Category: Religious Knowledge Systems

QAnon: The alternative religion that’s coming to your church

October 5, 2020

For years in the 1980s and ’90s, U.S. evangelicals, above nearly any other group, warned what will happen when people abandon absolute truth (which they located in the Bible), saying the idea of relative truth would lead to people believing whatever confirms their own inward hunches. But suspicion of big government, questioning of scientific consensus (on evolution, for example) and a rejection of the morals of Hollywood and liberal elites took hold among millennial Christians, many of whom feel politically alienated and beat up by mainstream media. They are natural targets for QAnon…

QAnon: The alternative religion that’s coming to your church

What Science Can Learn From Religion

March 31, 2019

Hostility toward spiritual traditions may be hampering empirical inquiry.

Just as ancient doesn’t always mean wise, it doesn’t always mean foolish. The only way to determine which is the case is to put an idea — a hypothesis — to an empirical test. In my own work, I have repeatedly done so. I have found that religious ideas about human behavior and how to influence it, though never worthy of blind embrace, are sometimes vindicated by scientific examination.

What Religion Gives Us (That Science Can’t)

June 4, 2018

My claim is that religion can provide direct access to this emotional life in ways that science does not. Yes, science can give us emotional feelings of wonder at the majesty of nature, but there are many forms of human suffering that are beyond the reach of any scientific alleviation. Different emotional stresses require different kinds of rescue. Unlike previous secular tributes to religion that praise its ethical and civilizing function, I think we need religion because it is a road-tested form of emotional management.

Did Math Kill God?

April 28, 2018

05d0cd6814ba197dbfb361be9eebc86e831b78c4

The Galileo Affair becomes part of a metanarrative, or, in Jean-Francois Lyotard’s term, a Grand Narrative. It says that early seventeenth-century Europe hung at a crux, with religion pulling it backward into medieval ignorance and science straining to push time forward into modernity…

Scholars began thinking “with empty and abstract information symbols,” which catalyzed a revolution from “thing-mathematics” to “relation-mathematics.” Because this form of knowledge went beyond ordinary language, which previously was the primary means of conveying information, people slowly began to conceive of a world contingent on “natural” laws rather than the word of God.

https://newrepublic.com/article/148150/math-kill-god

Reza Aslan: Why I am a Muslim

March 19, 2017
“Faith is mysterious and ineffable. It is an emotional, not necessarily a rational, experience. Religion is a fairly recent human invention. But faith, as I have elsewhere argued, is embedded in our very evolution as human beings.
“And yet, in the end, faith is nothing more or less than a choice. You either believe there is something beyond the physical world (as I do), or you don’t. You either believe you are more than the sum of your material parts (as I do), or you don’t. You either believe in the existence of a soul (as I do), or you don’t.
“No one can prove or disprove these things, not any more than anyone can prove or disprove love or fear or any other human emotion.
“Religion, on the other hand, is the language we use to express faith. It is a language made up of symbols and metaphors that allows people to express to each other (and to themselves) what is, almost by definition, inexpressible.
“After all, if there is a God, then that God is utterly beyond human comprehension.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/26/opinions/believer-personal-faith-essay-reza-aslan/

Whatever the soul is, its existence can’t be proved or disproved by natural science

August 11, 2016

“When his results were first published, critics argued that the weight loss could be explained by physiologic factors, such as evaporation. Moreover, his report failed to mention several patients in whom he found no weight loss. Finally, subsequent attempts to reproduce his results failed to find any weight loss. Indeed, MacDougall’s vision may have been clouded by confirmation bias, the tendency for investigators to see what they expect.”

https://theconversation.com/whatever-the-soul-is-its-existence-cant-be-proved-or-disproved-by-natural-science-61244?mc_cid=6e8e6bd94e&mc_eid=34e2887073

Iceland Is Officially Worshiping Norse Gods Again

February 21, 2016

Hilmarsson said: “I don’t believe anyone believes in a one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet. We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology.” Membership in Asatruarfelagid has tripled in Iceland to 2,400 members, out of a total population of 330,000.

http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/iceland-to-officially-worship-norse-gods-again?mc_cid=84d899c964&mc_eid=34e2887073

Belief in all-knowing, punitive gods aided the growth of human societies, study says

February 11, 2016

“Belief in moral-watching, all-knowing, punitive gods might have helped human societies grow far beyond small, close-knit groups, a new study shows. Researchers who ran an experiment with a total of 591 people in eight different small-scale societies around the world found that people who believed their deity of choice knew about their misdeeds and would punish them were more likely to play fairly in a game where money was on the line.”

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-gods-punishment-society-spread-20160210-story.html

 

Can you be a scientist and have religious faith?

January 5, 2016

“I’ve been a scientist for as long as I can remember. Children are born scientists; they experiment with everything, are naturally inquisitive and through this exploration they learn about how the world works. And I’ve never grown out of it. Of course, for many people, their modes of thought change as they find or are brought up with faith. Some manage, somehow, to hold religious beliefs alongside a dedication to the rationality of science.”

https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/4889/can-you-be-a-scientist-and-have-religious-faith?mc_cid=f607b9a6a4&mc_eid=34e2887073