Religious dissent has no empirical anchor. Religious truth endlessly changes and shifts amorphously with time and culture. Religions splinter and fragment, all the while furiously denouncing the other's moral depravity.
Science, on the other hand, holds provisional truth, tests, makes predictions and steadily converges.
As for slavery and racism, one would expect that social and cultural forces would be the primary drivers for beliefs about races. Only secondarily would religion and/or proto-science be used to justify those beliefs, unless or until either system developed rigorous empirical means capable of supporting or undermining those beliefs. Christians supported slavery by using biblical references to Ham's descendants being cursed to be servants. Attempts to use science to support racism and slavery were used as well, of course, but flawed in the way the practice of science itself was flawed at the time.
Neither religion nor science can claim any credit for ending slavery, that credit can only go to evolving social views. Steven Pinker argues that increased empathy for slaves and moral revulsion for slavery was catalyzed by a number of best-selling autobiographies of slaves. The growth of empathy, the rejection of slavery and gradual but steady rejection of all forms of violence in societies is well documented in his "Better Angels of Our Nature".
True. But what of it? Not everything in life should or can have an empirical anchor, it is only a tool, and with limited usability at that.
>>> Religions splinter and fragment, all the while furiously denouncing the other's moral depravity.
Not all religions denounce each other's moral depravity, far from it. As for splintering, so do scientific schools or art schools or sports teams or companies, what's wrong with that? It's the market of ideas, like any other.
>>> As for slavery and racism, one would expect that social and cultural forces would be the primary drivers for beliefs about races.
As if religion is something that is orthogonal to social and cultural forces instead of being integral part of it? If you read _why_ religious abolitionists were abolitionists, you'll see plenty of purely religious reasons for that. Of course, not all religious people were like that - there's dissent in science, and dissent in religion, people love to dissent and the question of racism was not an exception.
>>> Attempts to use science to support racism and slavery were used as well, of course, but flawed in the way the practice of science itself was flawed at the time.
Science at the time was no different than science today. It wasn't flawed in any specific way it is not flawed now, and we did not do anything different today than we did back then. People changed, and some things that were done back then are not considered fit to be done today. But it's not because science discovered something different - it's because the morals changed. And science has very little to do with morals, unfortunately.
>>> Neither religion nor science can claim any credit for ending slavery, that credit can only go to evolving social views.
Again, if you talk about social views, religion is much closer to what we understand by social views than science.
>>> gradual but steady rejection of all forms of violence
I would be hard pressed to find any scientific and empirically supported argument for rejecting violence and increasing empathy. In fact, if you look in the empirical examples from the nature, abhorrent violence and terrifying behavior is the regular occurrence. However, if you look at religions, you can find plenty of argument for empathy and non-violence. Of course, not in all religions, but at least you can find some sources for these ideas there, while you find very little in the empirical science. Same goes for other ideas that underly most of western society, such as Protestant work ethics, or rule of law, or concepts of law and justice, etc. You may dismiss the religion as stupid superstitions, but be careful not to throw out the whole civilization we're living in that was built on the same basis.
>>>I would be hard pressed to find any scientific and empirically supported argument for rejecting violence and increasing empathy. In fact, if you look in the empirical examples from the nature, abhorrent violence and terrifying behavior is the regular occurrence.
See "Who's Afraid of the Naturalistic Fallacy?" by Oliver Curry for the prevailing view on morality and evolution (in the absence of religious assumptions). No naturalist is looking to nature for morality, we look to our values as beings designed by evolution for sociality, and the argument is as sound as it was back when Hume made it.
http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep04234247.pdf
>>>However, if you look at religions, you can find plenty of argument for empathy and non-violence. Of course, not in all religions, but at least you can find some sources for these ideas there, while you find very little in the empirical science. Same goes for other ideas that underly most of western society, such as Protestant work ethics, or rule of law, or concepts of law and justice, etc. You may dismiss the religion as stupid superstitions, but be careful not to throw out the whole civilization we're living in that was built on the same basis.
But why has violence decreased and so much moral progress made while secularism has also increased? Attributing the good to religion even in part just won't work. It seems, rather, that religion is just another cultural phenomena being shaped and changed by more powerful and influential factors in human moral evolution, as Pinker argues in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature
Science, on the other hand, holds provisional truth, tests, makes predictions and steadily converges.
As for slavery and racism, one would expect that social and cultural forces would be the primary drivers for beliefs about races. Only secondarily would religion and/or proto-science be used to justify those beliefs, unless or until either system developed rigorous empirical means capable of supporting or undermining those beliefs. Christians supported slavery by using biblical references to Ham's descendants being cursed to be servants. Attempts to use science to support racism and slavery were used as well, of course, but flawed in the way the practice of science itself was flawed at the time.
Neither religion nor science can claim any credit for ending slavery, that credit can only go to evolving social views. Steven Pinker argues that increased empathy for slaves and moral revulsion for slavery was catalyzed by a number of best-selling autobiographies of slaves. The growth of empathy, the rejection of slavery and gradual but steady rejection of all forms of violence in societies is well documented in his "Better Angels of Our Nature".