Religious Quality Assurance

(Picture from an unknown source. If you know, post as a comment.)

I'm an engineer. I was trained originally as a scientist-- a zoologist to be precise-- but ended up in software engineering. I like science because it has the capacity of expanding its own understanding and discarding things that don't work. Religions don't do that well. There's a sacred set of ideas that are considered unquestionable and these are not open to examination.

Most religions, I should say. I think all religions have a set of axioms that are unprovable and upon which the religion is built. However, many religions proceed to extend that same protection to all components of the religion. However, some religions, such as Judaism, have such a vibrant and powerful self-examination process that it functions nearly as adaptively as science. Where would modern Judaism be without the Talmud, for example?

Science has a similar set of presumptions-- the presumption that reproducibility implies common cause of results, for example. Or the presumption that the physical behavior of the universe in one locality is the same in another locality. There's no way to prove such things-- though there is mounting evidence of it. Where science is different is the way it treats presumptions when they become testable: they're tested.

My original religious upbringing was Southern Methodist-- different from Southern Baptists only in the mind and heart of Southern Methodists and Southern Baptists. Both branches of Christianity are beautifully designed to reinterpret the transcendental experience into their own framework and bend it to their own purposes. So I went for some years.

I got nervous when the religion invaded my sexual understanding-- I heard several discourses on how sex outside of marriage was a bad thing. I became truly restive when that included sex with myself. When I was in college and the woman I was involved with decided she was Born Again I became downright rebellious. Since then I find religion a rich vein of metaphor to be mined but otherwise not of much use.

It was the capacity for self-examination (and the absence of an official afterlife) that drew me to Judaism. I did flirt dangerously close to converting to Judaism but when I looked deep in my heart and found unbelief rather than belief, I figured it was better to part cleanly.

But that flirtation and subsequent reading has made it hard to dismiss the idea that some religions are just better than others. Or, at least, more in keeping with my own world view.

I think you must judge a religion by its adherents. I had some long arguments in my youth about this. For example, Jesus says to follow him give everything you have, take up your cross and follow him. Pretty unequivocal.

It's pretty hard to reconcile that clear statement with prosperity ministries or the excesses of televangelists. Or even a particular car dealer that went to our church. I found out there were true Christians and false Christians. Further, within the faith of true Christians it was okay to own property. But what about what Jesus said? He was speaking metaphorically. He means giving your material goods to God-- while somehow keeping it for yourself. It reminds of the old joke about the minister deciding on his own salary: he through the money skyward and what God wanted, He kept. The minister got everything that fell back down. One interesting side note. I've met a lot of fundamentalist Christians that believe in the literal truth of Genesis but aren't so willing to accept the literal truth of Jesus actual statements.

No, I reasoned. We judge everyone and everything else by what they do. There's no reason not to judge religions by the same criteria.

Christianity doesn't do very well in this respect. It has been said to me that Christianity does pretty good compared to the competition. But that's a pretty low bar to step over. The comparison shouldn't between this religion or that religion. That's bad science. You need a control. So: is a world without religion better or worse than a world with Christianity?

That's the fundamental question that fundamentalists have to answer honestly.

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Political Links
NRA Lies
Alabama Lies
NYT (surprise) endorses Obama but it's out of money

Links of Interest
Imagining Death
Energy vs Water
The Milky Way Analogue
Dino Feathers for Show and here and here
Biomimetics
Scotch Tape X-Rays and here and here and here
Stealing even more water from Mexico
Selective Memory and here and here
Another Dead Sea
Revisiting the Miller Experiment
Rural Migration
Mapping Lung Cancer
Supercar!
Night of the Treeple
Antibody Art
Exoplanet Moons
Carbon Math: We're doomed