Og

Religion used to be science. Then the roman empire got a grip on the populous using an authoritative power religion to make the rich richer and slammed the world into the dark ages.

Pre-Christian Rome was with a pantheon of Gods who were not our creators. They were like our big brothers. It was a good idea to follow their will because they'd beat you up if you didn't, but they weren't really the boss of you.

Science and religion were the same thing. Zeus threw down thunder bolts, and that made sense. Someone had to drive the sun across the sky (apollo, or whatever). The 7 planets (wanderers) in the night sky formed the days of the week and the musical scale, etc. Our observations of the world informed our world view.

Religion solidified at some point and then what happened was that religion wouldn't adapt to new observations about the world. It killed people that disagreed and stifled life. Religion finally broke free of the yoke during the renaissance and grew into modern science. Christianity/islam/etc are not religions. They are solidifications of religion. They're waste products of religion when it gets used by the strong to keep their power over the weak.

Science is the real religion. The perceived conflict of religion and science is NOT that. It is a conflict between science of today and science of 3000 years ago. The problem is that the people who call themselves "Religions" have solidified their minds.

Unfortunate.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

marmalade

You're following my train of thought. Its not that religion replaced science nor that anything will replace science in its turn. New scientific theories replace old ones. What I was getting at is that the scientific theories of the future wouldn't be recognizable to us as science. Any advanced enough science would appear as magic and all that.

The warning of contemporary religions is clear. Its easy for a society to become over-identified with a particular worldview, and advancement stops. If people of the past got stuck in old scientific theories, the same could happen to us. The 'religions' of the future may simply be the solidifications of present science.

Og

The scientific method is necessarily unsolidifiable. That's the point. It's a feedback loop and non-dogmatic by definition. It never ceases self doubt. I don't see how this could ever be a solidification (by design).

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

marmalade

The idealized intentions of some present scientists says very little about what science may develop into. I'm sure that most religions don't resemble the intentions of the earlier people who brought forth a new view. The human nature that creates religions is the same human nature that scientists possess.

You may be right that science as we know it will never become a religion, but we can't know that. We're not so different from people of the past.

to_hobbes

Thats absolutely right. This constant self-doubting is the most important aspect of science, and why it is so different than faith.

But in one of your previous posts, you said:

I can agree with this, given your definition of religion. If understand you correctly, you are saying religion is the same as science, and what we call "religion" today is the jaded perversion of what science used to be, which is a nice and optimistic way of defining religion.

However, I think defining religion and science in this way can lead to problems. I think most people today think of religion as Christianity, Islam, etc, whereas science means following the scientific method. So if you redefine religion to include science, people can misconstrue this to mean that science requires faith.

That's why I say science and religion are logical opposites, as different as "true and false" or "left and right".

__________________
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(By the way, it's all in your head.)

Og

I appreciate what you're getting at, but there is what the masses perceive and think consciously, and then there is what they do. The masses bow their head and bend their knee to science. When the chips are down and they are vulnerable and hurt, they goto a doctor or a psychologist. When they want to wage war, they turn to the scientists. When they want to communicate with one another, they don't rub their rosary, they click a button on their cell phone. When they're at home, they gather around the TV and the PC. When they want to understand the universe, they look through the hubble telescope and not the bible. When they want to know the weather, they don't consult the local church's shaman, they consult the real mccoy shaman on the weather channel who is truly in tune with nature.

These are the icons of modern religion. People live 5 days of the week with Promethius, then spend one day with Yaweh, and then spend monday trying to figure out why their society is all scrambled.

The confusion you talk about is not due to me confusing terms of science and religion. It's that people don't realize that science IS the religion of the world and that the confusion is what is causing social strife. Science is the state sponsored religion of the USA (NSF and NIH and DARPA and DOE budgets.. etc) and that's why we have always been top gun since our inception.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

AB517

without the left there is not right. They are one, together.

AB517

This is the solidification point. This is the dogma.

From here on out it is semantics.

Og

Please explain further. What you just posted doesn't make any sense to me. How is "don't have dogma and always question everything" dogma? Doesn't that necessarily include its own process? I would assume that the scientific process is part of everything... So how is it dogmatic to "be non-dogmatic about all things"?

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

to_hobbes

This is a fascinating point of view, honestly I have never thought of science that way before, but your right. I appreciate it

Still, when I argue with religious people, while it does help to mention that modern society is where it is because of our practice of the new faith (science). But they just turn around and try to tell me that faith is still important. I tell them, as an agnostic, no one knows what faith to believe in. The smarter people tell me that any faith is OK, as long as you have it, I disagree, and we just agree to disagree.

But others tell me that science is worthless without faith to guide it, e.g. stem cell research is wrong, evolution is wrong... In these situations, I find it easier to argue that science and religion are opposites. Your point is taken, Og. Other than that, your point is taken.

__________________
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(By the way, it's all in your head.)