When science and religion collide who sets curriculum?

[Schneibster]

not based on science.

Then I'm not down with it.

Read better.

[Skipjack]

I read it and I still dont agree.

[Schneibster]

I read it and I still dont agree.

With what specifically?

Note I don't question your self; only your interpretations.

Note also that you said it was not scientific. How not? Be specific.

Hate to tell you but I've seen just as many liars that claimed to be scientific as that don't.

I'm old. And cynical. And I like to make fun of naïfs.

[GIThruster]

I'm sorry Skippy, as much as I want to agree, most of this is simply not true. Corrections follow:

But there were and are plenty of so called "modern" religions. The ones without gods were ideologies like communism, national socialism and so on.
Then there is all the new age crap.
In the end they are all just religions with a different front end.
There are some things that are common to all religions:
1. They all follow some dogmatic teaching that refuses to adapt to newly discovered fact and new scientific discovery. Usually something written in a (one), also referred to as "the" book.
E.g. genetics are frowned upon by the followers of almost all religions and ideologies (communists hated them and had them sent to siberia or executed, socialists hate them, christians hate them, muslims of course hate them) and there is probably no other science that get slandered as much as genetics, even tough this science is saving lives, constantly.

Modern evangelicalism which is what most of the US is composed of; adapts completely to the fact findings of science. I'm sure there are other religions as well that evolve over time.

2. They believe that only their religion is the real one.

Modern evangelicals most often agree that there are great lessons to be learned from all religions. (Satanism is the common exception.) They merely point out the distinction they hold between "special revelation" in Christianity, which is stuff people would not understand without divine intervention; and "natural revelation" found in places like Buddhism that can be derived from normal observation of life.

3. They believe that they and only they have the solution to all of mankinds problems.

See note above. Many evangelicals support the observations of other religions that are not in contradiction of Christianity. They do however most often note that Christ has a divine message that makes a significant difference in the life of a person, though sometimes but not always a matter of ultimate salvation. Evangelicals are divided on this issue. Those that believe one must "accept Christ" in order to receive salvation, almost always believe in "geographical dispensationalism" which is to say, that people will be judged by their Creator, based upon the truth they were exposed to during their lives.

4. They all teach that their followers are in some way better (chosen or superior, whatever) than those that are not part of the religion.

This is wrong start to finish. All Christians teach they are sinners in need of forgiveness, same as any participant of any religion.

5. They have their followers go out and spread the religion and by whatever means convince others to follow it or if not possible, kill those that wont follow(evangelize, world revolution, indoctrinate, re- educate, spread with fire and sword, conquer the world, holy war, etc, etc) .

Bullshit start to finish. Anyone who knows their bible knows that the "mandate" given by Christ is to spread the "gospel" of forgiveness. There is no mandate to persecute, harm or kill anyone outside Christianity in any historic form of Christianity. You're thinking of Islam, which is the only classical theistic religion that teaches from its core to harm "infidels".

6. They all require some form of sacrifice from their followers. There is lots of rites and beautiful stories, many using easy to understand metaphors and parabels.

Bullshit start to finish. All of Christianity has always taught throughout all the centuries, that Christ's sacrifice is complete and sufficient. Only dark age crazy versions of Christianity have ever called for sacrifice from believers, and these were to support the fraudulent priesthood evoked upon Europe during the dark ages when believers couldn't read and the priesthood had a monopoly on "what God said". Even modern Catholics don't believe stuff like this, though it is easy to document this during the dark ages and the early-proto renaissance.

7. They usually assume some human ideal that simply does not exist. Common (wrong) assumptions (mix and match depending on religion / ideology) are:
All humans are equal (at birth, in front of god, by nature, by class).
All humans are or want to be good by nature and it is society (or the devil, or the lack of education about morals, or the godlessnes) that makes them evil or forces them to do bad things.
Members of people X are superior to all others.
Aquired abilities become part of nature and species adapt. So that e.g. a couple of generations of teaching of an ideology can make a better class of humans.

Wrong start to finish. Christianity teaches the opposite--that mankind is flawed and in need of redemption. I guess you've never been to Sunday School and don't really know much about Christianity. And to say the truth, most atheists are in your position, with these same misunderstandings--as was C. S. Lewis before his conversion from Atheist at age 30. You should read him.

[Skipjack]

Yo should learn to read, I was talking about religion in general and was naming examples, I was NOT talking about Christianity specifically. So some of the examples may not apply.

I'm sorry Skippy, as much as I want to agree, most of this is simply not true. Corrections follow:

But there were and are plenty of so called "modern" religions. The ones without gods were ideologies like communism, national socialism and so on.
Then there is all the new age crap.
In the end they are all just religions with a different front end.
There are some things that are common to all religions:
1. They all follow some dogmatic teaching that refuses to adapt to newly discovered fact and new scientific discovery. Usually something written in a (one), also referred to as "the" book.
E.g. genetics are frowned upon by the followers of almost all religions and ideologies (communists hated them and had them sent to siberia or executed, socialists hate them, christians hate them, muslims of course hate them) and there is probably no other science that get slandered as much as genetics, even tough this science is saving lives, constantly.

Modern evangelicalism which is what most of the US is composed of; adapts completely to the fact findings of science. I'm sure there are other religions as well that evolve over time.

LOL, yeah sure that is why we have all those young earth creationists run about. That is why we have people complain about "men playing god" whenever genetics are mentioned. The catholic church had been denying basic scientific fact until very recently. Heck they were denying people in areas of Africa that had 50% HIV positives the use of condoms for Christs sake (excuse the pun!)Sure some of them are trying to adapt because they have to, but they would much rather not.
The muslim world is completely science averse anyway.

2. They believe that only their religion is the real one.

Modern evangelicals most often agree that there are great lessons to be learned from all religions. (Satanism is the common exception.) They merely point out the distinction they hold between "special revelation" in Christianity, which is stuff people would not understand without divine intervention; and "natural revelation" found in places like Buddhism that can be derived from normal observation of life.

Again, you only go to heaven if you are a Christian. Everybody else goes to hell. So their members are "special" compared to others. It is the same with all religions though.

3. They believe that they and only they have the solution to all of mankinds problems.

See note above. Many evangelicals support the observations of other religions that are not in contradiction of Christianity. They do however most often note that Christ has a divine message that makes a significant difference in the life of a person, though sometimes but not always a matter of ultimate salvation. Evangelicals are divided on this issue. Those that believe one must "accept Christ" in order to receive salvation, almost always believe in "geographical dispensationalism" which is to say, that people will be judged by their Creator, based upon the truth they were exposed to during their lives.

Not those devout Christians that I knew. Maybe some more modern ones think so. Anyway, it does not contradict what I said.

4. They all teach that their followers are in some way better (chosen or superior, whatever) than those that are not part of the religion.

This is wrong start to finish. All Christians teach they are sinners in need of forgiveness, same as any participant of any religion.

How does that contradict anything? You still only go to heaven if you are a Christian. Also again, we are not talking about just Christianity there.

5. They have their followers go out and spread the religion and by whatever means convince others to follow it or if not possible, kill those that wont follow(evangelize, world revolution, indoctrinate, re- educate, spread with fire and sword, conquer the world, holy war, etc, etc) .

Bullshit start to finish. Anyone who knows their bible knows that the "mandate" given by Christ is to spread the "gospel" of forgiveness. There is no mandate to persecute, harm or kill anyone outside Christianity in any historic form of Christianity. You're thinking of Islam, which is the only classical theistic religion that teaches from its core to harm "infidels".

I was not saying that all religions were doing the same thing. I gave examples for what happened in various religions or what had been tought by their leaders. Crusades, holy wars, jihad, world revolution, all the same.Sure Christianity is a lot more moderate these days. I just want to point out the Husite wars, the Hugenotte wars, the reformation wars, the crusades, etc, etc.

6. They all require some form of sacrifice from their followers. There is lots of rites and beautiful stories, many using easy to understand metaphors and parabels.

Bullshit start to finish. All of Christianity has always taught throughout all the centuries, that Christ's sacrifice is complete and sufficient. Only dark age crazy versions of Christianity have ever called for sacrifice from believers, and these were to support the fraudulent priesthood evoked upon Europe during the dark ages when believers couldn't read and the priesthood had a monopoly on "what God said". Even modern Catholics don't believe stuff like this, though it is easy to document this during the dark ages and the early-proto renaissance.

Where did I talk about sacrificing someone or something? You do understand the meaning of personal sacrifice, do you? As in doing something that is unpleasant? That does NOT mean sacrificing a living being! Personal sacrifice can be going on a pilgrimage, donating to the church, fasting, rammadan, etc. That is what I was referring to.
Geeze!

7. They usually assume some human ideal that simply does not exist. Common (wrong) assumptions (mix and match depending on religion / ideology) are:
All humans are equal (at birth, in front of god, by nature, by class).
All humans are or want to be good by nature and it is society (or the devil, or the lack of education about morals, or the godlessnes) that makes them evil or forces them to do bad things.
Members of people X are superior to all others.
Aquired abilities become part of nature and species adapt. So that e.g. a couple of generations of teaching of an ideology can make a better class of humans.

Wrong start to finish. Christianity teaches the opposite--that mankind is flawed and in need of redemption. I guess you've never been to Sunday School and don't really know much about Christianity. And to say the truth, most atheists are in your position, with these same misunderstandings--as was C. S. Lewis before his conversion from Atheist at age 30. You should read him.

Again, incapable of understanding what I was trying to say. Christianity still assumes that "god made all people equal". This is simply not true.

[GIThruster]

Sorry Skippy, but you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding on this issue. None of your answers obtain.

[Skipjack]

Sorry Skippy, but you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding on this issue. None of your answers obtain.

Usual response from religious people and their defenders "You just dont understand it".
My grandmother was a very devout Christian. I went to a catholic school with priests as teachers...

[GIThruster]

genetics are frowned upon by the followers of almost all religions and ideologies

Dream on. Most scientists are Christians.

. . .you only go to heaven if you are a Christian. Everybody else goes to hell.

Sounds like you have a very small sampling of what Christianity is all about. "Anecdotal" would be an extremely generous way to characterize it.

They believe that they and only they have the solution to all of mankinds problems. . .Not those devout Christians that I knew. Maybe some more modern ones think so. Anyway, it does not contradict what I said.

Em. . .yep It does.

I was not saying that all religions were doing the same thing. I gave examples for what happened in various religions or what had been tought by their leaders. Crusades, holy wars, jihad, world revolution, all the same. Sure Christianity is a lot more moderate these days. I just want to point out the Husite wars, the Hugenotte wars, the reformation wars, the crusades, etc, etc.

Okay, so you want to point out examples you agree are not good examples of modern religion? You can do that. Do you want theists to point out examples of comic book atheism to discredit it? Mao Zedong in China, Stalin in Russia, and Hitler--together have killed vastly more people on the planet than everyone else combined for 6,000 years of recorded history, and they were all Atheists.

Where did I talk about sacrificing someone or something? You do understand the meaning of personal sacrifice, do you?

Em, yeah, I really do.

Christianity still assumes that "god made all people equal". This is simply not true.

You're confusing 18th century political philosophy with Christianity. Certainly it's true, Christianity teaches a brotherhood of all mankind, but there is nothing in your bible that teaches the modern notion of equality. That is a construct of modern Christianity for sure, but it is not a doctrine of Christianity. If it were, Christ would have been made into a politician, and we would have seen the end of slavery much sooner than we did. As it is, Christ had bigger plans than social justice. He decided instead, to save the world.

You should read Mere Christianity, Skippy. You'd like it.

[choff]

Anybody else read Tacitus 'The Histories', guy was a pagan Roman writing about the destruction of Jerusalem.

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboa ... chap18.htm


13. Prodigies had occurred, but their expiation by the offering of victims or solemn vows is held to be unlawful by a nation which is the slave of superstition and the enemy of true beliefs. In the sky appeared a vision of armies in conflict, of glittering armour. A sudden lightning flash from the clouds lit up the Temple. The doors of the holy place abruptly opened, a superhuman voice was heard to declare that the gods were leaving it, and in the same instant came the rushing tumult of their departure. Few people placed a sinister interpretation upon this. The majority were convinced that the ancient scriptures of their priests alluded to the present as the very time when the Orient would triumph and from Judaea would go forth men destined to rule the world. This mysterious prophecy really referred to Vespasian and Titus, but the common people, true to the selfish ambitions of mankind, thought that this mighty destiny was reserved for them, and not even their calamities opened their eyes to the truth.

Tacitus was no Bible Thumper.

[Schneibster]

Sorry Skippy, but you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding on this issue. None of your answers obtain.

Usual response from religious people and their defenders "You just dont understand it".
My grandmother was a very devout Christian. I went to a catholic school with priests as teachers...

I read the Babble when I was eight, and again when I was fifteen. I'm an atheist and the son of atheists. I've also read two translations of the Q'uran and have studied Zen and read most of the Mahayana Sutras. I've read parts of the Gita and several of the Upanishads.

And I'm still an atheist.

After all, Skip, I never claimed to need a religion myself. But if religions were free of super magic daddy myths and other fairy tales I might take one up. I just haven't seen one I liked. People want some comfort when they lose a loved one, or are about to die, or are choosing a life-parter/mate or losing what they thought was one, or are making the transition from child to adult. These are important events in one's life, and most people need some counseling to deal with them.

It's the fundies that create most of the problems. And that's as true in Islam as in Christianity. And even in the fight between the Zen buddhists and the Ninja tradition, and the Shintoist samurai. (I joke about ninjas, but never forget they were a legitimate violent political movement, just like al Qaeda or Christian Dominionists or Jewish Zionist terrorists. And the Shintoists responded with dudes with swords.)

[Schneibster]

genetics are frowned upon by the followers of almost all religions and ideologies

Dream on. Most scientists are Christians.

They're not fundies like you.

You're lying again.

. . .you only go to heaven if you are a Christian. Everybody else goes to hell.

Sounds like you have a very small sampling of what Christianity is all about. "Anecdotal" would be an extremely generous way to characterize it.

Noted you didn't deny it. You just tried to sweep it under the carpet. That's a pretty big lump you got there under that carpet.

They believe that they and only they have the solution to all of mankinds problems. . .Not those devout Christians that I knew. Maybe some more modern ones think so. Anyway, it does not contradict what I said.

Em. . .yep It does.

You left something important out. This doesn't make any sense.

I was not saying that all religions were doing the same thing. I gave examples for what happened in various religions or what had been tought by their leaders. Crusades, holy wars, jihad, world revolution, all the same. Sure Christianity is a lot more moderate these days. I just want to point out the Husite wars, the Hugenotte wars, the reformation wars, the crusades, etc, etc.

Okay, so you want to point out examples you agree are not good examples of modern religion? You can do that. Do you want theists to point out examples of comic book atheism to discredit it?

You know nothing of atheism or atheists.

The problem is most atheists don't want to fight religious wars and religionists like you do.

Mao Zedong in China, Stalin in Russia, and Hitler

Hitler was not an atheist. You're lying again.

Where did I talk about sacrificing someone or something? You do understand the meaning of personal sacrifice, do you?

Em, yeah, I really do.

Christianity still assumes that "god made all people equal". This is simply not true.

You're confusing 18th century political philosophy with Christianity. Certainly it's true, Christianity teaches a brotherhood of all mankind, but there is nothing in your bible that teaches the modern notion of equality. That is a construct of modern Christianity for sure, but it is not a doctrine of Christianity. If it were, Christ would have been made into a politician, and we would have seen the end of slavery much sooner than we did. As it is, Christ had bigger plans than social justice. He decided instead, to save the world.

You should read Mere Christianity, Skippy. You'd like it.

And it would even be relevant if anyone actually followed it.

They never do though.

[Schneibster]

Look, here's the deal: we teach religion in churches and reality in schools. It says so in the Constitution. Stop trying to deny my Constitution,violators. You can try to force whatever dumbass crap you like into their minds all day Sunday. The rest of the week belongs to reality. And I have no intention of paying for your religious indoctrination of your helpless children. Get over it.

To answer the question of the thread title: the government sets curriculum, and the government has the responsibility to ensure that citizens' money is not wasted teaching religion. We even give religions cred for teaching it; they get tax advantages. Tithing is supposed to pay for teaching religion. Trying to get the government to do it is greedy, and last I checked greed is a mortal sin. Pay for it yourself if you want it done, cheapskates.

Not to mention, I think religions should be audited to ensure they're providing actual religious education, and performing real works of charity. If they're not they should be required to pay taxes like everyone else.

[Schneibster]

And BTW, why would anyone who knows their butt from a hole in the ground expect stone age sheep herders to understand the structure and the origin of the universe, or the origin of species? It's ridiculous on its very face.

There's no miracle; none of the Babble, Koran, Gita, or any of the others have a realistic explanation of the origin of anything at all. It's a bunch of fairy tales. When we're mature enough to discard these childish remnants of our cultural adolescence, and make real religions that don't deny science, we'll be worthy of the respect of others. And there will be others. Count on it.

And the humans who know reality will mourn you and leave you to die.

[Schneibster]

We know where the universe came from; we know how the universe came to be from a nothing far more profound than mere "empty space" in our universe. That's not really nothing; our universe cannot contain really nothing. We know how the universe can come to be from really nothing. Nothing nothing. A nothing human minds cannot comprehend, we can only describe it mathematically as "nothing." It has no space or time, as well as no matter or energy. Space and time get created in bubbles in it of various durations; the least stable last nanoseconds, the most stable trillions of years. We're in the froth left over after it Big Banged on either side of us 13.6 billion years ago.

There are approximately 10^300 possible universes in terms of their laws of physics, or, if you prefer, their Calabi-Yau manifold coefficients. It appears that universes in a given area are pretty close in laws; close enough that we can see them. Furthermore, at distances of trillions of light years from us, there may still be universes being born, just like ours were. There are many possible patterns of universe creation of this type, and most of them favor our type of universe being one of those created; given this, we will necessarily exist. And there you are: no magic sky daddies. It's inevitable that we should exist, and therefore it's inevitable that there should be universes like the ones we're on the froth of to create us.

We have models that reproduce the structure of the universe we see around us, including the structure of our Virgo supercluster of galaxies and the gigantic voids around us that gave birth to the matter/energy that we are formed of. We have models that show the galaxies growing, developing, and interacting, and we have an understanding of how the stellar nursery that our solar system was born in developed within our galaxy; we know of several such in our galaxy, and even more in both M31 in Andromeda and M33 in Triangulum, our two nearest similar neighbor galaxies. I have personally looked through my telescope and seen the "Orion Nebula of M33," a star-forming structure just like the Sword Nebula in Orion, M42. We understand how the clouds of gas and dust coalesced into our solar nebula, how our sun became a T-Tauri star, how the planets formed, and how the Sun evolved into an H-R Main Sequence G-class yellow dwarf. We understand how Jupiter protected us eventually from the worst, most destructive asteroid strikes, accounting for the uninterrupted progress of life on our planet.

We know where life came from. We can see how complex energetic molecules were created by myriad comet impacts; we can see how such molecules evolved to consume one another for energy; we can see how they evolved to be self-replicating; and we can see how they developed complex RNA molecules, and then dueling compositions of RNA and DNA. Some of the remnants of the losers remain alive today in esoteric environments.

We know how the first simple multicellular organisms evolved, and we know the challenges they faced and how they adapted to them. It's obvious from the geneological record. We know they evolved from individual auto-catalytic networks to have cell walls, and then the cells evolved to form mats, sponges, and eventually organisms that could swim and crawl. And on the other side, plants evolved to spread across the surface of the sea to absorb the most sunlight; and invaded the land to absorb sunlight there too.

Then we see the animal land invaders feed on the cornucopia the plants have been harvesting for a few tens of million of years, and they grow into Synapsids, which eventually evolve into the first Mammalia; meanwhile the Archosaurs grew into the largest dinosaurs, both the herbivorous and carnivorous kinds; these reached their peak after two more mass extinctions. When a third came along it basically exterminated them, but left the Synapsids behind, or more precisely their descendents the Theropodae, from whom the mammals (and eventually we) evolved.

Moving forward, we see the first ape-like ancestors of the current Hominidae appearing in the late Miocene, inventing fire in the Pliocene, then evolving into large animal hunters in the Pleistocene when the glaciers came down. Finally the current interglacial comes, and the beginning of the Holocene, and from there we have dominated the world: the last 11,000 years.

This is all well-known science. None of it is under any particular question, certainly not by even a plurality of scientists.

Magic religious books deny it all. When will we grow up? We don't need religions to explain any of this stuff any more, we have science.

But we still need them. For other things. Emotional things. Cultural things.

Seriously, not one thing I've said here is even scientifically controversial. It's all well-known stuff.

Dudes, how can you argue about events six hundred million years ago when you don't admit there's anything older than 6,000 years old? Not to mention, how about things that are 2.3 million light years away, like the Andromeda Galaxy, the farthest thing humans can see with their naked eyes? I don't even need a telescope. Are you trying to tell me God faked it by making the light in transit?

God faked it? Are you kidding or are you insane?

[Schneibster]

Seriously, what's to deny?

I don't see anything but reality left. And it just happened; it was the most probable thing to happen.

Why do we need imaginary magic sky daddies?