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The problem with a religion-oriented attitude (no matter how progressive the religion) is that it acts like a pacifier for the human inquirer.

I'd have to say that they are different sorts of food. Science is a food for your brain. It stimulates you and helps you to doubt everything.

Religion is a food for your "soul" or inner well being. It is meant to make you into a better person and to help you enjoy this life in a different way.

Our brain needs both types of stimulation. Some of us get stimulation by proving our theories.

The religous get stimulation by thinking about abstract concepts that have no solution. You can consider it like a game, the better you play the "happier" you will be.

I'll admit that religion does not work for everyone. For some it tastes like garbage and gives no nourishment, I can see why you'd view it as a pacifier in that way.

To others it helps them to cope with being on a rock, flying through space. It helps me in that way. In this case I say to each his own, I prefer to separate science and religion and get my nourishment from them both in equal parts.

Personally, i take the eliminativist view that soul is your brain. I do see some value in metaphysical contemplation (as a fun exercise) but I think if one accepts it seriously, it becomes an escape mechanism.

An escape mechanism for what? To escape the fact that you are a package of meat spinning on a rock, spinning about a ball of burning gas, spinning about....

It is an escape, a hope a dream that at the end of this day in day out life to wake up to something different rather than to cease existing. It is the most arrogant, self sustaining idea out there. That you as a person are important, that your opinion will matter, and that the concept of who you are will be carried forward by more than your sperm/eggs.

Faith is the concept of believing in something you can't prove. It is a thesis that is backed by our need as a species to propagate forward. The proof is in our minds (or spirits). It gives us something to latch on to. I just don't understand why it has to be considered a bad thing?

I have to also throw out there that philosophy has a great way of showing that doubt is at our core. I think some of these arguments are fanciful, but why is it not possible for there to be something more out there that we can't detect?

Religion (if that's what you describe) offers coping mechanisms that pacify the existential stress. While this is rewarding (and psychologically beneficial to most people) it also acts as an escape from the drive to discover the true nature of the world. Naturally, we may assume that there may be many entities outside this universe (but should they necessarily be undetectable?), as our imagination is boundless. That doesn't mean that these ideas should necessarily be considered valid by everyone. It's a personal choice to believe or not. The appeal of science is that it provides a universally applicable test (empiricism) to determine whether a belief is false or not.

Religion as an institution, or religion's effect on each person?

Separate the culture from the spirituality. Most people never do, and suffer greatly for it. I am almost certain you're arguing against the anti-intellectualism of American religious culture, and I find them to be a harmful, misguided force. But they do not constitute the whole of the religious experience; in fact, I believe they only partake in a truncated form of it because they exclude certain types of knowledge.

I ask you to consider the fact that there are counter examples to your assertion, even if they are harder to see. I wouldn't think you'd be happy with half-truths (especially those that seek to demonize).

So the failure of science is...its inability to perfectly predict the future?

So the failure of religion is... its inability to perfectly predict the future (i.e. after death)?

Yes, science is imperfect, there are no proofs. Only disproofs.

Would you consider a model that does not perfectly predict the future to be considered a failure ? If I want to send a message across the galaxy and I'm only using Netwon's Laws will it get to where I want it go? Would that be considered a failure? In a word, yes. But it is also a learning experience.

I think this model should apply to religion as well. It is not meant to be taken as a perfect prediction of Godhood, just a theory that we are currently wearing. Hopefully it isn't too far off, but so what if it is?

I really just want people to accept that we hold certain truths to be infallible and they are not. Not even scientific theories. The Standard Model is under constant change.

Science is not a failure because of that, for the simple reason that it was never supposed to be infallible. Imperfection is at its core, it's not a failure.

Sending a message across the galaxy with the assumption that science is perfect is a failure by the person sending the message, not science's.

Bah, I'm stopping this thread cuz I did a better job of explaining in this other conversation.

Also, it is not a failure at all, it is a datum to be added to the experience that we base our observations on.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4417531

> Science is constantly failing us.

This is a classic religious view of science. But science isn't a belief system or some kind of guarantee, it's simply a disciplined way to compare ideas to reality.

> The problem is that science was BUILT to fail.

That's true, but is is certainly not a problem. In science, ideas can only be falsified, never proven true once and for all, and that is by design. Every scientific theory awaits falsification through new evidence, and some resist falsification for very long periods. No scientific theory ever becomes true in a final sense.

That is what separates science and religion.

> Religion does adapt, and grow, and find failures.

This is false. Religion punishes dissent and doubt. Science encourages it. The most reliable way to earn a scientific reputation, a Nobel Prize, is to cast doubt on a theory and produce evidence to back up the doubt. In religion, that can only get you expelled or killed.

> How many scientific theories are proven not to be accurate models for the data? Is that not a failure?

No, that is a success, and an essential part of the scientific process. Falsifiability, the idea that any theory can be disproven by way of evidence, is the single most important thing to understand about science, and it's what separates scientific theories from all other kinds.

> There is a perception that science does not fail. It does, frequently.

The failure of a theory, by way of evidence, is a success for science.

OK so what I'm attempting to say here is that it is not possible to compare scientific discovery with that religion. Science grows from its failures. I understand that. While I'm not a scientist, I am an Engineer and I have a solid (albeit not exhaustive) background in science.

Science does not inherently deal with morality. Thus it can't truly be compared to religion. Honestly, the religious should stay away from explaining the natural world, but they don't so we get some crazy stories.

>This is false. Religion punishes dissent and doubt. Science encourages it. The most reliable way to earn a scientific reputation, a Nobel Prize, is to cast doubt on a theory and produce evidence to back up the doubt. In religion, that can only get you expelled or killed.

This is the only point on which I disagree with you. If you study religion, you will see that they grow and adapt naturally. An example would be Vatican II. Did you know that the early Catholic church did not believe that Mary was "Assumed" into heaven? Now it's as good as a "religious" fact. That change came about non-violently from inside the church.

Power is something people try to find anywhere. The atom bomb was a tool to be used against populations, and so is religion. Many people are dissilusioned by religion because they see historic bad behavior and want to stop it. Hence, lets get rid of religion. This is not the case. "Evil" or acts that you and I would deem in breech of basic human rights come from other people and they will use any tool they can.

Yes, many Catholics believe papal decrees to be infallible, they are idiots. A church should never be considered above it's own laws.

They are two different models for belief and inquiry. I think that much can be learned in religion from the scientific model, and that science needs to stay pure (i.e. away from religion).

That doesn't mean that we can throw moral standards aside and begin human testing, but it does mean that the religious should try to stop scientific exploration for fear of a loss of "faith". If their faith is so weak that it is centered around how the universe works, then they have a problem. I.E. Kill Galileo cuz he's going to ruin our plans.

That was a power move by a corrupt church, not a religious move where "God" said to the pope, "That dude is going to make all sorts of trouble for the Catholic church, we better of him.. oh yeah that one commandment I taught you, I'll ignore it."

This corruption is peppered anywhere there is power, even in science. I know some grad students are asked to falsify data... I don't constitute this as proof. It's really just to show that the notion isn't out in left field. http://ctscanhollywood.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/workplace-bu...

Does that mean that science is bad? No, it's the person wielding that power.

> If you study religion, you will see that they grow and adapt naturally.

Yes -- but only when everything else has failed. For example, when confronted by science, the Church began by burning all the heretics ("natural philosophers") they could lay their hands on, then imprisoning them, then negotiating with them, and finally, when the Church's survival was clearly at stake, embracing a kind of science that doesn't threaten dogma.

> An example would be Vatican II.

An example of the replacement of one dogma with another.

> Yes, many Catholics believe papal decrees to be infallible, they are idiots.

Yes -- religion's natural constituency.

> Does that mean that science is bad?

Science is not a moral arbiter and doesn't dictate behaviors as religion does. So individual misbehaviors don't reflect on science as they might in religion.

Conclusion? Science and religion aren't even comparable -- they serve different purposes.