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njlauren -> RE: Children exposed to religion have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction (7/26/2014 9:29:31 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: CreativeDominant
Thank you. Much of your answer above frames why I view the argument, at least as seen here on these religious forums, as liberal vs. conservatives.
The liberal argument comes across as pompous and absolute...if you believe in science, you cannot believe in a God. To me, as a man of science, it doesn't boil down that way. And yes, as a health care professional, I am a man of science...orthopedics, neurology, etc.. That doesn't stop me from believing in a God. Perhaps it is fanciful to look around at the world and believe there's something other than a purely scientific explanation for it. But...I don't use that belief to help my patients, I use what I was taught to use in neurology, orthopedics, kinesiology, and on and on and on to help them. My beliefs in terms of a God are mine and my faith comforts me. I don't understand why that bothers many on the left and many atheists, just as I don't understand why a lack of belief in a God bothers so many conservatives and people of faith. If you're on the left and truly believe what you espouse about people needing to stay out of other people's' lives, then stay the he'll out of believers' lives and their children's' lives. How they believe isn't your business...you certainly protest loudly enough about your rights to be who YOU are when the religious or a conservative tells you how to live. And those of you on the right or who are religious who don't understand non-faith and want to try and save them...leave them alone. You certainly don't want anybody interfering in your freedom to believe or to raise your child as you see fit.
I think CD that you are stating something that is patently false this claim that liberals believe you cannot believe in science and believe in God, that is a Faux News talking point, not the reality, any more than the Richard Dawkins idea that anyone who believes in God is an idiot.......yes, there are those who believe if you respect science, you cannot believe in God, but they are a distinct minority, being pretty liberal myself, and being around people like that, they don't believe that, for the very real reason that they don't believe science has anything to do with God, God is a construct of morality and an explanation of things science cannot explain, doesn't want to, things like having an immoral soul or there being some sort of divine being who cares about us. Someone once said science is the how and religion is the why, and for most liberals I am aware of, that is fine. People who are mainstream Catholics (and liberal, as many Catholics are, despite what the US Bishops will have you believe), mainstream protestant, mainstream Christian have no problem with science and God, because they see them as two different things. The Richard Dawkins/extreme Atheist position is a distinct minority, most scientists and even most atheist liberals, don't see the conflict even if they have no problem with God.
The real problem is with the religious conservatives. Liberals, including people of liberal religious convictions, are brought up that there are no absolutes (think of the conservatives yelling about liberals claiming everything is relative...) and when conflict happens, they re-examine their faith, re-examing their beliefs, and see why there is a conflict and try to reconcile it. Among other things, liberals tend not to think in absolutes, of 'absolute' truth, they may look at the facts and evidence and say this is the truth as we know it, but they don't think like that. Religious conservatives on the other hand come at things from the basis of revealed truth, absolute revealed truth, that is based on the literal view of the bible, hence the crap with a 6000 year old universe, dinosaurs living in the Garden of Eden, evolution a lie, etc.....they are the ones who have the issue, and their answer is often to try and stop the teaching of science in schools, or try to get some finagled crap like Creationism taught as alternate science. For all the claims of liberals interfering in others beliefs, the real answer is the other way around, why do religious conservatives have this need to force their beliefs on others? Why do dumb shit farmers in Kansas get to ban teaching evolution? Why is it the religious right that is trying to force prayer in school, or at football games, why is it when science conflicts with their beliefs, they want to stifle science? In large part, those who claim you cannot believe in God and science are using the evangelical Christians as the measuring stick, in large part thanks to the GOP and the media giving them a voice, as if they are the true voice of religion, their black and white view of things has come to mean 'religious'. Liberals generally don't tell the conservatives how to think, and I can't think of a liberal preacher who yells from the pulpit that fundies are going to hell (actually, they piss me off, because they spend a ton of time explaining how fundies really believe, this is all they know, what they have to grasp onto, etc), but I cannot say it the other way. Liberals don't try and use biblical law or morality as public law, as the good yokels of Texas did (criminalizing homosexual sex in private, though making sex with animals legal as long as they were your own), or the ban on same sex marriage.
Getting back to the OP's point,I think that the article is unfair, because it is lumping religious faith as being the same. Kids who are brought up by evangelicals/fundamentalist Christians are taught not to question, as are Orthodox Catholic types, they are told 'this is the truth, this is what the bible says, and if something says differently, it is wrong.....but that is not how many faiths operate. Jews are taught to question, told that part of their duty is to figure out what God is telling them each day, liberal Christians teach that questions are often worth more than the answers, which fundies go nuts at.....kids brought up with faiths that question teachings, that give them the right to self awareness of truth, expects them to work it out, are not going to have problems working things through.
As far as kids believing in things that are impossible, the problem with the fundamentalists is that they teach kids things as literal truth they are supposed to believe in the face of what reality and fact says, and that is not imagination, that is the opposite of it. Richard Feynman, one of the most brilliant scientists who ever hit this planet, said that science begins, goes forward, ends and begins again with a question, which is not something that rOrthodox religion we are talking about says. Fundamentalist says the bible is literal truth and anything in it is therefore not subject to a question; science says that even the most 'settled' science is open to questions, and the proof is in the pudding. When Einstein was a young man, mainstream physics thought Newton and Maxwell had worked out everything; Einstein (who was outside the mainstream) didn't believe that, they asked questions, and revolutionized thinking. Science used to think the universe was something that extended forever and kept creating itself (continuous creation), until someone came along and questioned that, and turned it on its head (big bang theory, in light of this discussion, ironic, was a Belgian Monk).
And yes, science can get dogmatic, forget this. Feynman in his memoirs said that kids are often the wisest, because they ask questions, and because adults haven't yet told them what can't be done, and orthodox religion along with common bs ends up doing just that, he said one of the most horrible things he ever heard was someone telling someone else who dared to dream to 'grow up', to telling a kid that they were acting 'childish', because it was a childs imagination that drives things forward...but science is also full of people who have done what the religionists do, When Wigener proposed the theory of plate tectonics, he was treated like a pariah, like a joke (and to tell you what kind of man he was, he ended up sacrificing his own life on a rescue mission to a trapped group of scientists in the artic), and of course he was right, in the medical profession the guy who said that ulcers were caused by bacteria was called a charlatan, the researcher who said that cholesterol was not the main problem with heart disease (scarring caused by homocysteine was, which is why the medical profession suddenly started having people take folic acid, which counters homocysteine) was scorned by cardiologists and the American Heart Association (whose diet is still projecting the myth that dietary cholesterol has anything to do with heart disease, despite the fact the Lancet just put the nail in the coffin on that one).....so there is blindness, too, it is quite human, but science is not supposed to operate on revealed truth or ever say that science is totally settled, but it does demand a lot when you overturn things, proof to show it is in fact what you say. Fundamentalist religion is the enemy of science, faith is not, but fundamentalist religion to me is well beyond faith, it is mindless dogma to comfort people into not having to think of the issues, not be uncomfortable, but rather have this written in black and white belief system, neat, simple, and as Mencken liked to say, dead wrong.
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