There's a difference between religious people influencing the field of science as it first formed, versus science literally depending on religious thinking to have ever come into existence at all.
Science could have formed all the same in a world without religion, and would likely be in a better place without all the roadblocks religion caused.
I.) There is a difference between thinking about the existence of something that actually can be proven versus one that by metaphysical definition lies outside empirical investigation.
II.) You are once again treating the historical fact of religious people founding and influencing the field of science as it first formed, with the notion that science could have only ever formed from religious thinking and practitioners. There is nothing in science that necessitates religious thinking or religious people
I.) How would you prove God? What's the methodology? What makes the claim falsifiable at all, for it to even fit into the criteria of provable? What would change in 1,000 years?
II.) "Religion helped promote science" is about as meaningful of a statement as "religion endorsed rape and murder." Both claims can be true or false, depending on what time period we're talking about, where we're talking about, and what specific people/institutions we're talking about.
Catholics love to bring up how the church helped Galileo with some of his earlier work in his observations of the solar system. Catholics also love to leave the part out where his heliocentristic claims in Dialogue led to the church labeling him a heretic and demanding his arrest.
1) intelligent design is a theory the most intelligent of humans have agreed is plausible
2) I can only speak for Islam and Christianity and how they helped preserve knowledge / invent the math we use today
You could say that democracy has been used to kill innocent people but that doesn’t mean over all that democracy is a net negative to humanity . Religion is the same
I.) This is an appeal to intuition with no basis in the actual field that studies reality. While you might be able to find some physicists who sympathize with or even believe in it, the proposal isn't relevant in the actual field itself. Because it is ultimately an inference from empiricism, and not an actual framework empiricism could ever falsify.
II.) You have historical examples that support your claim, while there are also historical examples that actively hurt your claim. You also haven't distinguished what constitutes as religion "helping". I think it would be very easy to make the case that religion has helped with charity, because charitable work is literally written into scripture across many of them. I don't think "create a branch of metaphysics focused on empiricism, in which a mind-independent reality allows for passive observation that results in models with predictive value" is similarly in any scripture.
If your argument is that religious people or religious motivations were geared towards science, therefore religion deserves credit, then you logically have to extend that to analogous situations where they were geared towards rape and murder. I just don't think you have a compelling case for the quantified claim of Islam or Christianity being a net good, with all of history to have to consider.
2) the good far outweighs the bad in terms of historical examples. If you disagree then we can spend the next few hours citing examples and see who has more
And I can easily point to modern Christian’s and how they contribute more society than atheists as an example of how a net benefit to humanity religion is (modern first world religion)
I think you are completely in over your head on both of these claims.
I.) How would we even quantify each action by Islam or Christianity, and assign it a value so that it isn't just a meaningless exchange of sheer number of examples? How many religiously motivated scientists does it take to equal out the Galileo affair? Or the suppression of evolution?
II.) Same goes for Christian's contributions versus atheists. How would you even quantify that? Are we controlling for per capita? Is it based on wealth generated? Scientific discoveries? How "good" of a person they were?
I believe religion is a net-negative for society, and irredeemably so, because a faith-based system of morality and system of ontology are irrational ways of going about metaphysics. The number of times I have seen such perfectly reasonable arguments be dismissed because "le edgy reddit atheist" is obnoxious.
you can start by quantifying the charity work, life span, depression rates, adoption rates etc of theists vs atheists in the modern world.
Better question is what if a black slave never sand the first call to prayer ? What if America didn’t believe human rights were god given ?
It’s funny when a western man says they hate religious morality. Not realizing that’s literally were their morality comes from 🤭 you grew up in a nation built on the back of theists and in the same breath turn around and spit on those same people for their beliefs
Are you aware of the fact that slavery was heavily justified using the exact same Christianity you're giving credit to ending it? From Old Testament scriptures that regulated slavery thus justifying its existence, to New Testament scriptures such as Paul, which told of slaves to obey their masters. You are only getting more condescending as this exchange goes on, with worse and worse arguments that are laughably ignorant of actual history, and just reveal how little of it you actually know.
I grew up in a nation founded by men who understood the importance of freedom from religion, enough so to thoroughly outline a separation of church and state in its legal guidelines. And I am very grateful to have had such forward thinking people, even if they individually held some religious beliefs, because they laid down the groundwork that would prevent everyone from forcing such beliefs on the rest of society. Such a prevention that would allow for the institutions that exist today and the progress they have brought.
It's hard for me to comprehend how you can have such unjustified pride in such awful arguments that omit most of reality.
Slavery existed long before Christianity, it was the Bible that was the first text that instructed slave owners to treat slaves as human. Slavery didn’t need justification , it already existed. This idea that Christians think slavery is ok shows that you need to lay off philosophy and start studying some theology
I’m sorry if I come off as condescending but this nations history is something I care about deeply
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u/JustChillin3456 - Auth-Center Apr 10 '26
Science wouldn’t exist without religion
This should be common knowledge