Science is a religion, is this statement no more than a desperate attack to avoid real issues?

Question

I mean, when some one makes this ridiculous statement isn't it obviously based on misinterpretations and desperation aimed to bring people down to their level. Oh yeah science is a religion, and if you aren't part of it you don't get any medicine or get to use technology that it created (sarcasm).

And the people seem to have no basis for the statement. They love the dictionary definition that says something followed with faith and ardor. Well great, but a few people religiously following science doesn't make science a religion. A few Christians liking the devil doesn't make all Christianity devil worship. Evolution isn't a religion either. Everything that can't be explained perfectly but is still probable isn't a religion. If so, then every time see evidence then make a logical assumption you are following a religion. At least evolution is based on evidence and fact and is looking for answers, not just trying to clog up brains and prevent people from looking deeper than an old book.

People also seem to think this matters at all. Even if it was a religion, it would be a religion that returns definate and beneficial REAL results and progresses and makes things better, which would make it the best most successful religion ever. Stop making cheap shots because you're feeling insecure.

Answer 1

Well, science essentially is oblivious to god... and rightfully so. Science is looking for natural explanations for natural things. The presumption of science is that everything that can exist and anything that can occur in the universe is, by definition, natural... even if we cannot presently understand it or explain it. Again, this is as it should be.

Religion doesn't see it that way, though:

* At the bleeding edge of science, at the point where it REALLY starts to get interesting, SCIENCE says: "We don't know... OK, boys... let's roll up our sleeves, dig in and find out."

* At the bleeding edge of science, at the point where it REALLY starts to get interesting, RELIGION (imagine South Park - Officer Barbrady) says: "That's too complicated. God did it. Move along. Nothing to see here. Everybody go home now."

Religion exists in a strange netherworld between two logical fallacies (flaws in thinking)... the 'Argument From Incredulity' ("I can't understand how that might have come to be; therefore, God did it.") and the 'God of the Gaps' fallacy, also known as the 'Divine Fallacy'. The God of the Gaps lives at the bleeding edge of science... and religionists view the advances of science as an encroachment into their territory. They are at war, fighting a rear-guard action against the advance of scientists... and the preoccupied scientists, for the most part, don't even KNOW that they're in a fight.

Science doesn't attack god. That is true from the perspective of science... as I said, science is oblivious to god... he/she/it is simply out of scope. From the standpoint of the religiose, though, science is the mortal enemy. First they took away the earth being the center of the universe, and the focus and purpose of all creation... the god of the gaps got his butt whipped. Next thing you know, lightening is just an electrical discharge... not a manifestation of the wrath of god. The god of the gaps got his butt kicked again. Disease caused by germs, not demons. Ouch. Planets aren't wandering stars... they are bodies that orbit the sun. Whap. Stars aren't little lights placed on the firmament (the solid barrier between heaven and earth... i.e., the sky)... they are actually suns, like our own, unimaginably far away. God of the Gaps gets kicked right in the balls. And on, and on, and on. The God of the Gaps has NEVER won a fight with science... NOT ONCE. Every time there is a scrimmage between science and the God of the Gaps, another gap gets filled up with knowledge, and the God of the Gaps slinks away, with his tail between his legs. Earth isn't 6,000 years old... it's 4.5 BILLION years old. G of G gets kicked in the nuts again. And on and on... and on.

Well, they're tired of getting kicked in the nuts... so, they've changed tactics. Rather than fighting the battle on the basis of knowledge and evidence, they fight it on the basis of lies and misdirection. Science won't engage them... heck... it won't even acknowledge them. So, rather than engaging science, they just appeal to their constituency, which is scientifically ignorant for the most part, and feed them a bunch of plausible sounding pseudo-scientific lies. Take 'Intelligent Design'. The strategy is not to argue this on a scientific basis... it is to "Teach the controversy"... except in the scientific community, THERE IS NO CONTROVERSY. But their dumbass constituency doesn't go to the scientific community for their scientific information... no... they go to the people they TRUST... their SPIRITUAL LEADERS... and they get fed pseudoscience, misrepresentations and lies.

Willful ignorance, lies and delusions are winning. Science is losing. The God of the Gaps, FINALLY, is holding the line against knowledge, reason and critical thought.

So, while it is true that science doesn't attack god, that doesn't really matter... because as long as they PERCEIVE science (in general) to be an attack on god, we're going to be in an ongoing fight. At some point, in the near future, we need to wake up and realize that, or we're going to end up back in the Dark Ages.

Answer 2

I have been a scientist for about thirty years now. The answer to your question depends on how you define religion (and science).

I've known scientists who believe and preach science with a faith and ardor that is the envy of religious persons. Sometime scientists show blind faith in the precepts and beliefs of others. Sometimes it seems that there is a certain dogma in science, and you had better accept it or you will never be taken seriously by the established scientific community. Which can be pretty closed. You won't get funding if you don't conform to the prevailing scientific doctrines, outside of certain permissible limits. You don't get accepted to teach at a university if your theories are too far out. It is not only the religious who have closed minds and irrational attachments to the teachings of their elders or their pet theories.

I think when a person gets emotionally involved, and heatedly defends science as not a religion, then he is in fact acting as though for him science is a religion.

Answer 3

I think the statement, "Science is a religion..." is more a misguided faith in something that is just a tool for humanity. Science can never be the "end all, & be all" for the entire human race. People who put all their faith in science will always be confounded by TB, cancer, genetic anomalies, "acts of nature", asteroids falling on their heads.

...but I must say that you did a 180 on your very last sentence. If you were referring to 'The Bible' as, "an old book" that "clogs up brains and prevent(s) people from looking deeper", then there are still deeper issues with you and religion, correct?

Answer 4

From the tenor of the original post, as well as some of the responding answers, I can see this is a very heated issue before I even dive into the fray.

That being said, as a thinking Christian I might suggest that extremists from both camps may be more responsible for the general histronics than reasonable proponents (albeit, the majority?) from both sides really are.

Like many of my Christian scientist friends (who include PhD's from Oxford, UC Berkeley, MIT and other noteworthy institutions who currently work at Lawrence Livermore Labs, Pfizer Pharmaceutical, etc.), I do not nor cannot immediately and summarily dismiss ALL science out of hand. The progress, discoveries, and direct (and tertiary) benefits we all enjoy from science are manifold and sundry.

But I think what is rightfully observed with regard to some extreme views of certain secular scientists is the rather malevolent, hostile , summary dismissal of anything having to do with Christianity as naive, unthinking, childish, etc. Of course, some Christians respond to these attacks (and they often do take the shape of direct attacks, mind you) in petulant and unloving ways...which is wrong.

But the whole accusation of "Science is a religion", I think, hits upon one aspect of the pursuit of science that many scientists (Christians and nonbelievers) will readily admit: That the scientific intellectual community DOES approach the development and articulation of science with a certain degree of humanistic arrogance, and with a self-referential belief which shares an awful lot with sheer faith.

What is seldom seriously factored into the conversation is that we are, individually and collectively, a FINITE race, and there is a lot of hubris behind the presumption that here in the 21st century, we're finally smart enough to have figured it all out.

If you simply scratch beneath the surface of many theories, what you've got is the same struggle to shape our understanding of the world around us with grandly articulated analogies (the world is a machine, the universe has one governing law - string theory, the mind is a computer), JUST AS the renaissance scientist sought to exploit alchemy.

What is missing from the fevered debate is a sense of humility as a race, and a reasonable admittance that we really don't know it all. On both sides of the dialogue.

Best to you.

Answer 5

Science is not a religion, I agree with your reasoning completly. If religious nuts accept that science does not exist to debunk religions, then there would not be an argument. And evolution isn't an attack on the existence of God. It is just the best scientific theory out there to explain the diversity of species.

It's always the creationists that try to bring science to the same level, if it is by making ID a "science" or calling evolution a "Religion". I'm sorry, but there's no Church of Darwin, just an overwhelming body of research based publications.

Answer 6

I would never call science a religion, though certain scientific theories do require faith to believe them, and I wouldn't want to be caught up in semantics of what to call something.

Christianity has never opposed the theory of micro-evolution. Let's take dogs for an example. You can have big dogs or small dogs. White dogs or brown dogs. Dogs with curly hair, straight hair, or no hair. You can even breed dogs that can't bark. But they are all dogs.

What Christianity is opposed to is macro-evolution. You can breed two dogs, and produce a cat. The Bible says that animals can only produce after their kind. After all their looking, science has never found a missing ling between one kind of species and another. The only thing science has proved; the Bible is correct.

Answer 7

Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not trying to talk science down,
BUT you have to admit that quite a lot of people have started treating science as they used to treat religion. They look for answers and take everything that's reported in the press as the latest theory for dogma, they let physicians prescribe their eating and living habits for them and want everyone else to follow the same ways. They want us to stop all kinds of things, like eating what we want, smoking, etc. and even manage to get the state to enforce it for them.
All these patterns of behaviour are typical not for science, but for religion.
And not all scientific developments have been for the good, just think of all the military "achievements" like poison gas etc.

Answer 8

Not a question, but Bravo.

Faith and Science are two different things.

They are not even apples and oranges, more like apples and monster trucks.

Answer 9

Science isn't a religion, but a lot of religions emerged from science.

Such as the Faith of Evolution.

Answer 10

yes it is. Religion is a theorry. science is a fact.