Are religions suppressing scientific truth?

Question

Do you agree with Richard Dawkins that religious fundamentalists are hampering scientific truths?

Or do you think it is just fundamentalists and dogmatists and this could be scientists, politicians, people in fear of losing their jobs and that religion is not the important factor?

Answer 1

No. Religions don't supress the truth. People do!

It's just that some religions try to spread fear about science, and that indirectly hampers discovery. Fear-based faith is a whole different topic. But, in the end, people choose what they want to be afraid of, and often it's the facts of science that they cannot take.

Answer 2

I believe that fundamentalists are stuck in the storytelling phase of spirituality and faith.

Let's face it all those stories would never have survived over 2000 years if fundamentalists hadn't have been dogmatic for each generation and taught the stories word for word - exactly.

Now, science is coming a long and taking Gods works a step further... researchers are piece by piece finding clues and truths in fact proving the very existence of God, Satan and the after life.

It's fascinating thinking if you accept that science is in fact moving the believe of God forward.

There is a researcher at the University of Guelph who has spent the last five years developing DNA mapping. He as found key elements that are leading him to admit it is looking like a divine creator is behind it all.

So, if the scientists would stop trying to prove it all wrong and the fundamentalists would accept their own role as historians, or theological guides rather than spiritual leaders, I think we'd see a true meeting of the minds and some REAL progress socially, politically, theologically, and scientifically.

I'm keeping an eye out.

Answer 3

How does it effect me if the scientific truth states that the stars are 20 billion miles away from me or that Black Holes exist in the cosmos. Some scientific truths are just a waste of money and time. Same can be said of Some religious Fundamentalists. Does it really matter. We live in the real world.

All science is based on a theory.

1 + 1 = 2 Only because we say it does.

Live for today, Love and Forgive always and let the nutcases weed themselves out.

Answer 4

It appears that you have already seen the most recent copy of TIME magazine. It is a great debate; Classic. Read it if you haven't already read the article titled; God vs. Science. It will at least present both sides of the debate. With which a few contributors have a problem. (Both sides that is.) I think a more efficient way to state the question might be: Do some Christians embrace scientific discovery and still have room for a supreme being? The current Astro-physicists are postulating 'billions of other universes'. My God has no boundaries, no human form, no need to be right only righteous. Humankind can't know and understand all things; I don't want to know everything. But I do embrace scientific explanation of naturally occurring events. And the study of our origins. Miracles can have a rational explanation. But it still happened no matter if it's factually provable or it's simply taken on faith.

Answer 5

Yes, of course.. mysticism, science, and philosophy, etc, are forever stepping one one another's toes, especially the first two. One sees the sort of reflexive dogmatism often thrown about in arguments of this sort, though, and begins to sympathise with Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, Goethe, and other great thinkers who have declared war on a culture of absolute, rigid scientism.

Science explains what it explains; but of course, it hasn't found out the limits of what it will explain! There are things which are obviously empirical propositions ("If I drop a rock, what will happen? What are the mechansims involved in protein synthesis?"), propositions that clearly aren't ("Triangles are either isocoles, scalene, or equilateral", "We have mysterious noumenal selves"), propositions which probably aren't (I would put "God exists" here, depending on the concept of god), and propositions which may or may not be ("Consciousness is epiphenomenal", "Science will provide us with an adequate account of free will"), and so forth. One should never assume science has the answer, nor should one try to tell science that it can't answer scientific questions (as some theorists do with regard to questions of consciousness.)!

And how far can we get in sociology, for example; to what extent can ethics be made scientific? To what extent must it (or, rather, its problems and questions) be a purely philosophical problem, and what's the difference? Is there one? Or is it a religious problem? A combination? A psychological phenomenon that merely needs to be described? Etc.

Yeah, religion has always suppressed science - one thinks of Descartes and Gallileo, for example, and one can point to stem-cell research and evolution in schools today. But I would argue it can go both ways, or multiple ways. Perfectly logical reasoning gets us nowhere, we will always have to account for Hume's problems, for example, and so there is a "mysterious" or imaginative component to all reasoning. Any good scientist knows this intuitively!

I'm not advocating positing mysterious essences to account for everything we don't understand, nor am I championing skepticism, or exclusive subjectivism, let alone religious fundamentalism. Just flexibility! I worry that people limit themselves by insisting on thinking of certain things in inappopriate terms that will get them nowhere.

Answer 6

The history of all religions, not just fundamentalists, condemn them here. Religious people are ecstatically trying to convert you to there way of thinking and rational thought is their enemy. They will suppress any truth, not just scientific truth, that is not in line with there moronic beliefs. You seem to forget the titanic struggle that Europe went through to get secular law above religious law. So the answer to your question is yes; they will if me let them.

Answer 7

In some ways, yes. The much, much more worse problem is they are a fundamental catch in our efforts to cure and prevent diseases. People are suffering and in some cases going uncured because of nothing more than a "moral" objection that means nothing. Why let someones personal hang-up allow a child or paraplegic to go uncured? Think of the families and generations that could be affected by one cure! It would free people to live and work instead of quitting their jobs and paying their lives wages to keep someone alive, much less in comfort. Its just common sense.

Common sense should prevail, God himself through Christ said that "His" kingdom was not of this earth. So if that is true, why are they holding on to this patch of land so bad? Christ himself said to "look forward to his incoming Kingdom and to not mix in this world. To be no part of this world." Yet they make sure they are in the middle of everything. Makes no sense. They don't even listen to their own God, why listen to common sense?

Answer 8

Richard Dawkins is an idiot who worships the god of Evolution the same way Christians worship God. Religions are not suppressing scientific truth because I've never heard a Christian or Muslim say that Gravity is a fake Value.

All they say to Dawkins and his type is wheres your proof? If you have no proof, it is NOT scientific. If this is problematic for Dawkins, he can go and jump into the River Thames and see if we care.

Answer 9

Religion thrives on suppressing any truth that threatens their doctrine, wheter it is scientific, social, or religious, for that matter. In the past, when it was more powerful, the Church tried to destroy any writings or information that did not fit into it's version of the truth. These writings are now refered to as heretical, or apocrophyl. Religion is all about control. Information, and free thought are the way to liberation from that control. The church wants to keep the masses, and its' followers ignorant to the truth so that they will unquestioningly and blindly follow their version of the truth.....Ignorant masses are easier to control....

Answer 10

The same could be said from the other perspective. Religious people tend to believe that Science is poisoning the minds of their children. I tend to disagree but hey we all have our own opinions. And most "Scientific Truths" are still theories.