Who Really Works Hardest to Banish Ignorance? (Science is almost totally incompatible with religion) [View all]

[cleanhippie]

Science is almost totally incompatible with religion. I say "almost," but I do not wish that weasel word to be construed as weakness. The only point of compatibility is that there are well-meaning, honest people on both sides who are genuinely and deeply concerned with discovering the truth about this wonderful world. That having been said, there is no actual compatibility between science and religion.

Science's dispassionate stare examines issues publicly, exchanges information openly, discusses awkward points objectively, and builds up a network of interdependent ideas and theories that progressively expose the complex as an outcome of the simple. Religion's inwardly directed sentimental glow reflects on issues privately, exchanges information by assurance and assertion, discusses awkward points by warfare, terror, and coercion, and builds up a network of conflicting ideas that conceal ignorance under a cloak of high-flown yet empty prose.

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation. Science, with its publicly accessible corpus of information and its open, scrutable arguments, can lead the wondering to an understanding of the entire physical world. (Below, of course, I shall have to argue that that is the entire world.)

Science respects the power of the human intellect; religion belittles it. Science gives us the prospect of full understanding, for it continues to show that, given time, there is no aspect of the world that is closed to its scrutiny and explanation. Religion disarmingly avers that human brains are too puny to achieve full comprehension. Yet science is progressively advancing toward complete knowledge, leaving religions bobbing about in its wake.


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Here, though, we must be very careful to distinguish between questions that have been invented and questions that at least seem to be real. Only the latter are likely to lead to true understanding of the world; the former merely expose the psychological condition of individuals and societies who invent them. I am afraid that, in my view, most of the questions that so exercise the religious are of the former, empty kind. Thus, whereas it may seem to be a perfectly legitimate question to ask, What is the purpose of this universe?, in fact that question is a transposition from everyday life. There is no need for this universe to have a purpose: it could be a wholly purposeless accidental entity.


http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=atkins_18_2

Entire article at link.