"Religion is to knowledge as lead shoes are to swimming" do you agree with this statement?

Question

I for one fully agree. Nothing, but nothing has held humanity back from it's full potential as religion.
Look at the scientists that the church (predominantly christian but all religions are equally guilty) has either jailed, denounced or excommunicated. Men like Gallileo, Tycho Brahe, Magellan... the list goes on.
After all, one of the first lessons taught in the bible is the one about Adam, Eve and the tree of KNOWLEDGE. They could eat from any tree but that one. What's that tell you? That knowledge is bad in any form and that blind faith is all a person needs.
Personally I hope for the day when religion is nothing more than an embarrasing footnote in the history of mankind.
When people finally reject mythology, they move ahead at tremendous speed. Those that are mired in the mess that is religion however, either move slower than continental drift, or simply go backwards.

Well julia has won today's "idiot of the day" award.
I cannot imagine a stupider statement than the one you just made.
The church did NOT act as a patron to the sciences. Doctors were persecuted for taking money from the church (healing after all was the domain of god, not man) and scientists were routinely jailed or killed for simply speaking the truth.
Please do a bit of research before you answer, that way you might not look like such a moron...

Answer 1

You are right on. The inquisition comes to mind when I read your question. Julia is deluding herself, which is why she did not give any examples.

Answer 2

I disagree. Religion fills you full of knowledge that's why we go to church every Sunday and have a Preacher that teaches us the word. It's a continual learning process.

People say that the stories in the bible are a myth because men wrote the bible. However, believe in science. Now, wasn't science and scientific methods created by man? Most science is learned the same way as religion through lectures/preaching and books. So, you have a bible which is made by man and a science book which is made by man. So, how can science prove anything if its made by man, if the bible can't under that very premise? Doesn't that make people who believe in science just as "stupid" as they say Christians are for believing in a man made stories? Just because someone wrote that the rings on a tree mean this and don't mean it does. So, we can argue that you believe in a man made book of fictional stories as well. Just because they say they found evidence and tried to prove it with a man made method don't mean it's real. Science don't have all the answers hence the Big Bang "theory". Theory impies its not certain. I'm not trying to down science or trying to say that I don't believe some of the things it has found (I'm just trying to make a point). I do know there is no theories about God everything in the bible either is or isn't. I've never read in the bible where Adam hypothesized this or Moses had a theory that. Everything these men wrote was based on the facts as they witnessed them. The bible is from eye witness accounts, science is based on things someone found years later.

Answer 3

One could certainly state that knowledge took a giant step backwards with the fall of Rome and the upswing of the church, and the resulting suppression of advanced information.

Certainly sexual matters are still in the dark ages because of it.

And persecution of their own. Joan of Arc said she heard the voice of God and was burned for it.

Later on, when the church admitted an "error", she was still not considered a martyr, as the church cannot martyr one of its own.

As to Adam and Eve, why are all sins forgiven and all sinners forgiven, but not those two?

I don't know if I agree with that statement but perhaps an alternative.

If you are drowning thirty feet from shore, religion is a rope twenty feet long.

What do you think?

Answer 4

Heh,

Yeah, maybe. It does not directly help science by any means.

But it does allow for a stable society in most cases, and science needs that to operate. Yeah, geniuses are some times held back by the priest class, but they would have never gotten started otherwise.

Hard call. Really. So if humans did not have religion, what do we have, rule of the jungle? Think about it. If the human race was without constraining moral rules, which is after all what religion is about, what would the place look like?

Yeah, I know, we have civil law, and it is based on what?

(shrug)

Complex question dude.

-Dio

Answer 5

WOW!!! That is a powerful statement. I love science, always have.

I have been a Christian all my fifty plus years and I never thought of religion quite that way.

In view of the recent arguing over stem cell research I may have to consider that as a possibility.

The scientists you mentioned, Gallileo, Tycho Brahe, Magellan... were from ages past and I do not know of any jailed recently for daring to disagree with the church. Mind you now they were jailed or persecuted when the church was in control of government. That part of religious interference is no longer a problem because we have a separation of church and state. At least in the U.S. Not so in some where Muslim leaders rule through the religious heirarchy. And Communism although it is anti-religious is a religion onto itself, without morals.

I can see your point of view as having some substance.

But there needs to be some balance between science and morals. Whether the morals come from religion or not is another matter. But I firmly believe that without religion there would be no morals.

I wouldn't want a condition where religion has total control of science either. If that were the case we would likely still not have a vaccine for smallpox because it would have been considered tampering with Gods' will.

I recently watched a DVD that covered the life of a scientist who I have loved dearly since childhood, Benjamin Franklin. At the time he lived, the leaders of the church taught that lightning was the work of God's will. If it struck your house and started a fire the people would think it the will of God and not try to save the house. They would throw water on the other buildings and let the house burn. Well, our much beloved scientist Ben Franklin was working on his theory of electricity and he proved that it was not the work of God by placing lightning rods on the buildings. His point was that if it were the work of God than the lightning rods wouldn't make any difference. God could avoid them if He intended that building to burn. So, THERE IS a definite instance where religion obstructed science.


But please consider for a moment the catastrophic results of science without the moral guidance of religion. Look at the horror of the most recent thing that comes to mind at the moment.

The atomic bomb.

It was used twice on Japan as a means to end the war without the need for a ground assault that would have taken hundreds of thousands of lives. Without some moral restraint in the use of that bomb it is possible there would have been ten of them dropped on Japan. There were some in the defense department so filled with hatred and resolve they would have bombed Japan into oblivion with every A-bomb they could build. The entire island would have been uninhabitable.

Consider also the "science" used by the Nazis. That is a perfect example of science without religion. Religion had been virtually abolished in Nazi Germany.

(Mind you now I don't blame all German people for this it was a "political" party. The U.S. has had its own hate groups, they just didn't manage to rise to power.)

The Nazi scientists used humans as guinea pigs to learn how long people could survive outside in freezing temperatures. They used them for medical experiments. Had medical students operate on them to learn techniques. If the patient died it didn't matter they were just test subjects. There were some experiments with bacteria to develop vaccines for the soldiers. There were more but that should be sufficient to make my point.

Science gave nations the ability to create nerve agents and the UN with some conscience, made it a war crime to use it. Where did that better judgment come from? The moral teachings of religion I would think.

The nature of rogue countries is to develop a weapon so terrible that no other country would dare challenge them. Look what is happening in North Korea. That country is a loose cannon that could start World War III.

Do you now see the other side of that coin we call science?

In the past and perhaps yet today, there was interference from religion as regards science but please consider the monster that could develop now with the increased knowledge and capabilities that didn't exist in the 1940's. As recent as 1995 Saddam Hussein used a nerve agent on several thousand people just because he didn't like them!

There must be something exerting a conscience on the scientists of the world or there could be chaos.

Scientists are not always honest. Look at the recent news of one who falsified his research. We can't place total trust in people like that to do what is right.

And look at all the drugs being created in the last ten years. Some have horrible side effects that cripple and even kill people but the drug companies and the scientists try to cover that up. Every so often the news of such will leak out and once again we are reminded that science is not to be allowed a free hand in all it does.


Consider that for awhile please.

We need science to continue developing new things for us. Better anitbiotics, alternate fuels, fabrics that last longer and better nutrition from the foods we already have. Better ways to grow food from land that hasn't been productive.


As Mr. Myiagi said in the movie "Karate Kid",
"Must first have balance."

Answer 6

I disagree with you and the julia pattern answers,

Take for example the druids, they believed their God was the moon and the sun, but they eventually in trying to understand their God via stonehenge realized . . a calendar of orbit of moon around earth (and i guess sun around earth but we dont know that really do we)

Essentially the druids religion made their religion . . . obsolete . . . and was able to give them a calendar.

So there is obviously the cult mythology type religion, pray to jesus and your soul becomes righteous and i don't know why anyone wouldnt love and serve god oh no they must be empty, which is sick and abuseive,

and the real religion, which attempts to understand nature, and indeed, in doing that, find an absense of God, but the scientific underworkings of the Universe.

Maybe Druids were secular humanists that just had drunken orgy rituals,

Answer 7

Faith-based religions, such as Christianity, are antagonistic to
knowledge. The fly in the ointment is faith. Religion isn't the problem.

So your statement is false. You should have said "faith" or some faith-based religion.

What is "knowledge" has to be demonstrable. A religion not based on faith is not antagonistic to knowledge. It can be full of
crap, but in that case it can learn why it is full of crap. A faith-based religion can't, etc.

Answer 8

Religion, you say. Can you not separate organized religion and what MEN do in the name of God- from God Himself? Then you are not as smart as you think you are. The wrongs that one human does to another is not from God. The Adam and Eve story tells me that God, our creator of infinite wisdom- (that means more wisdom than you or I can fathom)- expects obedience. But He also gave us freewill- the ability to think for ourselves, which Adam & Eve showed they wanted to do. They already had paradise, but there was evil they were warned about, like when a parent tells you not to play on the highway- for your own good. It's not the kind of knowledge you are talking about- yes we should think for ourselves, and learn all you can in life-but it does all come back to faith. You have the wrong idea, my friend. To be as smart as you think you are, you are completely missing the boat.

Answer 9

While I agree, I don't think it's as simple as that. I am no religious zealot, but I believe that religion probably played an integral part in our advancement. If we were to just push ahead for the sake of knowledge, regardless of the cost, with no real moral framework to judge ourselves by, this planet would likely be dust.

Conversely, I think that in today's world, religion is merely an outdated form of politics.

Answer 10

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Answer 11

Modern Christianity is definitely not thristy for knowledge. It thrives off of fear and the belief that everything secular is of the devil.

I agree with Julia that some early Catholic Monks made huge developments in scientific knowledge, but it was also this church that threw people in prison for heresy when they claimed the earth was not flat.

Modern Christianity's leaders inbed fear of knowledge and push total acceptance of their message as "the Word of God". Someday I hope people wake up and start thinking for themselves. I won't hold my breath, though...