Changes in Religious and Scientific Belief

I have conquered my addiction to reading and posting on Quora, but commenter Earl Wajenberg (Wind off the Hilltop) still has his.  Occasionally the fit takes him, as it does the Tooks from time to time, and he answers a question that deserves a solid answer, mostly because it should never have been asked. I thought the analogies had good teaching properties.

How do scientific theories evolve over time, and why do scientists accept those changes more easily than religious belief changes?

Science is a method of investigation, so its findings will keep changing as investigation continues.

Religion is not a method of investigation. It is a way of reacting to the awesome and the ultimately important. Therefore, it is all about the thing it is reacting to. Change the understanding of the religious object and you change the religion.

Change the understanding of the object of scientific investigation and it’s just time for another round of peer review (usually, unless you have a real paradigm-breaker).

If you’re researching a historical figure and you start by assuming she was born in England and named Mary Johniston, née Smithers, then learn that she was actually born in Austria as Elizabet Maria von Uberwalden, married at age 16 to Karl von Schadenfreude, ran away to England at age 18, took the name Mary Smithers, managed to drop her accent entirely, but never quite got around to finishing the divorce proceedings before (oops) marrying Johniston and having three kids—well, all that is very interesting, but not nearly as upsetting as if you are Johniston and discover all this about your not-quite-lawfully-wedded wife when she has a little too much wine on your tenth wedding anniversary.

The historian is like the scientist. The husband is like the worshiper.

I’m not saying that all religion is or should be a matter of having “a personal relationship with Jesus” or whoever the deity is, but a religion is about your soul or destiny or purpose, or the souls or survival of your people, so it takes a lot less kindly to tinkering than almost any change to a piece of science. Changes to science will change how you understand something, and maybe change how you understand almost everything you’re interested in, but it has to reach a rare fever pitch in a few deeply dedicated individuals before scientific changes keep them awake all night biting the pillow.

Concrete example: There is a movement in modern conservative Christianity saying, “For centuries, people have been concentrating on the issue of ‘How do I get to Heaven’ when really the issue should be ‘How do I advance the Kingdom of God.’” There is also a long-standing effort in theoretical physics to extend the standard model of particle physics so as to explain a number of loose ends and puzzles. People are going to have a lot more emotion and argument about Heaven and the Kingdom of God than about super-symmetry and loop quantum gravity, though no doubt the latter will be intensely important to some specialists and of considerable interest to a number of their colleagues. 

Recent Links

 The second malaria vaccine. Podcast with trnscript of what vaccine development looks like from the inside. "The reality of this problem is the hardness of it is set by nature, and nature is a vicious test setter." That is more than a cute throwaway line.  Vaccine objectors will talk about preferring natural solutions, but one problem is that these are natural diseases, and nature is not kind. Only people in prosperous places protected from nature think nature is kind. People who live with it know that it is powerful, sometimes beautiful, but dangerous. From Works in Progress

Also from Works in Progress: Review:Recession by Tyler Goodspeed 

 At first glance, Goodspeed’s target is the popular understanding of a boom-and-bust cycle. Consider his vivid account of the crisis of 1873. Both popular and scholarly histories have attributed this recession to railway mania and the collapse of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Goodspeed instead points out the devastating role of a surprise that had nothing to do with economics or economic policy: the great grasshopper plagues of 1873-1876, during which a single locust swarm covered an area larger than California and devastated the very regions the railroad was supposed to open to European settlers...This is why recessions remain essentially unpredictable. Any perceived regularity is likely to be a statistical illusion.

 Why Did the Murders Stop In Baltimore? The information has been out there a long time, including Grim's discussion here, that homicide is is a problem in very few neighborhoods and even a very few people. 

Baltimore follows this pattern. In Baltimore’s Western District, 72 percent of murders between 2015 and 2021 were attributable to a small number of men, mostly organized into gangs. The same analysis estimated that the area’s gang members accounted for just 2 percent of the district’s population but as much as 75 percent of its shootings and homicides. 

The Cost of Longevity  Cremieux Recueil.  I don't know if this level of advancement is true, but pretend it is.  More than anything, I wonder it will mean for church life and family life.

 If we have a revolution in everything related to what I’ve listed so far, we conquer the travails of living. We become effectively immune to our environments: an end to infections, an end to degradation from plaque accumulation and the stress of glycemic spikes, a practical end to withering. It also means an end to wellness culture—no regimented dieting required, no extra benefits from structured exercise programs and retreats. You’ll be able to drink and party and you’ll be no worse off for having done it.