Science cannot prove religion wrong. What it can do is prove specific stories impossible, which it has. What Science does is provide testable evidence and theories. Occam’s Razor states that making further assumptions (such as a metaphysical realm or god) is not preferable, and the theory with the least assumptions is most likely correct. There is room for there to be a god. I’m an atheist, and I’m certainly not fond of religion, but there is nothing that expressly prohibits the existence of a god (though you can certainly make compelling cases that some gods, such as the popular vision of the modern Christian god, are logically impossible with or without science), it simply writes them off as unnecessary. It’s not a surprise that most well educated physical scientists who are Christian are usually, at best, deists.
Whether religion is harmful or not is tangential to whether or not science necessarily prohibits it, that’s a moral/ethical claim rather than a factual one.
ETA: An example is the idea that the success of prayer is directly related to the likelihood of the event occurring in the first place. None of those studies PROHIBIT there being a divine arbiter doling out prayer answers that happen to mesh exactly with the natural state of affairs, so somebody can fairly believe in intercessory prayer even knowing that fact.
Yeah, it’s actually what I’d call the most common representation of atheists in Hollywood. While not necessarily outright stated, atheists in Hollywood are usually like “how could God let my dear old mum die?” And never offer up any logical claims.
It’s also, in my experience, the default analysis (alongside the No True Scotsman fallacy) that die-hard Christians afford on people who leave their church to become apostates.
Yeah, but the majority of religious people synchronize to a major degree with science. There are your vocal fringes, but most normal religious people say “okay, Creationism doesn’t really work scientifically, whatever, I move my position to a less interventionist God.”
Of course, this does tend to leave Christianity as a husk with very little that actually matters worth a damn, but like I said, most scientifically minded Christians (and, in my experience, most regular Christians in general) tend to be closer to deists (though not necessarily 100% deists) for a reason.
(And this applies to most other religions too, but it would take a while to enumerate it).
ETA: This doesn’t excuse the “Swiss-cheese bible” in my eyes, where they pick and choose what they want to follow, but I don’t think science and logic, per se, invalidate most modern modifications of Christianity at an existential (as opposed to moral) level.
I think we’re essentially debating the cultural version of Aristotle’s boat problem. I think that given that religion is a cultural construct, there’s a difference between rejecting your whole theology, starting a cult about aliens, and calling it “Christianity” and over decades or centuries, the religious bodies and its followers gradually changing their mind and deciding that Christianity is about aliens.
Meaning that, being “Christian” is a cultural thing, it’s possible to be Christian without reading or knowing a thing directly about the Bible. Yes, ultimately it’s an incredibly different religion than its roots, but the culture defines its tenants, not the book, despite what they may claim. Religion has always faced the choice of revising or dying.
Yes, I suppose it would be best if people just stopped pretending to be truly Christian and renamed their religion something else when it reaches a certain level of disparity with the source material, but since that’s not going to happen I don’t see any harm in going with the same nominative inertia that’s been going on since religions came into being.
Nah it is not, it is about saying my new Ferrari [this years model] is a bit better given what we have learnt along the way but still maintains the essence of what a Ferrari is,
Nah, it’s closer to the question of, if Ferrari slowly changes its lineup over time until it almost indistinguishably resembles Volkswagen’s, are the new cars still Ferrari (not that any car analogy is going to ultimately succeed here)?
Do you believe Jesus Christ was a magical super-being that was brought back to life three days after being killed?
If not, why call yourself Christian? What separates your beliefs from Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and any number of other religions? Why not just call yourself deist?
The magical super being as you put it shows an complete misunderstanding of what the story is about and a lack of understanding of what modern Christianity is about.
As a modern enlightened cultural christian I do not buy into the whole magic side of it, but I am still a christian. I could call myself something else but christian is my cultural history and as such I like it and will stick with it.
Only because people insist on using a special standard for religion that they don’t use elsewhere. For anything else (or for less popular religions), people would just say that science had disproved it and that would be that.
It’s about what it has always been about; maximizing the number of people who say “I am Christian”. Everything else is just various tactics for achieving that one goal.
> I have read often that Stephen Hawking stayed in the closet for so long
> because his wife would have been devastated.
I don’t want to argue any of the other claims in this thread. I just want to question this one. Hawking and his first wife were separated in 1990. (I assume you mean his first wife, since there’s no evidence that his second wife had any religious differences with him at all.) This doesn’t match anything that I’ve read about his first marriage. What I’ve read was that they always knew that they differed in religious beliefs. They always tolerated each other’s beliefs. I don’t see any evidence that Hawking ever held back about talking about his beliefs. His first wife left him because she got tired of taking care of him, because she didn’t like his arrogant attitude toward her and everyone else around him, and because she had fallen in love with someone else. Or that’s what I’ve read anyway. Does anyone have any more precise information that they can add to this?
I’ve heard the same; that he pretended respect towards religion partly because of his first wife, and partly because of fear of what other believers might do.
Can you give me something more specific than “I’ve heard . . .” Where did you read this? Can you give me a link? I’m interested both in the claim that he hid his atheism and the claim that his first wife would have been devastated by it, because neither one matches what I’ve read.
You do understand why a real scientist wouldn’t bother attempting to answer such nonsense as the ‘universe is love’?
Actually, I take that back. A sarcastic scientist might respond by saying that it isn’t his job to prove or disprove all the notions that people pull from their asses.