Is Science the new relgion?
Do people put too much faith in science? Dont we in the west consider most if not all other "sciences" heresy? The same for scientists whos findings dont agree with mainstream thought(dogma) Heres a few articles delving into the topic.
Modern Man's Religion
Science is the modern man's religion, without a god, or morality, but it has all the qualities of an oppressive religion. It can pursue the goal to advance science, that is the institution, rather than the search for knowledge. The following examples illustrate how a theoretical dogma is held in the face of clear counter evidence, the characteristic of religious fanaticism in science. The main point is that the human tendency to persist in holding false beliefs even when the consequences are harmful to themselves and others is found even in science, where its essence is to acquire knowledge through experiment!
Ex-communication
Boris Pavlovitch Belousov performed the key work on this chemical reaction while head of the laboratory of biophysics attached to the Soviet Ministry of Health in the early 1950s. During his research he concocted a mixture of chemicals meant to resemble and so throw further light on aspects of the Kreebs cycle, a metabolic pathway by which living cells break down foodstuffs into energy. Belousov's experiment contained a mixture of chemicals to mimic the reaction. To his amazement, the solution started to oscillate between being colourless and of a yellow hue. This might not sound earth shattering, but it was totally against all theoretical expectations. However, 'its antics turn out to resemble nothing foreseen in the thirty years devoted to the subject by theoretical chemists and biologists'. Unfortunately for Belousov, the reaction was so peculiar that he had great trouble in convincing the scientific establishment. In 1951 a manuscript of his work was rejected. The editor told him that his 'supposedly discovered discovery was quite impossible. Belousov submitted other reports, only to have them published in obscure publications, often in drastically abbreviated forms. The scientific establishment was so besotted with the simplistic interpretation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics - order decaying uniformly to disorder - that no one was prepared to accept Belousov's reports. People thought the second law said that a chemical reaction always heads for degenerate equilibrium. A chemical clock which switches between two colours implies that the reaction is somehow turning back on itself, a travesty of the Second Law. (In fact, Belousov was not the first to suffer from this misinterpretation. The discovery of an oscillating chemical reaction in the conversion of hydrogen peroxide to water by William Bray of the University of California at Berkeley in 1921 was dismissed as an artefact caused by poor experimental procedure.) In the ensuing years, the scientific community began to discover just how important Belousov's work was. Unfortunately, Belousov died in 1970, before receiving his deserved international recognition for his work. The discovery of Belousov and the many variants subsequently developed have together come to be known as the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction.
Science is about experiment, but only as long as the experiments support the current theories! If the current dogma is threatened, then all the powers of religion are used to stop the heresy.
Science vs. Religion
A view from Islam
The Religion of Modern ScienceThe Real Meaning of Science
To see the reasons why accepting science as the only guide is wrong, first it should be grasped what science is and what science is not.
For the ones who support the idea that science is the guide, science is absolute, and independent from all the cultures, all ideologies and beliefs. According to this, science is the universal criteria different than all other sources of knowledge. It is the centre of everything, and everything should be regulated accordingly.
The deception is at this point. Contrary to the propagation, there is no such constant and 'universal' science above religion, cultures and ideologies. Science is not a universal guide, contrarily, science is guided.
The "paradigm" concept of American science philosopher Thomas Kuhn explains it clearly. According to Kuhn, who is not semi-positivist like Popper, all kind of science are built on a series of some presumptions. The general theoretical conjectures, rules and technics that are made up by the people in science and their applications constitute "paradigm". Until a new scientific fact comes up, this paradigm will be valid, but later it will definitely collapse. For example Newton's scientific hypothesis is a scientific paradigm. With the rise of Einstein's paradigm that is valid today, Newton's paradigm lost its validity. This means: when a new scientific crisis appears, this paradigm will lose its validity too. The important point is that paradigms cannot be stated as a general law. Paradigm is nothing but conjecture that is accepted to be true for a temporary period of time.The scientists who take science as their guide and their followers accept a certain paradigm as being the absolute truth, hence in fact they take a conjecture as their guide. The Qur'an points out that the unbelievers:
"....follow nothing but conjecture and what their own souls desire!- Even though there has already come to them Guidance from their Lord!"
(Quran, 53:23)
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Originally Posted by Gawain's Islamic Science Article
) You confuse organized churches with the religions they claim to represent.
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