RE: A religious simulation for atheists

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(Edited)

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As you probably know I tend towards a kind of open spirituality. The reason I’ve never been attracted to religion is that it discourages you from having your own thoughts and theories based on your experience, based on others experiences, based on experiments and data or based on your gut feeling, all of which are more valuable than dogma.

That’s not to say I’m against religion, I actually find it fascinating and full of interesting ideas. But if these guys are not able to sit and have a discussion with this guy without being so dismissive, it just proves how flimsy their faith really is at a fundamental level. I hope that doesn’t happen to him every day



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I have the controversial opinion that religion damages society in an intrinsic way. If we promote the acceptance of unscientific beliefs as the foundation of society (social behaviour and policies), we create risk.

Most religious beliefs are harmless, but statistically, since they are not based on science but on sheer arbitrary rules, it is inevitable that, just like broken clocks are right twice a day, there will be a large trail of harmful behaviour left behind by this tolerance. Anti-vaxxers, cultists and demagogues are just the tip of the iceberg.

We condemn anti-vaxxers, for example, but only doing this and not condemning the actual cause behind them is like treating a tumour only by extracting the ugliest parts. If our civilisation is based on faulty decision-making, it is inevitable that faulty results will happen. These faulty results might be harmless sometimes, but oftentimes they present themselves as famines, genocides, mass suicides and many other terribly harmful events.

Accepting religion, thus, is promoting the corruption of civilisation and the continuity of much of the harm and injustice that happens around the world.

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Sounds like a pretty dogmatic religious belief in the scientific method :-P

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(Edited)

That's the thing, there is no one "scientific method", and the point of science is to get as far away from dogma as possible, because dogma is very problematic (as I described in my previous comment). I decided to find you an article I'd read before. It's behind a paywall so I copied it here.

Just as there can be intolerance to intolerance, absolute beliefs should also be held in disregard.

Wivagg, D., & Allchin, D. (2002). The Dogma of “The” Scientific Method. The American Biology Teacher, 64(9), 645–646. https://doi.org/10.1662/0002-7685(2002)064[0645:tdotsm]2.0.co;2

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