There are disagreements about details, but there are no disagreements about the basics. For instance although Newton is replaced by Relativity, but Newton is still good enough for 99.99% of gravitational computations.
Christians want biologists to seem in disagreement about evolution, because they think that makes their creation nonsense more plausible.
But in reality 90% of biologists agree on 90% of how evolution works. Compare that to religions, where you don’t have anything similar, even within the same religion. The new pope doesn’t even agree with the old pope, on how many children a priest is allowed to molest, before going to the police.
My point being is that scientists disagree with each other as much as religious groups disagree with each other. Disagreement within a group isn’t a valid reason to dismiss that group’s ideas, nor should we treat it as such.
Religions are as coherent and formal as scientific disciplines, if not even more so in many cases, especially within the same religion/tradition.
Would you then turn around and say that an entire scientific discipline is bunk simply because the outgoing president of an academic association disagreed with or had different views from the incoming president?
I agree with you that some religious folks argue in bad faith/polemics, and one of their tactics is to highlight the fact that science is not a monolith. I see that as a science communication problem, not as a reason to pretend that science actually is monolithic. It’s tremendously important to embrace the ways in which science could change, the ways that science is intended to be flexible, the ways that science actually produces a kind of knowledge among other ways of producing knowledge. But it’s silly to proclaim science as the only way of knowing things in the world, and then to say that it’s entirely (or even mostly) internally consistent and without debate. Science is debate.
Religions are as coherent and formal as scientific disciplines,
That’s just decidedly false.
Would you then turn around and say that an entire scientific discipline is bunk simply because the outgoing president of an academic association disagreed with or had different views from the incoming president?
If it was just personal opinions without evidence they just pulled out their behinds then yes absolutely.
Even ignoring the fact that Western science has roots in Catholicism, seems to me like most religions are fairly explicit about what they believe, and generally agree on what those beliefs are. The biggest religions in the world seem to have quite a bit of hierarchy and structure, with enough organization and agreement to produce large-scale structures and institutions. Sure there are disagreements - but those disagreements, again, are no reason to discount religion as a whole.
If it was just personal opinions without evidence they just pulled out their behinds then yes absolutely.
So again you’ve proved my point. It’s not the disagreement you have a problem with, it’s something else entirely.
Even ignoring the fact that Western science has roots in Catholicism,
That too is decidedly false. The sciences existed before Catholicism. Catholics just wanted to control science, like they wanted to control the minds of people in general.
Science progressed despite Catholicism, not because of it.
The biggest religions in the world seem to have quite a bit of hierarchy and structure,
Being Authoritarian and relying on power without merit, doesn’t mean it’s in any way comparable to science, which is a meritocracy, where logic based on evidence prevails over bullshit pulled out of someones ass, which is what religion is based on.
So again you’ve proved my point. It’s not the disagreement you have a problem with, it’s something else entirely.
It’s absolutely about the disagreement and how disagreements are resolved, it’s just not only the simplistically interpreted disagreement you present.
"Lindberg, David C.; Numbers, Ronald L. (1986), “Introduction”, God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 5, 12, ISBN 978-0-520-05538-4, ‘It would be indefensible to maintain, with Hooykaas and Jaki, that Christianity was fundamentally responsible for the successes of seventeenth-century science. It would be a mistake of equal magnitude, however, to overlook the intricate interlocking of scientific and religious concerns throughout the century.’
“…authors from the late 1980s to the 2000s developed contextual approaches, including detailed historical examinations of the relationship between science and religion (e.g., Brooke 1991). Peter Harrison (1998) challenged the warfare model by arguing that Protestant theological conceptions of nature and humanity helped to give rise to science in the seventeenth century. Peter Bowler (2001, 2009) drew attention to a broad movement of liberal Christians and evolutionists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who aimed to reconcile evolutionary theory with religious belief… Several historians (e.g., Hooykaas 1972) have argued that Christianity was instrumental to the development of Western science. Peter Harrison (2007) maintains that the doctrine of original sin played a crucial role in this, arguing there was a widespread belief in the early modern period that Adam, prior to the Fall, had superior senses, intellect, and understanding. As a result of the Fall, human senses became duller, our ability to make correct inferences was diminished, and nature itself became less intelligible. Postlapsarian humans (i.e., humans after the Fall) are no longer able to exclusively rely on their a priori reasoning to understand nature. They must supplement their reasoning and senses with observation through specialized instruments, such as microscopes and telescopes.”
Finally - the reason I say some of this in the first place - is from my familiarity with Foucault, and his history of the emergence of the “disciplines”. While Foucault is more specifically focused on what might be briefly described as the human sciences (or sciences aimed at the control of populations), he describes:
“…the modern Western state has integrated in a new political shape an old power technique which originated in Christian institutions. We can call this power technique the pastoral power… the multiplication of the aims and agents of pastoral power focused the development of knowledge of man around two roles: one, globalizing and quantitative, concerning the population; the other, analytical, concerning the individual. And this implies that power of a pastoral type, which over centuries —for more than a millennium— had been linked to a defined religious institution, suddenly spread out into the whole social body; it found support in a multitude of institutions. And, instead of a pastoral power and a political power, more or less linked to each other, more or less rival, there was an individualizing “tactic” which characterized a series of powers: those of the family, medicine, psychiatry, education, and employers.”
Then similarly in The Subject of Power:
“Given this, in the Western world I think the real history of the pastorate as the source of a specific type of power over men, as a model and matrix of procedures for the government of men, really only begins with Christianity” (pp. 147–48). I’d bet that if this was a little more my subject area I could dig up more on discourses of truth and the relationship to Western science within his work - but even here the sheer number of scientific disciplines this touches is significant.
Beyond that, no - science is not a meritocracy. I can tell you that from the inside, or I can point you a huge literature on the ways that science is anything but - start with the concept of the Matthew Effect.
Again, when you talk about what “religion is based on” you’re taking up an epistemic criticism. Same when you flat call religion bullshit. You’re talking about making decisions between the different ways that people form knowledge. Fine, have at it. But don’t start claiming that people disagreeing with one another within a social group is somehow cause for that entire social group and their ideas to be dismissed.
There are disagreements about details, but there are no disagreements about the basics. For instance although Newton is replaced by Relativity, but Newton is still good enough for 99.99% of gravitational computations.
Christians want biologists to seem in disagreement about evolution, because they think that makes their creation nonsense more plausible.
But in reality 90% of biologists agree on 90% of how evolution works. Compare that to religions, where you don’t have anything similar, even within the same religion. The new pope doesn’t even agree with the old pope, on how many children a priest is allowed to molest, before going to the police.
My point being is that scientists disagree with each other as much as religious groups disagree with each other. Disagreement within a group isn’t a valid reason to dismiss that group’s ideas, nor should we treat it as such.
Religions are as coherent and formal as scientific disciplines, if not even more so in many cases, especially within the same religion/tradition.
Would you then turn around and say that an entire scientific discipline is bunk simply because the outgoing president of an academic association disagreed with or had different views from the incoming president?
I agree with you that some religious folks argue in bad faith/polemics, and one of their tactics is to highlight the fact that science is not a monolith. I see that as a science communication problem, not as a reason to pretend that science actually is monolithic. It’s tremendously important to embrace the ways in which science could change, the ways that science is intended to be flexible, the ways that science actually produces a kind of knowledge among other ways of producing knowledge. But it’s silly to proclaim science as the only way of knowing things in the world, and then to say that it’s entirely (or even mostly) internally consistent and without debate. Science is debate.
That’s just decidedly false.
If it was just personal opinions without evidence they just pulled out their behinds then yes absolutely.
Even ignoring the fact that Western science has roots in Catholicism, seems to me like most religions are fairly explicit about what they believe, and generally agree on what those beliefs are. The biggest religions in the world seem to have quite a bit of hierarchy and structure, with enough organization and agreement to produce large-scale structures and institutions. Sure there are disagreements - but those disagreements, again, are no reason to discount religion as a whole.
So again you’ve proved my point. It’s not the disagreement you have a problem with, it’s something else entirely.
That too is decidedly false. The sciences existed before Catholicism. Catholics just wanted to control science, like they wanted to control the minds of people in general. Science progressed despite Catholicism, not because of it.
Being Authoritarian and relying on power without merit, doesn’t mean it’s in any way comparable to science, which is a meritocracy, where logic based on evidence prevails over bullshit pulled out of someones ass, which is what religion is based on.
It’s absolutely about the disagreement and how disagreements are resolved, it’s just not only the simplistically interpreted disagreement you present.
Well, let’s start with Wikipedia:
Then let’s go to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is really all I’m trying to say anyway:
Finally - the reason I say some of this in the first place - is from my familiarity with Foucault, and his history of the emergence of the “disciplines”. While Foucault is more specifically focused on what might be briefly described as the human sciences (or sciences aimed at the control of populations), he describes:
Then similarly in The Subject of Power:
Beyond that, no - science is not a meritocracy. I can tell you that from the inside, or I can point you a huge literature on the ways that science is anything but - start with the concept of the Matthew Effect.
Again, when you talk about what “religion is based on” you’re taking up an epistemic criticism. Same when you flat call religion bullshit. You’re talking about making decisions between the different ways that people form knowledge. Fine, have at it. But don’t start claiming that people disagreeing with one another within a social group is somehow cause for that entire social group and their ideas to be dismissed.