Freethought & Rationalism Archive

crazycat · 01-03-2002, 05:38 AM

JohnHind wrote in the thread <a href="http://ii-f.ws/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=10&t=000564" target="_blank">Combining science and religion</a>

Quote:

Religion is characteristically a closed, reactionary system which insists it had a pristine and perfect truth at some point in the past and exists to defend this truth against the forces of entropy and against opposing religious systems.

Richard Dawkins in his article
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/asap/1999/1004/235.html" target="_blank">Snake Oil and Holy Water</a>

Quote:

Yet, by the book's own account, Goodenough does not believe in any sort of supreme being, does not believe in any sort of life after death. By any normal understanding of the English language, she is no more religious than I am.

Paul Connelly wrote in
<a href="http://www.darc.org/connelly/religion1.html" target="_blank">Defining religion and related terms</a>

Quote:

A number of modern scholars of religion have commented on the difficulty of defining what religion is. Over the centuries, influential thinkers have offered their own definitions, with greater or lesser degrees of assurance, but virtually all of these definitions have been found wanting by the majority of scholars. In some cases the definitions are too narrow, defining religion in terms of the speaker's religious beliefs or those of his or her culture and tending to exclude the religious beliefs of other cultures. In other cases the definitions are so vague and inclusive that they do not sufficiently delimit religion from other areas of human thought such as psychology, law, economics, physics, etc.

He offered his own definition:

Quote:

Religion originates in an attempt to represent and order beliefs, feelings, imaginings and actions that arise in response to direct experience of the sacred and the spiritual. As this attempt expands in its formulation and elaboration, it becomes a process that creates meaning for itself on a sustaining basis, in terms of both its originating experiences and its own continuing responses.

(<a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_defn.htm" target="_blank">Here</a> is another article from religioustolerance.org on the problems of accurate definitions of religion.)

Well, I'm not a scientist, and I'm pretty biased, because I'm quite fond of religion, although more in a general sense (I don't follow any specific tradition) but I'm getting quite annoyed when someone defines religion in a self-serving way, just to build up a strawman for an easy knock-down - it's like when someone says that evolution is the theory of how modern man came from nothing, or atheism is the active denial of an allmighty god.

Many atheist here claim to be very scientific-minded, and when someone misrepresents scientific theories they get upset for very good reasons - otoh most don't seem to mind if someone defines religion in the most outrageous ways, just because they don't like religions (and I understand that, and I understand it if someone simply doesn't care about religion) but if someone claims to value science how can they play this fast and loose with proper definitions?

(Please excuse my english, but I just had to say this...

)

[ January 03, 2002: Message edited by: crazycat ]</p>

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