I wasn't intending it to have to do with TS's assertions since, like I said, I didn't read everything in the preceding thread (read the first few posts, then skipped to the 4th page or so). But it does happen that it is tangentially related in that it demonstrates that science, like philosophical and religious systems, absorbs and reinterprets preceding bodies of knowledge (or belief/myth, if you want to get into more particularized terminologies). I hope my point about the parallel is clear.
I've been searching for years for an adequate way to distinguish the two but have so far come up empty handed. I currently hold that there are more similarities than differences, for what it's worth.
Good point. It (the collaboration, despite ideological differences) is something I've certainly noted. So, what is the common goal, in your view?
See, I think the notion of empiricism already prejudies the discussion. That's because empiricism was developed as a system in conscious distinction from religion and religiosity. In fact, as an intellectual phenomenon, it arises first in a totally philosophical milieu--in Hume's re-appropriation of and reaction to Kant. Are you aware of that? Doesn't this relationship (empiricism as a modern philosophical school arising in conjunction with modern science) show an influence of philosophy on science, by the way? In any case, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to have a meaningful discussion concerning religion on the basis of a philosophy that was developed in conscious distinction (opposition?) to, religion. It would surely result in a foregone conclusion.
Also, could the fluidity of which you speak ever result in the scientific community maintianing the existence of a divine being or beings? Or is this something, that in your view, is forever excluded as a possibility from the scientific enterprise?
And, by the way, you aren't really maintaining that religious people never admit to being wrong, are you? Because that is an easily falsified claim: I know religious people, even up to those in high administrative positions, that will admit to being wrong. If you don't know any such, I would suggest you have little converse with religious people. Or perhaps you are saying that religious people won't admit to their core beliefs being wrong, as in an adherent of Islam ceasing to hold as authoritative the teachings of Mohammed? You must know that the history of science is full of stories of scientists clinging, one could say dogmatically, to some superseded theory, right? I would point to Einstein and his disposition toward Bohr and quantum mechanics as a recent example. Bohr's work has become foundational to modern physics, so it seems Einstein's skepticism about it was in error. So the tendency to cling to beliefs that might be considered outmoded seems a tendency not at all peculiar to practitioners of religion, and thus does not serve well as a litmus test for distinguishing science from religion.
