The difference between science and religion.

[DetlefK]

Science has no holy books.

Science has no prophets.

Science has no chosen people.

Science can be discovered and lost and re-discovered and re-lost and re-re-re-re-re-discovered and re-re-re-re-re-lost and it will always be the same.

Burn all the books, kill every last person who knows about science and wipe out every memory of them: Somewhere someone will rebuild science in exactly the same way.

A religion is built on belief and trust and guidance and arguments. Miracles and proofs somehow always require a belief upfront.
Science needs no belief, no trust, no guidance and no arguments.
Science needs no defence or defend itself.
Science is literally put to the test quadrillions of times each day. And it passes almost every time.
And those incidents that threaten and destroy science aren't debated away or ignored. They are celebrated with the utmost jubilation, for every time science gets crushed, it arises stronger from the ashes. With every challenger that defeats science, it grows stronger and stronger instead.

It adapts to the new situation by changing down to its very core.

And its coming for you.

Resistance is futile.

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Religion has holy books.

Religion has prophets.

Religion has chosen people.

When a religion is lost, then it stays lost.

Burn all the books, kill all its believers, wipe out every memory of them: Nobody will ever find this particular belief-system again.

Religion is almost never put to a serious test. And the few times it is, it doesn't pass.
And those incidents are treated with scorn, they are debated away and outright ignored.
When a challenger defeats religion, it doesn't get reborn or replaced. Parts of it get amputated and new body-parts are stitched in those places. The religion becomes a patchwork of badly fitting components.

Religion is coming for you.

Resistance is possible.





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Science and religion are metaphysically and philosophically fundamentally different systems.

"Well, you believe in those laws of physics." - No, I don't. I doubt them with every fiber of my being. I doubt them, I test them in every waking moment of my life. I eagerly wait for them to fail, only to be disappointed and seeing them confirmed over and over and over again.

You believe in your religion. You believe and you wait every waking moment for something that supports your religion.

They. Cannot. Be. Reconciled.

[Maedhros]

1. Religious beliefs are based on revealed truth, and requires faith in the unobservable.

e.g. God delivering the Ten Commandments to Moses, and 'God has a plan for you.'

Science doesn't trade in 'truth' - a thing is 'true' only as long as it survives efforts to disprove it. Science is based on ongoing observation, questioning, and reevaluation.

[bvf]

2. And science seeks to explain.

Explanation is anathema to religion at its core.

[edhopper]

3. And when it turns out that

the chances of Moses even existing are within one standard deviation of being none.
They still choose to belief the story because "faith".

[Yorktown]

4. Agree with what you wrote, but there is worse

Agreed, Science works by proving things, eventually changing when new proofs refine what was hitherto believed.
But you did not mention another difference which is that religion prescribes harmful attitudes and actions, while science does not (or unknowingly)

Science in itself doesn't cause harm. Science explains things, allows to make things, but doesn't tell you what to do. Science can discover how to split atoms, but the decision to build an atom bomb is social, political, not scientific in itself. I will admit one big -but receding- caveat: Science, when wrong, could lead to harmful practices, ex: 'therapeutic' bloodletting.

While religion, in addition to being at best unprovable, at worst pure fantasy (Moses, Noah, etc), actively prescribes harmful or violent conducts.
- Why does ISIS throw gays from high towers? Because that's what **rolls eyes** god did to people in Sodom and Gomorrah, apparently as a cherry on top of fire and brimstone (*)
- Why did the Roman Catholic Church help the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa? Why does the Roman Catholic Church condone 'Kill the gays' bills in Africa? Because of religion itself,.

Unproven harmful ideologies should be called what they are: dangerous delusion.


(*) NB: it's not just the loons of ISIS. Here, the *learned* opinion of a sheik in Medina:

[mr blur]

5. Or to put it another way,