[The E]

Religious fundamentalism may be incompatible with rationality, but not all of religion is. People can accept verified, testable facts about the universe and still look to religion for the philosophical questions that observation can't answer. The problem arises when people start looking to religion for answers to things that can be verified, like evolution.

Very much this.

[Luis Dias]

So religion is philosophy?

[The E]

Umm, yes? Parts of it, anyway?

[Flipside]

Thing is, it's been under a decade that being pro-science seems to imply that you are 'anti-religion', mostly with the advent of people like Richard Dawkins. There's been more and more of a push lately to 'take sides' in the matter, it's almost as though people want a return to more fundamental positions.

[Shivan Hunter]

So religion is philosophy?

The way I see it, religion is a possible source of answers to things we can't verify. Morality, for instance, for those who can't be bothered to figure it out for themselves. Religion used to be very much a part of explaining the world- gods caused weather patterns, seasons, crops to grow etc. Now that we have the scientific method, a way of observing reality and holding our beliefs up to experiment, we don't need many of these explanations.

The problem comes out of people desperately clinging onto these explanations when verifiable answers exist. No one today would accept that the Earth is the center of the universe- well, OK, there may be a few nutjobs who think that- but quite a few people still believe evolution doesn't occur, when adaptation and speciation have been confirmed to exist.

[Flipside]

Oddly enough, the arguing isn't so much about if God made the Universe, the jury is still very much out on that one, the argument is over how and when God made the Universe. We are smart enough to look at Evidence and make a pretty educated guess at the when, though the how is a little more cloudy, and this is all being held back not by faith, but by arrogance in a lot of cases, the assumption that God is like a kind of Kids' Party magician, bringning the Universe into existence with an Abracadabra and a snap of fingers.

The real irony at the core of this is that a lot of the trouble is based on the fact that one Christian Scientist completely misunderstood the word 'begat' many years ago and assumed it meant 'was the parent of', rather than 'is the lineage of', and came up with this 6000 year figure in the Bible. It never at any point in the Bible actually says this was 6000 years ago.

[Luis Dias]

The bible is known for these little translation problems.

The "virgin" issue is another can of worms.

[AtomicClucker]

The real irony at the core of this is that a lot of the trouble is based on the fact that one Christian Scientist completely misunderstood the word 'begat' many years ago and assumed it meant 'was the parent of', rather than 'is the lineage of', and came up with this 6000 year figure in the Bible. It never at any point in the Bible actually says this was 6000 years ago.

Yep, one of the fun tidbits of history. Then you've got the problem of literalists v.s. intepretists and the wheel keeps on turning.

The problem with a number of these science v.s. religion issues is they're left best to philosophy - as the latter fields can't devolve into "meta" like the philosophers.

[Luis Dias]

Metaphysics is bull**** too. Just saying.

[AtomicClucker]

Metaphysics is bull**** too. Just saying.

Depends on the level of woo and meta, sometimes it's hard to tell the line between the two. However, the quest for "truth" often jumps to the meta level, and for the rest of us, we just get a beer and chill.

[Luis Dias]

I'm quite minimalistic at meta discussions. Anything that goes beyond verifiable propositions I label them as "fiction". Some fictions are good, some are useful too. But they are still nothing more than tales we tell each other.

Of course, the most interesting tales are the ones craving for verification.

[Mars]

The "Religion and Science answer different questions" argument doesn't hold water either though. It means instead of actually finding the various conditions in which people are healthy, happy, and content; we too often look for a metaphysical answer.

'Moderate' Christians largely believe in, or at least don't speak out against circumcision, or US support of Isreal, 'moderate' Musilims believe in FGM.Moderate religious people in general lend believability to the major religions. And every religion (aka, unprovable metaphysical answers for every day phenomenon) is absurd at its core.

[Scotty]

As a 'moderate' religious person, this thread fills me with all sorts of warm fuzzies.  HLP is truly an excellent and wonderful place.

[Nuclear1]

The problem with religion is people don't know how to separate the myths and legends from the moral teachings and guidelines.  This is especially true in the Abrahamic faiths, and specifically Christianity.  Here-in lies the problem:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness...
2 Timothy 3:16

Lots of Christians take this passage to mean that God dictated to the writers, and that every last word in the Bible is meant to be taken literally, as if God had written it.  They leave no room for argument that the writers were simply human beings that were religiously-inspired to write these books, which would leave the Bible open to interpretation.

Thus, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, we have a large number of people convinced that the world is no older than six thousand years, that Homo sapiens sapiens just popped up one day, that in the space of a month Egypt was afflicted with several-years worth of catastrophes, and that a human being rose from the dead.  They get so hung up on taking every word literally that even when scientific findings can be reconciled with a less strict interpretation, they refuse to accept.  Science provides evolution as the answer to how, and allows religion to be the answer to why.

[Mars]

As a 'moderate' religious person, this thread fills me with all sorts of warm fuzzies.  HLP is truly an excellent and wonderful place.

As a moderate, what significance does your scripture hold for you? (serious question, and not meant as "it doesn't.")

[Scotty]

Why should I qualify my belief when you didn't qualify your statement above?

[Mars]

The "Religion and Science answer different questions" argument doesn't hold water either though. It means instead of actually finding the various conditions in which people are healthy, happy, and content; we too often look for a metaphysical answer.

This I defend. There is no question I know of posed that that is answered by religion that science is incapable of answering. EDIT: It may not have reached a point of answering them yet, and some things, for now, are best answered with "I don't know"

'Moderate' Christians largely believe in, or at least don't speak out against circumcision, or US support of Isreal, 'moderate' Musilims believe in FGM.Moderate religious people in general lend believability to the major religions.

You're right, this is unfounded. All I have is a bias and weak correlation argument within the US, which could well be due to other factors.

And every religion (aka, unprovable metaphysical answers for every day phenomenon) is absurd at its core.

I stand by this, Bertrand Russell's teapot demonstrates this excellently.
EDIT:

Why should I qualify my belief when you didn't qualify your statement above?

And if the debate offends you, it's best to make an argument or counter assertion directly, rather than bemoaning: Hard Light being a 'wonderful' place." To do so makes your argument appear weaker.

[Unknown Target]

So religion is philosophy?

Is science a philosophy?

[General Battuta]

I feel like saying that moderate Muslims support female circumcision is a bit of a stretch.

[AtomicClucker]

The problem with science/religion debates is it descends to attacking personal beliefs, which gets really personal and people get offended when core ideas/identity get attacked.

My opinion firmly remains that really both groups are foolishly fighting over the totem poll of "truth maker," the problem is how the hell you define or make truth? Then it goes into the philosophical problems, and you get nowhere because you run into paradoxes. Then reality doesn't make sense anymore and everyone starts hitting their heads against walls.