Is Religion Considered a Theory

Originally posted by MaskedAvatar
Religion is generally blind dogma with no theoretical underpinnings at all.

Nope, I'd have to disagree with that as well. A reliogion is a belief based upon faith of the implied unknown. That being said, in modern terms we could say that the word religion can apply to ANY belief of any certainty that still contains unknown variables. In other words, people who assume the unknown and do not leave room to accept anything different.

Lets look at some modern religions falling under this catagory;

Eugenics via WW2 fame was accepted as gospel while still posing unknowns.

Global Warming is accepted as gospel while still posing unknowns.

Evolution is accepted as gospel while still posing unknowns.

When you take a belief and place it above all scrutiny as with those above and defend even its obvious flaws as "accepted on faith", my friends you have created your own religion. It becomes as close-minded as any other and develops the same fundamentalist whackos as any other who will go to the same extremes to protect it as any other.

I think we as the human race must put the certainty of anything out ofm our minds and always be ready to adjust our thinking as progress plows on.

In the future, we might find out aliens had something to do with our origins, we might find out that the bible or koran are true and we migth find we did evolve from apes. However, to place a permanant and unyeilding belief on any classifies it as your religion.

We might look back 100 years from now at the farse that was global warming much as we now look back at the flat earth belief or eugenics or we might look back and say it was worse than we knew

So, my opinion is religion cannot be a theory but a theory can become a religion. Leave room for the unknown.

Astrocreep, If I could give a WATS I would too bad can't give on to mods.
What you have just stated is something that I have been campaigning here for a number of months but I have also ram into the wall of closed mindeness from both sides.
Do have a quick question for you. Love the remark that you made that I have quoted. Would like you'r ok to add it to my sig.

When you take a belief and place it above all scrutiny as with those above and defend even its obvious flaws as "accepted on faith", my friends you have created your own religion. It becomes as close-minded as any other and develops the same fundamentalist whackos as any other who will go to the same extremes to protect it as any other.

Originally posted by kenshiro2012
Astrocreep, If I could give a WATS I would too bad can't give on to mods.
What you have just stated is something that I have been campaigning here for a number of months but I have also ram into the wall of closed mindeness from both sides.
Do have a quick question for you. Love the remark that you made that I have quoted. Would like you'r ok to add it to my sig.

When you take a belief and place it above all scrutiny as with those above and defend even its obvious flaws as "accepted on faith", my friends you have created your own religion. It becomes as close-minded as any other and develops the same fundamentalist whackos as any other who will go to the same extremes to protect it as any other.

Dang! I would be flattered! Of course you have permission...and its good to see someone else who understands that self-actualization begins with the realization of just how much we don't know.

Evolution and Global warming do have some science behind them. But most religions tend to be a book of stories saying how to live and throwing some 'I am god worship me or go to hell' into it so that whoever is at the top of the religion can say something like ''Donate' to us or go to hell.' And if you dont belive me just ask yourself which, 'non-profit' organisation is also the most wealthy organisation on the planet.

One thing that makes faith different from theory is that faith does not require you to prove it.

For my own part, I would say that you have to look at theory in the first place. A theory, in science, is simply an hypothesis that has 'withstood refuation' for a while. There's no hard and fast point at which the hypothesis of a researcher is recognized to be a theory by groups of researchers, and it isn't really an important distinction anyway.

The most important thing about theories/hypotheses is that they can, potentially, be disproven. We can have a rational method by which we can 'reject' them. I hypothesize that the earth is flat, I refute this, amoung other ways, by sending a spaceship up and looking at the earth, finding it be spherical. The hypothesis is refuted.

In religion, there is no possibility the general principles of the faith can be refuted. Its not possible to refute a position that hasn't even been arrived at by rational thought in the first place.

One doesn't perform logical and empirical experiments to determine if god exists, and no experiement, ever, that fails to demonstrate that god exists thereby refutes the idea that he does anyway. And of course this goes for any particular portion of the faith system, whether its that Prayer can cure ills or that the Eucharist actually becomes the flesh of god. You can't ever demonstrate that they actually worked, and no matter how many times a study fails to find a real correlation between prayer and being cured or fails to find human protein in communion wafers, the faith remains.

Therefore religion is not a theory.