# Make Science a Religion **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 23, 2009, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857 "2009-10-23T14:16:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/21 "2009-10-23T15:53:10Z")
The universe itself is God (a la Spinoza), and our job is to figure it out. Math is the main, mystical, ritualistic tool we use to do this. This is akin to praying, ordering concepts logically in the mind and helping people focus on the simple, relevant abstractions instead of the complicated whole. “Science” itself would be similar to scripture, using evidence (the ‘text’ of the universe) and math (ritual and prayer) to study and develop our our understanding of the universe (God) and our relationship to it. The main difference between this and regular religion is that it starts from a position of ignorance and actually advances towards the goal of less ignorance, instead of beginning with certainty and refusing to change. Anyway, when I compare and contrast religion with my own world view, this is what usually come up with. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/22 "2009-10-23T15:54:04Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Isn’t that a bit self-contradictory, though? If I know that I know nothing, I don’t know nothing; but then, I can’t know that I know nothing, since it’s not true that I know nothing. Hey! Take it up with [Socrates!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing) 😉 ---
**Author:** ![kevlaw](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kevlaw/32/2281_2.png) [@kevlaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kevlaw)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/23 "2009-10-23T16:12:45Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Evidence-based morality? 😕 Sure. One day we’ll get there. We should, in principle, be able to figure out whether adultery and/or sex before marriage damage society. Whether murder and homosexuality belong in the same category. Whether brief glimpses of nudity and/or depictions of brutal violence harms children. I think it’s a fine aspiration to think that our morality will one day align with what is actually good for society and for the individuals in it. ---
**Author:** ![bzzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/958977/32.png) [@bzzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bzzz)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/24 "2009-10-23T16:15:00Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > Can we create a “surrogate religion” based on the tenants of science itself? [I don’t know if thats such a good idea.](http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:southparkstudios.com:230805) :eek: ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/25 "2009-10-23T16:19:23Z")
> [@bzzz](#): > > [I don’t know if thats such a good idea.](http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:southparkstudios.com:230805) :eek: :eek: Oh. My. Science. _thatwasawesome!_ ---
**Author:** ![bzzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/958977/32.png) [@bzzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bzzz)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/26 "2009-10-23T16:21:14Z")
and it was all Richard Dwkins fault! ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/27 "2009-10-23T16:22:29Z")
> [@kevlaw](#): > > Sure. One day we’ll get there. > > We should, in principle, be able to figure out whether adultery and/or sex before marriage damage society. Whether murder and homosexuality belong in the same category. Whether brief glimpses of nudity and/or depictions of brutal violence harms children. > > I think it’s a fine aspiration to think that our morality will one day align with what is actually good for society and for the individuals in it. I’m not sure that pure utilitarianism is the best form of morality, however. A morality based on the Golden Mean has no particular evidence to support it - other than that it seems intuitively correct. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/28 "2009-10-23T16:24:49Z")
How do you know religion will evolve? If anything, as nations become wealthier and obtain higher levels of knowledge they seem to become more secular, agnostic and outright atheist. Young people in the US are more secular than older people as an example. As far as science as a religion, you can make secular humanism and scientism as philosophies. However they do not involve worship per se. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/29 "2009-10-23T16:39:37Z")
Right, we don’t know that religion would necessarily evolve given a sufficiently large group of people who have never been exposed to the idea before. For myself, I don’t believe that humans are hardwired to believe in a deity or some other sort of mysticism. I think that’s what we used to use to fill in the gaps in our knowledge before science started to pull back the sackcloth on our ignorance about the universe. Religion is archaic and obsolete. Unnecessary now. What we have left are these millennia old residual dogmas that will probably never wash out entirely. Besides, take a cross section of humanity. You’re always going to end up with a handful that believes there are spirits beyond an invisible dimension, or leprechauns, or whatever. If religion wasn’t as institutionalized and accepted as matter-of-fact as it is, imagine these “normal” people who believe in angels and demons and the second coming in a completely secular world where religion is considered bunk and a sham; where their beliefs are considered delusions by he medical community. How would society deal with these people. Such people as my parents, some good friends (and most of the GOP 😉 ) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/30 "2009-10-23T16:43:48Z")
> [@](#): > > This, of course, is immensely understood. The premise of this thread falls under the idea that, if we could start a human society anew, under the assumption that it’s in human nature to develop religion, regardless of any effort to eradicate it initially, that one will eventually evolve over time and generations, can we try and preempt it by designing a “religion” based on something that is the closest thing humanity has ever had at “truth”. It’s like trying to mathematically prove Shakespeare - it just can’t be done. Mathematics doesn’t apply to _Hamlet_ as it’s written and if you rewrite the play as a mathematical expression it’s no longer _Hamlet_. Same thing with science. If you tried to turn scientific facts into religious dogma then it’s no longer science. Look at Newton’s First Law: In the absence of force, a body either is at rest or moves in a straight line with constant speed. Now if you believe that’s correct because you’ve measured the mass and motion of various objects, then that’s science. But if you believe it’s correct as an article of faith that some higher being made it that way, then it’s religion. Without the proof of evidence, then you could just as easily believe that objects in motion will slow down and stop of its own accord. Followers of Newtonism will believe that objects continue to move while followers of Aristotlism will believe they stop. And neither faith will have a better case to offer than the other. If you take all the facts that have been discovered by science and then recast them as religious dogma, then you ended all the science and just have a set of beliefs. The key of science isn’t what you know - it’s why you know it. ---
**Author:** ![kevlaw](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kevlaw/32/2281_2.png) [@kevlaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kevlaw)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/31 "2009-10-23T16:48:47Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > I’m not sure that pure utilitarianism is the best form of morality, however. > > A morality based on the Golden Mean has no particular evidence to support it - other than that it seems intuitively correct. When I examine my own beliefs, I find that they are mostly, but not entirely, utilitarian. The exceptions are interesting. I think it is wrong to kill, for example, independent of the utility of that rule. For that example - no killing - we could recast the rule in utilitarian terms. I bet that’s true for the Golden Mean too. I wonder what the exceptions would be? Which rules could not be recast in utilitarian terms? I’ll start a new thread if this is too much of a hijack. ---
**Author:** ![bzzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/958977/32.png) [@bzzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bzzz)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/32 "2009-10-23T16:49:50Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > I’ve always seen religion as “crowd control”. Come up with an all powerful God, create the concept of sin or some sort of afterlife punishment, and create a book of circular logic to provide the dogma. That ought’a keep people in line. I also believe that religion came out of a need to understand the universe. The same principles that is the basis of science. Somewhere along its evolution it may have been hijacked for crowd control and became staic. But I do believe science and religion have a common ancestor. If we were to start again perhaps science will become a common ancestor for other oposing views. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/33 "2009-10-23T16:56:20Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > It’s like trying to mathematically prove Shakespeare - it just can’t be done. Mathematics doesn’t apply to _Hamlet_ as it’s written and if you rewrite the play as a mathematical expression it’s no longer _Hamlet_. > … But we can! First, get an infinite amount of monkeys on typewriters, and an infinite amount of time… ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/34 "2009-10-23T17:49:24Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > A stab at some “Commandments”, feel free to edit. > 6) Accept Evidence That Only Aligns with Known Facts. This one scares me. a lot of things we know are wrong today were “Known Facts” at one time. slight hijack: [This book](http://www.amazon.com/Blasphemy-Douglas-Preston/dp/0765349663/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256319879&sr=8-1) is an OK read and kind of on topic. It’s fiction (obviously) and not exceptionally well written but it might be worth a look. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/35 "2009-10-23T17:55:22Z")
Instead of constructing a new religion I think it would make more sense to promote the liberal idea of mutual tolerance and respect as well as a separation of religion and state. Then anyone could adopt whatever religion suits them (or doesn’t) without tearing each other apart. If you had to invent a religion, the best would probably be something based on Buddhism stressing meditation, self-control and good works. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/36 "2009-10-23T20:31:33Z")
I would build the structure of the “religion” around the idealized vision of human perfection in ideals. To this end, I would ‘diefy’ idealized versions of certain historical figures. Not to say I would claim the George Washington was an actual diety; he would explicitly be a human and quite specifically not supernatural or super-powerful. I _would_, however, allow him to be worshipped, and for his ideals and principles to be portrayed with otherworldly perfection, even if I have to exaggerate lie to get him perfect. (You know, like we already do.) This would have nothing to do with science itself, and I wouldn’t ‘deify’ scientists, though I would allow skepticism and accepting evidence to be Virtues. In my opinion science can take care of itself, if not directly attacked, and building faith around it would damage it. Better to build faith around human capabilities; they don’t suffer from unjustified belief. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/37 "2009-10-23T20:33:32Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > You only need one: > > “I might be wrong.” Brilliant. ---
**Author:** ![kevlaw](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kevlaw/32/2281_2.png) [@kevlaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kevlaw)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/38 "2009-10-23T20:52:36Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > I would build the structure of the “religion” around the idealized vision of human perfection in ideals. I expect that was the plan first time around too. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/39 "2009-10-23T20:59:10Z")
> [@kevlaw](#): > > I expect that was the plan first time around too. I doubt it. I think that religions tend to start with the anthropomorphization of an otherwise incomprehensible nature. After all, if the gods really were idealized humans, why do they all start off being presented as jerks and a-holes? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2009, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857/40 "2009-10-23T23:11:34Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > I doubt it. I think that religions tend to start with the anthropomorphization of an otherwise incomprehensible nature. After all, if the gods really were idealized humans, why do they all start off being presented as jerks and a-holes? They represented unfettered primal natures. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-science-a-religion/514857.md?page=3)