Science (ssss) vs. Religion

@nobodylies, AMEN to that ! :D

I feel that nowadays, people are more apt to support science and discredit religion entirely. However, like some of the other commenters have mentioned already, science has its limits as well. If left unchecked, it can function as dogma just as any organized religion can. And religion wasn’t always narrow-minded and oppressive (like Christianity is today). I feel as if both are necessary and neither is superior. Well, actually, I don’t know if religion is necessary… but some form of spirituality is necessary.(maybe? I’m still not so sure….)

Science and Religion are both retarded means for the cause of interacting with life.
We don’t really need any perspective beyond our own center of the universe.
Just stop thinking you are bad.

Religions often preach love without knowing what Love is (see Chapters 16 and 25). Many religious fundamentalists interpret their god’s love for them to be inseparable from its hatred for others. The U.S. political movement known as the Christian religious right is one such group (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_right). Its primary spokesmen are Robert Grant, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Rod Parsley, Franklin Graham, James Dobson, and Jerry Falwell (deceased 2007).

The scientific paradigm (see Section 2.1) has produced the theory of biological evolution. Since God is unnecessary in this theory, fundamentalist Christians are attempting to impose an antievolutionary doctrine on the educational systems in several States in the U.S. This doctrine takes two forms, creationism and intelligent design. Both doctrines are derived from Biblical stories of a universe created by God, and as such, require a belief in a dualistic God (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism).

Fundamentalists often create enemies on whom to displace their feelings of self-punishment, self-fear, and self-hatred (see Section 11.8). Their (unrecognized) self-punishment can be so unbearable that they try to compensate by believing that they are god’s favored few, and, in the name of this god, endeavor to eliminate a competing religion by trying to convert, demonize, or kill its adherents. Their fear of another religion or teaching can be even greater than their fear of death.

The belief that God has sanctioned violence leads to additional violence, not only among believers, but also among nonbelievers. (The daily news contains ample evidence that this is so.) Scientifically, this has been demonstrated by having a group of 500 students read a passage depicting violence in the Old Testament. Half of the students also read another passage saying that God commanded that the evil-doers be chastened. The half reading the additional passage were more likely to act aggressively in a later exercise, whether they were believers or not (Nature 446, 114-115 (8 March 2007)).

Following are a few examples of violent clashes between competing religious beliefs that resulted in executions, massacres, and wars:

· In less than a century after Mohammed (570-633) died, Muslims, in their missionary zeal to convert the “infidels”, conquered Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, North Africa, and the South of Spain. In the eighth and ninth centuries they conquered Persia, Afghanistan, and a large part of India, and in the twelfth century they had already become the absolute masters of all Western Asia, Spain and North Africa, and Sicily.

· Between 1095 and 1270, with the blessing of the popes, and with the intention of protecting the Holy Land and keeping the pilgrim routes open to Jerusalem, Christians launched several crusades, mostly from France, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Muslims.

· In 1478, Pope Sixtus IV initiated the Spanish Inquisition in order to purify Christian communities of all Jews and Muslims, even those who had converted to Christianity. This quickly became an instrument to expand state power and to fill its treasury with the estates of those found guilty of being less than fully Christian.

· In 1517, Martin Luther (1483-1546) in Wittenberg, Germany, repulsed by papal authority and its practice of buying and selling indulgences (the remission of religious penalties for sinning, including freeing the soul from purgatory) rebelled by posting his “Ninety-five Theses” on the door of the Wittenberg Castle church. Simultaneously, he called upon lay people to take responsibility for their own salvation and to renounce Roman authority.

· In Switzerland in 1523-1524, peasants in the Zurich district, using the argument that ruling authority should be based on the Scriptures, revolted against the town council, claiming that they should not be required to pay tithes on their produce because there was no biblical justification for doing so. Townsmen, with their own interpretation of the Bible, rejected the peasants’ demand, noting that the Bible did not forbid such payments, and said that the peasants should make them out of “love”. This so provoked the peasants that the revolt grew to hundreds of thousands in several countries. In 1525, territorial princes and large cities reacted by raising large armies that defeated and destroyed the revolt.

· In 1535, in Münster, Germany, believing that protection of “true” religion demanded harsh measures, Protestants, allied with the Catholic Church, persecuted and executed thousands of Anababtists (a sect that believed only adults should be baptized, founded in 1525 by Konrad Grebel, Balthasar Hubmaier, and others, and from whom the Baptists, Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, and Hutterites of today are descended).

· Between 1550 and 1650, about 100,000 people in Europe, mostly women, were persecuted for alleged witchcraft, and about 60,000 were executed. Under torture, or the threat of torture, many confessions were obtained, but no proof that an accused person ever attended a Devil-worshipping “black” Sabbath was ever produced in any witch trial.

· From 1618 to 1648, the Thirty Years’ War was fought between Protestant and Catholic states in the Holy Roman Empire (comprised largely of present-day Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic) with considerable opportunistic meddling by surrounding countries. The war ended with the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which required that all subjects follow their rulers’ faiths.

· Many Christians willingly joined the Nazis in trying to exterminate the Jews during World War II. Islamic fundamentalists have declared holy war on “infidel” nations, particularly on the powerful ones. Muslims, Jews, and Christians continue to kill each other today.

· On September 11, 2001, perceiving the U.S. to be anti-Islamic because of its support for the presumed anti-Islamic policies of Israel and other countries, Osama Bin Laden, an Islamic extremist headquartered in Afghanistan, directed coordinated suicide attacks by fanatical Muslims on the World Trade Center in New York City and on the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3000 people. These attacks inspired the following exchange on September 13, 2001 between Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (see above) on Pat Robertson’s cable television program, “The 700 Club” (as reported by various websites):

Falwell: “What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”
Robertson: “Well, Jerry, that’s my feeling. I think we’ve just seen the antechamber to terror, we haven’t begun to see what they can do to the major population.”
Falwell: “The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I’ll hear from them for this, but throwing God…successfully with the help of the federal court system…throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad…I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America…I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen.”
Robertson: “I totally concur, and the problem is we’ve adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government, and so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do, and the top people, of course, is the court system.”
Falwell: “Pat, did you notice yesterday that the ACLU and all the Christ-haters, the People for the American Way, NOW, etc., were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress, as they went out on the steps and and called out to God in prayer and sang ‘God bless America’ and said, let the ACLU be hanged. In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time, calling on God.”

· In late August 2005, hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast of the U.S. and caused more than 1300 confirmed deaths. On September 1, 2005, Pat Robertson (see above) proclaimed on “the 700 Club” that “New Orleans asked for this tragedy by advertising itself as a destination for jazz music. As every Christian knows, jazz music is sinful and lures people into eternal damnation. The connection is obvious” (from http://datelinehollywood.com/archives/2005/09/18/pat-roberston-corrects-dateline-hollywood-article/). Reverend Franklin Graham (see above), son of Reverend Billy Graham, suggests the city was targeted because of the city’s sinful reputation. At a speech in Virginia, he said, “This is one wicked city, OK? It’s known for Mardi Gras, for Satan worship. It’s known for sex perversion. It’s known for every type of drugs and alcohol and the orgies and all of these things that go on down there in New Orleans.” Reverend Graham continued, “There’s been a black spiritual cloud over New Orleans for years. They believe God is going to use that storm to bring revival” (from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9600878/).
· As a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the removal of Saddam Hussein as dictator, Shiite Muslims waged civil war against Sunni Muslims in revenge for the atrocities committed by the Sunnis under the leadership of Hussein.
• In Silent No More (2005), Rod Parsley (see above) says, “I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.”
· In Jerusalem Countdown (2006), John Hagee (see above) says, “The final battle for Jerusalem is about to begin. Every day in the media you are watching the gathering storm over the State of Israel. The winds of war are once again about to sweep through the sacred city of Jerusalem. The world is about to discover the power of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Keeper of Israel, “who … shall neither slumber nor sleep” (Ps. 121:4). His righteous fury will be evident in the defense of Israel.”

http://faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/

@montelimart63, @nobodylies, I don’t see the distinction of people as religious or non-religious, any person, regardless of belief, can be a judgemental twat. The distinction is: Those who misappropriate concept and those who don’t.

People too often look for answers through science and religion.

We’ve forgotten our senses.

Both science and religion would be meaningless without our first han experience of life.

I think you have to know yourself to know the world.

Could religion have started as a means of explaining the unexplainable, but developed into a crutch through life for those who cannot accept the impermanent nature of all we know? A need to accept any sort of afterlife to sweeten the bland taste of naked reality?

@alltoohuman, Yes, I don’t know details as far as anything, there is only the way I see it and that is limited by my mastery of language.
Basically what I mean is that to the Alpha and Omega there is no distinction between nothingness, somethingness and everythingness. I think the persuit of reasoning for these things is irrational on the part of both science and religion, as no reasoning can exist. We are beings within the “Somethingness” and we are trying to use somethingness to explain things that exist outside of the “somethingness” universe. We are linear beings and we are using linear reason and linear language to explain non-linear phenomena.
If the Alpha and Omega is relevant in some fashion as far as humanity, I don’t know, but I believe it is only relevant to us as far as curiosity. What is relevant is figuring out how to deal with immediate things as far as humanity is concerned. We have a crystal tower built on the sand, I think we should sort out our foundations.

Religion and Science seem to be two completely different things, when in fact they are both attempts to describe what is going on in the universe.

As for arguments? You do not have to know anything about a subject to have a good argument. Just look at politicians.