I think that the scientific method is exactly a matter of telling us how to think just as much as any religious belief. It seems to me that there are degrees of everything, and true religious scholars tend to take religion much more in the way that a scientist treats science. They question, and they consider, and they seek. The only real fundamental difference is in their faith which does not ask for proof. People who take religion to be whatever they're told it is, are no more crazy or dangerous than people who do the same with science. How many crack science articles have you seen come out in popular culture which then get used to push an agenda, or cited in defense of whatever idea someone wants to follow. I think science gets it's edge over religion from it's willingness to be proven wrong, when it is in fact wrong, and the solidity it's of it's tenants gained from that kind of scrutiny.
Love this reply, avice. I actually find open-minded religious people to be especially annoying, because they disrupt my schema so profoundly. I have to create an exception clause. I have not needed to create many exceptions...
I think the world-view breaking explanation and difference between science and religion is that science is a process that never draws conclusions. Religion has beliefs and science has provisional conclusions of a high degree of certainty. A person with a Scientific/Humanist worldview (and this can include religious people, annoyingly...) might say, "The sun will come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there'll be sun," but what they mean is, "Given all that we know about physics and astronomy and including our own verified personal experience, we can safely conclude that the probability of the sun appearing to rise over the horizon tomorrow is so great that to entertain a different hypothesis is an absurd waste of time." That's as close as I come to "believing" things. It's not a certainty like
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I think the world-view breaking explanation and difference between science and religion is that science is a process that never draws conclusions. Religion has beliefs and science has provisional conclusions of a high degree of certainty. A person with a Scientific/Humanist worldview (and this can include religious people, annoyingly...) might say, "The sun will come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there'll be sun," but what they mean is, "Given all that we know about physics and astronomy and including our own verified personal experience, we can safely conclude that the probability of the sun appearing to rise over the horizon tomorrow is so great that to entertain a different hypothesis is an absurd waste of time." That's as close as I come to "believing" things. It's not a certainty like ( ... )
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Religion tells you what to think.
Science tells you how to think.
would be somewhat more accurate. And scientists have been just as guilty of narrow-minded sheeplike behavior as any religious follower.
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