Honestly I'm not sure why when I say 'religion' or 'religious systems' people are hearing 'Christianity' or something else entirely. If I said 'politics' or 'political systems' and spoke in general terms about the idea of politics, no one would assume that I was speaking about one specific political doctrine or political party, they'd understand that I was referring to a type of human activity.

This isn't looking at it from quite the same perspective that I am. Sure, all systems can be abused, but we're not talking about abuse, we're discussing a form a behaviour that I believe the system creates and facilitates. A 'flaw' that almost always expresses itself at some point (or at repeated points) in a religion's life cycle. The Benefits system in the UK was actually a bad example I now realise. The problem isn't the Benefits system, it's human nature. With religion, the problem, I believe, is inherent in the system.

I've moved away from 'godditit' because of what you've said. I've also come to understand that I can't simply rely on perceived historical accounts if one of the most commonly quoted examples might not even be true. Further, while doing research to build a historical case using accounts that can be relied on, I realised the magnitude of the work involved if I were to do that beyond a handful of examples, and I'm assuming I would need more than a few examples. But, it was whilst doing that that I realised that in almost every case I encountered, and that I'm aware of in the present day, fundamentalism had or is having a detrimental effect on scientific progress (for reasons that I think should be obvious so I won't go into that now) and decided to address what I was saying from that perspective instead.

While there may be those who regard Fundamentalists as 'fringe' elements in a religion, I regard them as the core believers, after all, they are the ones who follow a religion the most literally. So, aside from abandoning 'goddidit' because it's not useful in the way that I thought it was, I haven't actually changed my argument, I'm just focusing on what I've started to think might be the best to demonstrate it, by showing that when followed literally, most religious beliefs tend to create a barrier to scientific progress.

It was intended to counter your claim 'But yet, there is no controversy today'. While that might be true of Heliocentricity, there are still areas of scientific progress that are being slowed down or vigorously resisted because of religious beliefs. Stem cell research is another one.

I think that both the arguments you described are in fact part of the same argument. Fundamentalist versions of religion tend to inhibit scientific progress AND there is a latent tendency in all religion towards fundamentalisms, therefore, all religion has a latent tendency towards inhibiting scientific progress?

Except that I would reword it slightly, I don't like 'fundamentalist versions', because I think that all religions are intended to be taken literally it's just that most people don't take them literally, and also that it's not a 'latent tendency', it's an inherent flaw in the system.

Ye, of course. With the benefits system, a totally artificial human made system, operated by humans, for humans, and with the possibility of being taken advantage of by humans, it was the humans fault.

But with religion, a totally artificial human made system, operated by humans, for humans, and with the possibility of being taken advantage of by humans, it was the systems fault. Its almost like you believe in an actual "thing" called religion, ( which is different from a "thing" called a "benefits system" somehow, in a way you havent explained), that exists separate from society, that does all these things on its own, without any humans getting involved at all.

This claim would explain why nobody understands what you're talking about. Basically, you've gone full true-Scotsman on the whole conversation.

Have only skimmed this article so I'm not sure how much valid it's conclusions are but it has a link to the report that provides the basis of the article. MB may want to check it out.

http://www.motherjones.com/environme...vation-patents

I'm curious about how they control for the difference in cost between countries for filing patent applications. I see that they measure applications and not granted patents, so there's not an issue as far as differing countries having more or less harsh criteria for granting applications, but (for example) even though it's relatively cheap to file a provisional in the US if you write it yourself, I'm pretty sure it's generally inadvisable to do so, and patent attorneys are not cheap. I have some experience in that regard.

I also see a regression factor based on how strong patent protections are in each country, which covers incentive to some amount, but it's not clear if it takes cost into account. In any case it seems like comparing the economics of patents across entirely separate economies and legal systems is going to be pretty complex. This doesn't apply to the comparison within the 50 US states obviously

I think you might quibble also that patents as a measure of innovation in business and technology are probably somewhat disconnected from scientific research. Although most of experience with patents is in the software industry so maybe it's different outside of that domain

Anyway, thanks for the link. It's interesting

Important question to ask and consider: If the result had shown a positive correlation, would you be comfortable asserting a conclusion like "religion fosters innovation"?

I skimmed the paper, but it's not a good paper for skimming. There are a lot of technical details and modeling going on. But one thing that concerns me (and should concern anyone trying to understand the paper) is that it's not clear what the vertical axis represents. After all of the adjusting for various things (apparently, GDP, education levels, and intellectual property protections -- however that's measured), it's far from clear what a +1 represents in terms of an actual difference in innovation. What does that gap represent beyond just a number?

This doesn't really address my point. I'm questioning whether you think there is necessary feature to this type of human activity that makes it what it is. I don't, but presumably you do. Or don't. I can't tell.

Second, imagine you made this claim: "politics inhibits the progress of science." Now, it is plausibly true that some political systems inhibits the progress of science. But like with religion, I don't really see how we could ever figure out if this claim were true or false. After all, politics is practically a universal feature of human society. So, assuming that science is something that happens in human society, what kind of politics-free society would you be imagining under which science progresses more quickly than those in the actual world?

That is my criticism of your argument, except with "religion" in the place of "politics."

This doesn't actually do anything to defeat my criticism as essentially all you are doing here is substituting the word "flaw" for "abuse." All political systems have flaws that are expressed at various points in the the life cycles of different governments (go read Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics for discussions of the characteristic flaws of different kinds of governments written over two thousand years ago). Furthermore, these flaws, while not always expressed, are inherent to the system of government itself.

Somehow you seemed to have drawn the exact opposite lesson from my earlier criticism of your argument. There I said that your approach to religion is fundamentally flawed because instead of relying on science--e.g. sociology, anthropology, history, etc.--you try to reason about religion from first principles. I acknowledged there how difficult it was to reason about religion from a historical/scientific perspective, how it required a great deal of knowledge and scholarship, but I still think that is the best way at present to actually understand religion in history and the contemporary world. I claimed that trying to reason about religion from first principles is flawed because it relies on a conception of religion that, because of its lack of empirical feedback, ends up having little connection to religion in the real world.

You now agree with me that it is very difficult to get an accurate historical understanding of religion, but the lesson you seemed to have drawn from this is that we should just do what you were doing before--make claims about the effects of religion on the world based on an understanding of religions nature, or its "system." But this is where we started. My initial criticism was that your idea of the nature or system of religion is nearly worthless, based on cultural assumptions and hasty generalizations rather than on a historical study of actual religions or sociological/anthropological theorizing about the origin and function of religion. As such, any inference you try to derive from this concept of religion will be largely useless.

Let me put it this way. You've spent hundreds of hours reading and writing on RGT. If your goal truly is, as you say, to find the truth, then substitute some of that RGT time with reading a good book on the nature or history of religion. For instance, Scott Atran's In God's We Trust, or Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom.

While I don't regard fundamentalists as fringe elements in a religion, the constant attempt by some atheists to argue that they somehow represent a more pure, accurate, or core version of their religion to be wholly without justification.

Here's why. First, generally speaking, the claim that they are somehow following a "literal" understanding of their scriptures is typically nonsense. Instead, just like their liberal cousins they pick and choose what parts of the scriptures apply literally to the modern world. The literalism of fundamentalism should be understood as a theological doctrine used to condemn those they disagree with, not a description of what they actually do.

Second, look at the founders and major thinkers of the major religions. Are they all, or even predominantly fundamentalists? Well, this is certainly not true in Christianity (neither Jesus, nor Paul, nor the other authors of the New Testament are fundamentalists, nor are most major figures of Christian theology). Similarly, the major thinkers of Judaism are very far from fundamentalism (e.g. Maimonides, or really the entire idea of halakha).

Finally, I've argued before that for people who are not members of a religion there is no viable principled reason to say that one theology is more correct than another in more than a purely historical sense. You say below that you think that religions are "intended to be taken literally." Leaving aside the accuracy of this claim, why should that matter? Why should the way religion was intended matter for saying what is or is not central or essential to that religion? Thus, I see no reason to say that fundamentalism represent a core of religion whereas non-fundamentalists are not.

This is not to say that fundamentalism can't be the dominant feature of a particular religion at various times or places. I am only denying that we should think this dominance is more than a contingent feature of that religion.

Please. If you are going to quote me, at least do so accurately. This is what I said: "there is no controversy today--all major Christian denominations agree with the scientific consensus about heliocentrism." I am clearly saying there is no controversy today about heliocentrism. Pointing out that there are other controversies today in no way counters that claim.


Okay, so the second argument.

Why do you think that our understanding or criticisms of religion are best directed towards how they were intended rather than how most people actually understand/practice them? Also, what evidence do you have for the bolded claim?

It wasn't something I went looking for, i just had a link appear to it from a group I'm a member of on Facebook and thought if this thread. Was heading off to bed so never done more than skim it.

This is it.

Hits the nail on the head, I cannot articulate it any better.

Thanks for the recommendation I will see if I can get my hands on these.

I agree, thanks for saving me some virtual ink.

Very interesting, thanks for linking it.

These are the bits of your post that I can reply to right now. I will read at least one of those books, thanks for the recommendations, very useful to someone like me.

This is why I specifically addressed 'goddidit' as the mechanisms (paradigm) by which religions inhibit scientific enquiry, my claim was that religions inhibit enquiry specifically because of 'goddidit'. I've abandoned goddidit but I still think that the element of religious belief that causes this behaviour is the belief in a deity. This is because when you know that a deity is literally responsible for everything, you have an answer to any question. This has an inhibitive effect on curiosity and can create a situation where contrary explanations are not required, not encouraged and sometimes might need to be suppressed.


It's the difference between something not being treated the way it was intended to be treated, and something that creates the problem because of it's nature, or something about it's design.

I thought I'd made I clear when I said 'While that might be true of Heliocentricity' that I understood that you were referring specifically to heliocentricity and I wasn't attempting to deliberately misquote you or use your words for my own nefarious purposes, but I felt that it was worth pointing out that there still controversies over some scientific theory and the vigorous religious resistence to them. I shouldn't have used to the word 'counter'. ToE is today's heliocentricity perhaps.


Because I'm arguing about something that I think is built into religion and that IMO most regularly expresses it (notwithstanding what you said earlier in your reply) when religions are followed (almost?) literally. Wrt to evidence, I know that people do follow religions literally and those are the believers who have to do the least work to do to be believers (in terms of interpreting texts), but more convincingly me for me, I simply don't find it credible that any religious texts are written by people who didn't intend them to taken at face value and followed literally.

"I believe that the writers of religious texts intended the religious writings to be taken literally, and I find this assumption to be the most convincing part of this whole conversation!"

Okay. It is becoming apparent to me that you don't understand this criticism of your argument as your responses aren't even wrong, they are just about something else. I've asked numerous times what your baseline comparison society without religion looks like and you haven't even acknowledged this question. So I'll just let this point drop until you do. You should just know though that I'll not find anything you say convincing or even that interesting until you address this point.

Nope. The flaws in, say, democracy identified by Plato are flaws in its nature or design.

Yes, I think we can both agree that there are some scientific theories, of which evolution is the most prominent, whose widespread acceptance is hindered by some religious viewpoints. I'll point out, continuing with the above analogy, that there are also some scientific theories, such as global warming, whose widespread acceptance is hindered by some political ideologies. However, I don't derive from that fact that political ideology hinders science.

But isn't the practice of religion going to give you a more accurate picture of the nature or system of religion than the intentions of its founders or major figures? Jesus probably didn't even intend to found a religion, and Paul was talking and thinking about a relatively minor little cult in a corner of the Roman Empire, not the world-spanning religion we know today.

I asked, what is your evidence that religions were intended to be taken literally?

You gave me two answers:

1) Literalist believers have to do less work in interpreting texts.
2) You don't have find the opposing view credible.

Neither of these are actual evidence for your claim, nor do I see how you could think they were. (2) is merely the statement that you believe it. (1), as far as I can see, doesn't have anything to do with the intentions of a religion's founders (for example, we often see in cults an obfuscatory tendency on the parts of their leaders--why would we assume that religions are any different?).

See, this is why I don't like your approach to religion. I ask for evidence of a historical claim--how did the founders of a religion intend it to be understood? Instead of providing me with an argument based on historical evidence, you give me abstract principles about the supposed nature of religion and your own emotional response to religion.