Re: science and religion, was Re: Intelligent Design Invading Liberal Classrooms (was: South Park taunting Scientology)

On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 17:41:03 -0800 (PST), brian@xxxxxxx (Brian Tung)
wrote:

>When you characterized religious feeling as irrational, I found that
>uncharitable, but accurate. However, I do not feel that way about
>"psychologically damaged." That presupposes that humans begin life
>rational, and that in order to harbor religious feeling, something must
>first damage them. I see no evidence for that whatsoever. In my
>experience, people with no psychological trauma find themselves capable
>of a great variety of religious feeling--however irrational that feeling
>might be.

Brian-

I did not characterize "religious feeling" as the product of
psychological damage. I characterized a belief in core Christian
concepts as such. More generally, I suspect (but certainly don't claim I
can prove) that any religious beliefs that involve a "parent-like"
deity, requiring worship, meting out punishment, and generally getting
involved in human activities, are the product of psychological damage.


>Aside from religious *feeling*, asserting that some deity created the
>universe, and is in some manner responsible for the way it is, is simply
>an axiomatic position.

I agree, and I only consider such an assertion to be irrational (where
the word simply means the opposite of rational, and isn't intended as
pejorative in any way), not the product of any sort of psychological
damage.

BTW, I don't consider "psychologically damaged" to be insulting or
pejorative, either, although it is easily taken that way. I think
everyone is probably psychologically damaged in one way or another; it
is a specific sort of damage that leads to certain (but not all)
religious beliefs.

This is something interesting, which I'd be happy to discuss further
off-list, this being seriously OT (insofar as we are no longer
discussing the definition of science at all).

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
.