Worshiping Science

[_Sethbag]

So when some thoughtless person accuses you of worshiping science, you decide to ignore the gratuitous false dichotomy and try to justify why worship of science is okay?

Cool story bro

Are you talking to me?

[_MrStakhanovite]

Are you talking to me?

No sir, to the OP.

[_Sethbag]

Ah, I didn't get the same thing from the OP that you did then, sorry. The OP specifically referred to worship as an an of self-debasement, with the implication being that he couldn't support it for anything, including science.

[_asbestosman]

I would argue you'd have a hard time coming up with billion-dollar research experiments where the researchers just made up their data, and that this resulted in flawed new science accepted by the wider scientific establishment, and especially examples where this wasn't detected for a very long time.

I'm not sure about the details, but there was the fraudulent Korean stem cell cloning data. It was detected because the data was copied from a different publication as I recall. I'm not sure how frequent such things are though.

Science doesn't shift very much on the basis of one experiment anyway. Others work to duplicate it, and if they can't, then heads are scratched and methodologies looked into and so forth until the conflict is better understood and a resolution is arrived at.

Hopefully, anyhow. I remember Feynman speaking about how science assumed a certain constant was one thing off of one experiment. It took a while before Feynman figured out that this interpretation was wrong and how that made trouble for other developing theories.

So sure, science corrects itself sometimes, but expensive experiments will probably make this happen less often.

Mormonism is a particularly bad religion to compare to science in this way. By definition, in Mormonism only one guy in the world (at a time) can even possibly receive revelation on the way things are from God. There are no competing prophets, and any who stand up and proclaim themselves such are ostracized and expelled from the community.

It's a bit more complicated than that. There's the President, then the First Presidency, then the Quorum of 12. All of them can receive revelation for the church. But like any good parents, they will present a united front. We don't get to hear when they discuss various issues.

[_Sethbag]

Abman, if religious folks were just making their stuff up, how would you know?

[_DrW]

These science and religion threads always make me smile.

Then they make me feel sorry for the individual whose job it is to justify and defend the fruits of religion in modern life when compared to the fruits of science.

The charge by religionists that atheists or secularists "worship" science is just silly, of course, and demonstrates a severe lack of understanding on the part of the accuser. In fact, these kinds of assertions say more about the state of religious belief than they say about secularists or about science.

[_Hoops]

Thanks to:

the fruits of religion

We have:

in modern life when compared to the fruits of science.

The charge by religionists that atheists or secularists "worship" science is just silly, of course, and demonstrates a severe lack of understanding on the part of the accuser.

Of course it does. They is jus' so danged stoopid.

[_asbestosman]

Abman, if religious folks were just making their stuff up, how would you know?

God would tell the prophet and then he would tell us.

Duh.

[_Nightlion]

The OP misapprehends worship by suggesting it is a debasement of the human spirit. So now let's see if worship is an apt condition the people of the world hold toward science.
1. In worship we have faith in God...............the world has the utmost faith in science. DING!

2. In worship we pray for God's Providence........the world looks to science for blessings. DING!

3. In worship we fear God............the world fears science proving them wrong and will immediately jump on the newest bandwagon so not to be caught uninformed and behind the times, yea, verily, nothing maketh the knees to smote together with more ardor than to open the mouth and discover ignorance, which causeth the soul wracked with pain to confess an immediate repentance with the most earnest intent contitely bowing to the inquisition of the holy consensus of the latest science update. DING!

4. By faith the worshipers of God seek healing under the hand of God's benevolence according to his will........the world will give all their living to science to be healed by practitioners who only manage to luck out about the same as doing nothing. Why would the world trust implicitly in science that fails more than it cures if they were not exercising FAITH. Science is only good at relieving symptoms and not curing disease, which by and large seems to heal or not regardless. DING!

5. There is a fellowship in the worship of God that bonds believers together.........the fellowship of science is more fierce, protected, coveted, sought after, schemed for, bought and paid for, held up as bait for unpaid work, requires countless hours of devotion to merit, expects monastic field work of epic efforts to win a hearty, well done thou good and faithful servant. DING!

I have proven my point. I could go on but it bores me now. DING!

Man is a worshiper. If there is glory there is worship aplenty.

Now, how dumb is it for man to sift through all things meticulously and count that sifting greater and worthy of more renown and respect and yes, worship than the creator of all that gets sifted through? LOL A bunch of blind molesters of the proverbial elephant.

Because they love science overmuch many prefer to imagine a nothingness without it. So they do. I dingeth for that too as it counts for resting one's eternal destiny with its science god.

[_Franktalk]

It is not really science that most scientist worship but the creation. They give the creation powers in that it made itself (big bang) and organized itself (evolution). In this they deny that the power that really made the creation comes from the Spirit of God. It is a measure of where you place your faith. If you have faith in man's ability to uncover truth in the creation then the stage is set for you to wallow there for all eternity. It is a matter of choice. If however you see past the creation and see the Spiritual power that made the creation you will cast aside this world and seek the greater reality. This also is a matter of faith. And it is a matter of choice.

The people who admit to worshiping God are just admitting that they rest their faith in the invisible power of God. From the viewpoint of the religious it appears that scientist worship the creation because that is where their faith rest. But the scientist is not worshiping the creation in their eyes. To them it is a factual journey and has nothing to do with faith. The assumptions of science are so reasonable to them they don't even see their acceptance as faith but as a logical choice, far removed from faith.

The choice is between the world and a spiritual walk. Those who say they can have both have their faith in the world and do not have it in God. They may say the words but the rejection of the power of God reveals their true nature. To the people who say they can do both God is a hobby and their day job is in the world.