7 Ways Religion is Detrimental to Science
June 28th, 2008 | by blank89 |In the past, science has been limited to the boundaries religion places on it. As long as science did not conflict with the ideas of the regional religion, then all was good. However, science is going to conflict with religion. Scientific facts will grow further and further away from religion. Religion isn’t going out without a fight though. Here are 7 ways religions are trying to fight back against science.
1. Faith and the Scientific Method are Opposites
Close, but not quite.
2. People Vote Based on Religious Ideas
Stem Cells weren’t the first time a body of research didn’t get proper funding because some religious wack-jobs. If a group of fundamentalists uses their religion as a basis for morality, they may lose sight of the big picture. This creates a gray area in opinion for moderates as they struggle to find their place somewhere between the fundamentalist and the scientist.
This manifests itself on election day when moderates either stay home or give in to larger social pressures to vote for representatives of a religion rather than someone who is willing to make decisions based on evidence even if it goes against their faith. This has a very real impact in funding that certain research is subject to if it crosses a line determined by faith. This effects everybody who could benefit from the research. When the research is of a medical nature, policy based on religion literally kills.
3. Religion Removes the Need For Science
When people are content to believe in something that explains why they are here, even if it is wrong, they may become less interested in other ideas. Religion often leads people to believe that they have all the answers. Science is self-correcting in that nobody assumes they are absolutely correct. It is naive to think that such a simple idea could explain all the complexity around us.
4. People Lean on Religion, When They Could Benefit From Science
How many times have you seen a news story where a child dies of a curable disease while his/her parents pray? Obviously this is an extreme case, but the idea is the same for everyone in a religious group. The difference between an extremist and a moderate is that a moderate will eventually resort to common sense, while the extremist will try to justify their actions.
5. The Church Takes Up Natural Resources
The land that churches take up around the world could be used to build schools, homes, recreational buildings and commercial operations. Religion is terrible for the economy because it takes up precious resources for an often worthless cause.
The religious centers require electricity to heat and cool. They use water, sewage resources, building materials and repair materials. Is the small comfort that religion gives us worth it’s human cost? Religion is not practical on a benefit to cost scale.
6. The Church Takes Up Monetary Resources
If people donated to scientific advancement like they did to the church, imagine where we would be today. The economy can only support so much, and science should have the priority because it is helpful to mankind on a fundamental level. Religion may comfort the sick and dying, but science can prevent them from getting sick. Eventually science may be able to stop them from dying in the first place.
7. Religion is A Strong Meme
A meme (term first coined by Richard Dawkins) is any idea that is replicated. Memes can evolve in much the same way that genes do. If we look at both religion and science as memes, religion has had a much longer time to evolve than the modern scientific method. This does not mean that either is more correct than the other, it just means that religion is a much harder idea to destroy because it has “adapted” to thrive in it’s human container.
To continue the analogy between organisms and memes, I think that the science and religion memes are competing. They are both trying to fill the same niche in their environment: the need to explain the unknown (includes the how and why). This may be a rather bountiful niche, but that doesn’t mean that there is room for the both of them. The problem with this argument is that to you have to admit that neither science or religion have a very good understanding of the world.
6 Responses to “7 Ways Religion is Detrimental to Science”
By rly on Jun 28, 2008 | Reply
Religion in its many manifestations are all placebo. While, in general, I agree with all of your points, placebo is still better than nothing. Which means it isn’t *all* bad, or at best case mostly bad.
though, I still believe in the freedom of religion.
By jgoerzen2 on Jun 29, 2008 | Reply
This is a very interesting article. I think it is a valid criticism of a certain school of thought. However, I think you are painting with a brush way too wide; that school of thought is neither mainstream nor historically supported.
I have posted a response, focusing on how religion and science are compatible (and how faith doesn’t mean belief in a set of unsupportable statements) here: http://changelog.complete.org/posts/725-A-response-to-7-Ways-Religion-is-Detrimental-to-Science.html
I hope you find it interesting. In a nutshell, I think that a lot of your comments (such as thinking one is completely right) apply to people of a certain stripe, whether religious or not. The religious ones just get noticed because they do weird things like build creationism museums.
To put it another way, as a Christian, I would find the religious people that think like you think they do to be really weird!
By blank89 on Jun 29, 2008 | Reply
I’m sure that some people benefit from religion. I don’t think that religion is bad on average for the individuals participating. The problem I have with religion is it’s impact on society as a whole.
By dysfunctor on Jun 29, 2008 | Reply
Hmm… interesting. I presume this is a follow up to your “how to defend evolution” post so, if you don’t mind, I’ll comment on both of them here.
Your “defending evolution” article might be better titled, “how I would tell a Creationist that I’m right and he’s wrong.” I totally understand why you want to do that, but you’re not going to win any arguments that way.
If you just want to piss a Creationist off, then you’re going the right way about it.
If you want to *engage* with a Creationist, you need to start listening to and respecting him. Then he might be willing to tell you *why* he chooses to believe these things — why these beliefs matter so much. His reasons might not seem important to you, but but they’re important to him, and if you respect him then you’ll respect what’s important to them. *Now* you can start a dialogue.
Now for your 7 reasons:
1. Faith and the Scientific Method are Opposites
Quite right. The fire and brimstone preacher who screams, “Re-JECT the lie-e-es of Evolution. Bel-IEVE in ($DEITY|me) and you *shall* be healed!” is the very antithesis of reason.
Let me tell you about the people whose faith *has* impressed me. If you ask them about their faith they won’t spout doctrine at you and then demand that you fall on your knees and give your heart to $DEITY. Instead, they say, “Faith isn’t what you believe. Faith is something that is *lived*. To tell you about my faith, I’ll have to tell you my life-story. It’s not easy — my heart is still full of doubts, and there are a million questions that I couldn’t begin to answer for you — but I know that it’s been worth it.”
This kind of faith is informed and tested by life, and by the wisdom and experience (often found in scripture) of others. Informed? Tested? Doesn’t that sound just a little bit like the scientific method?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not claiming that this kind of faith is “objective” or “scientific”. (If it was, it wouldn’t be a faith any more.) But it’s not as far from the scientific mindset as you seem to think.
2. People Vote Based on Religious Ideas
You seem to assume that research ethics should be based on secular rather than religious principles, because secular ethics are less restrictive and interfering.
Now … tell me this … why do we need research ethics at all? Ethics only get in the way of scientific progress, don’t they?
3. Religion Removes the Need For Science
As Kurt Vonnegut put it (quoting from memory, so apologies for any errors):
Tiger gotta hunt
Bird gotta fly
Man gotta sit and think, why, why, why?
Tiger gotta sleep
Bird gotta land
Man gotta tell himself, he understands.
I would argue that it’s inhumility — the inability to say, “I don’t know.” — that removes the “need” for science. I don’t have much time for that kind of arrogance; religious or otherwise.
4. People Lean on Religion, When They Could Benefit From Science
Your example of the parents praying rather than getting medical help is a good one, but I’m more concerned about the enormous “alternative medicine” movement. Is alternative medicine a religion? Or is it just quackery? Or perhaps, in your mind, they’re the same thing?
5. The Church Takes Up Natural Resources
6. The Church Takes Up Monetary Resources
Yes, it does. So do many things. Are you also going to argue that, for instance, music harms science?
I also think it unfair of you to begrudge the resources consumed by religion without mentioning all the philanthropic activities that seem to nucleate around religion. Or perhaps you think that religion is as unnecessary as the onion in the varnish?
If you really think that money spent on religion is better spent on science, then go ahead and lobby your government to tax churches and spend the revenue on science. ;-P
7. Religion is A Strong Meme
Yes, it is, isn’t it. What’s your point?
—–
So … have I convinced you to become a man of faith? Of course not! But now you have an audience, why don’t you engage with us a little more and tell us *why* you hold these views.
:-)
By blank89 on Jun 29, 2008 | Reply
Expanded on my 7th point in response to dysfunctor.
By blank89 on Jun 29, 2008 | Reply
Also, I’m going to respond to a critic on reddit. His response was:
“Time for a bit of a critique, reason by reason.
1. This is perhaps the only legitimate reason in the article, but even this is a bit of a stretch. This makes a faulty assumption that relying on faith is mutually exclusive from relying upon the scientific method. While a great many scientists may be atheists or agnostics, there are also many Christian scientists who follow the method to a T.
2. People also vote on race, economic condition and family tradition. Should we eliminate those variables too?
3. Hmmm, fair enough point here, but only if you consider all Christians to be mindless drones. Making such a blanket assumption that faith answers all questions for all believers is a horrible logical fallacy.
4. Once again, making a blanket statement that covers only a few select people. the funny thing is that the author actually admits that his statement only applies to a few and hence admits his own weaknesses in his own reasoning.
5. The Church takes up natural resources? So do countless other business and individual for their own selfish gain. What makes the church worse than them?
6. This reason I absolutely disagree with. the amount of charitable work undertaken by churches is astonishing and nothing should be done to diminish that.
7. And right here the author totally shoots himself in the foot. With an RPG. He admits right here that neither science nor religion is more correct, implying that science could be detrimental to religion.”
1, There are Christians who think the scientific method is great. However, many of them are either moderates or they will bend the scientific method to their liking. This has an impact on number 2.
2. Of course we should eliminate race and family tradition. It would be nice to level the economic playing field, but I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon, so that’s not really an option either. There are times, however when people must look beyond these petty factors and vote for shear survival.
3. I don’t consider all Christians mindless drones. I just think that enough of them are to do damage. I actually went back in made a small edit in my article to clarify. “When people are content to believe in something that explains why they are here, even if it is wrong, they may become less interested in other ideas.”
4. Admitting that this only effects a few people doesn’t make it neutral to science. A few people can do a considerable amount of damage, especially when they are extremists. How can I be making a blanket statement if I limit my argument to a specific group of people? By definition that is not a blanket statement.
5. The church is worse because it is of little benefit and takes up a much larger amount of resources. It doesn’t need any.
6. Perhaps something should be done to diminish the amount of a charitable work the church is involved in. I posted a response to the second commenter response article here: http://changelog.complete.org/posts/725-A-response-to-7-Ways-Religion-is-Detrimental-to-Science.html
The idea is that the church often spends more money on other things besides their community and charity. You would be better of donating to a charity that is not specifically religious. Churches pay their own expenses first.
7. I don’t really shoot myself in the foot here. Science could be very detrimental to religion. The difference is that I don’t have a problem with that. I have a problem when religion is detrimental to science because it affect the practical applications that we need to survive.