Simone Weil's weird take on religious belief

Simone Weil's weird take on religious belief May 3, 2019 0:13:29 GMT

Quote

Post by general313 on May 3, 2019 0:13:29 GMT

May 2, 2019 21:54:21 GMT Arlon10 said:

May 2, 2019 14:53:12 GMT general313 said:

Without going into your irrelevant asides about politics or this "true heart of a scientist" nonsense, I'll make these points:

1) " People who believe in science don't realize theirs is as much faith as anyone else has." -- this is completely wrong. Science requires far less faith than religion, in fact that is the point of science. Instead of needing to accept some kind of divine revelation or other mumbo jumbo from some authority figure on faith, science provides arguments based on experiments, often ones that anyone can perform and even more often can be understood by laymen. The only faith required of science is an assumption that there is consistency in the universe, far far less than what is required in Christianity, for example.

2) "If people cannot decide whether to build a birdhouse, a lawn sprinkler or a badminton court there is really nothing science can do." Replace "science" with "religion" and you're still saying the same thing.

   It doesn't have to provide anything lately. Too many people accept as "science" almost anything claiming to be. I gave a recent example of mind reading. Perhaps you are not paying attention to the news. There are lots of things in politics that are a problem because people believe science has answers it does not.

   You perhaps need to get out more. Your concept of "religion" is terribly distorted. Do you think Trump followers are "religious"? They are definitely not. They just want to be rulers. They'll take any excuse they can get away with. Since they are incapable of science they'll take whatever they think they can get instead, like nationalism. They don't actually try religion because they don't have any themselves.

   You have what religion "fails" to do wrong in the example of the birdhouse/lawn sprinkler/badminton court scenario. It does not force any decision on anyone, that much is true. That however is not a failing. It doesn't try to force a decision on anyone. People who believe in science do try to force decisions on others in the name of science, but without real science to support them.   You are still trying to be the "boss" (or a low ranking soldier for the boss) through science and still can't see how futile that is. You had obvious difficulty understanding artistic (not literal) representations of a god. In your latest reply you actually assumed people incapable of science can somehow manage it. That isn't working, and you shouldn't be surprised.

If there are many people that confuse Youtube videos and other sources of pseudo-science, that doesn't change the qualities of real science or the level of faith required to engage in it. If people believe that they don't need to concern themselves with the latest measles outbreak it isn't because the science is faulty. My point stands that science requires far less faith than religion.

I haven't brought up Trump's relationship with religion, but as long as you mention it, one of Trump's most important constituents is the American religious right, with leaders like Franklin Graham constantly defending the President. Perhaps you can argue that Billy Graham's son is a complete hypocrite but are you prepared to claim that all or even many of the religious right are insincere in their beliefs in God?

So you say "people who believe in science do try to force decisions on others in the name of science". Do you mean all of them or some fraction? And you think that science followers try to force decisions more than religion followers? Now that's a good one!