“In one of his last books, famed paleontologist (and atheist) Stepehn Jay #Gould attempted to negotiate a peace between #science and #religion by referring them as two “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA), with science concerning itself with understanding the #natural world while religion deals with issues of #morality.
Many reviewers pointed out that Gould was trying to redefine religion as #moral philosophy. In fact, religions do more than just preach on morality. They make claims about the real world-about space,time and matter- that are thereby open to scientific testing.Furthermore… religion has not exactly shown any significant expertise with respect to morality. It has supported #slavery, the oppression of women, ethnic cleansing, serfdom, the divine right of kings, and extraction of testimony by torture. It has opposed anesthetics, lightning rods, sanitation, vaccination, eating meat on Friday, and birth control. It is very easy to give #nonsupernatural reasons for preferring honesty to lying, for outlawing murder and theft. And in fact, those moral principles were common in human society long before anyone had thought of the current major religions. So whatever useful moral prescriptions religion has provided are equally available without it."