Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.
Comment on Check mate, atheists.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
What a stupid premise to begin with. God is at least as real as money, love, or America.
All of these are useful ideas to describe things that cannot be “proven” with objective evidence, but still have a meaningful impact on the reality of our lives.
Arguing about the objective existence of God is a red herring. I wish we spent as much time talking about the very well studied social benefits and harms of religion. Then we could start talking about meaningful reforms.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Why make an ideological argument against ideologies?
Science also led to eugenics and atom bombs. Religion also builds food pantries, wells, and hospitals. It is not about the tool but how we choose to use it.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
eugenics
Not science.
atom bombs
No argument here. Science was also used to develop airplanes and buildings. You can create with the knowledge earned from science, but religion (can) give the justification to misuse those creations.
t is not about the tool but how we choose to use it.
Well said.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Science did not lead to eugenics. People used a young science as an excuse to advance their ideals by willingly misinterpreting genetics. Also, atom bombs are arguably more technology than science, and technology is rather neutral with its purpose.
Religion also builds food pantries, wells, and hospitals.
Do they, though? A woman called churches for baby formula and the majority of churches weren’t very cooperative. Also, even if the religious build churches, who’s to say they won’t follow some insane creed like Mother Teresa did, who willingly let people suffer because she believed that suffering led people to God? Not to mention that a lot of religious ideas tend to make people worse off, like denying blood transfusions with Jehovah’s Witnesses, or so many other topics that leave people out of proper care like objecting to abortions, prioritizing faith healing, historical opposition to preventative medicine like vaccines, IVF, etc. More often than not, religion seems to get in the way of major health interests.
What religion does do is build community, and communities come together to provide for necessities like community wells, but even an absolutely secular community would build a well. I think it’s a little undeserving to give so much credit to religion.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Science doesn’t take anecdotes.
Most food pantries and beds for the homeless in the USA are faith based. Here are the scientific papers that show it.
Assessing the Faith-Based Response to Homelessness in America: Findings from Eleven Cities
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 hours ago
Credit where it’s due, science built the plane.
YeahIgotskills2@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
“God Speed, John Glen”
Nalivai@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Well, the main reason for that big plain-into-building debacle was US going to the middle east to do some bombing, and the main reason for that is economical (well, and racist, but that’s a given). The only religious part there was people doing suicide bombing instead of shooting rockets.
Oppopity@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
It’s not a red herring. Religious people don’t treat god like some social concept that doesn’t physically exist but still plays a role in how we interact in our society. They claim their god literally exists.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
People claim money actually exists, too. It’s not an inherent property of human existence. It’s just an organizing principle that helps us coordinate resources.
It would be stupid if the main argument we had about money was whether on not it “exists.” By “stupid” I mean that it is counterproductive to the goals of bettering humanity. We don’t get anywhere with that discussion. Instead, we talk about how we should use use money as a tool to better organize our society. We talk about equity and advancement and poverty.
It’s the same with religion. It’s been well studied that religion offers social benefits:
Association between spirituality/religiousness and quality of life 2021
Assessing the Faith-Based Response to Homelessness in America Image
63.2% food pantries are identified as being faith-based food pantries
With this being Lemmy, I don’t have to highlight the negative consequences of religion.
The point is that we should be advancing beyond the kindergarten level discussion about what’s real and what’s make-believe. Intelligent people should instead be engaging on how we can ensure religious beliefs are fostering social trust, or how to recognize and combat religious extremism.
uienia@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Those “social benefits” are band-aids needed because of a non-functioning government solution like a non-fath based welfare state. The reason you don’t see them as much in functioning countries, is because they are needed much less.
Oppopity@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
But people don’t just argue that spirituality itself is a useful tool. They straight up say their religion is true. Those are not the same things.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
Are you saying that or “people”? You are making very wide assumptions about religious people.
HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I disagree.
Money and nations are well understood to be merely human made systems. They exist within the realm of human control to some degree, and therefore immediately invite open discussions and criticism.
God, in the eyes of those that believe in him, is the ultimate force of the universe of whom all existence and morality hinges upon. Unlike the other things you mentioned, there is fundamentally zero negotiations, criticisms, objections nor doubt’s that can be had against God.
It is significantly harder to convince someone that their perfect being of a God is evil and than it is that money or nations are tools of evil.
CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org 9 hours ago
Neither money nor states are dogmatic in their nature. They exist under some basis, that can be verified, and that defines their properties. Gods have arbitrary abilities that cannot be verified.
The only benefits of a religion are being a part of community and coping with reality. The first is not unique to religion, the second is delusional and leads to lots of misjudgement, harms one’s ability to percieve and analyze the objective reality. In other words, even the benefits are quite controversial in their usefulness here.
By the way, if you think about this, religion as a coping mechanism is as widespread only because it have been a substitute for more healthy alternatives for literal milleniums.
Religion should be a thing of past, but alas, magical thinking is still strong in modern society. To get rid of religions, first and foremost we should teach people about common logic fallacies and manipulations, so they would detect and avoid them more easily
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
I’ve shared several peer reviewed papers that show the opposite.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
How is it stupid if religious people really do argue that their god as an entity is real? I don’t think the comic tries to dispute that the concept of gods aren’t.
neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
You appear to be moving the goalposts. These are all concepts. God is not as real as Money or Love or America. You’re conflating several things here to try and obfuscate that the existence of God being proven isn’t a “big deal”.
If something is real, it can be proven, observed, the effects replicated. This is how every thing in the universe works. No exceptions.
Money can be proven, even the idea of it, even though it’s “conceptual”. It has real value, it’s a construct we created and it has physical objects in the real world and can be exchanged for goods and services. It’s a real idea that takes physical shape in the world and it can be proven as a real world concept.
Love is a concept, and while the nuances behind it aren’t well understood, it’s as real as anything anyone feels, like hate, fear, or any emotion. It’s an emotion, and emotions are a part of the human empathic experience. It’s something we’ve evolved and learned over time. It’s real because we make it real every day. Love isn’t existential, it doesn’t have some power we’re unable to measure. It can’t bend or warp or shift reality. It can’t do anything more than we can do as a human. In all the ways that matter, any result of love is 100% measurable and observable in the physical world.
America is a real place, a real continent, a real country, with real people, and while the idea of a country or its people changes over time, it’s not “fake” or made up, in the same way a claim about a deity is. The idea of America might be what you’re referring to, but it’s as real as any other shared idea or dream people have had in history, including Rome, the EU, etc.
You’re intentionally trying to muddy the waters and misdirect here by conflating the “realness” of God with 3 things that are nothing like the claim of God, and that can be quite easily proven with objective evidence.
Anything anyone claims that exists outside of our ability to observe, test, or measure, is either talking about things so small or far away that we haven’t developed the tools to measure and observe them yet, or they’re spouting bullshit.
Which bucket do the claims of god, and all religions fall into do you think?
ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Thank you
Flocklesscrow@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
Nicely said