Religion - could it be an ancient form of science

Religion often seeks to explain the same things that science does. This may say more about the human condition then it does about either science or religion. The two are often at odds, because they both seek to provide answers to fundamental questions about who we are and where we came from. It makes sense that there would be a more ancient form of science that tried to explain these things.

 

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Nah. Its just an ancient memetic disease honed by thousands of years of darwinian evolution.

 

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Science and religion are radically different in their methods and their objectives.

Where religion is satisfied with believing, science is interested in knowing.

 

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I WOULD AGREE, completely that religion is the science of the past.

and that, science, is hence forth the religion of the future.

science is my religion, and the source of my faith.

http://theempiricalchurch.blogspot.com/

and it is only by way of science, that we can unify all religions, for they all attempt to explain, and understand GOD... a GOD, we cannot hope to understand.

HENCE, we study GODS creation... threw science, and we come too know our selves and our enviorment, and all the while, we contemplate and give thanks to GOD.

im my religion, no one is forced to believe anything which cannot be proven by the sciences, and yet, is open to the discussion and study of all, and the fascilitating of individuals desire to worship the lord in their own fashion.

in a temple of science which would reside within the empirical church itself, running units generating and using high levels of energy will be manifested as estanlishing open lines of communication for the lord to potentially act threw.
the design of these units will vary from location to location, and as such, in the course of time... over eons.. and millenia.. perhaps some day, someone will build an altar machine which fullfills its ultimate purpose, and opens a line of communication with the GOD plane, and the lord GOD almighty.

i am not stupid, nor should we be... our success is unlikely, yet the potential exists, and as such, as a long term, commitment and hobbie for the organization, such will be engineering in new fashion for each and every church proper.

-MT
http://theempiricalchurch.blogspot.com/

 

Mosheh Thezion, WTF? are you serious?

anyway, religion and science both try to explain the nature of the universe. that is where the similarity ends.

 

It is my understanding that religion was primitive science. It was the first attempt to explain how & why the world was the way it seemed to be.

Somethow it got stuck with naive mystical explanations and never matured into true science. This was probably due to the power & prestige accorded to shamans, who wanted to maintain the status quo.

 

actually.. yes.. i am completely serious.

and yes.. there is an end to the similarities...

science, picks up where religion leaves off...........

i dont see any problems... and while many can argue about the content of scripture... thats fine.. so can i. so can we all.

in fact.. in many instances... we can argue about the science.

which brings us back to the similarities.

in my mind,, the similarities, are greater than the differences.

-MT

 

no.. it was the lack of applying mathmatics to quanitfy things..

once we began to do that.. as gallaleo, kepler, newton, faraday, maxwell...
doing so.. lead to modern science.

we were lost for so long... for the study of the mystical, was the realm of the theocrat.. who apparently, were not often mathamiticians....

-MT

 

Science doesn't attempt to 'explain' the how and why, it attempts to 'discover' the how and why.

 

But the belief in something you call God is your foundational assumption - certainly this is not something that can be proven by the sciences.

 

no.. but theory based on the evidense, can suggest the application of energy from an outside source, as the basis for creation.. thus... a GOD of some kind may exist.

-MT

 

Cato said:

Cato I certainly don't want to challenge you in any way - but don't you think that they both try to explain the nature of the universe is an incredible similarity? I mean if this is the only thing the two have in common, it is probably quite a lot. To say that they are not is like saying that money and credit cards are just ways to pay for things, and that is where the similarity ends. (ok end of argument with Cato and on to more abstract thoughts)
Throughout time some monks and others in religion have embraced science, and improved it, I think because many religious people were seeking truth in nature. Many religious people including Pope John Paul, who just past away recently, didn't think religion and science conflicted. When religion has challanged science, it has lost every step of the way - from burning Giordano Bruno alive for saying that there were many worlds and many suns "Giordano Bruno’s jaw was clamped shut with an iron gag, his tongue was pierced with an iron spike and another iron spike was driven into his palate. On February 19, 1600, he was driven through the streets of Rome, stripped of his clothes and burned at the stake." to the threatening of Copernicus for even suggesting that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Well now we are pretty sure that the church was wrong aren't we? Why did some church officials act this way? Because they were in direct competition - they had a monopoly on the definition of reality and the secrets of the universe - and this meant money and power.
Now and in the future it's possible that we may find that ancient thoughts do not always have to be wrong - that much of what is in the bible could be true and be consistent with science, but we may not be there quite yet.

 

The difference is that religion builds a structure of authority that supports a certain view of the universe without regards to actual evidence. That authority structure even, as Tortise's post mentions, destroys evidence that is contrary to its doctrine.

Real science is based on evidence. The evidence overrules the word of authority.

 

Yes, I have thought that ancient priests were ancient scientists. They knew the cycles of the seasons and the movement of the heavenly bodies. They knew the geometry of sacred architecture and ways to keep a community together. They knew ways to make people feel better. They knew some basic medicine. Mathematics was definitely mixed with Orphean type mysticism. All this had to take some observation and time.

 

I think that you have the purpose of religion pinned in the wrong spot. Religion is not about explaining, it is about relating oneself to other people and to the universe and the things within it. Trying to figure out the way things work and their origins is incidental to religion because it is easier to relate to something that you understand rather than to something which you don't.

 

Religion and science can be similar at times. But the ways at which they direct their reasoning are very different. Religion also comes with a crapload of rules and morals to follow. In a way, couldnt religion even be philosophy, economics, politics and science combined?

 

JetPilot, I agree, that was kind of my point. In the vacuum there was before science, religion functioned in these many roles - and did a good job. Then along came more rigorous testing to define what we believed - we named this science.

 

I suspect that Western science is a continuation of Christianity by other means. It all adds up to the same thing - aggression against nature. Christians launched their destructive Crusades against nature - trying to make it conform to their beliefs. Scientists try to force nature to conform to their theories.

 

People really need to learn to distinguish "Religion" from "The Roman Catholic Church" or "Christianity".
For example, but not exclusively...

You should expand your worldview and understanding of different religions.
Especially if you plan to disparage them.

I agree with Tortise, in a sense and to a certain degree.
I believe that what people did not have the capacity to understand through observation of patterns, experiment and other "scientific" means, they explained with allegories and characters, which ended up being viewed as beings with intentions.
If someone was stuck by lightening, before man knew what lightening was, one option was to explain it as a being riding on the clouds stiking somene down on purpose.
From that, people ascribed personalities to those beings, and purpose.
Either it was a malevolent being who hated humans and wanted to kill them, or it was a benevolent being wanting to punish evil humans.
Either way, these beings were more powerful than us and should be feared, respected and praised for their power.
(of course that is just ONE factor in development of religions)

Both religion and science seek to give explanations for the world, but religion starts where science ends.
As human knowldge of the world around him grows, the gods lessen and their powers dissolve.
As long as there is mystery, there will be gods.
We still don't know what happens after death, so we still have some gods in the afterlife, and likely always will.

 

At one time I would have said that the definitive difference between science and religion is that science uses deductive reasoning and religion uses inductive reasoning.
The more I learn about some areas of science (particularly areas of physics) and the more I learn about different religions, the more blurred that distinction becomes.
There are some religious beliefs and systems I would consider more “scientific” than some areas of so-called “science”.