Must knowledge and logic be the eternal foes of established religions?

Any religion that makes uninformed pronouncements about nature must be a foe of knowledge and logic. That’s obvious.

Find me a religion that confines itself to talking about right and wrong or other social issues without drawing its arguments from what it thinks nature is, and without imposing its rules on nature, and I think you’ll have found a religion that is not a foe of knowledge and logic.

Not all religions, I don’t think. And not for all believers either. I was never a foe of knowledge and logic when I was a believer. Of course, it eventually led me to that “dark place,” as a life long friend and fellow Christian said to me, just before she unfriended me when she realized my religious views had changed.

But for too many Christians, that seems to hold true. They feel they must believe, even when it flies in the face of all possibility.
I once questioned the resurrection to a fellow church goer. They literally went white. “But..but…that is the total foundation of Christianity! You must believe it!”
I mumbled, “I thought the total foundation of Christianity was to be kind to others,” before I just shut up all together.

Knowledge and logic are not synonymous. “Knowledge” is a broad term. I can have knowledge of astrology just as I can of evolutionary biology. “Logic” means that I apply some rules to my use of knowledge. For example, I use empiricism to evaluate my ideas of some knowledge I have.

It is possible to be knowledgeable and also religious.

It is also possible to be logical and still be religious, because humans do not inherently value logical fact over belief.

@dappled_leaves Unitarian Universalism

@Dutchess_III it astounds me that you even think you have enough knowledge of Christianity to discuss it at all. Maybe your backwoods Kansas Christian background is all you know, fine, but even basic awareness of history should give you some perspective.
For centuries the Jesuits were leaders in all things educational, including the sciences, as were also the religious leaders of Judaic and Islamic populations.

As to the question, a minimal study of history teaches us that most educated religious seek to discover and explain the workings of the world around them, appreciating the miraculous (I use that word colloquially) nature of existence. Theology is an enormously complex subject, based more in questioning the nature of the universe as in the idea of faith.
It bothers me no end that a few, loud, ignorant people with an agenda should shape the views of people who think that they, themselves, are informed because they don’t agree.

For the record, I have never been a Christian or even affiliated with any organized religion, but I have known a number of devout Christians, Jews and Muslims who hold doctorates in the various sciences.

People who would discuss how terrible religions are need to separate the political, human agenda that uses religion as a means to an end from the actual faith.

Not at all. One of the best people I’ve met in the last 10 years is a Pastor, he’s changed my views a lot.

In front of his house he has this sign that says

In this house, we believe:
Black Lives Matter
Women’s Rights are Human Rights
No Human is Illegal
Science is Real
Love is Love
Kindness is Everything

He has the same signs around the church and the attached preschool.

His kids went to the Science Academy I went to, he teaches the kids at his church about space and history and what a difference they can make. To him, religion is a way of living and celebrating your history while adding to it.

If you believe the final word was written 2000 years ago, then yes, I guess you’re not learning much past then, and logic probably wasn’t in your plans anyway.

But I don’t think there’s anything about religion that requires you stay blind to the changes in the world.

@Dutchess_III The foundation of Christianity is not to “be kind to others.”
The foundation of Christianity is to believe in the Gospel which is to believe that Jesus lived, died for our sins and was resurrected.
If you did attend church, you should have known or even heard of this.

Do you see how passive aggressive this question is?

To an extent. But aren’t religions forced onto the defensive as knowledge accumulates?

“For centuries the Jesuits were leaders in all things educational, including the sciences, as were also the religious leaders of Judaic and Islamic populations” I do know that @canidmajor. But the Roman Catholic church eclipsed all other offshoots of Christianity to the point where the contributions of the Jesuits (which I admire) were filed under the sin of “heresy,” and all the Christian denominations that followed rejected those scholarly teachings.

@chyna “The foundation of Christianity is to believe in the Gospel which is to believe that Jesus lived, died for our sins and was resurrected. Yep. That and all of the “miracles” that surrounded it all. I accept the philosophies attributed to Jesus, although I’m not convinced that “Jesus,” as one person, actually lived.
To me, the philosophies were more important than all of the other stuff, the impossible, illogical in keeping with the question conception, changing water to wine, the fishes and the loaves, the resurrection, etc. But, according to my church, you couldn’t just accept his philosophies, and try to live by them. You had to blindly accept the impossible, irrational stories as well to be a true Christian.

I only mentioned one church member’s reaction to my comment that I questioned the resurrection because I remember that particular exchange. We weren’t have a long, philosophical discussion on all the tenants of Christianity, just on that one point. Perhaps it was on the heels of a sermon about the resurrection. I don’t remember. I just remember she was shocked, almost afraid.

I questioned the miracles, I embraced science and evolution. I was a rotten Christian.

@janbb I wasn’t actually shopping, but I bet you already knew that. ;)

Knowledge and logic tell us that the centre of the universe is in each one of us, that time is inconstant and matter immaterial and that what appears to us as reality is merely a veil across what we can’t understand. They are by no means opposed to religion.

Yes, it is only logical that knowledge and logic would explain away religion. Religion came about because of the lack of knowledge about how things actually came to be.

And in many religions, when they realized how in awe people were of these things, it was refined as a way to control the masses.

And to collect alms. They had bills to pay, too!

Yep. A way to get rich.