AJP, as I have tried to explain, science derives from religion. Any science-based argument against religion is essentially a sectarian dispute and therefore fundamentally uninteresting.

The argument against scientism is that it is derived from the belief of some who don't know any better that science "has all the answers" and it doesn't, nor can it.

JKJ, no, it's not deifying the state, simply recognising the pragmatics of the situation. A scientist may wish to perform all sorts of experiments but laws constrain her ambitions within some bounds (defined as ethics) acceptable to the group (nation), which is exactly the function of religious authority (defined as morality in that case). A proper discussion of ethics/morality would be interesting, but not on this thread.

Pythagorus is an interesting case. He was a member of a mystical sect interested in the underlying patterns of reality and it is arguable that he was not a mathematician as such at all. Euclid was more interested in establishing immutable precepts for his musings on pure mathematics. In some ways he set the study of science back for a long time. There's an interesting discussion from Feynmann on youtube about "Babylonian vs Greek mathematics" which is worth watching.

Pericles, I'm sorry, I wasn't asking anybody to do anything other than to consider the implications of what may have been unintentionally loose language. If I grasp your point, you think that a religious person has an obligation to convince you (or perhaps some ineffably Solomonic Judge who shares your view) of the validity of his belief in order for that belief to be a reasonable one to hold.

At the risk of offending, that's poppycock that has some rather unpleasant ethical implications.

That's ok Craig Minns.

>>If I grasp your point, you think that a religious person has an obligation to convince you (or perhaps some ineffably Solomonic Judge who shares your view) of the validity of his belief in order for that belief to be a reasonable one to hold. At the risk of offending, that's poppycock that has some rather unpleasant ethical implications.<<

Since you did in fact fail to grasp the point I was making, then there is no possibility that you would offend.

It has never occurred to me - not once - that a religious person has an obligation to convince me of the validity of their belief.

I have on occasions wondered, however, why some of them seem to spend so much of their valuable time attempting to do so.

Present company excluded, naturally.

Dear George,

I was representing vectors as numbers. Of course there are quaternions, octonions etc. There are rules for operating with vectors, but I did not want to go into them.

We do not believe or not accept the beliefs in a religion by reason. We can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a deity. Morality in the Abrahamic religions is filtered through the religion, but it is a convenient fiction to say it is the word of God. In general I don’t think Christians or Jews currently accept slavery as moral although I think some Muslims do. At one time adherents of the Abrahamic religions accepted slavery as moral. Southern Baptists in the United States broke off the other Baptists in the nineteenth century because SB accepted slavery.

Morality even in the Abrahamic faiths in general conforms to the usages of the society in which they find themselves. Most living in a democratic society accept the values of the society. The recent killings by some Muslims in France, Australia and other places are due to the Muslims not accepting the values of the society in which they are living. However, they are still acting morally. In Saudi Arabia it is legal to execute people for the offenses of blasphemy and apostasy. In that they are acting contrary to the words of the prophet who supposedly said that one should not exercise compulsion in religion. The problem is that the word of God as found in scripture or in interpretation of scripture is not coherent internally and can conflict with the laws of the polity.

The Bible accepts slavery and enjoins killing of witches. In Africa Christians are still killing witches although it is not considered the thing to do in the Americas and Europe by Christians or Jews.

Your belief in God and my atheism are not products of reason and cannot be defended by reason. However, the fact is humans have believed in many gods. I believe in one less than you believe in

Dear George,

My last sentence in my previous post should be: I believe in one fewer God than you do.

Dear Craig Minns,

You have stated that science derives from religion. When did this happen? I don’t think it did.

About 22 centuries ago Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the earth to better than 99% accuracy. He did this by finding the difference in time from noon at 2 points on the earth. This was a scientific experiment. Do you know of any connection that it had with religion?

I think it more reasonable to state that science and religion derive from the same impulse – the desire to explain what we find around us. However, science relies on observation and experiment. Religion relies on unprovable assertions.

You have stated, “AJP, as I have tried to explain, science derives from religion.”

You have not tried to explain. You have made an assertion and given no evidence for its validity.

Craig Minns,

It sounds like you’re changing tack. You’ve been saying (and I agreed) that science and religion are derived from the same humanistic needs, but I don’t think you’ve said this yet…

<<…as I have tried to explain, science derives from religion.>>

Are you appealing to the “orderly creator” nonsense that we hear from Christian apologists over and over again regarding the founding of modern science?

Either way, this sounds like a non sequitur to me. If science were derived from religion (granting for a moment that it was), how does it then follow that there is something objective about religion that can be "hijacked"; how does does it justify your implication that religion is no more to blame for those who use it to justify evil actions than science is when people hijack science for similar purposes?

<<Any science-based argument against religion is essentially a sectarian dispute and therefore fundamentally uninteresting.>>

Whether or not a question is uninteresting is subjective. Personally, I find it fascinating.

<<The argument against scientism is that it is derived from the belief of some who don't know any better that science "has all the answers" and it doesn't, nor can it.>>

Well scientism didn’t factor into either of the points I was making. It didn’t need to. But since you mention it, I will point out that it is just a caricature invented by those who feel threatened by the idea that science may one day explain an aspect of reality that needs to remain mysterious in order to justify a belief that is important to them. Usually a belief in the total free will of humans and a fear of determinism, or a religious belief.

That aside, I don’t think we can say this for sure. We have no way of knowing that. This argument is based on the assumption (and for many, the hope) that science will never, and could never, explain everything. It relies on the Argument from Ignorance fallacy in that it is fundamentally based on the fact that we cannot yet explain consciousness.

David f, you're quite right, I should have said that science and religion derive from a common human impulse which was my intent: mea culpa.

It is only very recently that science and religion have diverged sufficiently to be identified as separate pursuits (post-European enlightenment) and therefore, my original comment is not entirely invalid. I think you are completely wrong to say that religion has no basis in observation. To the contrary, it is all about observations of the world and an attempt to explain how humans fit into that observed reality. In that it is no different to science, albeit less reductionist and with greater emphasis on qualia than phenomena, perhaps.

As QM is further developed it is becoming increasingly obvious that the classically deterministic view of reality (that I suggest underlies a great deal of the support for scientism) is simply a crude approximation to reality; a step along the path to a proper understanding just as religion is.

I have previously provided my reasoning as to the common nature of religious and scientific epistemology, so I don't think your last sentence is reasonable.

Pericles, if I have misunderstood you, perhaps you might elucidate?