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Originally Posted by asaris
Will, the first argument you make seems to boil down to "In this one specific instance, some religious people are seeking to stall scientific progress; therefore, religion in general necessarily stalls scientific progress." Of course, this is not a valid argument.
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If you'd like, I can compile a more complete list of every time in recorded history that religion has slowed, stopped, or even reversed scientific progress. I must warn you, this will not be a small list and will encompass several major world religions. I simply named the most recent and prevalent as it is easily relatable and common knowledge.
The point I was trying to make follows:
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Originally Posted by asaris
Your second argument is that, because religions presuppose the existence of miracles, they necessarily stall scientific progress, because the existence of miracles contradicts science. This is true in one sense, but false in another. If you view the laws of science as immutable truths that cannot be overriden, then yes, religions (at least, Christianity) contradict science. I'll apparently be continuing this later.
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It's not as simple as the rules of science being immutable. In fact, the rules of science are ever expanding and changing. The point is that science grows with and as what we know. When a new fact or law is discovered, science evolves with it and our understanding of the universe broadens.
Religion, theism, theology, whatever you wish to call it, is not the same at all. Religion assumes as fact the supernatural. That is fundamentally opposed to the continuing development of science. In fact, the idea that the supernatural can be assumed correct and/or real is one of the most overt breaches to our understanding of science and the universe, in my opinion.
Imagine, if you will, that the country were flip-flopped. Imagine that the US was overwhelmingly atheist and Christianity only took up 3-12% of the population. Without the support of numbers, I would expect that Christians would be regarded as madmen and summarily dismissed. Frankly, I am virtually certain (as certain as I am that god doesn't exist, in fact) that the reason religion is so prevalent is that children are indoctrinated and that leads to a majority of adults being religious, which has been going on for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years. These two ideas, precedent and a majority, are the only thing that is keeping religion from becoming something of the past. If parents did the responsible thing, allowing their children to make a determination as adults about religion, religion, god, etc. would become ideals instead of beings and reality. In that function, they can more easily be dissected from an unbiased perspective.