3·
2 days agoTo put it bluntly, Science wouldn’t give any shits about religion if religion would stay in their lane.
While there’s plenty of atheists who have taken up the charge of destroying religion as much as they possibly can, with limited success, Science has, to my knowledge, never tried to influence religious teachings. Religion, conversely, has tried to stop, slow or otherwise discredit, scientific research, and understanding.
It seems to me that if religion would stay in its lane, this problem wouldn’t exist.
I understand your argument, and I recognize that you’re discussing the current state of affairs on the current political and social landscape.
My statements, as a whole, are not specific to the current state of affairs. Religion and belief tried to deny that the earth revolves around the sun, as an example. Of course, there’s hundreds of examples of this kind of interference. Darwin’s evolution theory is another prime example. I won’t go on or this will turn into an anti-religion rant.
The problems I’m pointing at are much broader in scope and longer in the timeline / deeper in history than what you seem to be discussing.
I’m only generalizing about “religion” rather than a specific group or religion, because it’s happened so often and come from so many different sources that it’s hard to not generalize as “religion” vs naming all the various belief systems that have hindered scientific progress and understanding.
Certainly religion, as a concept as a much more broad and lingering effect on our society, from state religions (mostly eliminated in developed nations), like the church of England, and other, similar religious organizations, where you were obligated to believe in that religion if you lived in that nation or state, to policy set by proxy, by religious groups or extremist believers. Things that oppose bodily autonomy, and equality… Among others. While these are relevant to our society, both historically, and presently, they are not necessarily blocking, refuting, denying, or otherwise trying to remove scientific knowledge and understanding. It’s a sad state of affairs that we allow such things to have a significant impact on our society, but these things are not significantly impacting our ability to make scientific discovery and progress.
Speaking strictly of direct interference from religious organizations and belief, both now and especially historically, and the damage it has caused to scientific progress and discovery, is difficult to quantify. Needless to say, it has been a significant detriment to scientific progress.
I cannot think of any examples of Science, or any scientist, trying to influence what religion teaches, or what the followers of that religion believe. Science is happy to let entire swaths of people deny what they say and believe whatever the hell they want. Science and scientists will proceed with the information they have; nobody cares what you think your sky daddy has to say about it.
There will always be people using Science to denounce bad teachings from the church, but this is limited in scope, and generally on an individual basis; typically atheists who are anti-religion will use scientific truths to dissuade beliefs in general, not any specific teaching. Any/all scientific organizations have no comment on the matter.