Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Science and Religion Have Never Been Enemies

williampoulos.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 77 posts

Re: Science and Religion Have Never Been Enemies

#21

Post by defrost »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #19
defrost wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because Christianity is the source of spiritual truth the source? I'll give you a source (for some) .. but there are a lot of religions across the globe and Christianity is just one of several in the Abrahamic family. Fair point about Galileo though - his trial was principally due to him being a delibrately provocative giant pain in the butt to all the wrong people.

Several? There’s Judaism and Christianity. There’s also Islam which came later, whose scriptures contradict with canonical Christian texts. Islam also exhibits religious deviation from ethnic bias. Other so-called Abrahamic religions are beliefs tossed in a blender with some of this and some of that, sometimes ethic emphasis, sometimes syncretism. But no serious reader should consider them “Abrahamic.”

Pretty sure most of Utah feels slighted by your comment.

    When people refer to the Abrahamic religions they are usually thinking of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

    There are, in fact,  more Abrahamic religions, such as the Baha’i Faith, Yezidi, Druze, Samaritan and Rastafari, ...
https://www.bl.uk/sacred-texts/articles/the-abrahamic-religi...

You're certainly entitled to your opinion just as the British Libray (above link) is entitled to theirs.

It's not like serious readers bother much with the British Library.

    The British Library is a research library in London that is the national library of the United Kingdom.

    It is one of the two largest libraries in the world, along with the Library of Congress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library

Re: Science and Religion Have Never Been Enemies

#22

Post by andrewmcwatters »

defrost wrote: post #21
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several? There’s Judaism and Christianity. There’s also Islam which came later, whose scriptures contradict with canonical Christian texts. Islam also exhibits religious deviation from ethnic bias. Other so-called Abrahamic religions are beliefs tossed in a blender with some of this and some of that, sometimes ethic emphasis, sometimes syncretism. But no serious reader should consider them “Abrahamic.”

Pretty sure most of Utah feels slighted by your comment. When people refer to the Abrahamic religions they are usually thinking of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There are, in fact, more Abrahamic religions, such as the Baha’i Faith, Yezidi, Druze, Samaritan and Rastafari, ... https://www.bl.uk/sacred-texts/articles/the-abrahamic-religi... You're certainly entitled to your opinion just as the British Libray (above…

I’m going to assume you’re talking about Mormonism, which isn’t a new religion unto itself. It’s a denomination.

Your other examples, which are copy-pasted from other sites, are in fact, religions of syncretism.

They are obviously not Abrahamic.

If we created a new religion right here in this HN thread and combined Abrahamic precepts with some blend of western Buddhism and secular thought, does it make it an “Abhramic” religion? No it makes it a syncretic religion.

It’s irrelevant what the size of an institution says. This is just an example of an argument from authority fallacy. You’re not making an actual point.

It’s a poor reference to authority, too. If you wanted good cookware, would you go to Walmart or Williams Sonoma? Why of all places would The British Library be an institution for religious authority as compared to actual religious history schools?

Re: Science and Religion Have Never Been Enemies

#23

Post by jowea »

lgvln wrote: post #2

The author conveniently fails to mention Galileo was found guilty of heresy by the Church, forced to retract his Dialogues and lived the rest of his life under house arrest for advocating the Copernican heliocentric model over the doctrinal geocentric model.[0] When one cherry picks evidence like that... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

And pro-heliocentrism books remained in the Church's Index of banned books until 1758.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum#Ch...

Re: Science and Religion Have Never Been Enemies

#24

Post by jowea »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #5
kashunstva wrote: post #3

Granted, the religious _practice_ I’m most familiar with is Christianity as it is practiced in North America. There, non-trivial numbers of people believe that the Earth is 6000 years old and hold to other similar falsifiable claims. I would gladly shrug my shoulders and say “To each, his own.” But there are constant battles to present some of these views (albeit less extreme) in public school curricula. Some have en…

Point taken, but you have to understand that American Fundamentalism is a minor pocket of Christianity in the worldwide scheme of things. There are billions of Christians who don't believe in a 6,000-year-old Earth. Billions of us. And perhaps those Fundamentalists felt that the anti-religious atheists needed an appropriate foil. Certainly some of the noisiest people have come from both camps and made their presence…

Depending on how the specific questions are asked there's 18% to 39% of survey respondents with some sort of young earth creationist beliefs.[0][1] That's tens of millions of people in the most powerful country in the world. And American Evangelicals seem to be doing quite a bit of evangelizing around the world.

[0] https://ncse.ngo/americans-scientific-knowledge-and-beliefs-...

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/02/06/the-evolutio...

Re: Science and Religion Have Never Been Enemies

#25

Post by jjaken »

lgvln wrote: post #2

The author conveniently fails to mention Galileo was found guilty of heresy by the Church, forced to retract his Dialogues and lived the rest of his life under house arrest for advocating the Copernican heliocentric model over the doctrinal geocentric model.[0] When one cherry picks evidence like that... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

That’s the one example anyone ever uses and it’s way oversimplified. It’s also something that occurred 400 years ago, conducted by a church that doesn’t exist anymore (the catholics have changed a lot in 400 years and the Inquisition has been dead a long time).

The argument in the OP isn’t that religion hasn’t opposed or suppressed science. It’s that religion isn’t fundamentally opposed to science. While some may wield religion to whatever ends suits them, the religion itself was merely the tool of the day. We see evidence of that throughout history, to oppose science or anything else.

Re: Science and Religion Have Never Been Enemies

#26

Post by jowea »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #22
defrost wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure most of Utah feels slighted by your comment. When people refer to the Abrahamic religions they are usually thinking of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There are, in fact, more Abrahamic religions, such as the Baha’i Faith, Yezidi, Druze, Samaritan and Rastafari, ... https://www.bl.uk/sacred-texts/articles/the-abrahamic-religi... You're certainly entitled to your opinion just as the British Libray (above…

I’m going to assume you’re talking about Mormonism, which isn’t a new religion unto itself. It’s a denomination. Your other examples, which are copy-pasted from other sites, are in fact, religions of syncretism. They are obviously not Abrahamic. If we created a new religion right here in this HN thread and combined Abrahamic precepts with some blend of western Buddhism and secular thought, does it make it an “Abhrami…

There are some Christians who don't recognize Mormonism or some other groups that call themselves Christian as Christians due to theological differences, mainly about the Trinity IIRC.

As for Abrahamic faiths, the obvious criteria to decide if it is Abrahamic or not is to see if they claim to worship the God of Abraham, which a quick Wikipedia check indicates they all do. What criteria do you believe correct and includes Judaism and Christianity but not any other?

Re: Science and Religion Have Never Been Enemies

#27

Post by m-theory »

defrost wrote: post #15
m-theory wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you explain flat earthers with engineering degrees? Intelligent people are not immune to dumb beliefs.

The ones that crowd source funds to build rockets to 'disprove' the round earth belief? Genius spruikers, exuberant showmen, I-can't-believe-you-fell-for-their-spiel operators. For the most part. The remainder are just plain crazy of the kind that can rote learn and regurgitate a four year ritual incantation exam course without deviation into critical thinking.

Surely you've met people who were genuinely intelligent and accomplished who still held on to dumb beliefs?

Re: Science and Religion Have Never Been Enemies

#28

Post by jononomo »

rockemsockem wrote: post #20
jononomo wrote: post #9

This is a great piece and I have bought the book. I'm expecting that in the decades ahead we will begin to see conferences on the conflict between science and atheism. Research into the question of the origin of life has put atheism to bed as a serious hypothesis, but there are still many common uneducated people who think atheism is a scientifically viable stance, and this perspective can even be found among academi…

You don't exactly sound like the type of person who would have needed convincing that atheism is not "a serious hypothesis". So are you really someone who can declare that with any credibility? This also feels like terminology nitpicking. Plenty of scientists are agnostic instead of explicitly atheists, but they tend to be just as unreligious.

The existence of life is a straightforward and definitive proof for the existence of God.

Re: Science and Religion Have Never Been Enemies

#29

Post by jononomo »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #17
jononomo wrote: post #9

This is a great piece and I have bought the book. I'm expecting that in the decades ahead we will begin to see conferences on the conflict between science and atheism. Research into the question of the origin of life has put atheism to bed as a serious hypothesis, but there are still many common uneducated people who think atheism is a scientifically viable stance, and this perspective can even be found among academi…

“We don’t know how rna can self replicate” implies “the creator of the universe gave birth to himself and then had himself tortured and killed and then brought back to life because the only conceivable alternative was for him to torture us all forever for being the way he made us”

[flagged]

Re: Science and Religion Have Never Been Enemies

#30

Post by lgvln »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #4
lgvln wrote: post #2

The author conveniently fails to mention Galileo was found guilty of heresy by the Church, forced to retract his Dialogues and lived the rest of his life under house arrest for advocating the Copernican heliocentric model over the doctrinal geocentric model.[0] When one cherry picks evidence like that... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

Well, that's not really how it happened. Don't forget that Galileo spilled a lot of ink in order to deliberately mock and humiliate the Holy Father at the time. His trial and sentence were not so much about his science than about his lousy attitude toward legitimate authority. There were other scientists who adhered to the Copernican perspective (Copernicus himself is a Roman Catholic priest) without so much trouble.

> His trial and sentence were not so much about his science than about his lousy attitude toward legitimate authority

References?

The charge of heresy is for heretic views, such as the Copernican heliocentric model in his case. It threatens to upend the authority of the Church; if the Church can be wrong about the nature of the universe then surely they can be wrong about other matters as well. His Dialogues remain banned by the Church till 1835, ~200 years later. To say that Galileo was convicted of heresy for "bad behaviour" is simply disingenuous.

Post reply on HN