Now you’ve got me confused, Craig Minns.

<<… science simply doesn't address issues of morality/ethics.>>

I know, and that actually goes to what I was saying.

The fact that science doesn’t address issues of morality and ethics, while religion does, only strengthens my point. It’s partly the reason why there’s "nothing within science to support what such a person would do," and why science is not able to "convince someone who doesn’t have all the answers to think that they do."

You've actually helped support my argument that it's not true that “[t]he same may be said of the natural sciences.”

The fact that science doesn’t address issues of morality and ethics when religion does, does not therefore mean that the two cannot be compared on that level at all. It doesn't mean that any differences or similarities there cannot be counted towards how similar or different they are overall. On the contrary, they help define why the two are either similar or different.

Zero is still a number.

AJ,cience and religion derive from the same epistemological (search for causation) roots, it is the ontology (means of approaching the problem) which is different. In both cases, if there is a lack of ethical/moral grounding the pragmatic effect may be somewhat dysfunctional from an external POV.

The moral grounding in the Abrahamic religions is provided by an externalised omnipresent power called God embodied in a religiopolitical hierarchy, while in the modern scientific endeavour it is provided by an externalised omnipresent power called Law embodied in a sociopolitical hierarchy.

Completely equivalent.

Craig

What do you think of thinkers such as Pythagoras or Euclid?

Do you call that science, and if so, why; and if not, why not?

These things have been called proto-physics, because although most people say they are not 'science' per se, yet if we take out of science, the possibility of measurement, then what would be left of Hooke's and Newton's contributions?

I would be interested in your comments on this.

"The moral grounding in the Abrahamic religions is provided by an externalised omnipresent power called God embodied in a religiopolitical hierarchy, while in the modern scientific endeavour it is provided by an externalised omnipresent power called Law embodied in a sociopolitical hierarchy."

And what if someone doesn't agree with the latter clause? What is the moral status of that moral grounding?

Craig Minns,

I think I'm going to have to drag you back a bit because - as had happened in our other discussion - you seem to be drifting a bit from your claims that I was initially responding to.

I’m happy to run with all you said in your last post, for now, because I don’t think it detracts from my two points.

The first one being that it is wrong to say that some “hijack” religion (unless you want to specify a particular religion, and even then…). Religion is purely subjective and personal, and there is no wrong way to go about it so long as you maintain a supernatural component to it. One’s conclusions are just as likely to be right or wrong regardless of what religious beliefs one holds, for so long as they are guided by those religious beliefs.

The second point being that it is at the very least misleading to say or imply that science is just as prone to “lead[ing] to profoundly flawed social outcomes” and “be[ing] hijacked by horrid people to justify abhorrent actions” and “stultifying” as religion is, when only religion has (or seems to consistently develop) tenets that enable one to think that they have all the answers when they don’t. Probably because religions always comprise this idea that they are ultimately concerned with a higher level or plane that transcends the observable world.

"... while in the modern scientific endeavour it [moral grounding] is provided by an externalised omnipresent power called Law embodied in a sociopolitical hierarchy."

Isn't that just deifying the State?

If the law allowed, for example, cruel vivisections, according to your theory, that would provide moral grounding for cruel vivisections. Yes? No? There is in other words, no substantive content to moral grounding, it depends entirely on what the State has arbitrarily legislated?

Pericles,

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

What is the justification for, e.g. my existence in the 21st century? Or did you mean to say, as Craig Minns hinted, that I should rather not exist (be killed) if no such justification can be found ? You see, I did not understand your question.

However, I understand your preference for one feature of Christianity, or religion in general, just one (of the six) “blind men’s views of the elephant”.

Craig Minns,

>>Science and religion derive from the same epistemological (search for causation) roots, it is the ontology (means of approaching the problem) which is different.<<

I think ontologically scientism - as one possible interpretation of science (not science itself since it is not directly concerned with the nature of reality, only the various philosophical interpretations of scientific findings are) - and most religious, certainly Christian, world views differ in what they assume about ultimate reality.

So one can indeed say that the ontologies of science and (most) religions are different in the sense that the latter are mostly concerned with an extension of reality the former is concerned with.

On the other hand, epistemologically, how to acquire knowledge about this reality, though still different, their methods can be compared because the human seeker of this knowledge is the same in both cases, as already in 1974 Ian Barbour observed (c.f. his Myths, Models and Paradigms: The Nature of Scientific and Religious Language) by pointing to some parallels in forming our respective representations of reality.