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Hi Richard,
Let me clarify what I meant by "basing on known science" as a negative aspect of religion. If someone wants to smooth over their religion with respect to science, there is absolutely nothing negative in doing so. That is what religion has always been doing, in fact if religion didn't try to conform to known facts, we would still only have animistic religions of the Cro-Magnon.
What I meant by that comment is that religion isn't just trying to conform to science, but in addition, religion tries to act as if it thought of it first, or act as if it is a science or so closely aligned to science that we shouldn't mind the difference. For example, it is one thing to say that the Christian religion conforms to our modern cosmology, it is entirely a different thing to say that Christianity invented the big bang concept in Genesis.
You see this a lot by Christian fundamentalists. They will make a remark that some scripture in Isaiah says the earth was known to be an orb, or something of the sort. I know some fundamentalists (Christian and others) get so caught up in this concept that they try to prove the truth of their beliefs by showing that if you read their scriptures in the 'correct' light you will see how the 'true' understanding shows them in conformance to science.
The other version of this religious misuse of science is what I saw implied in Glenn's post. It seemed to be saying, "look here is a scientific religion that you people who are sensible can become involved, don't pay attention to those other theist religions that contradict science". I see this as negative and a misuse of science since science doesn't say anything profound about whether there is a God or not. And, to charade as a scientific-like religion is full of fallacies as I tried to communicate to Glenn. Sorry for the misleading statement, but I was short on time.
Harv |
