Should science replace religion?

You're another rare case of somebody who cannot be (or who doesn't want to be) educated.

Recall that I asked you: "Please explain how you think that hauntings establish the existence of spirit."

Your response was the semi-coherent: "Experience of a haunting."

Now, where in your response is the answer to the "how" question that I asked? Nowhere, that's where.

I am very well aware that some people claim to "experience" hauntings. I asked you how you think that in any way advances the case for the existence of spirits.

There is nothing for us to discuss unless and until you can explain what actual evidence you have to support your belief in spirits.

Over the past week or so, I have repeatedly asked you to provide evidence for a number of baseless claims that you have made on this forum. Each time, you have come up blank. So much so, in fact, that I have to wonder whether you have any idea what the word "evidence" actually means, or what kinds of things would count as objective evidence for something.

My impression of you is that you exist in a state of almost childlike naivete. You hear stories that people tell you and you like them, so you decide for yourself to believe they are true. You think that your own belief in the stories is enough to make them true.

This is a science forum. Realise that "true for river" is not the same as "true". When you make silly claims like "ghosts are real" or "space doesn't bend", we want more than just bald statements about your personal beliefs. What is required here is that you make a case for the claims you are making. That is, you should attempt to provide an argument for your views, preferably with supporting evidence where it is possible to gather any, in order to make try to persuade other people that the state of affairs you claim is extant is objectively perceivable to all.

What is proposed with no evidence or argument is just as easily dismissed with no evidence or argument.

All indications from your history here are that this is the best you have to offer. I feel a bit sorry for you, truth be told. There must be so many things that you don't understand in the world.

Many people experience a haunting . I don't envy them .
 
Science isn’t the only path towards knowledge. How about art, music, literature, philosophy, spirituality, etc?

I am unaware of any knowledge gleaned from those, please explain and provide examples of knowledge gained from art, music, literature, philosophy, spirituality?
 
I am unaware of any knowledge gleaned from those, please explain and provide examples of knowledge gained from art, music, literature, philosophy, spirituality?
Part of one's knowledge base are the skills one develops in pursuing art, music, etc. Are you saying that a music composer has no knowledge if he isn't interested in pursuing science? o_O
 
Part of one's knowledge base are the skills one develops in pursuing art, music, etc. Are you saying that a music composer has no knowledge if he isn't interested in pursuing science? o_O

That doesn't answer the question. Art and Music are forms of expression, they are not seen as processes for gaining knowledge in the same way science gains knowledge.

A music composer can pursue science if they want, but that doesn't mean their compositions have produced knowledge.
 
perspective?

It seems that the "old gods" were very much nature gods
if you knew the stories about the gods, then you had a way of knowing what to expect from certain natural events in advance of encountering the event
then'
the old religions were very much like science in that they were a way of studying nature and transmitting that knowledge to other people(think metaphor)

but: (that may be no more than my perspective of the old religions)
and, (even if correct)
That was then, this is now?
 
That doesn't answer the question. Art and Music are forms of expression, they are not seen as processes for gaining knowledge in the same way science gains knowledge.

A music composer can pursue science if they want, but that doesn't mean their compositions have produced knowledge.

So without science, you believe there would be no knowledge at all? There wouldn’t be knowledge of the physical world and universe, but knowledge doesn’t begin and end there, imo.
 
So without science, you believe there would be no knowledge at all? There wouldn’t be knowledge of the physical world and universe, but knowledge doesn’t begin and end there, imo.

I didn't say there would be no knowledge at all. What I said was that science is a process for gaining knowledge and you said there were other ways of gaining knowledge but have yet to produce one.
 
I didn't say there would be no knowledge at all. What I said was that science is a process for gaining knowledge and you said there were other ways of gaining knowledge but have yet to produce one.

Remembering the details of an event is knowledge. Acquiring the skills to play an instrument can be part of gaining knowledge. Science is one process for gaining knowledge. Perception, education, and experience are what leads to knowledge of different subjects, or facts.

I’m not following why you feel science is the only process to gaining knowledge?

Wait, what does all this have to do with my OP? Hmm.
 
Remembering the details of an event is knowledge. Acquiring the skills to play an instrument can be part of gaining knowledge. Science is one process for gaining knowledge. Perception, education, and experience are what leads to knowledge of different subjects, or facts.

If one remembers something, then it's something thet knew already, which means it was already knowledge before they remembered it. Acquiring skills means one is gaining knowledge that was already knowledge. Perception is simply the ability to become aware of something and not the process of gaining knowledge. Education is educating oneself with knowledge already known. Experience can lead to knowledge, but experience can also be experimentation, which is already part of the process of science

I’m not following why you feel science is the only process to gaining knowledge?.

It's because I've yet to see another process to gaining knowledge.
 
If suddenly, everything about the universe could be scientifically explained, would we still yearn for answers as to what it all means? Are we existential by nature? Existentialism doesn't automatically lead to questioning if there exists a higher power or not, but it often does.

Religion, for many, offers meaning to people's lives. It can contribute something essential to the human condition.

If science replaced religion, would we all somehow stop our storytelling? Would myths and legends cease to be believed, if we had all the answers to the universe, explained to us by science?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2013/05/14/the-fear-that-drives-our-alien-belief/
Can science replace religion?
We all should sit down and contemplate where we would be without science.
 
Science isn’t the only path towards knowledge. How about art, music, literature, philosophy, spirituality, etc?

Learning to play a musical instrument or how to ride a bicycle. Children first learning to talk and adults learning a foreign language. Ethical knowledge of right and wrong. Knowledge of the principles of logic and mathematics. Knowledge of what the Mona Lisa looks like. Knowledge of events in the past or what a particular book says. Taking a university class. Knowledge of whether another person's reasoning in a particular instance makes sense or is well justified...

Examples could be multiplied without end. These kind of things are what Sciforums spends most of its time arguing about.

Science seems to be hugely dependent on the existence of a suitable conceptual vocabulary ('experiment', 'matter', 'energy', 'nature', 'reality', 'life', 'substance', 'property', 'cause', 'form'...) generally derived from the prior history of the subject, and on possession of principles of reasoning (induction, deduction, ideas of probability, mathematics, some concept of how 'evidence' supports conclusions, how 'confirmation' works and what it means to 'explain' something) that allow scientific thinkers to interpret their own and other scientists' experience.

Most of that isn't itself the product of scientific research in the stereotyped hypothesis-testing manner. It is prior to hypothesis testing and forms the intellectual framework in which the hypotheses are constructed and the testing conducted.
 
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Thank you, Yazata; that is very insightful.

I'm wondering if what others are getting at is that the scientific process is necessary for the ''construction'' of a knowledge base? (of any subject mater, really)
 
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