The first sentences be true, then it drives off a whacky tangent, or what science calls “a cliff”.
If we all respected that rule from all sides, we’d have a lot less unnecessary hatred and death.
You’re addressing wrong people with that
If religion wasn’t behind some of the worst atrocities on the planet you might have a point, but the largest religions also are the ones that tend to be fundementally intolerant.
Once an irrational belief in magical spirits starts effecting other people and how our society is run that’s when it becomes something people actively need to be convinced not to believe. They need to cope with reality, not hide from it.
The first sentences be true, then it drives off a whacky tangent, or what science calls “a cliff”.
The first sentence isn’t true at all, science doesn’t try and disprove god at all. It’s just inconvenient for people who used to explain things as ‘god made it’ that science didn’t manage to prove that.
Science is the only belief system that tries to falsify theorems. So rather than daarin something is true, we try to prove something is false. That doesn’t gel with a system that supposes to have the absolute answer to all things.
However it doesn’t say you can’t believe what you want, just that it might not be true.
Straw man. Science doesn’t try to prove if God is real or fake.
True it just keeps invalidating the garbage piled up around someones faith. They could accept it was false and move on with no hindrance to their belief in god but because they can’t burn someone as a witch because we know why milk goes bad they reject it all.
Also, its literally impossible to prove, that something doesntvexist. You can be very sure about the not existence of something, but you can’t be 100% sure.
Are you 100% sure that such proof doesn’t exist?
I’ve met a lot of people who don’t seem to understand this important concept from epistemology, which is the philosophy of knowledge.
To demonstrate the concept of “non-falsifiability” I will now produce a short fictitious dialog between a made up Scientist, S, and a Religionist, R.
Topic: how old is the earth? Is it 6,000 years old or more than 4 billion years old?
S: The earth must be more than 4 billion years old, because I found these rocks. These rocks have isotopes in them and they definitely look like they’ve been around for more than 4 billion years. If the rocks are really old, then the earth must be really old too.
R: No. The is only 6,000 years old, because the holy Bible has a list of human descendants from Adam, the first man, to Jesus, who we know was born in 4 BC. If you count it all up, you can find the exact year that the earth was created, as described in Genesis 1, and it’s about 6,000 years.
S: But these rocks… They’re really old…
R: God must have created those rocks with the isotopes already set up in the correct ratios to look like they are 4 billion years old, when He separated the firmament from the heavens 6,000 years ago.
S: But how could God create rocks with different isotopes? When minerals solidify from molten lava, lead isotopes naturally form in this ratio. (I don’t actually know how initial lead composition was established for this)
R: God is omnipotent! Any miracle is within his grasp.
S: But why would God want to make the earth appear to be much older than it really is? What purpose does it serve?
R: I do not pretend to understand the ways of God.
One of my favorite quotes from Blood Meridian:
God dont lie. No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words. He held up a chunk of rock. He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.
As an aside, it’s worth noting not every religion conflicts with science.
But unironically, “having faith” implies that you do not need proof but you are trusting your belief. So they are kind of correct
Yep, bible has a lot of sections about having the faith of a child. Believing without needing proof.
And there are no ongoing studies, clinical trials, etc regarding the existence or non-existence of god. And of course this IS a “shitpost”.
That’s probably because the current Abrahamic incarnation of god and his attributes are carefully designed to be a non-falsifiable claim.
So the point is actually rendered moot. God is according to the True Believer invisible, intangible, only works in “mysterious ways,” and cannot be observed to have any influence on the universe, nor leaves any evidence of his existence except “faith.” By those metrics, it’s irrelevant whether he exists or not. A hypothetical force that exists but doesn’t affect anything is interchangeable from a functional standpoint from something that doesn’t exist.
See also: Russel’s Teapot.
The way faith is treated in the First Century doesn’t translate well to modern audiences. Having faith of a child isn’t an analogy to a child being gullible. It’s an analogy to the way a child trusts in and depends on his parents. Trust, arguably, would be a better translation than faith in many instances.
Faith for ancient religious peoples wasn’t about believing without proof. That would be as ridiculous for a Firsr Century jew as it is for us. Faith is being persuaded to a conclusion by the evidence.
Those are apologetics. There’s no point in time where faith has ever required proof or evidence. Trust is not a better translation. Trust can be broken between two people and requires a mutual exchange of equals. That is not what religion is. It is not two equal parties exchanging trust. It’s one party with all the perceived power telling the other how it’s going to be without being able to change the rules, disagree, doubt, etc. It requires total and complete faith to accept. Not trust. Faith.
So while what you wrote sounds nice, it’s all bullshit.
No, sorry. I try to be deferential when talking about this stuff, but this is pretty cut and dry, and I’m afraid you’re just wrong here. This is Greek–not theology. πίστις is the word we’re talking about. It shares the common root with πείθω–“to persuade” (i.e., that evidence is compelling or trustworthy). πίστις is the same word you would use in describing the veracity of a tribunal’s judgment (for example, “I have πίστις that the jurors in NY got the verdict right/wrong”). The Greeks used the word to personify honesty, trust, and persuasiveness prior to the existence of Christianity (although someone who knows Attic or is better versed in Greek mythology feel free to correct me). The word is inherently tied up with persuasion, confidence, and trust since long before the New Testament. The original audience of the New Testament would have understood the meaning of the word without depending on any prior relation to religion.
Is trust always a better translation? Of course not–and that’s why, you’ll notice, I didn’t say that (and if it were, one would hope that many of the very well educated translators of Bibles would have used it). But I think you can agree that the concept is also difficult for English to handle (since trust in a person, trust in a deity, and trust in a statement are similar but not quite the same thing, and the same goes for belief in a proposition, belief in a person, and belief in an ideal or value, to say nothing of analogous concepts like loyalty and integrity).
The point is that πίστις–faith–absolutely does not mean belief without evidence, and Christianity since its inception has never taught that. English also doesn’t use the word “faith” to imply the absence of evidence, and we don’t need to appeal to another language to understand that. It’s why the phrase “blind faith” exists (and the phrase is generally pejorative in religious circles as well as secular ones).
Now, if you think the evidence that convinces Christians to conclude that Jesus’ followers saw Him after His death is inadequate, that’s perfectly valid and a reasonable criticism of Christianity–and if you want to talk about that, that would be apologetics.
In any event, if you’re going to call something bullshit, you better have a lot of faith in the conclusion you’re drawing. ;)
Yeah that’s pretty good description. But nothing motivates asshole more than the need to prove another asshole wrong
The quickest way to get the right answer to a complicated question is to post the wrong answer, confidently, and wait.
or (pretend to) be female: https://lemmy.world/comment/10363254
I don’t remember any scientists raping children then being shielded by the scientific community
The proofs are already there. Science just tries to find them
SANTA IS REAL!!! LALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING YOU’RE SAYING!!! LALALALA!!
What have
The Romansscientists ever done for us?Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins the movie by telling you how it ends. Well I say there are some things we don’t want to know! Important things!
To be fair, it’s more like that annoying friend who babbles on and on about what they think is going to happen. They’re never quite sure, and are always changing their mind as the movie keeps going.
Atheism is bad for science because atheists tend tend to present science as a belief system that’s in completion with religion.
Science is about discovering how things work, while religion is about thinking about why. These are different questions.
There is of course some intersection between science and religion, but atheist seek to artificially widen that intersection to create conflict. To prove religion wrong “because science.”
This has an effect of pushing religious people away from science. But atheists don’t care that they’re hurting science, because the goal is to win petty internet arguments (many of which are imaginary) rather than promote scientific understanding.
My reaction to a post like the above would be to explain that science is not about disproving God, it’s simply about gaining a better understanding of the universe. Since it’s a religious person, we could also explain that understanding the universe is a way of appreciating God’s creation. That person could walk away thinking more positively about science and willing to learn more about it.
But an atheist will just mock the person to gain imaginary internet points and that person would go on being distrustful of science.
Atheism is bad for science.
You can have your faith, so long as you stop forcing it down other people’s throats.
People take this to mean evangelizing, but still don’t see anything wrong with passing laws about their religion’s morality.
Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion. If legal and moral standard of society are dominated by the tenets of one religion, that’s not freedom of religion.
and don’t insist that every part of the holy texts are literally 100% undiluted word of god, which generally makes religion way easier to integrate with a scientific worldview.
no, god did not create eve from adam’s rib, that’s just evocative storytelling initially written by people in the middle east 2000 years ago and repeatedly altered and translated since then.
The problem is, the Abrahamic religions will always seed new fundementalists because, regardless of how people with a modern mindset might interpret it as allegory etc. to make it more palletable, the texts were intended to be read and believed literally. They were written by people in the bronze age, based on made up stories that go who knows how far back.
It’s what makes them so toxic, the belief virus of fundementalism is always there in a latent state waiting to be activated by some new context (usually a particularly charismatic leader or radical change in society).
You see a great example with the current pope – people thought from his language of “acceptance” towards lgbt people that the church was becoming more progressive, but then recently you see him using slurs that pretty clearly contradict that sentiment, because he understands the text is unequivocally anti-lgbt. The Abrahamic religions will always betray people in this way.
You know what, they’re right. All this time I’ve spent praising our study of the universe, development of medicine and vaccines, even harnessing energy and sending information around the planet and I just feel duped.
Science is a liar sometimes.
It’s not that science and scientists set out to prove god doesn’t exists. It’s that the word of god as written down by men is contradicted directly and often by proven fact, and that belief in God is associated with a strong ignorance of reality.
People didn’t live to 800. Goat blood doesn’t protect you from plagues. The earth is not just 5 millennia old. Humans have not existed since the dawn of time.
I remember someone asking what are good documentaries on evolution that doesn’t say “this is why religion is BS”. I cannot recall a time having watched a documentary on evolution that blatantly says that. Religion on the other hand…
Anyone with two thinking brain cells would already put two and two together and see the contradiction. When I first learned about evolution in school, I thought to myself that it contradicts what the Bible said, and my teacher and the book never even said anything explicitly. However, I somehow rationalised that god must have created beings first and evolution took course after. It is in my later formative years through education and more reading which made up my mind that religion overall is nonsense and the denial of reality.
We should fix that people first learn religion before they learn how the world works.
If you want to believe that illness is caused by demons and witchcraft, fine, knock yourself out. But that’s not how the real world works. If you’re going to make extraordinary claims about reality, then you have to provide extraordinary proof. “I believe” isn’t going to cut it in the reality-based community.
Religion: a bunch of deep shits trying to not know something by making up false truths.
