This is incorrect. Most Western religions (Christianity is a good example) do not contain philosophy. There is a reason why we separate religion and philosophy. To be considered Philosophy it must use rational proofs. To be considered science it must use empirical proofs. Religion uses faith based proofs. The religions that do have philosophy are interesting because they have ideas that require faith but other ideas requiring logic and they usually just deal with metaphysics and epistemology.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 26 2009, 9:31 pm by CecilSunkure. Reason: Removed post responded to.

Yes, you have good examples. Show them why they are, before you present it. Or its gibberish, otherwise just stop posting.

You said EVERY religion is bound to philosophy. I only need 1 religion to disprove that. Christianity lacks anything relating to philosophy. If you disagree maybe you should say something that is philosophical that comes from Christianity.

Shifting the burden of proof upon others isn't exactly going to be tolerated. If you make a claim outside the realm of common knowledge, it is up to you to provide the necessary citation or explanation to back your claim.

So, you need to fix your post so that you aren't breaking rule two or three in the SD rules topic.

Watermelons are blue on the inside, before you cut into them. Prove me wrong, if you think that I am. -That isn't a valid argument.

http://www.staredit.net/topic/6552/

This is not necessarily true. Rationalism is certainly a popular branch of philosophy in general, but there are other movements as well, like the empiricists and the existentialists, who are all part of the group we call "philosophy."

If we take the entry on dictionary.com for "philosophy" we obtain:
The first one certainly includes the word "rational" but the meaning of the word is not so simple or limited. We can see from definitions 3 and 5 that philosophy and religion are closely tied.
This is why I mentioned earlier in the topic that Kame should have specified whether she meant a specific religion, like Christianity, or religion in general, which can encompass individual "philosophies" as taken to be "a system of rinciples for guidance in practical affairs" or "something one believes in and follows devotedly"

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 29 2009, 5:23 am by Vrael. Reason: typo

And Taoisms and Confucianism are religions. It you are required to have any type of faith, in anything, you are a member of a religion. God or not.

Confucianism never tells its followers to have faith in anything but perhaps the government. If Confucianism is a religion, than Legalism and Manifest Destiny are also religions.

Confucianism only gives a way to live your life. There is no faith involved.

My counter argument:



Also if you look, the more secularist countries out there are the ones making all the technological and scientific advancements. Also there's somewhat of a correlation between the US slowly declining in education standards and becoming less of a secularist country. However that's only a correlation, doesn't really prove anything, that's not to say that religion automatically makes a country more stupid, but arguably there's something wrong when the pressing issue in America for some is to push "intelligent design" education into schools and attempt to remove evolution, which pretty much is teaching kids nowadays that it's okay to accept and deny any part of the scientific process you don't personally agree with without going through the scientific process of giving evidence to disprove theories. This, is pretty much alone will be the fall of America alone as a world leader in scientific advancement as other countries step up to take their place with better education systems that don't teach kids that.

However, I don't think that everybody should be forced to give up faith. If it helps you as a person, do as you wish. Just keep it out of government, education, other important matters, and don't bother everyone else with your faith trying to convert them under the threat of hell (for the more extremist) which is something America seems to be forgetting and that I personally think already is having a negative impact on the country.

Not sure why I decided to participate in a SD thread. It's really been a while.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 30 2009, 5:12 am by Yoshi.

Its an interesting argument, Yoshi, but I want to know your opinion about the Islamic Renaissance, which would have happened over the same period of time. Is it fair to base the degredation on the idea of religion, or on the religion itself?

It is clear religion has hindered science in the past, probably more so than helped.

It is clear religion has a lot of extremists now-a-days and is generally still causing fights.

It isn't clear if the next chapter of our planet includes religion or not, but with the advancements we are making due to free speach, I envision an age of Atheism.

So to answer this topic: who cares?

I can't possibly say religion is all negatives. There is good elements, such as yes, the Islamic renaissance, emotional assistance when times are rough, and making some not so good people into good people.

However, while there are some recorded benefits such as the Islamic renaissance, there's the flip side of all the wars, bad country relations, people killing each other, prioritizing "appeasing their god" over scientific advancement, and so on. Which pretty much has been happening all throughout the ages, which alone I think stifled potential scientific advancement and such, more than what the Islamic renaissance offered.

As already said, the Northern Renaissance was brought about by Christianity, when the Reformation started to 'take down' the Roman Catholic stranglehold on Europe. So only some religions hinder scientific advancement. Others, such as Christianity, promote it.

I'm surprised that no one has brought about the idea that it isn't religion that bars scientific progress, but the people who are religious. In a sense, its not the principles of religion that bars people from doing things, but those who use religion as an excuse to keep power that barred men like Galileo from publishing their discoveries. In any group there are always those jerks who give it a bad name, and in something as widespread as Christianity, the problem is magnified by the population. The point is, I think an argument could be made that religion has little to do with barring science, rather it's bound to happen anyway because of assholes in society.

But Vrael, the kind of guys like them always exist in many societies in many forms of belief. I think most people know it as corruption.

That's exactly what I mean. It may have simply been that religion was the tool they used to impede science, and not that religion was the cause. It sort of parallels the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" idea. You don't send the gun to jail after a murder, you send the human who fired it to jail. This may (or may not) have been the case in history.

Without religion you can't have people who are religious, nevermind people with authority due to religion, so I fail to see what your point is. If we had a "without guns" thread is your argument "there's still crossbows" ? If so, I think that parallels it pretty well, you might still have options to be corrupt, but it's a lot harder. Historically, you can get away with astoundingly ridiculous claims and actions by simply calling yourself divinely inspired, that would have never have otherwise stood for a second in a traditional legislature. Ancient Egypt, medieval Europe, modern Middle East, etc. You also will have an incredibly hard time convincing a more informed public that you're right to lock up this guy without reasoning. I think a secular public would have established habeus corpus long before we did.

I never understand why people always assume that "bad people" just are. I question whether anyone in the world has ever gone into something thinking "I want to be as evil as possible." There's almost always a motive and it's usually ignorance, especially when you look at religious scenarios.

Essentially, yes. The idea is that while religion may have been a useful cover-up mechanism, it was not the root of the problem. Same goes for any position of unchecked power; if some scientific progress would have shown that some King of England should not have been king (say, DNA testing showed he was a bastard child or something) then he would have used his power to restrict science as well. Of course, it's undeniable that religion has conflicted with science, and still does to a lesser degree I think, but the point is that the conflict may not have arose necessarily because religion and science are somehow fated to be locked in struggle with one another, but because there were people who were struggling with one another, and religion and science happened to be the medium of attack.

In a different context, like the modern evolution vs. creationsm or intelligent design problem, it's much more apparent that it is the principles of religion and the findings of science which are in conflict, and not a behind-the-scenes power struggle or anything.

Look at it this way:

People + Power(as in an aristocracy or monarchy) + Religion = Power taken advantage of (possibly leading to detriment to society, or science)

Religion sort of augments any power a person has; it can be used to control people. If we had taken religion out of the picture, but left people in power, they would have found some other tool to use to their advantage. If not religion, something else could have been strung up in its place.

However, if we removed all power, then nobody would have the ability to take advantage over anyone else -despite religion still being present.

If you remove people from the equation, then power and religion become meaningless, as in they wouldn't even really exist without people.

As you should be able to see, removing religion doesn't inherently solve the problems that people are blaming religion for. Religion itself can take no action, although, it can be used by people to fulfill actions.

Unfortunately, this picture is invalid because it does not include a scale for "Scientific Advancement" or states what constitutes "Scientific Advancement."

As much as historical fact agrees with the graph, the cause of the lack of scientific advancement during the Christian Dark Ages is most likely due to the fall of the Roman Empire. Then, the speeding up of progress in the Renaissance and later is likely due to the exponential population growth in the second half of the second millennium. In addition, China made most of the world's technological advancements up until the Muslim Caliphates (which were empires inspired by religion), who then were succeeded by the Europeans.

I agree with "if they didn't use religion as a tool, they would have used something else."