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The left isn't hostile to religion, but it is wary of it like a person with a mental illness who carries a gun.Brainiac Five posted:I always like the whole "religion is literally magic" line of attack because of how transparently rigged it is. After all, what is "magic", in this context? The inclusion of a supernatural phenomenon? Then science is a religion right now and has been off and on one for as long as it has existed. The veneration of a supernatural phenomenon? That leads into the question of what "veneration" is, and you'd have to create quite the twisted definition to include all religions in it. But perhaps magic, since transubstantiation is magic but not other parts of Catholicism, apparently, simply refers to attributing symbolic natures to objects, in which case magic is everywhere. The definition of supernatural is "attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature" so it is by definition impossible for science to include supernatural phenomenon because if it was included within science theories it would no longer be supernatural. If you're trying to make reference to either the scientific consensus or individual scientists believing incorrect stuff in the past, that is very different from a belief system founded on the acceptance of of claims incompatible with observable reality. "Oh but aren't religion and science really the same when you think about it" doesn't really work when you take two seconds to think about it and realise "No, they really aren't".
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Mar 8, 2017 00:31
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Brainiac Five posted:Right, it's a rigged proposition. If there was proof for religion, it would thus no longer be religion and so religion is that which is inherently unbelievable for many atheists. That is, if they were to encounter an asura, many atheists would assume that Buddhism and Hinduism are thus no longer religions, but instead branches of science. It's not a rigged definition so much as it is the basic definitions of the concepts we are talking about. Here you concede that religion inherently contains magical handwavy bullshit and cannot contain proof - yet in your previous post you are defensive over the suggestion that people might actually point this out. Make your mind up which side you are arguing. Also the quantum gravity thing is a torturous straining try try and draw an equivalency on your part and it doesn't work. Gravity is observably and testable part reality that we know obeys the laws of nature, much of which are understood to the point where we can model a whole host of scenarios and have our models be completely right, even if we don't currently understand every single aspect of it when it gets to the observable level. Hence not supernatural. All quantum gravity works on is trying to work how gravity, a very obviously and easily provably real phenomenon, works at a very very in depth level. The only valid comparisons would be stuff where we don't know it exists, don't have proof to think it does exist but people believe it does anyway. So basically the only level your comparison works at is with conspiracy theories.
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Mar 8, 2017 01:06
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Brainiac Five posted:Ah, so now we're defining religion as the unprovable. So now a significant fraction of political science and philosophy is now religion. Your definitions are not very good at defining things in such a way as to quarantine religion safely into a place where it can be destroyed at your whim and religious people continue to exist on sufferance. Being unprovable is a defining feature of religion YOU gave in your very last post. "If there was proof for religion, it would thus no longer be religion". By YOUR definition, religion must be inherently unprovable so congrats on calling yourself a dumbass. Also I never stated that religion doesn't offer any explanation for the observable world. If you disagree, please feel free to quote me. However the offers of explanation that it does give will at some level fundamentally rely on supernatural assumptions that don't relate to any viewable or testable reality and in fact go against that - just like conspiracy theorists. The more I think about it, the better that comparison feels. After all conspiracy theorists offer explanations for the observable world too, but at some point there is some massive leap of faith into lizard men or men in black or UFOs or what have you. Also religion can have all the great and infinitely subtle shades that it wants, but as you yourself have conceded these will be fantastic theological positions that are founded on a handwavy magical bullshit version of how reality works. This isn't about the personal satisfaction, effort and thought people can put into religion, this is about the underlying assumptions of it.
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Mar 8, 2017 08:13
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