> > Chris
> > Science can be a religion in the sense that people can try to hold
> > "scientific" views on faith, and be dogmatic about them. But I think it
> > worth mentioning that science itself cannot be a religion. It
> is a body of
> > knowledge and an empirical method for discovering and validating that
> > knowledge and more empirical knowledge.
>
> JER: Actually, Chris, there are numerous senses in which people
> can take science
> as a religion.
>
> Which supports Chris's statement. People can try to hold
> scientific views on faith but science is not a religion by
> itself, at most a small part of it.
Perhaps you (and Chris?) mean only that science is not -necessarily- a
religion, not essentially a religion? I completely agree with that. But I
still think that some people use it that way. Perhaps it would be best to
call "scientism" sometimes a religion, or "scientific atheism" or something
like that. SOME of such people could and I think do take science as a
religion, and they may see that as the only coherent way to practice and
believe in science. But I agree that they're wrong: it's not even remotely
essential to science, and if that was your (plural) point, I missed it,
though I agree with it. Sorry about that.
I simply took something to be sometimes a religion if some people
practiced/believed it as such, that is was considered to answer religious
questions, and/or give ultimate purpose, etc. (BTW, the concept of what is
or is not a religion is a vague, but not meaningless, one, I think.)
Holding scientific views "on faith" hasn't much to do with it being a
religion, at least not if "by faith" means "without compelling evidence".
All scientific beliefs -rest upon- "faith" in that aridly philosophical
sense of the term. That doesn't mean science is unreliable, or fideistic,
or a religion (per se) -- it just means it has many assumptions, many
foundation stones that inevitably and properly go well beyond any evidential
support (unless one accepts circular arguments, anyway). This isn't a
criticism at all, just an observation.
(If someone were to argue that not-evidentially-compelled assumptions --
"faith" -- made science a religion, then presumably things like believing in
the laws of logic, other minds, the past, the reliability of memory and the
senses, etc. etc. would also be religions, which would seem rather odd.
[But perhaps some Eastern religionists would disagree here, seeing those
beliefs as controversial and religiously opposed to their convictions . . .
hmmm.])
John