You are conflating science with scientists.
Science produces knowledge, it does not produce morality.
Morality can only come from people.
If you want to blame science, you need to also blame knowledge ... but that is irrational, knowledge is neither good nor bad and it remains neither good nor bad even after it has been used for good or evil.

Suppose that I know that firing a cannon into a crowd will hurt people.
If I also work out that firing four cannons at varying angles will hurt five times as many and then I go ahead and do that ... is mathematics to blame for the injuries?
No, I am to blame.


And it wasn't science either, it was human beings.
Religion and/or faith (within those people or within others) failed to exercise the consciences of those human beings who perpetrated the act.

The point of this thread has become about whether the decline of religious observance and belief has corresponded with a decline in morality.
The facts suggest not.
Blair and Bush are a couple of good recent examples of the religious failing to engage their consciences.

IIRC both of them actually justified their decisions on religious grounds, they both said that they had prayed for guidance before recommending military action, presumably they were both told to go ahead with impunity and both now believe that a seat at the right hand of their god awaits them.

''[iI think if you have faith about these things, then you realise that that judgement is made by other people... and if you believe in God, it's made by God as well.''[/i

Anthony Blair (2006) explaining his thought process in justifying the attack on Iraq.

Really? Are you not aware of any number of horrific (and quite terminal) experiments conducted on human beings which have been rationalised in scientific terms?

Aren't these the rules of the game? After all, I responded to a factually incorrect and silly dig which conflated the concept of religion with the reality of human health by introducing my own silly dig which conflated the concept of science with the results of scientific study.



The concept of "science" produces precisely nothing without scientists. They are fundamentally inseparable. Which is why it is simply ridiculous to suggest I shouldn't highlight the innumerable victims of scientific study. I'm not suggesting that it is scientific study alone which led to their deaths - but the fact remains that lacking the science of atomic fission there are no deaths by atomic fission.



This may come as a surprise to you but when the judge sends you to prison he doesn't give your concept of mathematics - which exists in YOUR HEAD - freedom to return home. As I said - inseparable.

When you start talking sense I'll read it.



The Pope could have pulled the trigger himself - it would still be irrelevant. I stated that despite its many crimes the Catholic Church (along with other major religions, I might add), has also served as a socially beneficial agent. As evidence I introduced Liberation Theology, which has gained not just millions of followers but also praise across the globe (including America - the very nation it has fought bitterly against).

If you were genuinely interested in pursuing the truth you'd just agree and from thereon we might possibly have an intellectually stimulating discussion about what can only be described as a radical, not to mention - extremely encouraging, ecclesiastical development which is re-shaping South America for the better.

Instead you childishly attempt to muddy the waters by suggesting that because a handful of high-ranking Catholics in Rome threw a hissy fit, Liberation Theology and Catholicism are now on a completely different page. Which, no doubt, will come as a shock to the thousands of Argentinian, Chilean, Bolivian etc. priests who consider themselves Catholic, are based in Catholic churches, deliver Catholic mass three times each day etc.

Sorry, but you are still conflating knowledge with the people who have that knowledge.
Knowledge (in this example mathematics) cannot behave well or badly, if the judge imprisons me for my antisocial use of it, it is I who will be imprisoned, not the knowledge. The knowledge is still extant and could, for example, be used by another person for purposes of good.

According to your view, there must be good knowledge and evil knowledge.
That, to me, is a nonsense and is the route that Pol Pot took.

In which case, by your own 'logic', I was either talking sense – or your replied to something that you now admit you didn't read.

Mind, there seems to be the tiniest flaw in the 'logic' that says that you have godlike enough powers to 'know' whether something makes sense before reading it, thus making it feasible to decide whether to actually read it or not on the basis such knowledge.

Interesting.
So, he's fallible?

That is not 'killing in the name of science'. I have already stated that some people abuse the scientific process for evil purposes (including countless religious people).

What I'm saying is that you don't see those who accept the evidence for climate change waging war on the idiots who deny its existence. You don't see rallies with hordes of tank-topped, bespectacled men holding up placards saying 'behead those who insult the peer-review process'. Compare that with the major religions who have always killed in the name of their 'God', and continue to do so.

You said that before. And before that. Is this some kind of Chinese water torture?



Your interpretations of my words are precisely that and I can't put them more simply. Impasse.

To be honest, I'm struggling to grasp your disconnect. Nothing I have said is particularly (pardon the pun) [iheretical[/i. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote at length about the troubling indivisibility of science and scientist. If you are interested the American version of the Open University (TCC) runs an excellent course on Science (which the resourceful should have no difficulty locating) and devotes an entire module to this thorny question.



Now you're just wasting my time.

It was biased rhetoric (primarily through omission). I guess there's some internal logic within your own warped frame of reference but beyond that ...



Stop grinding your teeth.

Given your utter lack of interest in anything outside your own proclamations, I'm surprised you bother 'wasting your time' here at all.

Not as big as Titanic, which if you believe was essentially about god murdering 1,500 people by flicking an ice cube at them.

Also, if religion is the foundation of morality, how does the mafia as devout Catholics work?

They have confession.

I'm frankly amazed that some people are capable of rational debate until the subject of religion crops up, then they reert back to tribal instinct

If you start off with the premise that what you are defending has no physical evidence or proof of existence but you're prepared to base the whole of your lifestyle and opinion on mankind on it anyway, including the rubbishing of proven facts and physical evidence, then any further discussion from that starting point is totally irrelevant - anyone who starts any conversation about anything with the view that they will not listen to the other party is not having a conversation or debate at all.

Did you expect a different outcome from the same argument?


Impasse indeed if you can't explain.


You assert that science cannot be dissociated from scientists.
I would agree that, in the sense that scientific knowledge cannot come about without scientists to discover it, this is true.
But the knowledge that emerges is also called science and that knowledge cannot be moral (good) or immoral (evil).

When uncovering knowledge or when using knowledge, a scientist can choose whether or not to act in a moral way (although it can be immensely difficult sometimes to decide which direction is morally better and it may be that morality of the use of the outcome is unknown).
This does not make science/knowledge intrinsically moral or immoral.

What it does mean is that the use of science can be put to immoral use or moral use ... and that is a question of conscience.

I don't know what you are thinking but it might be of an example situation where a scientist might consider continuing with his work, because he believes that he has a moral imperative to increase knowledge, even though he knows there will be immoral uses for his results.
This is again a moral dilemma [ifor the scientist[/i and does not make science (which is a process) either moral or immoral.

I haven't looked for your US module, time constrains me.

It "cannot" in the same way that an apple cannot transform itself into a mountain and then ride a bicycle - or "cannot" within a [ihuman devised[/i perceptual framework?

Let us return to the point of entry. A silly and factually incorrect graphic claiming that "Science" had cured any number of diseases whilst "Religion" had not.

I responded with my own hastily cobbled together photoshop graphic which claimed that "Science" had played a role in the deaths of millions in wars since 1900 (an extremely conservative figure, I might add).

I then clarified this point by stating that whilst it is often claimed that "science" is neutral (which I didn't disagree with) - we cannot ignore the undeniable fact that science and warfare have shared an unhealthy relationship since the very beginning.

You can't bring yourself to admit this point and so you obfuscate by suggesting the science born out of the atom bomb which killed tens of thousands of Japanese exists in some metaphysical paradise and therefore cannot possibly be connected to the scientists themselves, the dead etc.

Should we debate instead on a metaphysical RLFANS?

Science has been put to moral use, it has been put to immoral use.
I have denied neither.
That science and knowledge have been put to immoral use does not mean that they are intrinsically immoral or evil.

My point all the way through has been, quite simply, that science is a process of discovering knowledge but is not a guide on how to live your life.

Now that you admit that you do not disagree with that, my work is done.

I did not post any graphics, I responded to a post of yours, to point out that science is the way to knowledge.