Isn't Religion Just a Science or History?

Isn't Religion Just a Science or History? [+ favourites]

If you think about it, Religion is just a bunch of theories and ideas that people have developed over time. There are some proofs in holy scriptures but they never really reveal the author so can they really be credible.

What I wonder is that, how come we believe religion, but not science? How come we believe stories that we don't really know as true, yet we counter every theory by scientists or have to have visible facts to prove a historical event? Shouldn't religion be treated the same way as science or History?

"If the opposite of Pro is Con, then is the opposite of Progress, Congress?"

the concept of heaven and hell that i was taught growing up scared me to death as a child but now makes me wonder why once "grown up", people still fall for it! you are right about people blindly believing in something so far-fetched and bizzare as heaven nd hell yet needing so much proof of historical events to believe them true or so many years of investigating a new scientific theory to make it a fact.... i think people need to be led... we need to blindly believe that if we behave ourselves we will be rewarded in an eternity of bliss or burn in hell. Religion allows us to have productive societies, a basic goodness in most of us and most of all rules to live by that really dont ask tooooooo much of us to be good....the ten commandments arent so hard to abide to by most of us, after all, there are only TEN....without rules we become barbaric........and unable to persuse scientific theories and wonders that have taught us how to advance ourselves thru the ages to now. so, without the "scientists" of the biblical age deciding we needed some rules to live by, we may have never progressed to where we are now, be that good or bad. science needs religion to exist at all and vise-versa........IF U ASK ME!

"boldly going nowhere"

Science, Religion and History are the same they just have different labels with a different finding.

Science is theory, religion is beliefs and history is a mixture of both. Science is finding facts, religion is finding God, and history is learning about the past.

To grasp this with a little more understanding, ask yourself, am I for real? or am I apart of someone elses dream? You think you know the answer, but honestly you do not know for sure.
Everything we think we know is nothing more than a bundle of beliefs that can easily become unraveled. So what is truth, it is what we believe it to be. Your choice is as good as mine.

"A fool says I know and a wise man says I wonder."

Okcitykid, I can see what you are saying, but science cannot be both theory and the search for facts. Unless, the facts you find can be put into a theory that has both a valid beginning and conclusion. I can see the big bang theory in that movement and radiation explain how the universe moves outward from a center...BUT science has not shown where the matter that exploded came from...thus negating the entire THEORY...Theory is the operative word...not fact. I do see how science and religion and history can all be general lumped into the same type of thought, though.

"Wars are not won by dying for your country, they a"

Tanker, by your definition of fact, nothing is true. You can always answer every answer with "why?".
"apples fall to the ground" why?
"because the earth is big and attracts it with gravity" why?
" because gravity acts as a bending in space" why?
"I... I don't know!"
Does this mean apples falling to the ground isn't a fact?
Just because someone cannot explain something entirely doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Heck, just look at lightning, We still don't reaally understand it, but that doesn't mean we don't have proof for it.

"AIDS is God's way of sending Catholics to heaven."

You make a good point with the lightning argument. You have a tendency, though to put arguments in my mouth...I explained how I can see the one portion of the theory, but the most important part is," where did the matter come from?"....at least in the argument I used. I apparently am not allowed to question anything you or others say, but you may insult me and question everything I say. Now that I know the rules I'll try better to parrot and nod at everything you say. I show one semblence of agreement with an opposing view and I am attacked...damn if you do.....The fact that the matter is not explained in its origin keeps the THEORY from being a FACT...once that origin is explained reasonably, then I might be willing to see it more openly...do you get how this works?

And apples falling to the ground is merely evidence of gravity, because gravity can only be SEEN in its effect on objects...for all we know earth sucks...haha!! At least with your logic....

I think I answered every point in your post, and in doing so we may have gone off course a little...sorry to the "freedom" police...I'll try to get back to the subject at hand.... To Mr. kid...my post was intended to say that I thought your idea about science, religion and history was interesting and had some truth to it...when it comes to how we think and debate these subjects...good point my friend.

"Wars are not won by dying for your country, they a"

" You have a tendency, though to put arguments in my mouth..."
Err sorry if I do, but I don't understand that expression (I'm of US-english origin but I've lived in france all my life so I don't understand all expressions)

"I explained how I can see the one portion of the theory, but the most important part is," where did the matter come from?"....at least in the argument I used. I apparently am not allowed to question anything you or others say, but you may insult me and question everything I say. Now that I know the rules I'll try better to parrot and nod at everything you say. I show one semblence of agreement with an opposing view and I am attacked...damn if you do.....The fact that the matter is not explained in its origin keeps the THEORY from being a FACT...once that origin is explained reasonably, then I might be willing to see it more openly...do you get how this works?"
We're on a discussion forum, we're supposed to question each other and discuss. Anyway, yes there is difference between theory and fact, but the lack of any idea where the matter came from is not the thing that makes it theory. As I've shown with the apple, no matter how much you explain, people can always ask you why to your explanation. You could explain that the matter came from quantum mechanics (being suggested) and people would ask where QM come from. We have NO IDEA where the rules of QM (or gravity; or sunlight for that matter) come from all we know is how they work and why they *must* exist (the laws allow us to explain systems and predict things).
But just because we don't know why the laws are there does not make you doubt the theories who describe those laws. It should the same with Big Bang who should be held as the most likely explanation thus far, because we know why it must happened but I doubt we'll ever trully know *why* it happened.

"AIDS is God's way of sending Catholics to heaven."

tanker: Thanks for the English lesson - if I need further clarification on a matter, I'll be sure to request your assistance. It is a good thing that others did not also misunderstand me.

"A fool says I know and a wise man says I wonder."

I agree that on the surface religion is like a theory or philosophy. But if you look deeply into it, at the essence of religion, you can see their quite different. The essence of religion is the teachings of the “prophets”. Christ, Mohammad, The Buddha etc. all taught a way to cope with the suffering of life and to find real happiness. Their teachings are not philosophies to be believed but instructions by which to live.

say to your question about religion, science, and history I believe in reality them all to be from the same source its humans who have separated them one from another. History, science. and religion all teach the same thing. Learning of the past, present, and future. The way we should be or the things we should do to make this illusion we live in more understandable. We are all different and as such each needs there own way in life. We cannot judge what we do not know. No matter what the subject is

"truth is the light of the way"

Science is based on the physical laws of nature. Without these laws science would be theory.

Since the begining of time, man has sought to understand who we are, why we exist and where we go after death. Religion played an important role in answering many of these questions. Also its importance in creating a social law and order cannot be overstated.

History covers both science and religion and everything affected such as political and social ramifications. Both science and religion have history. At a point in time in history, they were one in the same.

"No one died when Clinton lied!"

I agree with imn2caves except that science too is theory. They do have some facts, but is mostly theory so strongly believed that it is mistaken as fact. The same is true for religion. There is a God, this is fact to a religious person while it is theory to everyone else. To be able to respect the others point of view is to realize the elusion, and to know, that this is all we have to hold on to, we decide what to believe.

But yes, long long ago, everyone believed in God or kept their mouth shut about their disbelief. If there were no religion, government, law, beliefs, whatever. We would be barbarions and woman may not have survived and neither our race. We are a cruel disfunctional race of mamales, without threats of hell and condemnation we may not have survived.

"A fool says I know and a wise man says I wonder."

Religion is different from sciences (which history is arguably a part of) in that religion claims absolute truth. Sciences can only say 'this is more true then anything we thought was true before'. A scientific truth is always awaiting to be disproved so that the 'truth' can be more accurate. In contrast, a religious truth is supposedly eternal, static and absolute.

"Durch Nacht und Blut das Licht"

Ya Got a point. In religion a truth is unchanging while in science we are learning. That is the way it is supposed to be.

"A fool says I know and a wise man says I wonder."

Dont forget that in the heyday of religions before science was really founded by the royal society, if you did sin or do wrong, you would be burnt in hell, or suffer an eternity of pain or torture, because you would be burnt to death or tortured or inflicted with pain in many different forms, im sure a few hours serious torture is akin to a millenia of mythological hell. I mean if you think about it i suppose science has always been present because even primitive weapons and tools are considered a form of technology, and people have been mapping the stars and experimenting as they evolved, when was copernicus the 1400s? That was when they believed that the earth was at the centre of the galaxy or of the other planets, and when people believed the earth to be flat that must have been the science of the day, until proved otherwise, the royal society was founded in the 1600s. Some of Einsteins relativity has been proved wrong half a century later, you just dont get called a heretic or witch or blasphemer and killed for it anymore. Some religions used to sacrifice so that they would be sure to get food or a good season or assuage the sea god, because they believed it would bring about a positive effect or reaction for them, was that some kind of primitive twisted religio-science, before the two were seperated?