what we're up against
Reply #49 – 2010-03-04 13:57:32
I've enjoyed reading this discussion, and since a lot of points on pg 2 have revolved around belief etc., and history and perception of religion, I'd like to add a few clarification points. In my "real life" I'm a sociologist who studies how governments regulate religion, and have taught classes on sociology of religion, and the relationship between science and religion. For the record, I completely agree with euphonic that discussion of audio quality shouldn't be faith-based in nature. It's all about evidence. And the clarifications I'm making here are similarly not faith-based; I'm just reporting what academic scholars of religion think about a couple of things. I understand if this is getting into "religion and politics" territory, but I'm not intending to make any normative argument. Plus, I don't think I'm actually disagreeing with anything that people have said in this thread. But I'm totally fine branching off of this thread if people want to discuss this stuff. 1. Galileo didn't have conclusive evidence about heliocentrism. That's *part* of the reason it was such a big issue as a debate. Galileo's self-supposed best argument for heliocentrism was his argument from the tides - which turns out to have to do with the moon's gravitational field, not with the relative motion and size of earth vs. sun. Most historians of science agree that during the Galileo controversy, the evidence for geocentrism vs. heliocentrism was not conclusive. This DOESN'T absolve the Catholic church from declaring geocentrism "a matter of faith and morals" which now appears absolutely ludicrous. This probably wouldn't have happened except that Galileo wrote an open letter on scriptural interpretation (which he rightly understood as one of the major reasons for his opposition). I of course think that Galileo should have been able to discuss scriptural interpretation with Catholic hierarchy, even if he was kind of a prick. But the Galileo story isn't a clean-cut narrative about open-minded science being squelched by religion. It's only halfway that 2. Like andy o, I too have thought it curious that many educated people who are critical of religion and religious belief(s) give a free pass to to various "cute" and new-age systems of thought. Probably it's because these things given a free pass aren't highly-institutionalized, and part of the frustration or critique these people have is with institutional religion. As krabapple points out, Dawkins and various other "public atheists" (a.k.a. "new atheists" or "angry atheists") call this out as unfounded belief, along similar lines to how they perceive institutional religions. But it's worth noting that the perspectives of Dawkins et al, both about philosophy and sociology of religion (their books are usually 2-part: why belief in religion is stupid, and how religion has bad effects on the world), are rarely taken seriously by people who professionally study these issues. There are some good arguments made by the "public atheist" crowd, but many of their arguments are crap and are an embarassment to the many atheists who actually study religion. I think this is more true of their sociological arguments (about how religion affects society), but maybe that's just b/c I'm a sociologist and know my field better than I know philosophy of religion.