Re: Attention Dialed Into a Higher Dimension

[Anonymous]

“It’s like trying to convince a catholic to become an atheist- or vice versa even. You have to understand and value where other people are, otherwise it can be offensive.”

Not quite…. While there are plenty of “militant” atheists who are irrational and stupid, for most of us the reason for atheism is an evidence-based approach (see Saffron’s post on the scientific method), where religion isn’t.

If a Catholic is open to evidence and understands the scientific method and is honest about applying it to the world they see around them, they change. It happened to my fiancé :-p He was raised to be a Catholic, but was also raised to think critically. Ultimately, he gave up Catholicism because he realised that he could not base everything else he accepted about the universe on empirical evidence, yet hold this one thing as an exception. It’s why I, raised without religion but sent to a religious school, was unable to convert – to accept a deity would have required me to reject all my intellectual principles for just this one case.

Sorry, I rambled. But in this place, I’m sure that’s not entirely unexpected :-p

Back to my point: In every religion vs science case, the simple fact is that it is actually one of empirical, repeatable and refutable evidence vs. anecdotal evidence. One has lead to all the technology and understanding we have today, the other can lead to the placebo of crystal healing.

And to address the earlier comment that “Science doesn’t have all the answers”:

It doesn’t have all the answers YET – our understanding of the world is constantly growing. And it actually *has* answers and explanations, unlike most superstitions. Think back to the days when epilepsy was thought to be demonic possession (a superstitious belief) – science showed it to be otherwise. If not for scientific enquiry, we’d still be drilling holes in people’s heads and performing exorcisms, rather than treating them with medications that actually work (and it matters not whether scientific enquiry is performed by atheists or people who are religious; it is the method that is important, not who uses it).

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