Your religion is proven wrong; How do you react?

However, it's pleasantly shocking at how low-temp the argument is. In some places, this would have turned into a full flame-war three days ago.

I'm just wondering if it ceases to be a proper religion if there is undeniable proof.

 

My religion does not have a solid belief, it is known as Unitarian Universalism. There is no bible, no core rules. I have always thought that the whole god idea is just a way to manipulate others. In my religion we believe in human justice and we serve all people.

 

Of course there have been some mistakes and flaws, absolutely. Even downright intentional fraud. But the only way to uncover these mistakes is through the scientific method. Take a good look at it, consider the evidence, etc. Science is selfcorrecting by its own nature.

I wouldn't say we should believe everything scientists say. Some are not very good at communicating with the public, or what they say is distorted by popular media, or they might discuss some cutting edge controversial idea and some people might think they're talking about established mainstream science. Or they happen to mention their own personal pet views about this or that. Or they could be talking about something from a completely different field in which they are not experts. Or something.

Our understanding of the natural world is better than ever before, but that doesn't mean our worldview is "true" or "right", only that it is the best and most accurate for now. The shape of the Earth, for example. If we look around and it looks fairly flat we might work with the theory that the world is, as far as we know, flat. And it would be a theory/model that works for us on a small scale. But then the ancient Greek philosophers discovered that a stick gave off different shadows at noon in different cities, and the best model seemed to be a spherical Earth. Now the shape of the Earth has been refined many times over, from sphere to ellipsoid, to a warped ellipsoid, etc. The spherical Earth was not completely "right" but that doesn't mean it was equally wrong as the flat Earth model. The ellipsoid was even more accurate.

I hope I haven't offended too many people, too much, by jumping into this thread.

 

I agree with this. Religion is not about fact, its about faith. I find i hard to say that something is "right or wrong" when it comes to religion. I think most religious people would just ignore such a theory and go on believeing in what they believe.

 

Someone could call a duck a cow too. A theory doesn't get widely accepted until it's gone under a peer review process, and has evidence to support itself. Until then, it's just a hypothesis.

 

I lost whatever faith I had in Christianity when I was 10. I've been an Atheist ever since. In short: I abandoned it.

 

Stay on topic, folks.

 

OK, back to the original question. I think someone's reaction is going to vary, based on the individual. Who is the person to begin with? How do they react to other situations? You have to make them react similar to how you have been portraying their actions up to the point where they discover their religion is false.

 

Reading some of the responses, it occurs to me that a vaguely fun and interesting thing to do would be to depict scientists responding to this same thing - to this same tangible proof...a tangible proof which likely will impugn certain existing scientific paradigms.

Many replies here seem founded on the assumption that religious sorts may be relied upon to act irrationally, may be relied upon to not see and scientists may be relied upon to act rationally, to see. To my mind, that's not quite how things are.

 

In reply to that, and also in reply to the thread, I believe I must quote Max Planck:

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

From my own experience, I can assure you that there is a lot of truth in it. I suppose the same thing would happen with the disproval of a religion.

 

Religion (in my opinion) is based off of Faith and Hope, even if someone were to prove you 100% wrong there would always be that part of you (especially if you were older when you're told) that wouldn't believe them. You've been brought up on the facts, you've always believed in them and its a big part of yourself and someone proving that wrong would probably feel like an attack on you. I'd personally get angry and defensive, which is why I avoid religious conversations in public situations it's a personal thing, so I guess it all kind of depends on your personality in how you'd react. A logical person might re act differently to one who's more of a subjective thinker.

 

That's not how empiricism works. You're likely mixing it up with rationalism.
Gathering data is not the same as drawing conclusions, or even worse, as you suggested: draw a conclusion and then find facts to "prove" it. A scientist who does this won't be a scientist for long.

Consider our world a big puzzle. Through history of science we've gathered a pile of puzzle pieces. Some fit together, some don't, so by hypothesis we try and lay them out in a new way and once this patch becomes reasonably big and whole we might call it a theory. It only holds until the pile of pieces that don't fit is bigger than the new puzzle we've assembled.

Scientific empricism is about making as big a patch of puzzle as possible, not about the meaning of the image in the puzzle. Religion concerns itself deeply with meaning -- science does not, and you'll have to step a bit away from the religious hunger for meaning to properly understand empiricism. It has no agenda but to gather the pieces -- it cares not for what the image of the puzzle might mean to the human race, soul, etc. Even if the actual picture portrayed by the assembled puzzle was one of absolute horror, it would be a violation of empiricism to try and stick a nicer looking picture together instead. This may be another reason why religious people feel hostility towards the concept, but to flat-out demonize science for its efforts is a bit over the top. The scientists aren't the ones painting the picture on the puzzle and shouldn't be blamed for what it might suggest.

How is this related to the topic? Science and religion are two different arenas. One is concerned with the hows of things, the other concerned with the whys. You cannot prove religion false with hows, nor can you apply moral judgment to the simple gathering of facts with whys. If the religious people in a story were to be convinced that there was no god, sticking a graph in their face would both be misplaced, ineffective and an abuse of the puzzle patch to draw your own picture on its back. It certainly wouldn't be empiric.
Were the deeply religious character to abandon their faith, it would have to come through some kind of emotional, personal epiphany, or by a stronger, more charismatic leader persuading them that his meanings are deeper and truer somehow -- this is how it has happened in our real world history -- one faith taking over another by being more persuasive for its time. Not by displaying a chart.

 

Horus! There's a caller on the line for you..
It's the sixteenth century and she would like her ideas back.

 

What do you mean, Art? I think he/she's making a lot of sense.

 

Empiricism was booming in the 16th / 17th century, I think that might be what he's referring to. Regardlessly, it's as old as Aristotles and as modern as CERN.

 

Another thread that has wandered too far off topic for too long.