Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The Religion Virus: Is Christianity Dying?

The Religion Virus: Is Christianity Dying?

An interesting set of posts. From the title, it is obvious the author has characterized religion as something evil that must be eradicated like a plague. Religions are after all, ideas. Just as a bias against religion is an idea. Of course, there are good ideas and there are bad ideas. Each needs to be evaluated on its merit and substance rather than attaching to it blanket generalizations that do nothing to educate but are only self serving.

The very idea of liberty is an idea that competing ideas should be presented and debated based on reason and the merit of evidences for or against it. So, to seek to suppress ideas by any means other than substantive argument is a violation of liberty. Unfortunately, careers and reputations are built around ideas, so competing ideas are seen as an infectious and ruinous invasion that needs to be dealt with by any means necessary.

Characterizing the host of a competing idea as dangerous (as opposed to the idea itself) is an all too tempting means of debate regardless of which side we are on. Likewise, Painting the opposition with broad brushes and/or setting up 'straw man arguments' are all tactics that actually signal the weakness of an argument, though not necessarily the weakness of an idea itself.

Arguments both for or against Christianity in particular tend to take on these broad dimensions because it relieves us of the burden of substantive examination. Broad brush strokes that paint all religions as evil or all science is true are simply not helpful in the extreme.

The notion that science and religion are incompatible is simply false. So also is the notion that Christianity is dead. There will always be true followers of Christ just as there will always be those who characterize themselves as atheists. The degree of influence that each has on society will vary with the times, but since each position is primarily a spiritual one, they will always be as long as man exists.

True science is observational, falsifiable and repeatable. All of our technologies are the result of applying observational principles to an ordered and predictable set of assumptions. (What one would logically expect from an intelligent designer).

Science that explores our past or future, by its very nature implies a belief about the past that relies on unobservable, untestable, and unrepeatable set of assumptions (about uncontrollable variables) that therefore result in unreliable predictions.

So, where 'science' is seen to be in conflict with religion, is usually where world-views about the past or future collide. It is not a conflict of true science with religion but simply a conflict of religions, ideas or beliefs. Each defender makes their argument based on the assumptions that their world-view leads them to.

So, let's not be duped into thinking that all that is called science and religion are mutually exclusive.

No comments:

Post a Comment