Neil deGrasse Tyson on religion and ..

[John Dule]

Tyson might be annoying and pedantic, but I'm instinctively skeptical of anyone who considers a fairly harmless pop scientist to be more worthy of criticism than the multitudes of dangerous fundamentalists who continue to afflict our society.

[John Dule]

Tyson might be annoying and pedantic, but I'm instinctively skeptical of anyone who considers a fairly harmless pop scientist to be more worthy of criticism than the multitudes of dangerous fundamentalists who continue to afflict our society.

Fortunately there aren't very many fundamentalists on this forum. If you want to debate Extreme Republican on evolution though, be my guest. I'd read it.

Regardless of whether they're on this particular site, they exist, and they're always going to be a bigger problem than a few Reddit fedora-wearers. If the worst thing people can think of to say about my ideology is that it's "cringe," I consider that a win.

[John Dule]

Tyson might be annoying and pedantic, but I'm instinctively skeptical of anyone who considers a fairly harmless pop scientist to be more worthy of criticism than the multitudes of dangerous fundamentalists who continue to afflict our society.

Did someone here say that?

This forum has a general obsession with whining about atheists.

[John Dule]

Tyson might be annoying and pedantic, but I'm instinctively skeptical of anyone who considers a fairly harmless pop scientist to be more worthy of criticism than the multitudes of dangerous fundamentalists who continue to afflict our society.

This is textbook whataboutism. "How can you criticize X when Y is worse?"

If someone spends all their time complaining about BLM protestors while ignoring police brutality, or if they constantly criticize western countries for human rights violations while ignoring brutal conditions in Russia and China, can we not make reasonable inferences about their ulterior motives? Of course we can, and the principle is the same here. I won't deny anyone their right to level criticism where it's deserved. But I will reserve the right to question whether they are doing so in an intellectually honest fashion.

A dogmatic belief in science may not be the perfect worldview, but it is (A) Preferable to a dogmatic belief in just about anything else, and (B) Clearly not a major concern in a world where huge portions of the population adamantly refuse to accept basic scientific facts. The idea that the public discourse on these issues is being primarily afflicted by too much faith in science is laughable.

[John Dule]

Tyson might be annoying and pedantic, but I'm instinctively skeptical of anyone who considers a fairly harmless pop scientist to be more worthy of criticism than the multitudes of dangerous fundamentalists who continue to afflict our society.

This is textbook whataboutism. "How can you criticize X when Y is worse?"

If someone spends all their time complaining about BLM protestors while ignoring police brutality, or if they constantly criticize western countries for human rights violations while ignoring brutal conditions in Russia and China, can we not make reasonable inferences about their ulterior motives? Of course we can, and the principle is the same here. I won't deny anyone their right to level criticism where it's deserved. But I will reserve the right to question whether they are doing so in good faith.

So your premise here is that Atlas almost never criticizes Evangelical fundamentalism? You know that's ridiculous. Or if your beef is with a specific poster or two, then you should make that clear.

My premise is that if you look at modern discourse and conclude that "scientism" is the major (or even a major) problem in our society, that has more to do with your preconceived notions than it does with anything else.

[John Dule]

Tyson might be annoying and pedantic, but I'm instinctively skeptical of anyone who considers a fairly harmless pop scientist to be more worthy of criticism than the multitudes of dangerous fundamentalists who continue to afflict our society.

This is textbook whataboutism. "How can you criticize X when Y is worse?"

If someone spends all their time complaining about BLM protestors while ignoring police brutality, or if they constantly criticize western countries for human rights violations while ignoring brutal conditions in Russia and China, can we not make reasonable inferences about their ulterior motives? Of course we can, and the principle is the same here. I won't deny anyone their right to level criticism where it's deserved. But I will reserve the right to question whether they are doing so in good faith.

So your premise here is that Atlas almost never criticizes Evangelical fundamentalism? You know that's ridiculous. Or if your beef is with a specific poster or two, then you should make that clear.

My premise is that if you look at modern discourse and conclude that "scientism" is the major (or even a major) problem in our society, that has more to do with your preconceived notions than it does with anything else.

Except no one actually said that. This particular thread just happens to be a critique of scientism, and you don't like that, so you're trying to shift the conversation to something else.

If you have substantive arguments, make them. If you find the whole topic uninteresting, don't post about it. But please save us this spineless bullsh*t. You're better than this, Dule.

You said that in the first comment you wrote in this thread. Don’t play dumb.

[John Dule]

Tyson might be annoying and pedantic, but I'm instinctively skeptical of anyone who considers a fairly harmless pop scientist to be more worthy of criticism than the multitudes of dangerous fundamentalists who continue to afflict our society.

This is textbook whataboutism. "How can you criticize X when Y is worse?"

If someone spends all their time complaining about BLM protestors while ignoring police brutality, or if they constantly criticize western countries for human rights violations while ignoring brutal conditions in Russia and China, can we not make reasonable inferences about their ulterior motives? Of course we can, and the principle is the same here. I won't deny anyone their right to level criticism where it's deserved. But I will reserve the right to question whether they are doing so in good faith.

So your premise here is that Atlas almost never criticizes Evangelical fundamentalism? You know that's ridiculous. Or if your beef is with a specific poster or two, then you should make that clear.

My premise is that if you look at modern discourse and conclude that "scientism" is the major (or even a major) problem in our society, that has more to do with your preconceived notions than it does with anything else.

Except no one actually said that. This particular thread just happens to be a critique of scientism, and you don't like that, so you're trying to shift the conversation to something else.

If you have substantive arguments, make them. If you find the whole topic uninteresting, don't post about it. But please save us this spineless bullsh*t. You're better than this, Dule.

You said that in the first comment you wrote in this thread. Don’t play dumb.

No I didn't. You might want to read that again.

For such a tireless advocate of dispassionate rationality, you're coming off awfully clouded by your own emotions on this particular matter.

You said that “arrogant scientism” is a problem with public discourse. My point is that it is the exact opposite of “scientism” that is the problem with public discourse around science. Can you address that argument, or will this exchange continue its devolution into useless pedantry?

[John Dule]

I said arrogant scientism was a presence in public discourse, which it objectively is (in fact, my exact word choice was "limping around", which hardly makes it sounds like the Major Issue like you claimed I said). I am not contractually obligated to only talk about major societal problems, nor is anyone else on this forum. I try to put some degree of thought in my word choice and I'd appreciate if you stopped putting words in my mouth. If not wanting to be reduced to a strawman is pedantry, then so f**king be it, I'll be as "pedantic" as I need to be for you to acknowledge what I actually did and did not say. And again, if you have substantive objections to critiques of scientism, it is incumbent on you to make these objections. Otherwise this is, once again, merely whataboutism and a complete waste of both of our times.

But if you want me to spoon-feed you a substantive disagreement you're unable to provide yourself, fine, here's one for you. Scientism and fundamentalism are fundamentally (no pun intended) two sides of the same coin, in that they rest on a broken conceptual foundation that implies that science and religion are competing worldviews, rather than separate domains of human thinking that exist to answer entirely separate questions. The idiots who claim the earth is 6000 years old because "muh Bible says so" old and the idiots who claim "modern science disproves God" are making the same basic mistake. If you're truly interested in rooting out religious obscurantism, then, perhaps you should be willing to recognize this mistake and call it out whenever it rears its ugly head.

It's completely absurd to equate these two. Full stop. That's what I'm getting at with my posts in this thread, and I thank you for outright stating this false equivalency so I can address it without having to make inferences about your position.

It's ridiculous to assert that "science and religion exist to answer entirely different questions." Really? Entirely different? So religion doesn't seek to provide any answers whatsoever about the origins of the natural world or the human race? Myths don't try to explain natural occurrences or the relationship between humankind and the world? I understand that you approach religion from a philosophical perspective because you're more educated on religious philosophy than 99% of people, but it's an extreme and demonstrably incorrect statement to say that there's no overlap whatsoever between the questions science and religion address. It's possible that you personally see science and religion as completely bifurcated, with no conflict between them-- but that is not the way millions of religious people approach their faith, and I'm not going to ignore their worldviews in favor of an (incorrect) analysis of religion as something that is intended to be purely philosophical or metaphorical. Your statement here completely ignores how religion guides people's thinking in the real world.

What I think you mean to say is that they're not mutually exclusive-- which I can agree with, but that's not the same thing as saying they're entirely separate. In short, this is an argument so stupid that only a smart person could possibly make it.

It's a basic truth that there are areas of conflict between science and religion. And once you accept that these conflicts exist, you have to make some kind of judgement about which approach is preferable to solving those conflicts. Saying that science and faith are in any way equivalent when it comes to resolving these conflicts is a false equivalency. Evidence and deductive reasoning are not in any way comparable to faith when it comes to their validity.

Another point: I don't think there are any adherents to "scientism" (insofar as such a thing exists) who actually think that science can answer moral truths or provide us with value judgements. I've certainly never heard Tyson make such a claim-- perhaps I'm not in the right online neckbeard communities to be exposed to these arguments, but I've never thought that anyone would entertain such an idea. On the other hand, there are overwhelming numbers of religious people who would contend that religion can answer the questions that you and I would consider to be within the purview of science-- questions about the laws of nature and natural history. Many of these people do indeed post on this site.

In fact, the only reason people make the argument that "science and religion are not in conflict" is because religion has effectively ceded one of its primary goals-- that of explaining the natural world-- to science (and even then, only in the face of overwhelming evidence). This has precipitated the cowardly attempt by "progressive" religious philosophers to retroactively define their faith as something that is only metaphorical. If anything, this process has not gone far enough. There are still millions of people in this country who refuse to accept the basic reality of evolution and the age of the Earth. Until that is no longer the case, I will continue to mock the assertion that "scientism" is a problem with our society that is worthy of discussion.

[John Dule]

I can't believe atheists feel persecuted on a site where they're about half if not a majority of posters -- and even most of the Christians are not these rabid fundamentalists who say you must believe to avoid Hell.

Come on, Dule. You're starting to sound just like Fuzzy Bear when he does his thing.

Lol, I'm not saying I'm being persecuted or running to the mods. I'm just responding to opinions that I consider wrong. Is that taboo now on this site?

[John Dule]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Creationism and Fundamentalism was not a thing in Christianity until the 19th century, with rise of Higher Biblical Criticism and all of that stuff, and then with the evolution stuff adding it's mix in. And it was mostly based in America, for many reasons.



https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/creationism/#HisCre


Many Christian thinkers have thought of the Bible as more metaphorical dating back to the 400s AD. Way before any scientific revolution happened, way before Charles Darwin.  People like Origen, Augustine,

" Catholics, especially dating back to Saint Augustine around 400 AD, and even to earlier thinkers like Origen, have always recognized that at times the Bible needs to be taken metaphorically or allegorically. Augustine was particularly sensitive to this need, because for many years as a young man he was a Manichean and hence denied the authenticity and relevance of the Old Testament for salvation. When he became a Christian he knew full well the problems of Genesis and hence was eager to help his fellow believers from getting ensnared in the traps of literalism."

Emphasizing the operative words here. Sure, there are parts of the Bible that have historically been considered metaphorical-- but to assert that Biblical scripture never attempted to provide any explanations of the natural world, and that people have always recognized the text as metaphorical, is absurd.

[John Dule]

Catholics and much of the liturgical churches like Eastern Orthodoxy, do not solely rely on the Bible. Hence, your biggest mistake in my view, is assuming all Christians hold on to Sola Scriptura. Which I think is at the crux of this issue we're having.

America is majority protestant. Right ? And what do protestants believe ? Sola Scriptura. Bible alone contains truth. That raises a lot of issues. Especially when it comes to Science. If one is going to read the Bible literally without any philosophical underpinnings, of course, they're going to believe in Creationism. I don't myself.  I actually find Creationism to be contrary to Christian thought about the nature and meaning of god, because it reduces the essence of God to a human, basically.



Catholics on the other hand take a look at a variety of sources, including Church Tradition, natural philosophy, and science.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVsbVAVSssc The Bible is not a science book. It's not supposed to be a science book. It's theology.

John, ask yourself this, if Fundamentalism, and Literalism was so common in Christianity, why did it only begin to pop up in America in the late 1800s and early 1900s ? And in Protestant circles ?

This discussion isn't about Catholicism or even Christianity. It's about religion in general and the fact that creation myths seek to explain elements of the natural world. I give Catholicism a lot of credit in terms of how open it is to scientific pursuits (at least when compared to, say, modern Islam). I have also argued in the past (including on this site) that the Catholic Church was at times a force for good in Medieval Europe, not only as a patron of the arts and sciences, but also as a node of power separate from the kings that contributed massively to the emergence of egalitarian and inclusive political systems in Europe. This cannot be said of the Orthodox churches, for example.

Having said all this, the fact remains that you cannot handwave away the historical tension between Catholicism and scientific pursuits, much of which was motivated by a literal interpretation of scripture. The entire basis for the Church's persecution of Galileo was a literal interpretation that arrived at the conclusion of geocentrism. There are many other examples.

[John Dule]

The bolded part is Pop History. There's new historical scholarship in the last decade or so that gives a far more nuanced view of what happened with Gaileo.

1. For one thing, for one thing, the Geocentrism belief was not based off the Bible. It was a given belief for thousands of years, going back to the ancient greeks and Romans. The Greek Philosopers And given, the lack of the technology at the time, well... it was natural that people were going to believe Geocentrism. Much of the scientists including the Jesuits up until the 17th century, worked off this assumption. Because they didn't have the technology. 17th century telescopes weren't that great.

2. The Heliocentrism theory was not the only alternative. Tychus Brache's theory was far more popular as a " alternative " to the geocentric model. And given, the scientific instruments at the time, it was easier to prove. The Catholic Church was leaning towards Brache's theory, including many Jesuits. Actually, there were from what I read 8 different models of how the sun and earth moved.

3. When Galieli first started off, the Catholic Church didn't care. The theory was around for several decades already, and the Church saw it as a non issue. Many of his early works were approved by the Church. They didn't see it as an issue. So what happened ? He presented it as fact. Without the advances in technology however, it could not be proved. That was the sticking point. Many of the prominent scientists at the time saw serious scientific flaws with the idea including Giovvani Battisa Riccioli, who wrote a book on Heliocentrism, and it's supposed flaws.


There was also politics, petty drama, personal name calling, innuendo, typical of 17th century Italy.


Mariano Artigas and William R. Shea, Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius (2003)

Richard J. Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible (1991)

Christopher Graney, Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo, (2015)

Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Copernicus in the Cultural Debates of the Renaissance: Reception, Legacy, Transformation, (2014)

4. Of course all of this was made mute when James Bradley several decades later discovered Light aberration, which proved Heliocentrism 100 percent. Thanks to the advancements in technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberration_(astronomy)#Discovery_and_first_observations

"Pop history?" These are the Bible quotations at issue:

Chronicles 16:30: "Tremble before him, all the earth. The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved."

Psalm 93:1: "He has established the world; it shall never be moved."

Ecclesiastes 1:5: "The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises."

Are you honestly going to tell me that the Church of Galileo's time wasn't motivated at all by a literal interpretation of these passages? That is ahistorical nonsense.

[John Dule]

What you're saying is Ahistorical. Literally, there is new historical scholarship that I have listed. Those books ( I have read in my free time ), that shows more nuances than your black and white pop culture history.

Geocentrism was an accepted belief in Western Civilization before the rise of Christianity from the time of the Greeks. And the Catholic Church absorbed that. Plain and Simple. Yes those Bible verses solidified the belief. But this was the most common belief of how the earth and sun moved for thousands of years. Before Christianity ever came into being.


Heliocentrism was already an idea floating around before Galieo's rise to fame, but the majority of Scientists rejected it. Plain and simple. It was never a majority consensus. Because no one had the ability to prove scientifically the sun was at the center. The technology wasn't there until 100 something years later. Scientists such as Johann Goerg Locher, Christopher Clavius, opposed Heliocentrism not on the basis of those verses but because there wasn't explicit proof. None. The technology wasn't there yet to provide that evidence needed.

The growing scientific Consensus as the time was not for Geocentrism, or for Heliocentrism, it was for Tychus Brache's theory, as I HAVE SAID ALREADY. And once again, given the technology at the time, Brache's theory was more easily proven.




https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/science-against-copernicus-in-the-age-of-galileo/


By the way, Scientist Philloppe Van Lansbergen a non Catholic scientist criticized Galieo for using non scientific arguments to prove Heliocentrism.

Who cares whether geocentrism existed prior to the Catholic Church or not? That is completely unrelated to the question of whether church teachings have historically come into direct conflict with science.

Here is the exact wording of the reasoning why the Catholic Church began its inquisition of Galileo, taken verbatim from the time:

[Galileo's proposition is] "formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture."

If you are not going to engage with basic facts, I am not going to waste my time responding to a Christian trying to retroactively justify something his church did 400 years ago. There is no point in getting bogged down in this one example. I could just as easily have cited the fact that Catholic bishops in the 21st Century have spread fearmongering falsehoods about condoms being ineffective against HIV-- a deliberate lie in direct contradiction to established medical science, done for the sole purpose of preventing what church doctrine considers a sin.

This conversation is not about specifics. It is about the general conflict between religion and science. And my only contention in my response to Antonio was that this conflict exists. Please limit all future replies to responding to that proposition. My mother also said she will take away my phone if I debate abortion.

[John Dule]

What you're saying is Ahistorical. Literally, there is new historical scholarship that I have listed. Those books ( I have read in my free time ), that shows more nuances than your black and white pop culture history.

Geocentrism was an accepted belief in Western Civilization before the rise of Christianity from the time of the Greeks. And the Catholic Church absorbed that. Plain and Simple. Yes those Bible verses solidified the belief. But this was the most common belief of how the earth and sun moved for thousands of years. Before Christianity ever came into being.


Heliocentrism was already an idea floating around before Galieo's rise to fame, but the majority of Scientists rejected it. Plain and simple. It was never a majority consensus. Because no one had the ability to prove scientifically the sun was at the center. The technology wasn't there until 100 something years later. Scientists such as Johann Goerg Locher, Christopher Clavius, opposed Heliocentrism not on the basis of those verses but because there wasn't explicit proof. None. The technology wasn't there yet to provide that evidence needed.

The growing scientific Consensus as the time was not for Geocentrism, or for Heliocentrism, it was for Tychus Brache's theory, as I HAVE SAID ALREADY. And once again, given the technology at the time, Brache's theory was more easily proven.




https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/science-against-copernicus-in-the-age-of-galileo/


By the way, Scientist Philloppe Van Lansbergen a non Catholic scientist criticized Galieo for using non scientific arguments to prove Heliocentrism.

Who cares whether geocentrism existed prior to the Catholic Church or not? That is completely unrelated to the question of whether church teachings have historically come into direct conflict with science.

Here is the exact wording of the reasoning why the Catholic Church began its inquisition of Galileo, taken verbatim from the time:

[Galileo's proposition is] "formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture."

If you are not going to engage with basic facts, I am not going to waste my time responding to a Christian trying to retroactively justify something his church did 400 years ago. There is no point in getting bogged down in this one example. I could just as easily have cited the fact that Catholic bishops in the 21st Century have spread fearmongering falsehoods about condoms being ineffective against HIV-- a deliberate lie in direct contradiction to established medical science, done for the sole purpose of preventing what church doctrine considers a sin.

This conversation is not about specifics. It is about the general conflict between religion and science. And my only contention in my response to Antonio was that this conflict exists. Please limit all future replies to responding to that proposition. My mother also said she will take away my phone if I debate abortion.

1. My point was; the accepted scientific consensus. ACCEPTED SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS. Up until the 1700s was Geocentrism. Plain and Simple. How can an scientific proposal conflict with " faith ", if the science itself did not fully support it ? The technology was not there to prove Heliocentrism. Plain and Simple.


If Heliocentrism was such a threat, the Catholic Church should have shut it down several decades before. Instead, it was allowed to fester and grow behind the scenes.


Gaileo's mistake was that he treated the theory as fact. It wasn't yet. Most historians of science agree that Heliocentrism wasn't explicitly proven until several decades after Gailei's death.


I'm a history major. I read books. What I'm saying isn't pro christian propaganda. Literally, what you're doing is what you accuse the Fundamentalists of doing. Taking quotes out of context, and refusing to read the sources. The scientific pushback against Galiei's ideas were there. THIS IS BASIC FACTS.


ACTUAL HISTORICAL SCHOLARSHIP ! Someone who accuses others of being anti intellectual, but who doesn't read the new updated historical scholarship is being quite hypocritical don't you think?


2. Also, the issue of condoms is not Church Dogma. It's a tradition. Upheld by the Popes. Wrongly ? Sure. There are still a vast number of theologians, normal catholics, who disagree with this ban. Heck, Pope Francis might change the church's teachings on Humane Vitae......





I need a vodka.

Do you understand that my point doesn’t even depend on whether Galileo was right? All I need to show is that the Church’s persecution of him was motivated by biblical literalism and your argument is disproved. You are completely obfuscating the subject of discussion.

[John Dule]

It's completely absurd to equate these two. Full stop. That's what I'm getting at with my posts in this thread, and I thank you for outright stating this false equivalency so I can address it without having to make inferences about your position.

I'm sorry you were unable to state your position in such a way as to make the disagreement clear and instead had to resort to cheap strawmanning to engineer something to be mad about. I'm sure you can do better next time.

Where's the strawman? You just stated a more up-front version of what you'd implied from the beginning of this thread, and I responded to it. I'm not understanding this comment.

Of course plenty of religious people have used religion as the basis for making empirical claims. And people like NdGT use science as the basis for making metaphysical claims. My point is that they're both epistemically incorrect in doing so, and their mistake is fundamentally the same even if it leads in opposite direction. So your argument boils down to the fact that a lot of people make this mistake, and therefore their framing should be taken as normative even though it's conceptually unsound. An oddly democratic position coming from you!

Who are these people using science as the basis for metaphysical claims? Tyson wasn't doing this in the video that was linked in the OP. I know that he's said in the past that philosophy is dumb (and I'm not gonna defend him on that point whatsoever), but that's not the same thing as claiming that science can derive the ought from the is, which is what you said he was doing.

Or we could, you know, resolve these conflicts based on the actual merits of the specific claims involved? I've always taken the side of "science" when it comes to making testable, replicable predictions about empirical phenomena, and nothing I've posted here in any way undermines that. That's what science is for - no more and no less. What more do you want exactly? If you're looking for some dogmatic allegiance to "science" as the only source of truth, then I'm afraid you're exactly the kind of person this thread is for.

I'll repeat myself to be even more clear: The only times when science and religion conflict are in the areas of predicting and explaining natural phenomena. We should defer to science in those areas because it is the discipline that is best suited to answer them.

I have no "allegiance to science" that extends outside its purpose, and I never suggested I did. Where are you getting the idea that I consider science "the only source of truth?" The "scientism" boogeyman isn't real, dude. Men in lab coats are not going to break into your house and burn your Hegel collection.

Uh, didn't Sam Harris write a whole book about exactly that?

I've literally never read anything by Sam Harris. You seem to think I know a lot about him, but that is only because I said he wasn't "alt-right." If he's out there making such arguments, feel free to enlighten me-- though I don't see how that's relevant to your initial claim in this thread, which was that Tyson adheres to that worldview.

His main thing seems to be blithely dismissing the value of philosophy. I don't have quotes on hand but from what I've heard before he seemed anything but humble on the matter. If there's any specific claim of his you want to bring up, I'm happy to discuss it, but I'm not that interested in the topic to dig it up myself.

I'm well aware of this tendency of his and I find it stupid. That doesn't change the fact that this does not fit the definition of "scientism" you provided, because he is not "using science as the basis for making metaphysical claims," but rather denying the utility of metaphysics.

On the other hand, there are overwhelming numbers of religious people who would contend that religion can answer the questions that you and I would consider to be within the purview of science-- questions about the laws of nature and natural history. Many of these people do indeed post on this site.

Yes, and I've criticized them plenty of times. Your point?

1) Religion, in its day-to-day application, constantly encroaches on the realms of human inquiry that are the purview of science.
2) Science does not encroach on the realms of human inquiry that are the purview of philosophy/religion (at least, apparently outside of a book written by a frequent Bill Maher guest and a few Reddit fedoras).

Given these two facts, it's hard for me to comprehend how someone could call religious fundamentalism and "scientism" "two sides of the same coin." Maybe in a fantasy world where "scientism" was a commonly held belief leading to incalculable social costs and widespread public ignorance about other areas of life, this would be true. In reality the two are completely incomparable when it comes to their effects on society.

This is a deeply ignorant (and laughably America-centric) understanding of the relationship between religion and science, which have enjoyed a productive relationship with religious structures in many civilizations across centuries. That aside, once again, I've not exactly been kind to religious fundamentalists who deny scientific findings, so all you're doing here is concern trolling.

All of my posts on this forum are America-centric.

It's worthy of discussion because I (and other posters) am interested in discussing it. Period. If you aren't, you're welcome to f**k off from this thread. But I don't need to justify my personal gripes based on how much social harm they might cause. As if you yourself didn't constantly bring up petty bullsh*t with no real world implications on this forum. Get over yourself.

You're really mean sometimes when we have our conversations. It makes me sad.

[John Dule]

That's not what Scientism is.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

I didn't quote your entire post because it's long, but I really appreciate the work that you put into it.

Hot Take : The New Atheists have more in common with the Christian Fundamentalists than people think.

Cold take: No they don't.