Interestingly, I've noticed that a lot of public atheism in America is conducted by former evangelicals who no longer find the dubious stories in the Bible convincing. But they are now 'preachers' and 'evangelists' for atheism and secular humanism. Same shit different bucket. That said, at least most of them are no longer racist, homophobic, trans-hating, misogynist, superstitious Trumpistas - so scientism is definitely an improvement on theism in these instances. And I'd rather discuss the world with a scientistic fuck-knuckle than a theistic one.

:smirk:

I wasn't talking about killing people. — Janus

How else would one go about killing a religion?

There are those who leave one fundamentalism only to find another, who putting down one bible, choose another — Banno

I think this is often the case. Epistemic humility is hard to maintain when you flee one thing looking for truth and find another that, at the least, seems more promising than what you left. Falliblism is in short supply, apparently.

Well, you could make it illegal I suppose, or brainwash people against religion from childhood. Might not be totally effective, but would no doubt vastly reduce the ranks of the faithful.

Actually your account of scientism here seems erroneous:
For adherents of Scientism though, there is no single source of authority on The Truth of how & why the world works as it does. — Gnomon
I understand scientism as the opposite of this. It is an unassailable certainty that science is right and not tentative. In other words, the single source of authority about how the world works is science - hence scientism. — Tom Storm

I agree that your "single source" is stipulated in the definition of Scientism. But "Science" is not an actual thing, not a centralized institution, or a book of wisdom. Instead, it's an ideal that scientists are supposed to aspire to. Likewise "settled science" assumes a unified consensus. Yet consensus in science remains an unattainable state of perfect agreement among independent thinkers. There is no central authority to settle all disagreements.

For centuries the Classical Mechanics of Newton was as close to a scientific Bible as we've ever had. But the advent of non-mechanical Quantum Mechanics turned a lot of that "settled science" upside down. Consequently, scientists argued among themselves about how to interpret their empirical findings. And even Einstein couldn't depend on his aura of authority to overrule the Copenhagen Consensus.

So, my comment was not belittling the ideals of Empirical Truth in Science, but merely referring to the absence of an actual central authority for Truth : an Imperial Church, or absolute Pope, or authorized Bible. Do you agree that there is nothing in Science or Scientism corresponding to those centralized Authorities? The bottom line here is that if Science had a Bible or Central Authority -- to whom all must bow -- it would soon become a fossilized belief system : a religion. :smile:


Authority in Science :
The demotion of authority in science has many roots:
The fact that results are not taken seriously until they have been replicated in independent experiments by people one may assume will not collude in covering up sloppy or fraudulent results.
The vital connection between theory and results. Shaping theories generalizes specific results and allows experiments using different methods to test the same claim, liberates the outcome from the biases of any individual, and ultimately creates a basis for distinct scientific fields (biology and chemistry are different fields not because of different names but because of different theories).
Statistical and mathematical analyses that are verifiable in their own right and that estimate the probability that a result arose by chance.
The innate skepticism and high standards of the scientists who read the result, e.g. the default assumption that an idea is false until and unless there is evidence to support it.
https://arachnoid.com/reader_exchanges/authority_in_science.html

A crisis of authority in scientific discourse :
Scientific discourse has typically been considered what philosopher of language Mikhail Bakhtin, Holquist and Emerson (1981, p. 343) termed an “authoritative discourse,”—a discourse that “binds us, quite independent of any power it might have to persuade us internally,” whose hegemony is traditionally a priori, unquestioned. However, within the public realm, that authority is in crisis.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11422-020-09989-1

there is no single source of authority on The Truth of how & why the world works as it does. — Gnomon
Given what you say here, can you demonstrate the single source of authority on The Truth? I suspect a Noble Price might be waiting if you can do this. — Tom Storm

You've got my "no authority" assertion turned around backward. I said "there is no single authority in Science". Nor should there be. So how could you challenge me to demonstrate the existence of what I just denied? :smile:

I've made my point. You failed to define scientism correctly. The rest of this discussion is superfluous.

But I still wonder if you appreciate the difference between science and scientism.

You've got my "no authority" assertion turned around backward. I said "there is no single authority in Science". — Gnomon

No. You got this wrong too. You originally used this as a poor definition of scientism not science.

Here:

For adherents of Scientism though, there is no single source of authority on The Truth of how & why the world works as it does. — Gnomon

Note again - you used the word scientism. As I have pointed out several times now scientism is certain about science as a single source of authority on truth and how the world works.

And then (as a separate matter) I asked the follow up question; can you cite any example of a single authority on the Truth? Since you seemed to be suggesting that this was a type of misplaced skepticism, I wonder if there is an alternative you can point too?

But perhaps this discussion has become too complex and you are a bit lost in it? I understand, this sometimes happens to me.

Let's not waste any more time on this. I wish to hear no more about scientism. I am not interested in pursuing this any further. Take care.

It seems that science is in need of religions’ values, ethics, and morals. Might science absorb values, ethics, and morals from religions? From purified religions, of course. — Art48

One philosophical point to consider in all this is the implication of David Hume's 'is /ought' problem and the difficulty of deriving the latter from the former.

I think one of the implications of his observation is that moral frameworks within which values are oriented are extrinsic to science. As it happens, due to the cultural context within which modern scientific method developed, there is, as it were, a residual moral framework that originated in the broader Christian worldview which had previously characterised Western culture, but such a framework can't be derived from science as such. There are no good or bad chemical reactions, simply things that just happen. And if you want to see what a modern, technologically and scientifically advanced culture that doesn't share the same historical orientation towards human rights is like, look no further than the PRC, where individual rights and social minorities are ruthlessly forced back into the imposed consensus.

One problem is, that 'religion' has itself become a kind of cliché or stereotype, the ossified remnants of myths and motifs that no longer possess vitality or relevance. The culture has outgrown its religious tropes. But think about this: we are surely approaching a period when renunciation ought to be valued because capitalist economics, based on unending growth, are nearing or surpassing their sustainable limits. And within what kind of cultural framework would a renunciate attitude, eschewing material gain and seeking the cultivation of wisdom, make sense?

Here I'm reminded of the famous counter-cultural classic, Small is Beautiful, by E F Schumacher, published in the early 70's on the basis of what he called Buddhist Economics. He believed that conventional Western economics was based on a flawed view of human nature, one that saw people as inherently selfish and materialistic. He believed that this view led to a focus on economic growth and the accumulation of wealth at the expense of other values, such as social justice, environmental sustainability, and spiritual well-being. He argued that Buddhist economics was based on an alternative view of human nature, one that recognized our interdependence with others and with the natural world. He believed that this view led to an economic system that was more equitable, sustainable, and in tune with our spiritual and emotional needs, working with nature rather than against it, and of valuing human relationships and the quality of life over material possessions. It also emphasizes the importance of mindfulness, compassion, and non-violence in economic decision-making.

Fifty years later, not much has come of his ideas, sad to say, but I bring them up, because they embody of kind of religious philosophy, in that the Buddhist worldview still incorporates a soteriology (a doctrine of liberation from the world). And I don't believe that science, or scientific naturalism, offers any such horizon of being, however conceived. (I sometimes wonder if dreams of interstellar colonization represent a kind of sublimated longing for Heaven.) In any case, for a Buddhist commentary on same, I will refer to a lecture given by translator-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi A Buddhist Response to Contemporary Dilemmas of Human Existence. It was a keynote lecture at a conference, so is a dense piece, and quite lengthy, but I find myself in substantial agreement with a lot of it.

The triumph of materialism in the sphere of cosmology and metaphysics had the profoundest impact on human self-understanding. The message it conveyed was that the inward dimensions of our existence, with its vast profusion of spiritual and ethical concerns, is mere adventitious superstructure. The inward is reducible to the external, the invisible to the visible, the personal to the impersonal. Mind becomes a higher order function of the brain, the individual a node in a social order governed by statistical laws. All humankind's ideals and values are relegated to the status of illusions: they are projections of biological drives, sublimated wish-fulfillment. Even ethics, the philosophy of moral conduct, comes to be explained away as a flowery way of expressing personal preferences. Its claim to any objective foundation is untenable, and all ethical judgments become equally valid. The ascendancy of relativism is complete. — Bhikkhu Bodhi

However, I'll also add as a counter to that, that there is a new kind of dialogue emerging between science and spirituality which eschews both religious dogma and scientific materialism, often inspired on the one hand by environmentalism and 'systems science' and even by the idealistic trend arising from 'the new physics':

Sigmund Freud remarked that ‘the self-love of mankind has been three times wounded by science’ referring to the Copernican revolution, Darwin’s discovery of evolution, and Nietszche’s declaration of the Death of God. In a strange way, the Copenhagen Interpretation gave back to humanity what the Enlightenment had taken away, by placing consciousness in a pivotal role in the observational construction of the most fundamental constituents of reality. While this is fiercely contested by what Werner Heisenberg termed ‘dogmatic realism’, for better or for worse it has become an established idea in modern cultural discourse (see e.g. Richard Conn Henry The Mental Universe.)

So the entire field is in a period of intense flux, as it ought to be, considering the tumultous nature of today's world. What is emerging is no longer the hard-edged materialistic science of the later modern period, nor the cliches and time-worn tropes of historical religion, but something that absorbs but exceeds both.

Small is Beautiful, by E F Schumacher... — Wayfarer

...ooo I suspect the ideas therein are sitting quietly in the background, an un-noted stoa for various Green political movements and alternate economic theories.

yep, folks ethics often improve when they leave their religion. Again, there is the inability of some folk to comprehend an ethic not based on god.

↪Tom Storm yep, folks ethics often improve when they leave their religion. Again, there is the inability of some folk to comprehend an ethic not based on god — Banno

or truth

Well, you could make it illegal I suppose, or brainwash people against religion from childhood. Might not be totally effective, but would no doubt vastly reduce the ranks of the faithful. — Janus

I honestly don't see the point of that, other than control, and control is the basic point of religion. It would essentially be replacing religion. I say let it die and DON'T TRY TO REPLACE IT.

or truth — Joshs

Is there a useful thread here on post modernism and truth? I would be keen to read something accessible on the subject.

Control is the basic point of any ideology including religious ideology; and that's why I questioned whether you hold an ideological view that recommends actively discouraging and/ or working against religion, or whether you are just hoping it will die out. If the former I would think that misguided, and if the latter, then I think you will be disappointed.

Both the Russian and Chinese Communist parties set out to eradicate religion, and to institute 'scientific communism', but both of them failed. (Since the fall of Soviet Communism we now have the appalling spectacle of the officially-sanctioned Russian Orthodox patriarchy blessing Putin's war crimes.) The Chinese Communist Party has made an enormous effort to discourage and control Christian sects within its borders, however it is growing faster there than almost anywhere in the world, from less than a million to more than 100 million in the last four decades.

:up: Yep, I don't believe religion is going away any time soon. And I also don't hold the view that humanity would be better off without it.

I honestly don't see the point of that, other than control, and control is the basic point of religion. It would essentially be replacing religion. I say let it die and DON'T TRY TO REPLACE IT. — praxis

Religion has effectively died out amongst large groups of people in the west. The kinds of religion that is growing widely around the world - evangelical Christianity (in Asia and Africa) and fundamentalist Islam are often so shallow that they scarcely count as religions the way we used to think of them. Doctrines waver and bend and almost no one knows any scripture or reads the holy books. I was talking to some Chinese former evangelicals and in their view it's just about professing belief and makings things up using a jumble of terminology (a bit like some people on this forum seem to do :wink:) sin, Satan and the love of Christ.

I support those atheist evangelists who help people to deconstruct from fundamentalist religion. I think this is a worthy thing to do and I have donated money. There seems to be a lot of folk wanting to leave and leaving behind the festering hatreds of fundamentalism and evangelical religion and they are looking for support in their emerging skepticism and critical thinking.

I support those atheist evangelists who help people to deconstruct from fundamentalist religion. I think this is a worthy thing to do and I have donated money. — Tom Storm

:clap: Me to. (Although I would replace 'atheist evDEVILists,' with secular humanist. I will continue to support such folks in anyway I can!)

Will apples replace oranges, I think that’s kinda what the question is asking.

Anyway here’s Louis Pasteur:

What is emerging is no longer the hard-edged materialistic science of the later modern period, nor the cliches and time-worn tropes of historical religion, but something that absorbs but exceeds both. — Wayfarer

This really does depend on the definition of "science" and "religion". You can have science presented as this systematic method of studying reality and religion as mere appeal to authority. — IP060903

It might be worth mentioning Science and Non-Duality. This started as a conference in San Rafael in California in 2009.

The mission of Science and Nonduality (SAND) is to forge a new paradigm in spirituality, one that is not dictated by religious dogma, but that is rather based on timeless wisdom traditions of the world, informed by cutting-edge science, and grounded in direct experience. — Wayfarer

Science will need to explain how consciousness can come from non-conscious stuff before it can replace religion. And I'm not holding my breath on an explanation. — RogueAI

It will become a religion. In many ways it already is. — Tzeentch

let it die and DON'T TRY TO REPLACE IT. — praxis

Both the Russian and Chinese Communist parties set out to eradicate religion, and to institute 'scientific communism', but both of them failed. — Wayfarer

Science and religion are two different things and there's no point in pitching them against each other because I'd argue that is a misunderstanding of the psychological function and inner workings of religion.

There's the argument that if humanity loses all knowledge about the world and history, people will eventually find out the same things in science, but religion will be whatever delusion that gets invented next.

Science is about facts and the pursuit of facts, it's always aimed at that goal, to explain and create a foundational and fundamental understanding of everything.

Religion is about comfort. Every human being is born into this world having grown-ups caring for them or at least having power over them. It's the first and most basic knowledge or experience humans have and seeing as how the first years in life tremendously dictate the psychology of a person, that experience is a powerful reality that isn't easily changed just because we're grown-ups.

This experience makes most people cling to nostalgia or another system that comforts them. Either by letting some authority care for them, be it a state or some power figure, or in this case, God or a pantheon. When people have grown to not need parents, or rebel against them, they are thrown into a world where having freedom and a lack of power controlling them can feel like pure horror. In Sartre's words: we are condemned to freedom.

The only way to escape the feeling of this overwhelming responsibility is to invent or surrender to a higher power in some actual or fictional form.

So, to answer the question, Science will not replace religion, because religion is an emergent form out of a basic psychological dilemma for people. The only way to change this fact is to reform how people view the responsibility and power over their own lives.

The problem with this is that it requires finding a meaning to existence that is more real than imaginary. And with nature and the universe's inherent meaninglessness in the perspective of our existence, that is a tall order.

The solution, and the thing that would eventually remove the need for religion, would be to find a strategy for meaning that is dislocated from religious fantasy. Something that can make people find meaning in the world and universe that we already have.

Then there's the case of rituals. There are hints in psychology that humans need rituals, or gravitate towards them all the time. We could argue that something like OCD is a form of "ritual disorder", in which rituals have taken over the mind and stress levels increase too much when trying to abandon them.

Rituals are a form of pattern behavior. We move into a pattern in order to soothe a chaotic mind. It could be that "rituals" are as important to us as sleep. A way to organize our emotions and thoughts.

So a second solution is to dislocate rituals from religion. There are many traditions today that don't require any religious ideas. Or they are based on old religious ideas that have been abandoned. Swedish Midsommar is filled with rituals that have nothing to do with its roots or that have forgotten its roots.

Then there's the case of "awe". Religion is often filled with awe over existence. But this is also something that can be dislocated from religion since it's not required to have faith in a fantasy to feel awe.

Awe can be felt in front of nature itself, in front of the universe as it is. The scientific concepts of how reality works, together with what we don't know about reality, what is outside the universe, etc. do not need to have less impact than a fantasy about it. We don't have to invent something to explain it in order to feel awe. People also feel awe standing at the foot of Mount Everest, or on the edge of the Grand Canyon, or seeing the rim of the milky way in a place without light pollution.

The only reason why religion still persists is that the work needed to build up these alternatives demands a lot of time and energy from the individual and society. We need more non-religious rituals and social and non-social traditions. We need a focus on the awe of nature and the universe as it is, and celebrate existence for what it is, not for what it's not. We need a focus on meaning and better guidance and mentorship from being a child to being an adult.

Science won't replace religion, because religion is based on a psychological need that cannot be met by science, only by a different way of life and a different way of how society works.

Religion has a totally other function than science and the idea that science will replace religion is based on the idea that religion has an equal measure of explaining the universe, which it clearly does not when looking at the track record. That is an argument that already accepts religion on equal terms, an argument from within the fantasy, not objectively studying these two things.

I suspect Pasteur is wrong about this since many people who know a lot of science are still atheists. Possibly most.

Maybe Pasteur should have said - 'A little or a lot of science won't necessarily replace the supernatural in the minds of some.' And we can't argue with that. :wink:

If that is indeed the case, I mean even Einstein who is considered one of the greats of theoretical physics said something like god doesn’t play dice or something to that effect. Is that a confession of doubt there ? Was he even a fully fledged atheist?

The list of scientists, and I talk about the ones with the biggest influence or impact in their respective fields outnumber the atheist by a ratio of at least 2:1. Historically speaking it’s even greater.

This might be skewed in the modern sense as all you need to be called a scientist these days is a degree from any mediocre university. It’s just a title and the science itself is trivial or non-consequential.

I’d like to be proven wrong.

Religion has a totally other function than science and the idea that science will replace religion is based on the idea that religion has an equal measure of explaining the universe, which it clearly does not when looking at the track record. — Christoffer

Yes, but isn't the point that science and religion are both in the explanation business? Religious explanations are often fixed and doctrinaire. Those of science are ususally evidence based and may change as knowledge increases.

When science has replaced philosophy, such questions will no longer be asked.

Yes, but isn't the point that science and religion are both in the explanation business? — Tom Storm

No, religion as an explanation system comes out of the need for a simple comforting answer, comfort comes first. In science, there could be a level of comfort in trying to find answers, but scientists actively scale off comfort as it is the foundation of scientific biases.

The early humans didn't stare up at the sun forming a God out of it because they first wanted to find an answer to why that thing was up there being hot. They formed a story around it out of the need to comfort their experience of reality with having a new authority over them when their actual authorities (parents, mentors, and tribe leaders) died or weren't in charge anymore. The explanation side of it is a later product within religion by scholars who were drilled into a specific religion but wanted to find out more about actual reality. All of these scholars and "wise men" were the first scientists in history, before we had a rigid system that removed biases from studies, philosophy, and experiments.

The argument, however, is that religion is emergent out of the need for this authority, ritual, and comfort. That this is the psychological need that gets overlooked when pitching science against religion. To pitch science against religion, you must already accept religion as having equal merits in explaining the world and universe, therefore, such an argument already comes from within the fantasy of religion, not looking at the function of science of religion psychologically.

I’d like to be proven wrong. — invicta

Well, you'll need to start by demonstrating evidence of your claim first.

Not sure how you would do this - you'd probaly need to provide a list of all the most significant scientists (that won't be controversial at all!) then you'd need to demonstrate who was a theist and what kind and who was an atheist.

Not something I imagine you can do. But who cares? As I already said above -

A little or a lot of science won't necessarily replace the supernatural in the minds of some.' — Tom Storm

Einstein? He's like a Rorschach inkblot on theism. A believer in a Spinoza's God. Famously in his notorious 1954 letter Einstein wrote:

The word God is for me nothing but the expression of and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends.. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this.

And

For me the unadulterated Jewish religion is, like all other religions, an incarnation of primitive superstition.

I think it's clear that Einstein preferred science to religion.

He was actually agnostic but anyway.

No, religion as an explanation system comes out of the need for a simple comforting answer, comfort comes first. In science, there could be a level of comfort in trying to find answers, but scientists actively scale off comfort as it is the foundation of scientific biases. — Christoffer

I think we see this differently. Explanations are explanations. Besides religious explanations do not always provide comfort. They often provide fear and trembling and terrifying obligations. The point for me is that both world views attempt to make sense of the world - explanations. How they go about it is of course quite different but that has no impact on the fact they are both trying to explain reality.

As it happens, I have known a number of former evangelicals who have deconverted and most of them have stated that science has made the world a whole lot less scary on account of the supernatural not being the explanation of why we are here.

They’re two vastly different things, science needs proofs otherwise it wouldn’t work.

The proof of god is one of the biggest philosophical questions there is. Science can’t find such proof yet, nor can it actually find proof to various other hypotheticals such as the graviton or dark matter.

Yet, though no proof is yet to be found on the two things science has not adopted an atheist stance to the existence of the graviton or dark matter.

Now there lies the real stupidity on part of the lay scientist and atheist.

So whilst they’re happy to dismiss God for lack of proof they’re yet to dismiss the graviton, the messiah to their gravity for lack of proof.

Hypocritical, blind and stupid.

So whilst they’re happy to dismiss God for lack of proof they’re yet to dismiss the graviton, the messiah to their gravity for lack of proof.

Hypocritical, blind and stupid. — invicta

We get it you're an angry theist. So?