Religion; the precursor to science?

[Creed of Heresy]

Don't kill me just yet.

This was just something I was ruminating over while I was in the tub. Maybe ten minutes of thought went into this, and most of that was sporadic anyways, but...I got to thinking. Science is the refined method of inquiring on the way things work. It provides answers. Religion, as an invention of mankind, didn't just poof into existence just because it could; it came about because early on in our days of settling and starting little tiny villages of civilization, when we first started to share any form of ideas beyond just grunting and pointing, we began to realize that we died but we didn't know what happened afterwards. We were primitive, and knew only that which we experienced. We needed a means of explaining things because we started having questions and we didn't have any real means of explaining them so we basically created our own.

Science, nowadays, replaces this concept. It doesn't create answers, it genuinely seeks them, and it can do so because we've reached a technological point that allows us to do so. I defy someone to tell me that a caveman had a hope in hell of building something that could map out the higgs-boson particle, for example. But is the root of science grounded, in some ways, in religion?

Personally, I don't actually think so, after some thought. Science is a result of human curiosity, and religion was created to sate that insatiable curiosity at a point in our history when we really had no means of doing so otherwise. But it's an interesting correlation, even if unfounded; it had me wondering for a moment.

[Angrboda]

This is one of a competing set of explanations of religion, that religion originally satisfied a "need" for explanations (and the concomittant existential comfort provided by them), in an age prior to the use of philosophy, math, and science to provide such comforts.


As such, it's certainly not without merit or its proponents, but it's important to bear in mind that it is only one of multiple (not necessarily mutually exclusive) explanations of religion, and to not prematurely put all one's eggs in the same basket.

More than that, I listed some of the others recently, but I don't recall the thread. With respect to this specific hypothesis, I'm not familiar with the examples off the top of my head, but if memory serves, anthropological study of religions as well as philosophical examples point up paradoxical or problematic issues lurking under the rather stately exterior of this hypothesis.

[Anomalocaris]

Don't kill me just yet.

This was just something I was ruminating over while I was in the tub. Maybe ten minutes of thought went into this, and most of that was sporadic anyways, but...I got to thinking. Science is the refined method of inquiring on the way things work. It provides answers. Religion, as an invention of mankind, didn't just poof into existence just because it could; it came about because early on in our days of settling and starting little tiny villages of civilization, when we first started to share any form of ideas beyond just grunting and pointing, we began to realize that we died but we didn't know what happened afterwards. We were primitive, and knew only that which we experienced. We needed a means of explaining things because we started having questions and we didn't have any real means of explaining them so we basically created our own.

Science, nowadays, replaces this concept. It doesn't create answers, it genuinely seeks them, and it can do so because we've reached a technological point that allows us to do so. I defy someone to tell me that a caveman had a hope in hell of building something that could map out the higgs-boson particle, for example. But is the root of science grounded, in some ways, in religion?

Personally, I don't actually think so, after some thought. Science is a result of human curiosity, and religion was created to sate that insatiable curiosity at a point in our history when we really had no means of doing so otherwise. But it's an interesting correlation, even if unfounded; it had me wondering for a moment.

But how component of human behavior and cognition interact to produce complex behaviors and cognition such as religion and science is, AFAIK, not well understood, and it is certainly probable that many of what we conceive to be morally, ethically, or cognatively diametrically opposite high level behavior are in fact just variations in emergent properties of interactions amongst heavily overlapping, or even identical, subsets of our behavioral and cognative components.

So in the sense that they may result from similar urges and impluses, and yet one preceeded the other, religion may be said to be a precursor to science.

But one could make the same claim about witchcraft. Witchcraft could also have been a precursor to science, and religion may also have been a precursor to witchcraft, or vice versa.

[genkaus]

I'd say that you have the right idea but you are comparing it to wrong subject. Rather than science, I'd say religion is a precursor to philosophy. I agree with others about not putting all your eggs in one basket and coming up with such a simplistic explanation for what is doubtless an extremely complex phenomena, but I believe that this comparison is more apt than the one to science.

Science does not cover all aspects of human life. It is limited in the sense that it only addresses what is and not what should be. Furthermore, it limits itself to natural phenomena without necessarily establishing that that is all that exists. Religion, on the other hand, does give explanations about the nature of things and why they are how they are (albeit incorrectly) and in that respect it is similar to science. But it goes beyond that and tells us how we should live our lives, what our goals and values should be, how human societies should be etc. (albeit irrationally) which science does not. Philosophy, on the other hand, does address both. Basically, almost everything covered by religion could conceivably be covered by non-religious philosophy. The distinct advantage of philosophy over religion is that while it depends on reason and - in some cases - evidence to justify its case, religion primarily relies on authority.

Now, it can be argued that philosophy itself is a precursor to science. Science does start from certain philosophical premises - such as existence of a natural world and evidence-based epistemology - currently it can't replace philosophy until it address all the aspects of human life that philosophy does.

[Gonzalo697]

When you attempt to use logic to conclude facts about religion, are you starting at the conclusion (God is not real), or are you starting at true premises?  Be honest.  If you are starting at true premises, then what are they?  And how are they true?