Any example of either as a business is already a corrupt example, as they are at their core methodologies rather than games.
How do you figure that? Is that what most religions claim to be doing? Just as many confuse science (method) for technology (tangible results), many do the same with religion (method) and mythology (tangible cause). The disconnect is that 1. mythology functions as a metaphor, as storytelling rather than history, and 2. the mythology exists because it is used by the true purpose of religion, which is to discern and cultivate subjective meaning. Because knowing how and why the universe exists does not automatically help one to know one’s place in it, or find personal or cultural meaning in any objective phenomena.
Finding meaning in what doesn’t exist is how many fail at religion, but that is not a flaw of religion itself. Most people just aren’t very thorough or rigorous. And elites encourage the masses to be gullible, which I think is what the OP is getting at.
I am not sure if “supernatural” is a meaningful distinction. My experience is that people throw it about assuming that they know what it would mean. Most people I know don’t even agree about what is “natural” in the first place. So it IMO tends to lead to an infinite regress of people arguing for and against poorly-defined terms.
As an engineer, I have created several gods. It’s pretty easy, anybody can do it and it’s a lot of fun. But to me, the distinction between art and religion is a false one. To me, they are synonymous. Art and religion are no more nor less than techniques for understanding and communicating that which is completely subjective. But this generally happens in its deepest at a pre-verbal, symbolic level of consciousness. So symbols and artworks can and do incorporate things from the objective world. But just like literature, they are not meant to be taken literally. The fact that many misunderstand this does not change how religion works, any more than it does when many also misunderstand how science works.
Oh, one more thing, there is a lot of anti-science on the left side of the political spectrum as well. As well as many secular people. Crystals and New Age stuff, westernized Eastern religions/philosophies (chi, chakras, etc), homeopathy, alternative “medicine”, certain fad diets, vaccines, anti-Nuclear Energy, aromatherapy, supplements, weed cures everything, etc etc. There are a TON of beliefs not based on science that have nothing to do with religion.
And don’t tell me Americans are gullible when you can buy “medicine” in Europe made of diluted duck parts (aka sugar pills).
I quoted this before, and feel that I’ll be quoting it a lot going forward:
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
Americans are gullible. Ever had a look where Hahnemann came from? And Steiner?
We Europeans INVENTED the stuff, and Americans bought and imported that bullshit!
SCNR. On a more serious note, my fucking health insurance pays for homeopathy. Granted, it also payed for the liver transplant and immune suppressors and surgery my infant relative needed. But it pays for stuff which makes people dumb, apparently. (Before you ask: people believing in that quackery actually suggested to the parents of said child they should try homeopathy instead, so yesssss: homeopathy is harmful.)
Religion isn’t a “metaphor” for the vast majority of religious people but a literal attempt to influence the power or powers supposedly ruling the universe. When somebody is ill, the general response from a religious person is “I’ll pray for them”. The idea being if enough people pray for somebody, their life will be spared, sort of like how a petition with enough signatures is supposed to influence politicians.
I sort of agree. Except that “powers ruling the universe” and “politicians” alike are indeed metaphorical, in that the “influence” is essentially upon our own self-constructed models of the external “reality” we may speculate about. In the sense that the only thing one knows first-hand is the state of their own nervous system. For example, ancestor worship can function as a metaphor for the continuous cellular regeneration of my body. Their “wisdom” is the hopefully maintained integrity of my genetic template, and effective error correction as my cells duplicate over time. With this understanding, I truly can be said to receive communications from my dead ancestors.
Whether people like it or not, the verbal, discursive mind is to a degree separate, abstracted from the deeper structures of the brain. Most of it is pre-verbal, which is to say in communication terms, symbolic. People can and do interpret symbols in literal ways, but I would argue that they would be misguided in doing so. The distinction I think is that it does not help for this error to be a rationale for de-valuing the actual raw methodologies as they truly work. Any more than the masses frequent misunderstandings of science should de-value the science. Rather than trying in vain to explain either side away, I find it more useful to keep them distinct. Not unlike a tedious “analog versus digital” debate, they are simply - for better or worse - mostly separate signal domains which we nonetheless have to messily reconcile from time to time.
IF (I guess that’s a big “if”) we operate on the assumption that science is the discipline of the objective, and religion/art is the discipline of the subjective - then I think that most confusion or problems between them can be productively resolved by seeing how one domain was simply, at some stage, confused for the other. It’s a much IMO simpler and effective strategy than countless versions of “My metaphysics are truly enlightened, but yours aren’t even reeeeel!”, which seems to always degenerate into a pissing contest, regardless of the respective merits of either party. Because, of course, anybody can say that.
Yep, Germany. They don’t need to, it’s a special service - to attract customers, I believe.
And no, that wasn’t a doctor. That was a trained and certified shaman and naturopath.
FTR, since the child needs immune suppressants, vaccinations for all family members are becoming an issue. I’m not yet sure how to convince my in-laws that they should get all the vaccinations which are suggested, and even some extras. Since its not my child, it might come over as asshattery.
I don’t know what that particular child’s parents believe, but if it were my child the immediate, non-negotiable method of persuasion for any relatives up to and including my own parents would be, “Until you either get all the suggested vaccinations or provide medical evidence you are unable to do so, you are no longer part of my child’s life.”
The trouble is: its not my child, so its not decision. I’ll have a chat with both parties, but I’m pretty sure my own involvement will not be appreciated by anyone.
I think your approach to science is wrong – scientists don’t so much “believe” in something as tentatively accept a theory based on observation and experiment. It’s not so much “believing in science” as accepting the scientific method as the best way to understand the universe, at least until better data and models come along. And it’s also not so much “believing in climate change” as looking at the data (or, if you’re not a climate researcher, looking at their conclusions) and accepting it as the best theory of where the climate is headed, until better data comes along. However, since data has been coming along for decades (and has been gathered from previous millennia via verified measurement techniques), the theory is accepted as pretty darn good (since they have predicted things that have come true). And the theory predicts some dire consequences in the coming decades. Just because you don’t “believe” in anthropogenic global warming doesn’t mean it isn’t the best way of describing what’s going on.
Note that “accepted as true” is not the same as “belief,” because latter indicates a kind of acceptance without proof, which is NOT the case with AGW.
BTW, one of the elements supporting AGW is thermodynamics, which has been verified over and over for over a hundred years, and is considered one of the most important scientific principles in existence. If AGW is untrue, then there’s something wrong with thermodynamics. That’s like saying gravity doesn’t exist.
I wonder if we should emphasize the teaching of the scientific method from an early level, as opposed to just teaching scientific facts. Put the emphasis on science being a way of finding truth, with the acknowledgement that it’s always tentative. Perhaps people would be able to be more accepting of the fruits of science as being the best that we know at the moment, even if they don’t fully understand how the results were achieved.
Precisely! ANY belief is basically a shorthand to avoid checking current evidence. “Belief in science” might even be the most insidious, since the uninformed are more likely to mistake it for a rational practice, when it is usually just a matter of consensus. An evidence-based society requires that everybody does their homework, so it really isn’t “path of least resistance” friendly.
That’s obviously what should happen. So obviously, in fact, it’s hard not to think that schools have made an organic, political decision not to teach that way. After all, most schools rely pretty heavily on “because I said so” working as the answer to various questions.
