The unscientific teachings of the poor basis for science

Science has its origin in ancient Greece. However that does not mean that Greek mythology is the science basis – particularly as the historical beginning of philosophy and science is usually counted from the first attempts to understand the world without the involvement of the gods in the declaration. It was there and then that humanity set out on the long inquiry which resulted in that we now live longer and are healthier than in the past, at the same time that we acquired the ability to completely destroy our living conditions.

When christianity took over the Roman empire took the church over education. The medieval philosophy tried to find rational arguments for gudstron – a project that came to fail – while the science was limited by the fact that new knowledge is needed to be consistent with the christian preaching. With kyrkofaderns Augustine's words, ”truth can not contradict truth”. Those who ventured to think unapproved thoughts happened to be in disgrace, with Galileo Galilei under house arrest and Giordano Bruno's bålbränning as a famous example.

But it was only when science threw of religion, the shackles of that research resulted in real progress. Famous is the british academy's motto, ”Nullis in verba” – which roughly translates as ”take nobody's word for it”. An expression of that science is not about only believing in what the previous people said, but that knowledge is something you have to test against reality.

the Problem with religions is that they contain förkunnelser where we are expected to take certain statements for true though they do not go to check, for example, that Jesus was the son of God or that an angel dictated the Koran to Muhammad, as he sat alone in a cave. The only knowledge we have of these events do we have that we ”took someone's word for it” – they are not scientific knowledge and are usually not claimed to be.

These are long since dismissed by philosophers as insufficient to determine the question of gods existence. In this respect, the debaters that ”such a formal proof is applied in all branches of science”, but it is not true. Formal proof exists, certainly in philosophy and mathematics, but the science of the world around us is not about evidence but about a method: Keep the theories that hold for the experimental tests and observations, throw away the theories that don't agree.

the Writers seem to have a welcome and good purpose in their desire to bring in more rationality and science in religious context. To achieve this, they must, however, start with cleaning out the unscientific beliefs, or alternatively to be clear about what beliefs that lack scientific support. All the theories with the demands for truth must be assessed on equal terms. This is science themselves grundfundament.