What is your general attitude towards those who believe in religion whether they are jewish, Muslim, Christian etc etc.
Do you get on well with any religious friends and neighbours?
Have you ever thought of believing in a religion at some point?
If you do not like the faiths, why?
If you DO, also why? Does this come from your family? Maybe something went bad during your life?
I get that Lemmy might have the same stereotype in Reddit that there are loads of atheists, but there’s a good reason why despite criticism of religion, it is still here.
P.S. I am not religious or anti religious in any fashion, I am agnostic.
Not sure if I’m taking the bait but here goes.
Science is a set of processes where you take belief out of the equation. You can start with something akin, which when you have informed belief you have an hypothesis which you set out to prove. You don’t hold that as truth and anything not falsifiable is not a valid hypothesis.
Science is not a religion, it’s just a thing. Plenty of people need to belief to function and end up having (even a blind) faith in science, using it as a religion.
On your second point I’m with you on the last part though I think you are calling religions and believes things that are organized religion and religion.
In any demonstration, you have to make some unproven statement, taken as true. It could be “1+1 = 2” or “God exists”. So sciences are methodologies based on believes. Lot of religions use logic and reasons, based on science and philosophy, to deduce things from their core believes. This is theology.
So if both science and religions are based on believes, and could have the same methods, how to distinguish one of the other ? We could argue that science try to reduce believes as possible. Personally I’m not good enough in sciences to argue with religious people, and demonstrate that point. In trying to challenge my believes in scientific models, I have to stay tolerant with religious people (I’m not sure I would otherwise); which is a most productive approach. Furthermore, it helps to have a critical point on view on science (as you’ve said, and to taking it as a blind faith)
If you need unproven statements to prove something, then it isn’t science.
You do have start somewhere. Complex numbers have an impossible assumption at its core. But it needs to be falsifiable. You need to be able to prove it isn’t true and fail at it.
God exists and God is all powerful are a blanket check to solve everything, because it just does whatever you want it to and you don’t even try to prove it. 1+1 = 2 is a semantic axiom, not really equivalent to wilder assumptions you can do where those wouldn’t be comparable to there’s an all powerful something in existent in our reality that affects it at will.
It’s like believing there’s a multiverse, it’s not a useful axiom as it’s not measurable and specially not falsifiable.
It’s useful to keep an open mind and not discard people based on irrational beliefs, but God is something you can only accept in the scientific method if you bend or break the method.
Imo, That’s not even looking at the fact that any type of religious organization ends up being someone taking advantage of the faithful. It irks me to no end, and it’s rare to find faithful in a vacuum.