Science is not a religion. Never should be and never will be even though people confuse it as such and willfully confuse their religious beliefs with scientific research.
The canonnical example of science as religion seems to be evolution. Before I go any further let me say that I'm not pushing one point of view or the other (evolution or creationism), I'm merely trying to make a small example. In short, this post is not about evolution vs creationism or anything. Just science as religion.
Evolution. Contraversial, unproven, an evolving theory (sorry for the pun.... couldn't resist.
). Now, say I became a scientist and me and a hundred other scientists spent years and millions of dollars researching the beginnings of human life and found that lo and behold Humanity was "seeded" here by alien beings. All the stuff that we attributed to evolution was actually carefully planned advancements carryed out by the aliens via microwaves, shot from invisible space ships that orbit Earth (now that I think about it, this scenario sounds like something by Phillip K. Dick). The evidence found is compelling. The proof goes far beyond anything that backs the theory of evolution. What would happen next would be very similar to what occured after Einstein said that Newton was kind of wrong. There would be a period of intense debate, probably a few other experiments would be done to correlate findings and then acceptence of the Alien Plan theory. Not, of course, complete acceptance. There would be a few who hang onto evolution with religious fervour and then there would be those who would go and try to prove the theorem wrong or find a different one.
Religion on the other hand, or I guess I should say Western Religions would respond differently to a similar situation. Each acceptance of difference comes with a great deal of rhetoric about how the church wasn't wrong about whatever it was that they had purported in the first place. The Church's adherence to Aristotilien theory set science back quite a bit. Several hundred years really. When they finally decided that the Copernican view of the Solar System was correct they reneged on all the rhetoric that had been spewed about the Earth being the center of the universe.
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Originally Posted by Yorick
Theology itself IS a science!
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Theology is the science of religion. Not scientific religion. Oh semantics how I hate thee.
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Originally Posted by Yorick
Religion is never the cause of War. Human greed, fear, politics, racial hatred and conflicting needs are the cause of wars, not religions.
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John Huss would be rolling over in his grave if he had one. Have you forgotten the wars of Reformation?
DeSoya