> Your statement that "scientific worldview, which is diametrically opposed to religious culture" is itself a dogma
No, it isn't, it's a description. I described what I mean by "scientific worldview" and by "religious culture". It should be evident from my descriptions that the two things I described are diametrically opposed. I think my descriptions have fairly captured the two world views in question. If you disagree, by all means make an argument; but just calling my descriptions "dogma" is not an argument.
> which is exactly the feature of religion you claim to have surpassed as a scientific person
I have made no such claim. I explicitly contrasted the scientific worldview with the behavior of individual persons. I also said nothing about "surpassing" anything.
> My point isn't to take sides but to point out that what you are calling religion is some kind of oppositional faction defined by rejecting scientific fact.
Again, if you disagree with my description of "religious culture", by all means make an argument for a different description. My description certainly does not describe all aspects of religion; but I think I have focused in on a key aspect that makes religious culture different from the scientific worldview.
> Religious reality was originally and for thousands of years the only reality
The level of historical ignorance in this statement is staggering. A true statement would be that humans have had religions for as far back as we have historical evidence. But that is a much, much weaker statement than your claim here.
> just at you proclaim that scientific realism is reality and reject any other
I have said no such thing. I have no idea what you are responding to, but it isn't anything I said.
> scientific culture resemblance to religious culture isn't coincidence
Before you start making claims about why such a resemblance exists, you first have to establish that it exists. You have not done that.
I don't mean to argue with you. If you say religion can't be fact based and aren't open to any alternate view that's scientific cultural dogma, in my opinion but also that's dogma by definition. If science can have dogma, then it has at least one similarity to religion which establishes a resemblance.
I'll give an alternate definition of religion that I think is compatible with a scientific world view rather than oppositional: religion is an ancient applied science of managing authority and consent in large groups of people. That's the reality it dealt with, just as modern science might deal with materials or biology.
I don't mean to give you a hard time. This topic is very difficult to talk about given the intense factions around it. But that's why it's important to talk about it even if it makes folks mad at you initial. Sorry if I irritated you.
I have said that science has a much better track record of generating true beliefs than religion does. That is not the same as saying religion never generates true beliefs or never looks at facts.
> religion is an ancient applied science of managing authority and consent in large groups of people
This is an interesting hypothesis, but note a key implication: that this "applied science" involves generating and propagating false beliefs. And given that, an easy alternate way of contrasting the religious worldview with the scientific worldview would be that the scientific worldview does not consider generating and propagating false beliefs to be a good thing. That's not to say science never does that, just that in science, it's considered a bug, whereas in religion, by your description, it's considered a feature.
Also, the term "applied science" implies that there is an actual scientific theory that is being applied. Religion does not have any theory at all about "managing authority and consent in large groups of people". It does that in practice, but it doesn't have any theory about it. So "applied science" is a misnomer in this case: a better term would be "art", as in "religion is an ancient art of managing authority and consent in large groups of people".
Well enjoy the discussion. I don't find it disagreeable.
I'd say that as a science of authority the theory is clear to those who seek to benefit from the cultural practice. A hypothesis such as "there is only one God" isn't powerful because it's true in the modern sense of having been through a rigorous scientfic process, it's powerful because it results in greater authority relative to other cultural symbolisms. Religion is a science that tests narratives and symbols and cultural signs for effective ability to leverage and maintain authority.
I don't dispute that modern science generates more factual reality, but I think there's a big question around the idea of truth and belief you raise. Truth and belief are difficult to quantify. I understand that you mean when you say "generate true belief", but it's a philosophically tough position to hold. If I claim that "God is love" you will have an impossible time proving that is not true, or that I don't believe it. You might say "the earth is a sphere" is the more true, scientfic statement, but until you have a lot of definitive context for each statement relative to the believer you don't really know how accurate either is.
I think the argument falls apart further in any attempt to evaluate the value of belief. If 90% of people believe in God but 60% reject climate change, does that make climate change less real? I would say no, but I'm the same token you would have to agree that scientfic speaking it is easier to believe in God than climate change. My question is, what makes God so easy to believe in? I would say one could produce a sound theory about why it's so easy to believe in God, and the folks who made him up were thoroughly versed in that theory. These were the scientific minds of their times.
As I understand it in the classical definition science is a branch of art as art is the more general term.
> until you have a lot of definitive context for each statement relative to the believer you don't really know how accurate either is
I'm not sure whether you are just historically ignorant or whether you are being deliberately obtuse. The proposition that the Earth is a sphere makes plenty of specific predictions which were confirmed observationally as long ago as ancient Greece.
> If 90% of people believe in God but 60% reject climate change, does that make climate change less real?
What percentage of people believe a proposition is irrelevant from the standpoint of science. The relevant criterion in science is whether a proposition can be tested against observation and experiment, whether, if so, it has been tested, and how the tests came out.
The reason "belief in God" is generally not considered a scientific proposition is that there is no way to test it against observation and experiment, because it makes no particular predictions about what we should observe or what the results of particular experiments should be. Whereas various beliefs about climate change do make such predictions and can be tested.
> what makes God so easy to believe in?
The fact that "belief in God" does not commit you to any specific predictions about what you should observe, so it's easy to adopt such a belief without having to disturb any of your other beliefs. Many scientists, for example, profess to believe in God, and don't seem to see any contradiction with what they do as scientists.
> in the classical definition science is a branch of art as art is the more general term
There is a sense of "art" in which science is one of the arts, yes. But that's not the sense in which I was using the term "art".
No, it isn't, it's a description. I described what I mean by "scientific worldview" and by "religious culture". It should be evident from my descriptions that the two things I described are diametrically opposed. I think my descriptions have fairly captured the two world views in question. If you disagree, by all means make an argument; but just calling my descriptions "dogma" is not an argument.
> which is exactly the feature of religion you claim to have surpassed as a scientific person
I have made no such claim. I explicitly contrasted the scientific worldview with the behavior of individual persons. I also said nothing about "surpassing" anything.
> My point isn't to take sides but to point out that what you are calling religion is some kind of oppositional faction defined by rejecting scientific fact.
Again, if you disagree with my description of "religious culture", by all means make an argument for a different description. My description certainly does not describe all aspects of religion; but I think I have focused in on a key aspect that makes religious culture different from the scientific worldview.
> Religious reality was originally and for thousands of years the only reality
The level of historical ignorance in this statement is staggering. A true statement would be that humans have had religions for as far back as we have historical evidence. But that is a much, much weaker statement than your claim here.
> just at you proclaim that scientific realism is reality and reject any other
I have said no such thing. I have no idea what you are responding to, but it isn't anything I said.
> scientific culture resemblance to religious culture isn't coincidence
Before you start making claims about why such a resemblance exists, you first have to establish that it exists. You have not done that.