While your examples are accurate, the article itself mentions different cases in India, Turkey and USA to point to the above mentioned statement.

What is the lane of science? It seems to me that given all the branches of science everything is in their lane.

The problem is that religions don’t stick to their lane. They insist on commenting on things such as whether evolution is real, how old the universe is, when life begins, nature of consciousness, what it means to be a trans or gay person and what kind of health care those people should be allowed to get.

I am assuming you are from Western Europe or Eastern Asia to say this. There are other places where religious movements have gained more momentum while scientific developments have also taken place.

> I think a sound argument could be made that "scientization" of a wide range of values, institutions and other non-scientific ventures has cause significant harm to science.

True....but they are so far ahead and have so much momentum, I am very confident they are fine.

Now, if a rival ideology was to arise....well, they may not be as resilient as they would have been if they'd monitored their flock more carefully. Time will tell I suppose.

> By labelling a whole range of capitalist western cultural values, practices and structures as "scientific", ranging from capitalist economics, western "racial" categories, political institutions, etc... the failures in those structures and the genocide and discrimination they've enabled have permanently made a lot of people skeptical about the whole idea of "science" across the board.

For their sake, let's hope someone doesn't come along who'd be so shallow and opportunistic as to exploit that weaknesses, and the many other ones.

There are good reasons why all ancient civilizations had a religion. Uniting a population and imposing a 'moral code' was very beneficial to the wellbeing of the group.

The question I would pose is, is it still necessary for religion to be the basis for uniting people?

In a religious context, what is the difference between moral behaviour and healthy behaviour?

I'm pretty sure all behaviour can be viewed from a scientific context. Science can't tell you which behaviours are moral and which aren't—but it can tell us which are healthy and which aren't.

I'm not entirely sure of your question. Are you asking if science is capable of accurate divination or are you questioning my seeming certainty that psychology can provide accurate guidance on human behaviour?

If you're asking about predicting the future with accuracy—science is more into predicting the future with probabilities rather than with accuracy. It appears to work pretty well within specific domains that we seem to understand well and poorly for general domains that we don't.

If you're asking how I can justifiably say psychology will be able to provide accurate guidance of human behaviour, it already does to a limited extent. We're only now gaining the tools we need in order to see what the problems actually are and the field faces a lot of stigma from religions and from it's youth and immaturity (including not a small amount of sheer lunacy), but there is solid work being done. It's successfully challenged many preconceptions of what drives human behaviour in fields of addiction and crime and it's shown that authoritarive structures are healthier and more effective than authoritarian ones. It does face structural difficulties that make it extremely difficult to get good science done and extremely easy to just see cultural bias reflected back—but give it time.

You'll probably find it interesting that it seems to be confirming collectivist views more than individualist ones. I think it's far more likely that psychology will simply confirm which aspects of religions and philosophies line up with actual human behaviour rather than invent new ones. A lot of people have been thinking on these things for a lot of time and we've got lots of good answers—science can eventually tell which ones don't work in practice.

> In the US, there is an incentive to use religion to control people and drag them toward their ideologies.

The same could be argued of The Science.

> Religion is so vague that it can be used by well-meaning people or ill-intentioned people.

Often, so too is The Science.

> The ill-intentioned people in a few large and powerful countries will make it easier to accelerate the downfall of religion everywhere, which is a net good.

Similarly, ill-intentioned people in a few large and powerful countries will make it easier to accelerate the downfall of humanity everywhere.

Also: I propose that "is a net good" is problematic due to being stated as an objective truth rather than a personal opinion. One would think "rational, scientific thinking" people would be less prone to this well known by science psychological phenomenon, but results suggest otherwise.

Yes, but it still maintains that it can find the truth and that understanding objective reality is possible.

Even then, you've arrived at your conclusion through begging the question again - we should use scientific reason because it is reasonable. The truth of science presupposes that the science will be correct because we have used scientific reason to understand the world.

And even then, if we take your position, why is science so much more valid than any other form of truth if we know that it's probably wrong?

> No, because it works. It's a completely pragmatic position.

How pragmatic is climate change?

> if it isn't accessible by science it isn't reality, it's delusion.

Have you a scientific proof of this fact?

> Science does say: "This is true to the best of our knowledge."

So do religious people.

Is this all that science (and its disciples) say?

> if it isn't accessible by science it isn't reality, it's delusion.

That's a terrible philosophical outlook. It is to be ridiculed as much as flat Earthers. Who argues that nonsense?

> Science does say: "This is true to the best of our knowledge."

No, it doesn't. It says here's the model that best fits the observations we have. Nothing to do with truth, and not even relevant, to what I said, profound truths. It makes no metaphysical claims, no ontological claims, requires a philosophical model for its limited epistemic claims, and it says nothing about the human experience as such. It doesn't answer as to the essence of humans, as to the very experience of reality, as to the nature of reality, as to the source of reality, as to morality, as to meaning, and so on. Science is useful only in its limited practical scope, nothing more.

> It's all just a experiments, predictions and replication, and you are free to join.

Sure, but what has that got to do with truth? What is meant by truth? That you have a coherent model of practical tinkering(like I said before) has little to do with truth, especially existential truths. If we are in an illusion, for example, the models and the experiments would still be useful and practical, but they would not be truth.

> If they wanted to have a deeper understanding of reality, they'd do science. But the stories science tell might not be the ones they want to hear and they can get a little complicated, as they are based in reality, not fantasy.

No. What is reality? Is reality accessible to sense-experience? How do you know? We have scientific evidence to the contrary. Naive realism is dead and it's not coming back. Science is useful for practical reasons, but the claim of truth or existential truths is just ignorant(I don't mean this in a rude way). It doesn't ask the questions nor posits to have answers, all the questions it makes are of an immediate sort to the sense-experience to gain control of the environment and from that we make models of prediction. Truth is not in-built into science, only observation, community trust, experimentation and on a later stage theoretical models around prediction.

Again, what is the relevance of that to truth, and how do you understand truth?

> The numbers aren't fudged

Is this to say that it is a fact that numbers are never fudged within the practice of science?

Note: I am not asking for a prediction of the average quality of science, I am asking precisely about this specific claim.

> You don't have to believe the gospel.

Opinions seem to vary on this. As I recall, it wasn't all that long ago that there was an international advertising campaign on the matter.

> It's all just a experiments, predictions and replication, and you are free to join.

It is often claimed to be the sole source of truth - this too is a part of what "science" is, comprehensively.

>> But humans seek a deeper understanding of reality, not accessible or relevant to science.

> That is utter bollocks.

By what means have you acquired comprehensive knowledge of the entirety of reality? Science?

> Humans like to hear pleasurable stories, they don't care about gaining an understanding.

This seems fairly true - take your comments as a prime example, and those of other atheists in this thread and others.

Wilful ignorance is a human problem, not solely a religious problem. If you disagree, consult science on the matter.

> If they wanted to have a deeper understanding of reality, they'd do science.

Do you know for a fact (as opposed to believe) that deeper understandings of reality are not available via religion?

> But the stories science tell might not be the ones they want to hear and they can get a little complicated, as they are based in reality, not fantasy.

Might this be a two way street? Do you perhaps believe yourself to have a direct line to reality itself (or perhaps: act as if you do, without any conscious awareness of it)?

And are you asserting as a fact that the entirety of the content of all religion is pure fantasy? And if that isn't what you're saying, would you mind stating what it is you are intending to say, in less ambiguous terms?

No. Science inherently can't give answers to questions on "what to do" It's not an answer machine. It just helps in fact seeking .

>High risk of child death tends to lead to more children, not less.

That's just a correlation, nothing more. Even trying to prove a direct causation is super difficult. Kant's objections against the vaccines were pretty en vouge at the time. And most importantly scientifically "correct". Whatever that means.

Law systems are not based on science. law systems are based on morale systems. Nothing in nature implies that the rule "do not kill" is inherent. It just makes morally sense.

You can build with scientific facts whatever death cult you want for example. First rule is to kill as much humans as possible. Try to use as much technology, organization and empirical evidence on how to kill a human as fast as possible and as many as possible. And so on. Oh wait. That's exactly what happened already in Germany 1940