Is #$#^$#^ a religion?

[Mighty AC]

I personally believe this approach would be more effective than telling believers that they are full of crap.

Nobody is told their personal beliefs are crap in science class. In most regions, science education is kept to facts, evidence, evaluation of data and the scientific method.

Unfortunately, we have evidence that contradicts some religious stories. We should not change or hide those facts from people who believe the contradictory tale. We should not water down those facts and allow those students to assemble their own version of truth. When dealing with natural phenomenon truth is not relative and truth matters.

Individual belief in ghosts, witches, gods, homeopathy, Big Foot, etc. is not a problem for me. However, in large numbers believers create political power and this is causing serious problems. School boards in some states are now forced to teach the creation myths of one specific religion as science. Human rights are being denied, medical advances hindered, diseases spread, hunger and strife worsened because of this political power. Analgesic or crutch like beliefs are fine, until they clash with reality and create serious problems for society.

[Pliny]

What exactly are they zealously pursuing, following, or ritualizing? Thus, It's complete and utter nonsense to call atheism a religion by any definition of the word.

Some are zealously pursuing the deconstruction of all religious belief. It seems you just dislike any attachment to the word to the point of it being a phobia.

[Mighty AC]

Pliny, would people on either side of the climate change argument also be a religion then?

[Mighty AC]

I'm not sure that religion belongs in a science classroom but a world religion course should be a mandatory course for every student. In my view it's better for students to make informed decisions and have the facts instead of relying on half truths from the internet and hearsay.

I agree. I am currently listening to a lecture series titled "Big History". It is a phenomenal mix of science and history starting moments after what is called the "Big Bang" and covering everything up to the modern day. It deals in scientific, archaeological and historical evidence and covers our entire story in layman's terms.

I would love it if high school students were required to take both "big history" and religious history courses. Similar to the big history lecture series, I would like the religion course to start with the earliest ceremonial evidence of early hominids and cover everything up to Scientology and the New Age movement.

[TimG]

Unfortunately, we have evidence that contradicts some religious stories. We should not change or hide those facts from people who believe the contradictory tale.

Some religious beliefs do insist on making concrete claims that confuse or undermine the scientific method. But these are the minority. I am not saying they should be taught - just that a more diplomatic explanation than 'you are full of crap' needs to be provided.

School boards in some states are now forced to teach the creation myths of one specific religion as science.

A situation that came about because the secularists felt they had no need to reconcile religious teachings with science. If a less confrontational approach had been adopted from the beginning then the politics would not have played out as it has.

Human rights are being denied, medical advances hindered, diseases spread, hunger and strife worsened because of this political power.

Morality will always limit human progress because that is what it is supposed to do: place limits on what we could do for intangible reasons. Edited February 15, 2013 by TimG

[Peanutbutter]

Morality will always limit human progress because that is what it is supposed to do: place limits on what we could do for intangible reasons.

Many people see morality as irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the law, the Constitution and the Charter. Morals, ethics be damned.

[cybercoma]

Why do you care?

Most of the time I couldn't possibly care less. I do care when religious people tell others how to behave because they believe in the existence of something they can't prove. You're going to need to prove its existence and that you know its wants and desires, if you expect anyone to take you seriously. Even then, frankly, I don't care if people believe in something they can't prove. They just shouldn't expect others to take them seriously, unless they can support their claims with some kind of evidence.

I find it interesting that you can find nothing factually wrong with my statement but you object because it mentions god. Such dogmatism is the hallmark of a zealot.

Making up new definition for dogmatism too? It's called logic. You should look into it sometime. It will help you understand your burden of proof problem.

[cybercoma]

Some are zealously pursuing the deconstruction of all religious belief. It seems you just dislike any attachment to the word to the point of it being a phobia.

Pliny says as he posts over and over again attempting to de-construct atheism.

I don't "dislike" people attaching religion to atheism. Doing so is just wrong and I think I've clearly explained why it's logicall. This has nothign to do with my likes and dislikes.

Edited February 15, 2013 by cybercoma

[TimG]

I do care when religious people tell others how to behave because they believe in the existence of something they can't prove.

Seems to me all they want is their children to have a public education that is consistent with their values. This is their right - as it is your right to ask that public education be consistent with your values. Which is why I think there needs to be room for compromise.

They just shouldn't expect others to take them seriously, unless they can support their claims with some kind of evidence.

No one is asking you to believe what they believe.

It will help you understand your burden of proof problem.

Spiritual faith is not about proof. Until you understand that you will never understand the position of the religious. Edited February 15, 2013 by TimG

[Mighty AC]

Some religious beliefs do insist on making concrete claims that confuse or undermine the scientific method. But these are the minority. I am not saying they should be taught - just that a more diplomatic explanation than 'you are full of crap' needs to be provided.[/Quote]Nobody is being told their beliefs are crap in school.

A situation that came about because the secularists felt they had no need to reconcile religious teachings with science. If a less confrontational approach had been adopted from the beginning then the politics would not have played out as it has.[/Quote]The only confrontation taking place is that actual scientific facts counter a few Bible stories. School boards and science teachers are not attacking or confronting religion by teaching the facts. Politically powerful religious groups inserted their story into the science curriculum because they want the facts suppressed. Do you think actual evidence should be hidden or changed because it conflicts with a religious story? Should we grant the power to distort evidence to all religions or just our favourites?

[cybercoma]

A situation that came about because the secularists felt they had no need to reconcile religious teachings with science.

They don't. Why would secularists or even scientists need to reconcile the two? There's a methodical and rigorous way in which we gain knowledge and test its validity: the scientific method. Random guesses about things do not fit that test for knowledge. Otherwise, anyone could just make anything up and claim it's true without any need for supporting those claims. That's exactly what religion does when it comes to scientific problems. When knowledge is accumulated through science, anyone can go back and examine how we came to that understanding, how it was tested against alternatives and what observable and testable evidence there is to support that knowledge. There is absolutely no need to reconcile for the dogmatic beliefs of theists. Again, the burden of proof is on those theists to reconcile their own beliefs with the science that is backed up by evidence and reason.

Forget about religion and God for a moment and consider someone making up some random guess about some sort of phenomena. In what way would you test the credibility of that claim? It's not correct to think it's true just because a bunch of people believe it, which is bandwagoning. Certainly it's possible that it's true. It's also possible that a bunch of people believe something that's incorrect. Take it a step further. If they're unable to produce evidence that supports their claim, evidence that anyone can examine and test, then it becomes far less likely that they're correct about their claim. It remains simply a wild guess with no support. When other people then come up with an alternative that's clearly observable and has evidence to support it, then it only makes sense to reject the unsupported claim in favour of the claim that actually has support. The unsupported claim then becomes very highly unlikely to be true.

And so goes the logic for making the unsupported claim that there is a God, that it's a He, that He demands obedience, that we must behave in accordance with His desires, that He answers prayers, that He punishes us when we're disobedient, etc. None of that has any factual support. There is no observable evidence that this is the case. That doesn't mean I want people to stop believing that. Frankly, I don't care if they do. People that do believe that need to realize that there's absolutely no reason for those who don't believe their claims to adopt them without evidence. They need to realize that if they made the exact same claims about things that are not related to religion, they would seem extremely uneducated or insane by virtue of believing in things for which there is no evidence. Yet, when it comes to religion, these people demand respect for their unsupported claims in the best of cases, and they murder those who do not accept their claims in extreme cases. This is crap. And we should be a hell of a lot more enlightened than that in 2013.

[cybercoma]

No one is asking you to believe what they believe.

BS they're not. Banning gay marriage. Forcing women to stay pregnant against their will. Making Africans convert before treating their illnesses. Injecting religious dogma into science classrooms. Some sects of Christianity are entirely based around evangelizing. Your statement is just completely wrong on every level. Edited February 15, 2013 by cybercoma

[bush_cheney2004]

Gee...next they will want to put fluoride in the drinking water.

[TimG]

BS they're not. Banning gay marriage. Forcing women to stay pregnant against their will. Making Africans convert before treating their illnesses. Injecting religious dogma into science classrooms. Some sects of Christianity are entirely based around evangelizing. Your statement is just completely wrong on every level.

Yet in Ontario we have eco-fanatics forcing people to pay huge subsidies for energy sources that make no scientific or economic sense. We have eco-fanatics in Washington demanding that a pipeline be blocked even though there is no rational reason to believe it will make any difference to the alleged problem.

People often want to impose their values on others and to have a functioning society we need to set boundaries. The examples you list of theists seeking to impose their values on non-believers are insignificant when compared to the damage done by followers of the eco-cultists. If you have a problem with theists then you should have a bigger problem with eco-cultists but I don't see you complaining about them.

Edited February 15, 2013 by TimG

[Mighty AC]

People often want to impose their values on others and to have a functioning society we need to set boundaries.

Yes, we do need to set and enforce those boundaries. That is exactly what we've been saying. Church and state should be kept separate and religious belief should not replace scientific evidence in the classroom.

[TimG]

Church and state should be kept separate and religious belief should not replace scientific evidence in the classroom.

Show me where I said that religious belief should replace scientific evidence. I carefully choose my words and it appears that some people did not understand the subtle point I was making.

Also, schools should reflect community values. They do not exist to reflect the values of technocrats and academics.

[Canuckistani]

Seems to me all they want is their children to have a public education that is consistent with their values. This is their right - as it is your right to ask that public education be consistent with your values. Which is why I think there needs to be room for compromise.

Can't agree here. Can't agree to education based on fundamentalist mormon values, literal interpretation of the bible values, traditional muslim values, etc etc. And then what about those poor wiccans - where do they get their education? This is why people fight to keep religion out of school altogether - you can't in a public school teach all the conflicting values of all the different parental povs out there. This should have been settled by now, and in Canada mostly seems to be.

[Mighty AC]

Show me where I said that religious belief should replace scientific evidence. I carefully choose my words and it appears that some people did not understand the subtle point I was making.

Also, schools should reflect community values. They do not exist to reflect the values of technocrats and academics.

I'm not saying you believe religion should be taught as science. However, you did say that Christianity being inserted into science classrooms is a "situation that came about because the secularists felt they had no need to reconcile religious teachings with science."

School boards should not have to reconcile religious teachings with science, there is a barrier between church and state that should not have been crossed. Science teachers should not be forced to teach that the essences of Xenu's people form around us, or life began as the result of the dismemberment of the Purusha or that a god seeded the earth with organisms more or less in their current form. Nor should school boards reconcile science education with these ideas.

Edited February 15, 2013 by Mighty AC

[TimG]

School boards should not have to reconcile religious teachings with science...

This is what I mean by reconcile:

Actually, it does. Students need to be given a coherent explanation about why mixing supernatural discussions into the scientific method makes no sense and undermines the value of science. i.e. even if one believes that a god created the universe one cannot advance human knowledge by claiming 'god did it' whenever something is not understood. For knowledge to advance we must assume that god did not do it and search for mundane explanations.

Do you disagree with that statement?

[Mighty AC]

I agree with your statement. Something to that effect is useful when dealing with 'god of the gaps' type arguments. Unfortunately, it does not help to placate the religious education lobby. Some topics like evolution flat out prove more literal takes on the Bible wrong. Those pushing for religion in the science classroom don't just want their belief system acknowledged they want it taught as legitimate scientific theories. That's a problem.

[TimG]

Those pushing for religion in the science classroom don't just want their belief system acknowledged they want it taught as legitimate scientific theories. That's a problem.

How do you know this? It is a big assumption. Young earth creationists are small in number - I think most people want kids to be taught that evolution does not exclude the possibility of a deity.

[cybercoma]

Evolution has nothing to do with deities or even the beginnings of life. It's completely irrelevant to the topic. And in any case, evolution has nothing to do with atheism.

Edited February 15, 2013 by cybercoma

[GostHacked]

Show me where I said that religious belief should replace scientific evidence. I carefully choose my words and it appears that some people did not understand the subtle point I was making.

The point is taken. You need to chose your words more carefully.

Also, schools should reflect community values. They do not exist to reflect the values of technocrats and academics.

Sure but just don't teach religion or spirituality or supernatural things in science class. As one would not teach science in philosophy or religion classes.

[freekundli]

Do you believe in God?

Yes, I believe in god.