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submitted 11 months ago by bullshitter@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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[-] ada 88 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I'll quote Tim Minchin here

"If you wanna watch telly, you should watch Scooby Doo
That show was so cool
Because every time there was a church with a ghoul
Or a ghost in a school
They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?
The fucking janitor or the dude who ran the waterslide
Because throughout history
Every mystery
Ever solved has turned out to be
Not magic"
[-] lars@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 11 months ago

Like one of my faves of his

Do you know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? Medicine.

[-] maliciousonion@lemmy.ml 71 points 11 months ago

Germ Theory

Diseases used to be associated with paranormal powers or the wrath of gods in most cultures. The discovery of microorganisms and advancement of medicine may be our civilization's greatest achievement.

[-] ananas@sopuli.xyz 57 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Science deals with the natural, gods are by definition supernatural.

Science can not either prove or disprove existence of supernatural. It may only erode the reasoning why supernatural should exist.

That reasoning is subjective, and as such, there are no definite answers to your question unless we add additional constraints.

[-] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago

Didn't some quantum nondeterminism prove the existence of effects without a natural cause? (being divil's advocate a bit here for the craic)

[-] ananas@sopuli.xyz 33 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

No

Slapping "quantum" in front of something does not make it magic.

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[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 4 points 11 months ago

Whatever we observe empirically is "natural" by definition. Causality is an assumption, not a law of nature.

[-] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago

Good comment

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[-] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 40 points 11 months ago

Evolutionary biology was the main one

[-] eightpix@lemmy.world 33 points 11 months ago

Heliocentric model.

Cosmic distance and time. Light speed as a limit.

The geological age of the Earth.

Dinosaurs.

Evolutionary theory.

Continental drift.

The periodic table of the elements.

Quantum theory, including wave-particle duality.

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Black holes.

[-] MagicShel@programming.dev 32 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Religion is deliberately non-falsifiable. No matter what scientific proof you can come up with, at the end of the day they just say God is fucking with us burying skeletons of creatures that never existed and such.

The fact that it needs to be constructed that way is frankly all the proof I need to toss religion in the garbage, but everyone isn't so cavalier about the disposition of their "immortal soul."

Honestly immortality and the very nature of God are both abhorrent to me. If religion were true, the best I could hope for is to be cast into a lake of fire and be destroyed, so I kinda win either way. Worst case is all religion is wrong but so is atheism and I have to spend eternity with an entity who is less of a malicious cunt than the Abrahamic god.

[-] m0darn@lemmy.ca 20 points 11 months ago

Religion is deliberately non-falsifiable.

I think it would be more accurate to say that the non-falsifiablity of religion has evolved as a result of a sort of natural selection. Essentially all the falsifiable religious beliefs have been falsified, and thus have trouble propagating.

[-] MagicShel@programming.dev 3 points 11 months ago

Hah! Fair enough.

[-] Redacted@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago

The scientific method itself considers any as yet unsubstantiated theory as hypothesis. Applying this to the idea of God would leave one agnostic on the issue.

A couple of prominent examples of religious dogmas disproved by scientific discoveries are the Copernican Revolution and evolution by means of natural selection.

[-] Spendrill@lemm.ee 19 points 11 months ago

Letter from Charles Darwin to Asa Gray (22nd May 1860)

With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.— I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I shd wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.

Source

[-] sirico@feddit.uk 16 points 11 months ago

Translative spoken word by the time a second hand account of the word of god becomes the word of the person speaking. Weird god never came back once we had verbatim recording techniques to address these inaccuracies.

[-] shasta@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago

But he works in mysterious ways

[-] lemmefixdat4u@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago

It wasn't any particular scientific discovery that weakened religion. It was the popularity of science fiction that did it. As Arthur C. Clarke put it, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." People can now imagine how miracles are done without invoking anything supernatural. We might not have the tech to do it yet, but we have a pretty good idea of potential methods. That has placed a lot of "creator god" religions under pressure. Create life? Tech will eventually do it. Create a world? Sure, tech again. Given enough tech, a solar system can be spawned. Water into wine? We're halfway there with Kool-Aid. We already have vimanas (those ancient Hindu flying vehicles). We call them airplanes or helicopters. We can destroy a whole city with a single weapon. So why should we worship a supreme being who supposedly did those things?

Assuming we can conquer poverty, religions that survive will be centered around improving the human condition. Worshipping dieties will eventually fall by the wayside. It will still be a long process. You can't dispel faith with reason and facts. And people in poverty tend to embrace religion because it gives them comfort and hope that things will be better in the afterlife.

[-] Naich@lemmings.world 12 points 11 months ago

You need to define God first.

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[-] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

Sanitation.

[-] Noodle07@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

Doesn't even take science to debunk religions, yet you can't prove the non existance of a god

[-] A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

The most reliable way to lose faith isn't through science, it's reading their holy text.

In general, nothing about science ever shakes a theist's faith, and I doubt it ever will. Reason being: the moment science breaks new ground, religion retreats further back into the unknown. As long as there is an unknown, theists will have something to take shelter from.

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[-] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Depends on what exactly which kind of God.

I don't think it's possible for science to really weaken or strengthen the case for a God in its most simple form (some entity existing outside of the observable universe), but particular tangible claims from religious texts or beliefs can and have been disproven. Others can't be disproven because of the nature of the claim made.

[-] Delusional@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Do we really need a scientific discovery to prove an existence that doesn't exist? I think the proof that's required is proof that God does exist and until that comes about, religion is clearly just a man made construct for the purpose of power and control.

Besides, I've given clear scientific examples to religious people before and they simply stated that it exists that way because god created it that way which is just the dumbest fucking thinking imaginable. You can't help those people.

[-] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

‭Psalms 19:1-2

"The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, And night to night reveals knowledge."

[-] A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

##Old Testament

#####Exodus 21:20-21 (NIV):

"And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money."


##New Testament

#####Ephesians 6:5 (NIV):

"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ"

#####1 Timothy 6:1 (NIV):

"All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. Those who have believing masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow believers. Instead, they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow believers and are devoted to the welfare of their slaves."

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[-] PsychedSy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago

There aren't any. Some things will disprove specific religious ideas, but that's about it.

[-] bouh@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

What weakened religion is a long process going from the middle age to the modern world. It starts with the pope wars. It peaks with the religion wars in the XVIIth century. By this point the religious power was a political power like any other, but merely with a cultural hold on European populations. Which was the nail in the coffin.

During this period, the Church radicalised itself as a defense mode. Which solidified the laïcal mindset of the Lumières. Basically the church entered a cultural war against science because it feared it would lose controle.

Then the XIXth century happened. Monarchies got destroyed. And the Catholic Church got humiliated and destroyed as a political power. Socialism and communism appeared, and to state how progressive they were, they put the church in the same reactionary bag as the royalists.

In the middle of this are the liberals who don't care much about anything but profits. Si when democracy is on the rise, they are democrats. When royalty comes back, they praise the king. At least as long as they let them make good profits. And that's what the church doesn't let them do. Morale goes in the way of profit. It forbid slavery and exploitation. It's against science. It promotes charity. That sucks balls for the liberals. But order is good, so why not being a believer but without the problems?

It's not science that made religion recess. It's bad political decisions and alliances. Many renowned scientists were believers. Many still are. But somehow the religions are rejecting science because it doesn't go into litteraly what their old fantasy book wrote. It's a shame because religions could easily make a humanist evolution if they had the political will to do it.

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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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