to be helpful? Interesting. Do you find mindless agreement with your errors to be helpful?

Too funny.

 

[IBDaMann]

Is it your contention that a belief in the supernatural as a matter of fact isn't antiscience?

Correct. A belief in zebra-striped gremlin monkeys lurking on the far side of the sun is not anti-science because, as I specified previously, it is not contradictory to any existing science model and is not "externally inconsistent."

The bigger point that you are forgetting/ignoring is that such strange beliefs are how science is developed in the first place. Someone had to "believe" that our eyes don't actively see things per se but rather are passive receptors of small packets of light called "photons." How absurd, right? How anti-science, right? Do you realize how crazy Einstein sounded describing gravity as a "curvature of space time" that most people don't fully understand?

The overarching reason that Christianity is not anti-science is that it might be TRUE. It's entirely unfalsifiable so no one can prove it FALSE.


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[IBDaMann]

Now you know what scientism is, and you should know how it applies here if you read what I posted. Do you need me to help you?

Yes, I need a great deal of help on this term "scientism."

What is it? "Society" is a vague term.

All I can say is that all laws in society must adhere to physics. On the other hand I believe that the free exercise of any non-harmful religion should not be impinged in any way.

 

[Matt Dillon]

Think about this, Legion:
Religion was around before the Scientific Method was established.