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Your comments, or mine? Joel Send a noteboard - 13/04/2011 01:24:53 AM
Since when do scientific finding force people to change religions if they can't find a way to reconcile the new finding with the current religion.

Since existence of the term "losing your religion", a phenomenon so common it fosters the conceit that humanity neatly divides into atheists and idiots.
What actually happens:

1. Accept the new findings while keeping the old religion. Keep everything separate in your brain and don't try to reconcile anything. Assume it all works out somehow. Compartmentaliza different aspects of your life. There's scientific rational thought and there is religion/spirituality and never the twain shall meet. Most people do this. Or they just don't care enough about religion and/or science to think about it that much and it's not an issue.

That "solution" is popular but rarely sustainable. As conflicting data mounts the tension will usually snap sooner rather than later, so that one is discarded in favor of the other, both are integrated or the mind is reduced to a mass of cognitive dissonance and nothing more.
2. Just don't think about either religion or science. People who call themselves christian but don't let it affect their lives or think about it that much. Christians that don't read the bible literally and most likely just don't read the bible much at all so whatever is in the bible is not an issue. If you do go to church, it's for reasons of belonging, community, and tradition.

Well, yes, if one only maintains a superficial connection to a thing its conflicts with the rest of ones life can easily be dismissed in the few cases where they are even recognized. That kind of pro forma involvement is not terribly relevant here though; one can hardly be said to abandon that which they were only nominally practicing from the start.
3. Reject the scientific findings that produce cognitive dissonance. You see this in the creationism people. Rejection of any scientific progress having to do with evolution.

I see this a lot of places; one can reject spiritual and supernatural observations and experiences that conflict with a greater body of scientific ones as easily as the reverse. It cuts both ways and is a regrettable consequence of absorbing rather than examining ones beliefs. This is the first of the cases referenced above, where two inflexible beliefs conflict and the one with greater mass ultimately annihilates the other. Any time one is conditioned to think exclusively in one way and ask only permissible questions in prescribed terms it becomes a real danger, not only to the belief system challenging the dominant one, but to a deep understanding of the dominant one, since science and religion are relatives in a metaphysical family properly about asking questions rather than confirming answers.
4. Alter the religion to make it fit with the scientific findings just enough that you take care of the cognitive dissonance. Pretend it hasn't been altered, that's how it has been all along.

To a great extent religion and science investigate different aspects of existence in different ways, and so share few vital particulars in their common general inquiry. The best leaders of both recognize that there are few particulars truly VITAL to either; investigating the unknown carries a great degree of uncertainty that makes many beliefs generally regarded as irrefutable merely very likely, and always subject to revision. Again, when science or religion ceases self examination it usually sacrifices credibility and relevance. Consequently, the alterations required to reconcile one with the other affect tenets that never should have been present to begin, let alone considered incontrovertible. The best examples that come to mind are the Catholic Churchs resistance to heliocentrism (irrelevant to Christianity unless one insists both that the bible is irrefutable AND that a few very figurative and poetic passages must be literal) and scientists resisting the Big Bang as religion disguised as science. As with heliocentrism, the latter criticism is as old as its subject theory, and the article citing it just as instructive as that earlier debacle, but I will save that for your final alternative.
5. A small percentage will turn away from religion, at least deep inside. Some of these people will "come out" as agnostics/atheists, some will not.

This is not so much an additional option as an inversion of the third one; when ones detailed analyses of religion and science conflict the former can be as easily discarded as the latter, and with no more justification. As promised, I will illustrate this with the article linked:

The author is quite right about the need for any investigation to question its assumptions (as I also noted earlier), but makes two massive (if typical) assumptions throughout: That religion is both false and assaulting science. This is unfortunate on several levels. His zeal to refute religions inroads on science causes several errors obvious even to a layman like me, such as the contention that Columbus pioneered belief in a spherical Earth (at best tangential to geocentrism) and that the universe is said to be 28 billion light years wide because the Earth is thought to be at its center (the "edge" of the universe is thought to be irregular, and the concept of its "center" to have even less validity than that of its boundary). Far worse, he cites some issues I already raised (the First Law of Thermodynamics and Newtons (perhaps) less relevant First Law of Motion) as PROOF the Big Bang is invalid because they suggest a supernatural agency is required, and anything involving the supernatural is, of course, by definition invalid (in his mind). Had he bothered to consider the Second Law of Thermodynamics he might have realized that tossing out the Big Bang on the grounds that the First Law says matter and energy cannot be created only makes things worse, since the universe that has been losing kinetic energy to friction for billions of years still has a TREMENDOUS amount of it. Sadly, his goal is to destroy religion rather than advance science, which impedes his understanding of both; the fact that the Big Bang neatly fits MY faith makes it intolerable to HIS "science". This is a recurring problem with such fierce biases, whether against religion or science and, IMHO, the ultimate cause for so many scientists seeking increasingly elaborate ways to fit the cosmological data to their entirely natural curve just as the author accuses (and then does himself).
No, I do not think that scientific findings/reason will make people convert from one religion to another. It is not reason but emotion that makes people embrace religion. Even if they don't personally feel it, perhaps they want to be accepted in a community.

That also cuts both ways; for every isolated religious person who never questions his religion because he never has cause there are at least as many who abandoned a religion after entering an environment where they felt religious beliefs marked them as unsophisticated, closed minded and/or unimaginative. To say that it is not reason but emotion that makes people embrace religion is no more fair than to say that it is not emotion but reason that makes people embrace science. The math may be as cold as interstellar space, but ask a hundred scientists in any branch why they chose that career and I bet not one says, "it was the rational thing to do". For that matter, I would go double or nothing on the proposition that many aspiring scientists hastily abandon even the appearance of religious notions to seek acceptance from others in their field just as passionate on the subject as Richard Dawkins is. To reiterate yet again, the suggestion that science, reason, logic etc. are realms inhabitated only by a small areligious gentlemans club does a disservice to science as much as to religion (to say nothing of humanity as a whole). As you are likely aware, such disappointment here is not new to me, but it remains regrettable nonetheless.
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Questions about souls... - 12/04/2011 03:06:54 AM 2020 Views
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All right. - 12/04/2011 05:50:08 AM 1034 Views
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Agreed. - 12/04/2011 05:49:11 PM 891 Views
it wouldn't change much for me, but I'm pretty flexible in my spiritual beliefs - 12/04/2011 04:23:34 PM 1028 Views
This. *NM* - 13/04/2011 04:15:11 PM 566 Views
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Your comments, or mine? - 13/04/2011 01:24:53 AM 1416 Views
You get one guess. - 13/04/2011 07:09:01 PM 1145 Views
One dismissive answer deserves another. - 24/04/2011 12:54:44 AM 1036 Views
I'm a Christian who is partial to reincarnation, so I do not think much would change. - 12/04/2011 06:21:36 PM 985 Views
*is disappointed* *NM* - 12/04/2011 08:01:05 PM 505 Views
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I bet you do! - 12/04/2011 08:47:59 PM 933 Views
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Does it really? - 24/04/2011 01:09:34 AM 855 Views
OMG! - 14/04/2011 06:19:50 PM 966 Views
Go expand his worldview. *NM* - 14/04/2011 06:56:03 PM 526 Views
I think we are similar in some respects philosophically. - 13/04/2011 05:59:38 AM 918 Views
Who says.... - 13/04/2011 07:11:24 PM 879 Views
So then my question is.... - 13/04/2011 07:08:42 PM 886 Views
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*heh* - 14/04/2011 04:12:32 PM 1026 Views
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Re: Actually, you didn't. - 24/04/2011 09:04:04 AM 952 Views
I think that, like a lot of other people responding, I would want and need more information. - 12/04/2011 07:13:14 PM 912 Views
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99% that there is no God... - 12/04/2011 08:08:42 PM 1020 Views
Technically, no, atheists simply lack belief in a God. - 12/04/2011 08:19:15 PM 940 Views
Whoah there, - 12/04/2011 08:26:43 PM 931 Views
Okay, I have to admit I wasn't expecting to get called out on that. - 13/04/2011 04:03:08 AM 1019 Views
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Isn't that what "technically" would imply? - 13/04/2011 04:04:42 AM 1068 Views
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Re: Campbell: - 12/04/2011 08:42:09 PM 1025 Views
Self-identification is an interesting point here. - 12/04/2011 09:00:46 PM 925 Views
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Answers. - 12/04/2011 09:05:38 PM 923 Views
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Never mind. - 12/04/2011 11:34:46 PM 893 Views
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I can easily believe that. - 13/04/2011 06:14:51 AM 867 Views
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Well, as I said in my census form on Sunday - 12/04/2011 08:36:05 PM 1061 Views
Pythagoras was a total nut. - 12/04/2011 10:05:42 PM 1007 Views
True - 12/04/2011 10:13:43 PM 915 Views
It would upset my belief in science - 12/04/2011 09:39:39 PM 1056 Views
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*is both bored and annoyed* - 12/04/2011 11:03:10 PM 925 Views
right. - 12/04/2011 11:18:31 PM 1134 Views
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I think that's kind of the point; it can't. - 13/04/2011 01:33:44 AM 880 Views
Did you read my original post? - 13/04/2011 03:13:34 AM 836 Views
I did, yes. - 13/04/2011 03:32:18 AM 883 Views
What's a soul? - 12/04/2011 10:51:39 PM 902 Views
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so did this guy took a railroad spike through the head - 13/04/2011 01:58:52 PM 1055 Views
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No. - 23/04/2011 09:15:16 PM 936 Views
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Can one have an identity without memory? *NM* - 13/04/2011 03:46:16 PM 548 Views
Sure. - 23/04/2011 08:53:51 PM 774 Views
Re: My question about souls: who will save your souuuuls? *NM* - 13/04/2011 04:04:21 AM 548 Views
I would becoming interested in tracing people's souls across time/space - 13/04/2011 04:00:51 PM 920 Views
Re: I would becoming interested in tracing people's souls across time/space - 14/04/2011 03:29:55 AM 925 Views
Sorry :-) - 14/04/2011 10:15:30 AM 1001 Views
Interesting concept.... - 13/04/2011 07:28:42 PM 898 Views
Heh. Loose faith. - 14/04/2011 02:32:27 AM 925 Views
It kinda still works though....doesn't it? - 14/04/2011 04:14:19 PM 916 Views
it does work. well in fact! *NM* - 24/04/2011 03:24:25 AM 524 Views
Oooh... - 14/04/2011 04:31:30 AM 980 Views
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Wow, thanks for all the responses!! - 14/04/2011 03:42:38 AM 982 Views

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