The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #121446   Message #2657130
Posted By: plnelson
15-Jun-09 - 03:39 PM
Thread Name: BS: Science and Religion
Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
Unfortunately, most religions, certainly in the west, belive in getting organized, freezing their doctrine and becoming dogmatic as soon as they can

I don't think it's an east -vs- west thing.   I'm not aware that the major eastern religions have a body of knowledge that has shown any particular progress over recent centuries.    Like the Protestants in the west, eastern religions such as Hinduisn and Buddhism have a propensity to divide up into new sects when they disagree over doctrine, rather than settling it by deciding which doctrine is better by some test they agree on.

One point about science is that, because it welcomes ideas and data that undermine the status quo, as long is it can be shown that those ideas do a better job of explaining whatever the issue at hand is, it demonstrates continued progress.   So science today can describe and model stuff with far greater precision and completeness than science of 50 years ago. And likewise science of 50 years ago was way better than science of 100 years ago. Etc.   And this progress has been across the board - physics, chemistry, the life sciences, environmental science, astrophysics, etc.

Are there any religions that can demonstrate that they have their theological domain more right today than 100 years ago?   I'm willing to accept the idea that what I'm saying only applies to the large organized religions if you can show us even a small organized religion that can demonstrate objective progress in a theological or spiritual domain (e.g., a more accurate description of their deity/-ies, more predictive prayer, better spiritual powers, etc).