Worth Re: [FoRK] Faith and/or Science - Newton et al

[Tom Higgins]

On Nov 28, 2007 1:50 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar
<drernie at radicalcentrism.org> wrote:

> Religion is about creating shared meaning, and that cuts both ways.

That is an interesting definition of religion.

http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=religion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

all have definitions as well.

Shared Meaning though, that would be an interesting thing  to ponder.
You mean like a Flickr group? Would a flickr group eventually grow to
be able to have parts of that group feel justified in stoning a rape
victim?

>
> Then again, both those things easily happen without religion.

Yet it religions seem to make these institutional. If it were not so
why is it then so?

Your  examples of anti slavery and protecting from persecutions were
all in contradiction to prevailing power authorities of the day. Lets
not forget the Bible is very much peppered with pro slavery verses as
well as ones showing who the Lord does damage to those not in its
favor (children and bears etc etc etc)

>
> Why not take a *truly* scientific approach, and try to figure out what
> values and behaviors *truly* create evil, rather than naively lumping
> them under the guise of religion?

It is far from naive to look at the historic dealings of the religious
authorities and not see them as a problem....I hold it is dangerously
naive to not see religion as it is in fact  rather than how the
faithful would wish it to seem.

-tomhiggins