Of course science does, every part of human life does contain those things, internally by default. But science does not glorify them, set them up as ideals and try to promote them in the world beyond, indeed science by its nature is not in the business of idealising anything.

@Fernapple lol, ok then

@Fernapple
I don’t know of any religious doctrine that glorifies hate. Many fundamentalists use literalist interpretations of religion to justify the hate they carry, but for the most part, religions glorify compassion, forgiveness, charity, etc.

Science pretty much does glorify rationality, objectivity, the scientific method, etc. Both fields have ideals, and individuals in both fields fall short of those ideals, because humans are like that.

@skado Don't confuse religious doctrine with religion.

Few if any human institutions have much in common in what they become or what they do, with their original doctrine. Marxism was about economic justice for all classes, but the communist system created vast economic cruelty based on a ridgid class system in most of the countries it infected. The US constitution set out freedom and democratic rights, yet the States repressed millions of black slaves horribly, and made native Americans virtual outsiders and second class people in their own land. Probably more than half of the worlds schools, all of which claim to be about education, are in the business of indoctrination and repressing education.

I could go on, there are thousands of examples. A friend of mine always used to joke that you could always tell which countries are horrible repessive dictatorships, because they always have 'democratic' in their title.

@Fernapple
We all get to choose what we call things, but for my money, when democracy is no longer democratic I stop calling it democracy. Autocracy is not democracy. Hate is not love. And practices that glorify egos are not religions.

anyway,
"In 1676 an anomaly in the orbit of Io, Jupiter's innermost moon, led the astronomer Ole Roemer to make a very specific prediction. Io would appear from behind Jupiter at 5:37 pm on November 9, 1676, he said--and that would prove light travels with a finite speed. Roemer's mentor, Jean-Dominique Cassini, head of the Paris Observatory, rubbished the idea; light spread instantaneously, he said. His beliefs () led him to a different prediction. According to Cassini, it would be 5:27 when Io appeared.

Io appeared at 5:37 and 49 seconds. On hearing of this, Cassini announced that the facts fit with the story he had presented (faith). Although Cassini had made his (erroneous) prediction at a public gathering of scientists, not one of them demurred when he denied it; they all backed him up. Roemer had to wait fifty years to be vindicated; only after Cassini had died did scientists accept that the speed of light was finite."
[books.google.com]
@Fernapple

@Fernapple "But science does not glorify them, set them up as ideals and try to promote them in the world beyond, indeed science by its nature is not..."

"atomic bombs"

Yes my point is not whether such people exist, but where in the future you would be best placed to find them if you want to go looking.

@Fernapple That depends on what intellectual and emotional scam is offering the seemingly best easy way out of the existential dilemma.

"Most people would die sooner than think — in fact, they do so.” — Bertrand Russell

Yes I agree with you, and I would be the first to point out that religion does a lot of good. Yet there is an observable trend, and trend is a none absolute word, for religion to become the last refuge of just that mindless dualistic hate culture as it becomes increasingly unacceptable in so many other places.

I am sorry if it came over as absolutist, but I was being brief and taking shortcuts because, I am more interested in the deeper reasons behind the thing, and peoples opinoins on them, than the thing itself.

@Fernapple ... well, youre a lot brighter than i first thought you were! im a dedicated complexist, but like Sisyphus still need to push stones up agnostics hills. ..so , id like to refer you to an old american somewhat crappy novella about this present political correctness, BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES by the latterday tom wolfe. but speaking of " the deeper reasons behind the thing, and peoples opinoins on them, than the thing itself ", and much more importantly, the seminal film KOYAANISQUATSI, without which no understanding of these, the complex last days, is possible. the film is 1' 30. here's a vimeo link to to it

[vimeo.com]

. do me and yourself this one favor. happy trails. ....... ps... "religion does a lot of good " ?

@Fernapple vimeo144433981

damn these computers!

@holdenc98 Wisdom is nuance.

I think you may well be very correct. My premise was mainly just to set up an observation on the future role of religion, human nature does not change with the passage of time, but it does find different ways of expressing itself, and institutions may change their roles over which part of it they express.

Indeed yes, hate is a normal part of all animals lives, but of course it can express itself in many ways , sometimes to good effect, ( I hate to see people starve, I will give to a charity, or ask my govermment to send more aid. ) But hate can be destructive of course, and as you rightly say, it loves to hide until it can pounce. My point therefore, was to ask, where destructive hate's next main hiding place is likely to be.

And of course all human institutions have to find a human need to fullfil if they are to survive. So that in a world where governance and law, take care of the moral, economics the matierial, medcine physical and mental health, the state education, science curiosity and the search for truth, where does religion go looking for a need to answer. Like you say hate may be a natural need.

I did not say that politics is hate free, I said that it at least demands respect for majority opinion, (some of the time ) which is not much, but it is something however trivial. And, since a lot of political hate is religiously inspired, touche'.

"If the 'world' is increasingly adopting good attitudes, that means it is increasingly letting go of bad attitudes. " Yes that follows, but that does not mean that bad attitudes may not persist, nor shift their location. Indeed if those holding them are a diminishing minority, or feel threatened by a improving world, then you would expect them to regroup, back away and cluster in an evil refuge of their own making. That is the point of the post.

Nor did I say that they were a fixed proportion, but the argument works, whether they decrease, increase, or remain the same. The world (as a whole ) may well improve, despite a bad minority growing more evil and more numerous. Paragraph two, shows some very bad logic.

I mention syntiger6 because these thoughts here came up as a comment on one of his posts, and I wish to give him credit for the inspiration, plus explain to members who have seen that, why a similar one appears twice.

@Fernapple hi, in regards to your first paragraph, I don’t think politics respects public opinion at all. They may act like it at times but politics is just the art of manipulating public opinion.

@Canndue Perhaps you are right, that is a whole other ball game to a degree, but I was using poloitics in the widest sense, including especially international politics such as the bill of human rights etc.

@Fernapple

It's not hard to see where one might get the impression that political hate is religiously inspired, but I've not seen any scientific studies that support that claim. Maybe you can supply some.

Seems much more likely to me that hate is just a part of human nature, and it's going to seep into everything we humans do.

I'm also not aware that "politics" demands respect for majority opinion to any degree whatsoever. That may appear to be the case in countries whose culture embraces democratic values, but politics (the distribution of power) is by no stretch of the imagination inherently democratic.

All human institutions are working against the background of our human (animal) nature, which is perennially loath to be tamed. But that very taming is the last of religion's many fields of endeavor not to have found a secular home, as did science, politics, health/medicine, education, business, art, etc.

If you want to sink religion's ship, let's be sure to offload its most valuable cargo yet before we do. When we have established a secular enterprise whose aim is to counterbalance our animal instincts in order to accommodate the unnatural living together in peaceful cooperation of millions of strangers under a single group identity, then "religion" will no longer be a useful term, and its authentic activities will be called something else.

Until then, let's work to reduce hate in the world wherever we find it, be that in religion or politics or in science, or indeed... in hating the haters.

syn = sny

@skado I am not saying that hate is religiously inspired, except at second hand when it works to inspire political hate. What I am saying is that hate is moving into religion, because that is where it finds the most suitable environment, where it can grow and prosper. Whilst most other human enterprizes become less friendly towards it, just as religion is doing the opposite.

I would contend that we have created a secular enterprize which can counterbalance the worst of our animal instinct , or at least that we have now got closer to doing that within the secular environment than we did within religion, even at its best. Religion will almost certainly remain a useful term for a long time to come, if only because all terms can be changed over time to an infinite degree. As epicurian originally meant self denying, and an aesthetic philosophy, yet came to mean hedonistic, at least in popular culture. So in perhaps a hundred years from now 'religion' will come to mean more or less the same thing which we use nazi or fascist for today, but the word will still be in use.

@Fernapple
I’m aware that it’s a popular notion that religion is friendly to hate, but I’ve not seen studies to back that up.

It certainly wasn’t the case with the religion I grew up in, or in religions I know anything about today. The Westboro Baptist Churches and the occasional outrageous pastor who gets on the news are not the entirety of “religion”. They are just the “newsworthy” examples.

And of course, every former religious person has a story or two of bad experiences. Meanwhile, an overwhelming majority of the human race are convinced they are getting something positive out of the experience.

The churches I have attended did welcome haters, but only in hopes of influencing them away from hate.

If religion truly has increasingly no role in the global debate, why are their numbers, as a percentage of the population, growing worldwide?

Nobody is hate-filled at birth. It’s not like there is a requirement that hateful people exist at all. They are made hateful by mistreatment or neglect.

You asked the question, so here is my vote: No. I don’t think “religion” is where the haters will collect.

In my view, the measure of whether the world is indeed increasingly adopting ideas like human rights, and respect for human diversity, would be the degree to which the world stops giving people reason to hate... whether that enterprise be secular or otherwise. And in this task both the secular and the sacred have failed so far.

@skado Once religion was everything, you performed a ritual before you started work, or when you gave birth, you went to the shaman when ill, unhappy, in need of advice or in love. But over a long period of time better ways have been found to do almost everything for which humans have a need, leaving religion on the sidelines. Better to see a doctor if you are ill, a psychologist or philosopher if unhappy, an engineer and a navigator if you want to cross the sea, social welfare if poor, a school for education, etc. etc. the list is endless. At which point you have to ask, what in the end will be left to religion, and what is even today observably left to religion ? It can only be that which more rationally constructed institutions can not, or do not, want to do, in other words criminality, with which religion always did have the most deep connection.

Of course, many people get a positive experience from religion, or they would not do it. But people also inject themselves with toxic chemicals, anorexics starve themselves, and flat earthers spend vast amounts of time trying to prove the ridiculous, because they feel they get a positive experience from doing so.

It is arguable that religion is growing in the world, I have heard a lot of statistics to the opposite, but what is certain is that almost all of the growth is in Islam. A far bigger share than the shrinkage elsewhere accounts for perhaps. And Islam is the most shameless at promoting a divisive and dualistic world view, even shameless nationalistic hate, which may not account for all its growth, but it certainly is a big attraction for many people.

@skado I like this last, will make it a post perhaps.

I think we all have a dark side that we often don't like to admit to. I can accept this is true as part of our nature so long as it doesn't get used as an excuse to harm others.

@RussRAB, I agree. The best thing is to acknowledge it and try not to harm others.

Yes I agree we all have done harm and have a dark side, me included. But while most people would like to improve, and put their weaker pasts behind them, a few would like to celebrate it and promote it to others, whence they seak a platform.