johngalt

My first post as a member!!:-)Anyways, my question is: does religion foster ignorance? All comments welcome

johngalt

Tyler Durden

Religion does not entails ignorance. It is a rich field of knowledge that helps one arrange the world around him or her into a sensible and meaningful weltanschaaung. Religion today, however, entails ignorance within the other fields of knowledge, given that its constituents are not open to critical reasoning, nor does an avowed membership to a certain denomination develop a good bullshit meter.

SO, religion by itself does not lead to ignorance, but relatively, wrt to other fields of discourse, loyalty to the principles of religion does help generate dogmatic ignorance.

Kimpatsu

Religion is not a field of knowledge, it's a field of belief. It demands faith in the unproven. Hardly a constructive background. If the field is one of knowledge, religion is unnecessary. Religion only exists to ascribe to the metaphysical that which is not yet understood.
Oh, and Tyler: don't drop the soap.

Tyler Durden

That remains to be seen whether a legitimate philosophy can be built around the possibility of "knowledge" without having beliefs. Care to expand on that point?

Not quite. Religion is a matter of supplying the opium to the yearnings of people who desire a grand centering of their moral values and purpose.

Wrong. Religion is a social construct of knowledge.

You could say the same about the hopes people have in scientific research - it also ascribes to the metaphysical that which is not yet understood. A good book speculating on the TOE should be enough evidence of a parallel.

I don't use soap.

Kimpatsu

That was fast! Do you live on line?
Be careful. Are you talking about rational belief, or faith? Religion is a matter of faith without any rational basis for, if there were rational evidence, faith would be superfluous. I believe, for example, that if I drop the dictionary that's on my desk out of the window, it will fall at 32 m^2. I have faith that this is so. I can justify that faith, however, by performing experiments to prove that I'm right. Religion wants to have its cake and eat it; apologists make scientific claims such as water into wine or virgin birth, but then claim NOMA when challenged on the point.
More like crack cocaine. Why do people need an outside agency to centre their moral values and purpose?
No, society is a social construct (obviously!). Religion is a non-scientific attempt to explain the origins of the universe, and especially, the origins of life. It is (a very poor!) cosmology and biology.
Science works by testing, and thereby either validating or eliminating, hypotheses. When was the last time a religioso hypothesised the non-existence of god?
You must be French.

Tyler Durden

During sessions of burning the midnight oil over assignments due the next day, sure.

I'm asking you. You declared that belief were not part of a system of "knowledge." So you should be careful in tossing around words that aren't necessarily fundamentally inimical to one another.

Wrong again. Reason by its function desires the unconditioned condition, and encourages the intellect to surpass empirical evidence. With that in mind, it is no wonder why we have so many transcendental conclusions in theological speculation.

Your faith is actually the common faculty all people and animals have- the assumption that the future will resemble the past- "animal faith" in the uniform theory. That is not religious faith, which pushes reasoning beyond the bound of sense.

Apologists are dishonest rationalists.

The psychology of herd mentality. It's far easier to let others, especially persuasive people, decide what ought to be. The very same goes for science, especially when introducing a new theory.

Uh, religion remains a social construct, a byproduct of the social norms of its constituents. THere is a reason why religious institutions have been around forever, and a very good psychological one you are not bothering to look into.

Ask Buddhists, preferrably the Zen variety.

Ouch! I don't see the point masking my pheromones.

Pyrrho

It depends on what you mean by "religion". Particular religions differ so much that it is difficult to speak of religion generally, and still speak the truth. Not all religions agree, for example, on even such questions as whether or not there is a god (some forms of Buddhism are atheistic), much less on the nature of such a god or gods. There appears to be no particular belief that is shared by all religions, and by no other group. And I don't find a typical set of definitions in a dictionary very helpful for this particular word:


From:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=religion

Definition 1 excludes some things commonly called "religions" (e.g., atheistic Buddhism); 2 defines "religion" using another form of that word, "religious", which is makes the definition somewhat circular; 3 involves the term "spiritual", which seems as problematic as the word that is being defined; and 4 seems to be a more metaphoric use of the term "religion" than a definition of it.

In my view, "being religious" means "believing without evidence" (i.e., having faith). I think my idea fits well with what are called religions, as those who believe in them do not require evidence for their beliefs (find a religion in which that is not true, and I will retract my idea, though we will also need to be satisfied that the thing in question is something that is commonly called, in a non-metaphoric manner, a "religion").

Therefore, I believe it favors ignorance. Obviously, a different idea of what it is to be religious may result in a very different answer to your question. However, we can look at this in another way, and ask about those things that have been called religions, and inquire into whether they foster ignorance, which, of course, would be primarily an historical matter. I think it is safe to say, that all religions foster certain forms of knowledge (i.e., knowledge of the religious tradition itself, though not necessarily being complete or unbiased), though they foster ignorance of some other matters (such as theories that contradict the religious tradition in question). Therefore, we may say that they foster ignorance.

Jobar

Who is John Galt?

Seriously, welcome to Internet Infidels. I'm going to put your thread into our General Religious Discussions forum; EoG, here, is concentrated specifically on God(s).

Kimpatsu

Having called you French, insulting you as an "anorak" or "geek" must be tame by comparison.
Oh, if only people all agreed on the definitions of such terms!
FYI, "faith" is a matter of belief without evidence. If we can't agree on our definitions, this debate is a non-starter. (Robert Heinlein made this point very well in Stranger in a Strange Land.)
Unconditioned condition? Can we have square circles and married batchelors as well?
But that's not faith, it's belief. (See above.) Universal laws have remained unchanged for the last 15 billion years, so it's reasonable to assume that they aren't going to change any time soon. Also, we can verify by experiment that the laws can't be broken, subject as always to the scientific caveat of potential falsifiability.
Pseudo-rationalists, surely? Apologists use a deceptive cloak of apparent rationality to justify their religious outlook.
More like people don't want to think for themselves. Science is quite different, however; so long as your experiments are performed correctly, and your results published in a peer-reviewed journal, fellow scientists will be forced to accept your conclusions. Debate in science arises when there are two or more conflicting hypotheses, neither of which has yet been verified. (This is true for major issues such as steady state versus big bang, down to the minute details of the mechanics of evolution.)
Yes, I'm aware of the psychological mechanics of religion. Au fond, however, religion remains an attempt by non-scientific people to explain scientific phenomena. There are other social constructs that are non-religious in nature.
Zen Buddhism isn't a religion; check out www.bskf.org to see what I mean.
Or that delightful scent of decaying bacteria, either.

Jobar

Who is John Galt?

Seriously, welcome to Internet Infidels. I'm going to put your thread into our General Religious Discussions forum; EoG, here, is concentrated specifically on God(s).