Indeed.

And they still get to reap all the benefits! I say we throw the religiolites out of the modern world and let them come up with their own scientific advances and stop mooching on us. In return, we won't benefit from their prayers anymore either. I think it's a fair trade.

Harsh, but true.

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." - A.E.

Famous Scientists Who Believed in God

>> ^quantumushroom:

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." - A.E.
Famous Scientists Who Believed in God

Ooooh, quote-mining again! Watch and learn: (or read: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_einstein.html)

Reminds me of hearing how the most important of the Beatification miracles (to become a Saint) attributed to Pope John Paul II is how a nun prayed to him and her Parkinsons's was cured.

By that logic the folks who discovered L-Dopa should each be some level of demi-God.

Yeah, A.E. was an agnostic, but that's a far cry from atheist.

I'm still waiting for an atheist-run near-utopia to arrive, where the moral foundation is built on 'pure reason' and not borrowed from any faith or doctrine. It hasn't arrived yet.


Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

It's only that simple for simpletons.

Do elaborate.

Science helps people walk again. Religion doesn't.

Therefore, science is preferable to religion mainly because good results are better than no results.

To put it another way, tangible solutions > intangible moral support

>> ^SDGundamX:

It's only that simple for simpletons.

I don't understand the need to choose, as long as religion stays out of science class and the law of the land.

The problem with your equation is time.

Everyday, the folks who take comfort from their religion -- take comfort from their religion. They only need science to help them walk again in extreme situations.

I'll say again what I have said elsewhere, which wasn't responded to at the time....

We evolved with the "need" for religion. It is a selected-for trait.

It is unscientific to think that you can argue a human being out of a trait that has co-evolved over thousands of years.

Keep it rational, folks. Separation of church & state, so that non-theists aren't impinged upon by theists.

Keep up the good work of advertising the existence and rationality of a non-belief in God. There are non-theists, poor children and adults, who feel isolated in deeply religious communities who think that they are alone. Be the It Gets Better Project for atheists in the closet.

Drop the black and white thinking and imposing your point of view on others. It is just as invasive and rude as any evangelical who wants to force their beliefs on you.

Rational. Be rational. It's the rational thing to do.


>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

Do elaborate.
Science helps people walk again. Religion doesn't.
Therefore, science is preferable to religion mainly because good results are better than no results.
To put it another way, tangible solutions > intangible moral support
>> ^SDGundamX:
It's only that simple for simpletons.

@bareboards2

You've obviously never personally experienced the negative effects of the police or religion.

Please explain how religion helped the survival rate of early humans.

I'm sure alcoholics feel just as comforted by a cold beer, that doesn't means it's good for them.

Science promotes investigation, collaboration, dissension, evalution and revisions in order to better understand life.

Religion promotes collaboration - churches & mosques are full of strong, healthy supportive relationships - the only drawback is..

..the obedience, subjugation, compartmentalization, ignorance towards certain things, and adherence to things without evidence to support them that goes with it.

Science provides all the benefits of religion while empowering the individual to discover more.

@GenjiKilpatrick, explain to me WHY we as humans have religion and have had it for thousands of years.

You are arguing against biology and human nature. You can't argue away biology and human nature. You can only protect yourself -- and others -- from its negative effects.

Hence laws, and specifically the separation of church and state.

As always, we actually agree -- I think religion does a great deal of harm in the world. I want the Constitution to protect me from it. I applaud atheists who are coming out of the closet and advertising their presence in the world -- I think that is a brilliant strategy in a crazy world, and is saving the lives of secularists trapped in the Bible Belt and evangelical homes.

But you cannot force your views onto others, genji. As angry as you are at religion and the police, you are just as guilty as they are at wanting to force your viewpoint onto the world.

All we have are laws between us and them. Use those laws.

We always end up in the same place, don't we, genji? You are so angry and are howling into the wind. I stand back and say -- yep, there's the wind, let's build a wall.

Ah well.

@GenjiKilpatrick

Downvoted my comment before even hearing my explanation? Classy.

Anyone who thinks that the only reason religion still exists in the modern world is to explain the physical world around us is either grossly uninformed of the complex and well-documented web of sociological, psychological, economic, and political facets of religion or is grossly oversimplifying the situation. In either case "simpleton" would be an apt term to describe such a person.

@SDGundamX

Like I already said. Science is the upgrade to Religion.

Any benefits - including societal, psychological, economical or political - have been superseded by the explanations uncovered by Science.

Religion is obsolete and does nothing but divide larger groups and keep them ignorant as fuck about things that could help them. i.e. stem cell research, contraceptives, understanding of sexuality

@GenjiKilpatrick

Science is not a means of organizing people, motivating them, getting them to work towards a common goal, helping them think about how they want to live, supporting them in times of tragedy, inspiring them, or countless other features of religion that your definition failed to mention, so it doesn't really seem like it could be considered an upgrade. Science is science. Religion is religion. They can co-exist just fine, if people would only let them (unfortunately people on both sides of the debate don't).

Also, those things you mentioned (being against stem cell research, contraceptives, etc.)... aren't those features of right-wing fundamentalist Protestant Christianity? I would hardly consider those people to be representative of religion as a whole. What about the Amish, who just want to live in peace? Or the Jains? Or Tibetian Buddhists? There are quite literally millions of people out there who do not fit your definition of religion in any way, shape, or form. How do you account for that?

Thanks for making this easy.

>> ^SDGundamX:

Science is not a means of organizing people, motivating them, getting them to work towards a common goal, helping them think about how they want to live, supporting them in times of tragedy, inspiring them, or countless other features of religion that your definition failed to mention, so it doesn't really seem like it could be considered an upgrade.


Science is a group activity, things like peer review inherently require one & are essential to science. For empirically-minded people, science most certainly does do all the things you described.

Science is the pursuit to understand the universe thru the scientific method.

Religion is the pursuit to understand the universe thru a bunch of incoherent gobbledygook.
~~~

Religion is outdated because they all, even the most peaceful and neutral, base their worldviews on assumptions made without evidence.
The system relies on those assumptions to make assertions from which more assumptions can be made.

You and bareboards2 obviously don't have a problem with never-ending circular logic..

But clearly, younger generations deserve not to be withheld from their potential - intellectually, sexually, artistically - because of some gobbledygook worldview meant to "civilize" them or bestow heightened morality.

Forcing humanity to pedal in place for longer, just because it makes you guys personally feel warm and fuzzy is a terrible justification.
>> ^nobody:

Please list the first three concrete steps to take to remove religion from the world and replace it with science. Since it is so easy.

Yelling in someone's face doesn't count as a "step."

Come on, genji, I know where you want to end up. What is your plan for getting there?


>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

Thanks for making this easy.

@GenjiKilpatrick

Now you're just playing semantic games. By equating peer review--an impersonal process in which people who probably have never even met each other in real life examine a report about an experiment--with "bringing people together" you've grossly exaggerated what science is and what science does. You then go on in nearly the same breath to so narrowly define religion (as only a means of understanding the physical world) that you create a strawman that (quite conveniently for you) is ridiculously easy to knock over.

FYI, I'm sure your definitions make sense to you, but you should be aware that those definitions aren't held by--well, pretty much anyone except you.

From Wikipedia:

Science (from Latin: scientia meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world.

Let's look at religion (again from Wikipedia):

Religion is a cultural system that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and moral values.[1] Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to explain the origin of life or the universe. They tend to derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human nature.

So, judging from what you've written here, when you say "science" or "religion" you are clearly talking about something completely different than what the vast majority of people understand science and religion to be. When I refer to science and religion, I am referring to the commonly held notions of them as defined, for example, on Wikipedia. I don't see how we can continue this conversation since you are apparently talking about something different than I am using these terms.

@SDGundamX

Everything that humans do that isn't provided directly thru our biology is a cultural system.

Science and Religion are both results of cultural evolution.

Before scientific journals and 150 page papers on nucleotides came about, peer review was this:
"Hey man! I discovered this new way to get girls to show up at our parties! Gin rummy & Pinochle!"

'WTF dude, I know for a fact that the only girls that play pinochle are 65 year old ladies. That method will never work'

You are a scientist from birth. Science therefore is essential.
You are not religious from birth. Religion therefore is not.
~~~

To clarify, I said religion & science are geared toward "understanding the universe".
I never said "understanding the physical world".

That was your straw-man so you could talk about some metaphysical gobbledygook I guess.

But you're in even worse footing there because metaphysical things can't be proven.

Religion is useless gobbledygook and serves no purpose in a society that has advanced beyond the need for it.
~~~
Here, I'll use the example how your diet evolved to provide more support for this position.

Humans are carnivorous because early hominids found animal protein - meat - beneficial because it promoted brain & muscle growth.

Eating meat was essential because without it, early human population would have been to weak & stupid to survive.

In 2011, there is absolutely need to consume meat.

We have discovered numerous combinations of plants - like rice & beans - that provided complete proteins and some that provide all essential amino acids outright, like soybeans.

Eating meat nowadays involves massive amounts of resources - land, water, crops - not to mention all the harmful effects like - deforestation, infectious outbreaks, & increased chronic or "lifestyle" diseases like grease encrusted heart muscles.

Consuming meat - like practicing religion - is unnecessary and destructive to our environment.
You only continue to engage in it because of ignorance, propaganda and emotional attachment.
~~~

Sooo, you can keep flappin' your gums.
But until you submit some evidence and not just personal feelings..

This sift talk will continue to head nowhere very quickly

I'm beginning to think you are a most brilliant troll, genji. It's the only explanation that makes sense.

@bareboards2

Don't even get me started.

If you and SD wanna argue that science is just a tool that's fine.
It only shows your ignorance.

But it's funny cause you still rely on the group consensus of scientists to support your claims about religion. "It's biological human nature."

If you studied biology and neuroscience, you'd have an actual understanding of the shit you're always spoutin' about.

Instead you go off on some zen master "howlin' winds & walls" bullshit without understanding why the wind is so intense in the first place.
~~~

For example, circumcision is wrong. In the same way murder is.

Your rational mind will immediately identify that it's wrong to mutilate babies.

But you'll defend it because it comes packaged with religion.

Your hippie "multiculturalist" mind will identify the act of baby mutilation as part of "biological human nature". [Church sanctioned Genital Mutilation is just part of the inevitable all-natural wind, right? -_-]

"It's really great for all those parents who come out of the 'anti-genital mutilation closet' because after enough time & laws have passed, I'm sure there will be no more infant genital mutilation." [This is your wall. Your weak, takes centuries to build wall.]
~~~
If you really supported stuff like It Gets Better you'd realize that apologist [like you and SD] who place religion on a pedestal..

..contributes to the problems of those closeted gay and lesbian kids face you apparently want someone to help.

Yet you still continue to defend religion because of some "humans err, it's natural" bullshit.

It's a self defeating "solution" whether you're talking about governments or religions.
~~~

Which is brings us to the question of why you continue to use that reason/logic, Gale.

You're either disingenuous or stupid as fuck.

I'm going with the latter. Here is why:

Police brutality and ritualized genital mutilations are constructs of human cultural.

There is no need for either of them.

You Gale, are attempting to argue that both are inherent evils that have to be dealt with because there is no other way around them.

I've been shouting and flinging evidence at you for that last month or two to prove otherwise.

You're too old and set in your ways to think otherwise.

[Don't worry it happens to all of us to some extent.]

But for you to sit here and continue to say that -

"Yes certain things are awful but we need to put up with them cause there's no other way"

[WHEN THERE ARE CLEARLY MUCH BETTER WAYS.]

Is again, a worldview born from stupidity [ignorance about why things are that way] or insincerity
~~~
Kumquat? Yeah, it's okay. You were never listening in the first place.

What is your plan, genji?

How do you get rid of religion?

And for the first time, I actually haven't read something you have written.

I ask specific questions, you insult me. That has been going on for weeks, too.

I find you tedious, immature, self-involved, and -- just in case you missed it the first time -- tedious.

I don't use the ignore button -- if you ever write something short and funny, I don't want to miss it.

The rants, however, the rants will never be read by me again.

I'm out of here. Enjoy ranting into the wind. (That was a metaphor, you idiot. Don't you know what a fucking metaphor is?)

@bareboards2
Hah. Glad I could finally get your goat.

The fact that you focus on stuff like insults is proof of my point that you don't give a damn about substance, only semantics.

It's okay to be ignorant Gale. I'm ignorant of lots of things.
[Hence why I advocate learning & science. I like to be fully informed.]

The reason I phrased it as "stupid as fuck" is because.. well it is.

If you abhor result A, but you condone action B which directly contributes to result A..

..it's crazy or stupid or whatever pejorative you want to use to identify that viewpoint as a contradiction to itself.

I can't comprehend why that is so difficult for you to realize or accept.

You keep asking my plan to get rid of religion or bureaucratic brutality.

Simple, confront the mindset that "Supporting A, while condoning B" will produce a positive result.

Cause it doesn't.
~~~

Think about this Gale.

If you think sexism in Islam is awful, why condone Buddhist Dharma - it only justifies the existence of the Quran and sexist interpretations of it.

@GenjiKilpatrick

Like I said, we can't have a conversation about science and religion if we aren't talking about the same thing when we use those words--and especially when you insist on grossly misrepresenting my position and wandering off-topic (I agree with you that we should eat less meat because of its ecological consequences, but I would like to see the research that says the only solution to the problem is for all of us to become vegetarians--PM me a link if you've got one).

@SDGundamX

The fastest to stop the negative consequences that directly follow from eating meat.

Is to stop eating meat.

Likewise, if you want to stop all the shitty consequences of religion.

Stop apologizing for religion. "but- but- but what about all the GOOD imaginary nonsense"

@GenjiKilpatrick

So, you don't have a link to empirical evidence to support your meat claim? Sure, the fastest way to stop the negative consequences might be to stop eating meat. That doesn't mean it's the best or even only way. I'd like to see the empirical evidence that shows it is the best and only way.

Thought you might enjoy this article since it fits your paradigm AND shows that the good stuff is not imaginary but actually provable by science: http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?qid=2747

Happy trolling!