Continued

I am also horrified and fascinated by science and its applications.

I was part of a team that designed the LARC (Livermore Atomic Research Computer) and went to California to supervise its installation. While there I felt more and more guilty about my part in it. The Quakers picketing exacerbated my guilt when I talked to them. Although only part of LARC's usage was to study the making of nuclear weapons and their effects I felt uneasy about taking any part in it at all. Having been a soldier in WW2 and having worked in rocket and computer design it was easiest for me to find work in the development of weapons. I refused any more to work in any area connected with any war effort. My life changed greatly including a marital breakup.

Much of science and technology has been furthered by its military applications. The resources devoted to trips to the moon would not have been there had it not been for the competition with the Soviets. Yet I am fascinated by space travel.

Although religion is not the only cause for war the idea that “We have the final truth” seems to make them worse. Religions have also worked for peace. John Ferguson wrote "War and Peace in the World's Religions". He found tendencies toward both in all the religions he examined.

To justify our destruction of the other we think of them as evil. If we are religious monotheists we can reflect that all things come from God.

The Bible contains: Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

If we are not religious we can reflect that we would probably be like our enemy had we been subjected to the same circumstances.

I have rejected any form of belief in any supernatural entities but will continue to read about the history and politics of those influenced by those ideas.

At 89 I can’t do too much more damage.

Craig Minns,

I think your use of the word “hijacked” here incorrectly implies that there is a right way and a wrong way to practice religion.

<<Yes, religion can lead to profoundly flawed social outcomes. Yes, it can be hijacked by horrid people to justify abhorrent actions. Yes, it can be stultifying.>>

Sure, the nutcase who goes on a shooting spree and claims to have done it in the name of Jainism has clearly hijacked Jainism, but the holy books of the Abrahamic religions - the ones we generally hear of being supposedly hijacked - are contradictory enough, and close enough to a choose-your-own-adventure book, to justify just about any interpretation.

That aside, though, this comparison I think is too flawed to have any invalidity…

<<The same may be said of the natural sciences.>>

Not quite. No-one kills in the name of science, and science doesn’t have a set of tenets that can drive people to do crazy things. Science is completely neutral and makes no claims about the nature of reality or what should or shouldn’t be done. There is nothing about science that convinces someone who doesn’t have all the answers to think that they do.

This is part of what I was getting at in that other thread, and your claim here only helps to confirm to me that we weren’t talking at cross purposes.

Most of the parallels you draw between science and religion are not valid. The only similarity between the two is the fact that they both attempt to describe the world we live in, and that the pursuit of them is, in part, driven by a need for answers. But that’s where it ends.

I used the word "hijacked" because it fits. Those who seek to distort ethical/moral ideas (religious, philosophical, whatever) to justify actions that are immoral/unethical are hijackers.

"No-one kills in the name of science"

Mengele is the classic example of one who did. In fact, that statement is disproven by any number of experimental regimes over the years, which have lead to the formation of ethics committees and legislative regimes designed to try to minimise the negative outcomes. Even today, the ideal model of Popperian philosophical purity is given the lie by the fact that some 80% of published papers contain serious errors of either evidence, statistical inference or conclusion.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/
http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1439

I could go on and on.

Personally, at the risk of being accused of betraying confidentiality, I have been told by the Managing Editor of The Conversation (a publication which does not use peer review, but services the academic community) the following:

"Happy to read it but I should be clear that the rule about being an academic [with a teaching position at an academmic institution] is hard and fast. We’re trying to be more strict about who qualifies to write, not less so, in part because of some of the types of issues you’ve identified (people writing outside their area of expertise and using us as a soapbox).

So even if the piece is brilliant sadly we’ll have to reject it."

It is obvious that Misha was being sincere and that he has the best of intentions, but the fact that a publication which purports to be about "Academic rigour" can say "even if the piece is brilliant sadly we’ll have to reject it." speaks volumes. It's the sort of thing one might expect to get from The Watchtower or The Catholic Leader, not a publication funded by Australia's universities.

"The only similarity between the two is the fact that they both attempt to describe the world we live in, and that the pursuit of them is, in part, driven by a need for answers."

Which is precisely what I have been arguing.

Craig Minns,

I think you might have missed my point.

<<I used the word "hijacked" because it fits. Those who seek to distort ethical/moral ideas (religious, philosophical, whatever) to justify actions that are immoral/unethical are hijackers.>>

The reason “hijacked” doesn’t fit is because there are no ultimate standards of religious ethics or religious morality. Religion isn’t intrinsically moral in and of itself, and nor is there any objective way to determine that the evil religion is not a real religion and the good religion is. Certainly there is enough wriggle room in the ambiguity of the holy books of the Abrahamic religions to justify near anything with a bit of cherry-picking.

<<Mengele is the classic example of one who did [kill in the name of religion].>>

Okay, so you’ve found an example, but what about the rest of what I said - which was the fundamental point I was making; that being that there is nothing within science to support what such a person would do?

Similarly, communists might have killed in the name of atheism (as theists will often claim they did) but that doesn’t mean much given that there is nothing within atheism to support what the communists did. There is, on the other hand, aspects inherent to religion that are attributable to the harm that can come from it. Again, it can convince someone who doesn’t have all the answers to think that they do.

<<Which is precisely what I have been arguing.>>

I know. What I’m concerned with, however, is when you take the comparison beyond that. That’s where your comparisons are no longer valid.

An interesting summary, George.

I read with interest your view that

>>[Christianity] is neither just a philosophical orientation that can inspire arts, science and morality (as well as act against them), nor a fairy tale (mythology) to be taken verbatim by the philosophically unsophisticated, nor a “mystical experience” comparable to the more developed Oriental versions, nor a pain killer (“opium for the masses”). Christianity is all of these things taken TOGETHER, and more.<<

I was so intrigued, given that last bit, I thought I'd take out the "neither just" parts, and turn them into positives. This what I discovered:

"[Christianity] is a philosophical orientation that can inspire arts, science and morality (as well as act against them), a fairy tale (mythology) to be taken verbatim by the philosophically unsophisticated, a 'mystical experience' comparable to the more developed Oriental versions, and a pain killer ('opium for the masses'). Christianity is all of these things, and more."

Oddly, I agree with practically all of that. Especially the fairy tale bit.

But which of these, in your view, is a justification for Christianity's existence in the twentyfirst century?

AJP, science simply doesn't address issues of morality/ethics. The quintessential scientific model thinker is Robert Hooke. As well as formulating Hooke's Law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooke%27s_law

he was held in some awe by his contemporaries within the early Royal Society for his ability to suppress his human responses to the pain of other creatures. For example, his surgical experiments on live dogs, where he excised different organs to see what would happen were regarded as exemplary. So great was his fame in this regard that Samuel Pepys, in a paroxysm of agony with kidney stones that would have soon killed him, allowed Hooke to operate (ex anaethesia) to remove them, trusting in his steadiness of hand and lack of empathy to do the job despite the agony and likely prognosis of his patient. Pepys survived.

Pericles, let's turn your question around: what is a justification for Christianity's non-existence in the 21st century? Let's examine a corollary to that: if it is justified that Christianity should not exist, what should be done to bring about that outcome? What grounds are there for such action?