Your post modern narrative disparaging science is also incredibly harmful to the ability of science to lead to action, such as vaccines and global warming to name two.
I've no hidden agenda, but this debate has made me realize that I certainly have a personal beef about science - or the way science is practiced, nowadays.
So a little soul-searching on my part would do me good with regards to that anger bubbling up in me regarding science. That's noted.
But I speak with honesty, and I can't get out of the nagging feeling that something is not right regarding science in our society.
I don't know how it is in the USA, but in France science teaching is dismal (I have a 9 years old son at school).
They don't teach youngsters the scientific method and critical thinking, they make them learn their little science textbook by rote, while telling them "it's the truth".
It's appalling.
Something has gone wrong in Occident - global warming being the most dire manifestation of that - and we need critical thinking more than ever, not blind allegience to Science or Religion.
And we need to reconnect with our soul, and to see the place we have in this world.
I don't know anything about Neil deGrasse Tyson. Isn't he the bloke who thinks there's a very good chance we're all living in some computer simulation ?
WAKE UP, Mr Tyson ! Feel your soul ! If we f*#@ it up on this planet, there won't be a reboot for the human race.
If one does think - as I do - that there are supernatural forces around us, the question of why the Occident doesn't believe in those any more is greatly interesting. Fascinating, even.I'd be interested about your thoughts about why non-believers don't believe in the supernatural / the spirit world / religion.There are multiple reasons, depending upon each non-believer, I'm sure.
This is what I'm curious about; the personal side of things. What are your brainstorms regarding the personal reasons for non-belief?
To get away from the cultural-historical approach you're taking to this, take a Korean, an Indian, a Congolese, and a Russian non-believer: what are your possible personal explanations for their non-belief?
I've no hidden agenda, but this debate has made me realize that I certainly have a personal beef about science - or the way science is practiced, nowadays.
It isn't practiced "nowadays" any differently than it was practiced "back then". The sausage factory is a mess, it's always been a mess, the sausage is still good.
But I speak with honesty, and I can't get out of the nagging feeling that something is not right regarding science in our society.
And you don't think that MIGHT be from a constant barage of "science is bad" coming from a religious tradition angry at being replaced, a corporate oligarchy that doesn't like saying things that will cost them money, the soft humanities who demand that their feelings be as valid as factual evidence, or philosophers struggling for relevancy?
Your feelings are not valid arbiters of reality.
I don't know how it is in the USA, but in France science teaching is dismal (I have a 9 years son at school).
They don't teach youngsters the scientific method and critical thinking, they make them learn their little science textbook by rote, while telling them "it's the truth".
It IS the truth. In so far as a government sponsored author in a basement can copy paste and edit a book under a deadline to explain it to a typical 9 nine year.
Good science will show HOW we know what's in the book, but you cannot just ask a human being to keep re inventing the wheel and ignore everything that's been learned so far/ That simply isn't realistic.
I don't know anything about Neil deGrasse Tyson. Isn't he the bloke who thinks there's a very good chance we're all living in some computer simulation ?
...No. He's an astrophysicist, author, and Cosmos TV host.
WAKE UP, Mr Tyson ! Feel your soul ! If we f+#! it up on this planet, there won't be a reboot for the human race.
"If you’re going to ignore Earth — and no one else is paying attention to Earth the way NASA is — you could be planting the seeds of your own destruction,” Tyson said. “It’d be different if most of [NASA’s budget] was spent on Earth, but that’s not the case.”
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Of course there is an afterlife. Sadly I can't show you the evidence I have seen with my own eyes, because they were my own personal experiences. Suffice to say I am sensitive to what we label the as the paranormal.
Let me make it clear that this sensitivity is not something I sought or even wanted. If someone tells me a place is haunted, then I will avoid said location because I don't desire the experience.
It has also been my experience that the departed seem drawn to people who are sensitive to such things. My own encounters suggest that like everyone else, they want to be heard and recognized.
Now, as to what the afterlife is like I have no idea. The apparitions I have seen have rarely spoken, not that I would have been receptive to any sort of extensive discourse in my horrified state.
I think maybe there are just different states of energy. Maybe dimensions outside our perceptions and current science. I firmly believe that if we are given enough time as a species, those other realities will become places we can observe and study through the use of science. We may not have all the tools or understanding yet, but so far the universe has proved to be an organized place with rules and order.
Scoff as you like, but this is from my own experiences and they are what they are. I cannot deny them nor quantify them.
"Nothing is true" is one of my pet philosophic building blocks.
It's a radioactive building block. get rid of it.
How do you know that radioactivity is a bad thing? maybe that pretty green glow is fine for you. Or maybe it's not there at all. If there's no truth at all you should be fine standing next to i...
and to meet your opposing arguments with a snickering "I'm true, you're wrong ; if you think differently it's because you're a moron".
which they typically haven't fully reflected upon nor mastered,
which they haven't thought through because thinking by oneself is difficult for many peopleYou are doing the very thing you're complaining about. The thin veneer of "well i'm talking about SOME people...not neccesarily YOU..." isn't polite it's passive aggressive.
You have very serious, demonstrable errors in your train of thought: errors you don't seem to care about, address, or acknowledge as you continue to tout your superiority over the narrow minded biggots oppressing your creativity for the luls.
Being unique is easy. Being right is hard. Being unique AND right? Thats genius.
It's not the scientific method per se which is problematic, it's the relationship people have with truth, and the utter inability for many people to realize that our conceptual constructions are, for the most part, axiomatic. And inherited from our society.
We would not be having this conversation if that were true. You cannot get a working computer out of a cultural axiom. We are not having this conversation because both of our cultures believe in electrons, we're having it because electrons objectively, independently exist even if our idea of them is somewhat fuzzy.
@Tequila Sunrise
The cultural and historical approach seems very relevant to me here.
The occidental world view has peaked in the minds of many people around this planet, because the West has had tremendous influence in other cultures.
In the 19th century, France and the United Kingdoms were the big poo-bah around the world. In the 20th century, USA took their place.
Now our star has rescinded, after having reached its apex, as is often the case.
Regarding the Congolese man, I would oppose that Africa seems a very religious continent. I've never traveled to Africa, but my wife has (to Senegal).
She told me that the Senegalese people, when you meet them, frequently and politely ask for your religion.
If you tell them "I'm a Muslim," they understand what you're saying.
If you would tell them "I'm a Buddhist", I assume they would ask you to explain the tenets of your religion*.
When my wife tried to tell some of them that she had no particular religion, the Senegalese would not quite understand. She was talking in that instance to common senegalese men, not to the ones who go study in French universities an are familiar to our miscreants ways ;-).
After several very awkward social encounters, my wife relented and said "I'm a Christian". And everything went okay after that.
---
For a Russian individual - well, Russia is a big part of the european world, and I have no trouble picturing a non-believing Russian.
Hell, they even invented nihilism, and nihilists believed in nothing, except that they were very pissed off.
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I know next to nothing about Korean people, so I wouldn't know why a Korean individual would believe or not.
---
Indian culture has some very complex and subtle notions regarding the nature of the Universe.
And Indian intellectuals think in a large and vast manner, I gather.
I think an Indian can decide he does not believe in a superior power after having intellectually disproven its existence.
But I admit I'm out of my depth here: I have trouble understanding Indian metaphysical culture - too many names, gods, demons, spirits, whatever :-).
---
I think we often underestimate the place of religion in other cultures.
Having said that, I can conceive of trends in the intellectual landscape of the world, but believing or not is an incredibly personal choice, motivated, no doubt, by each person's life story and spiritual journey.
*Yes, I know that buddhism is not always religious.
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Science is "fundamentally better", ha! I love it.Well, in the last 200 years we've totally mechanized warfare. Invented two types of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, ICBMs, and other remote killing options. We've engineered global climate change (and not for the better). We've made obesity and diabetes pandemic for the first time in human history.
Need I go on?
Yes, you do. You also forgot that medicine has advanced to the point that we're living twice as long, in greater overall health than our forebears. We live in an unprecedented age of communication and information, which, unless you're claiming you use your telepathic abilities to communicate across the web, seem to enjoy quite a lot.
Despite the US an its allies being in armed conflict for the last 15 years, we have had less fatalities during that time, on either side, than any conventional war in history.
And all of our man-made problems are, year by year, being solved by science as they were created by science. New energy resources are poised to halt the worsening of the climate, and potentially reverse the damage done. Obesity and diabetes are on a decline as greater awareness of the risks and greater access to knowledge about nutrition and healthy exercise emerge.
Nuclear and chemical weapons haven't been used in war in a literal lifetime.
We have a greater understanding of the underpinnings of he universe, and our pace in it than ever.
Pessimism isn't enlightenment, it's just pissed off ignorance.
In mauritania (which is close enough to senegal that I was technically in senegal when I had to get my watering can out of the river: and the locals really didn't care about the border) the "i'm an atheist" conversation went pretty much the same as it went in america.
Naka wa kerr gi?
"Nothing is true" is one of my pet philosophic building blocks.
It's a radioactive building block. get rid of it.
Nope.
[...]which they typically haven't fully reflected upon nor mastered,
which they haven't thought through because thinking by oneself is difficult for many people.
You are doing the very thing you're complaining about. The thin veneer of "well i'm talking about SOME people...not neccesarily YOU..." isn't polite it's passive aggressive.
I write my thoughts the way I want to. I can't help it if you've decided to take it all personally.
I'm not here to hold your hand, I'm here for debating.
You have very serious, demonstrable errors in your train of thought: errors you don't seem to care about, address, or acknowledge as you continue to tout your superiority over the narrow minded biggots oppressing your creativity for the luls.
I happen to disagree with you. I've reviewed what you said, and I've made my own opinion of it.
I can question myself after having taken in consideration what you said, and still disagree with you.
What do you want me to say ? That I might be wrong ?
There : I might be wrong.
I may be wrong.
Part of what I've said is surely wrong, or unconvincing. If, after some more thinking, I realize it's been the case, I will accept it, shed it, and move on.
I've no problem with admitting that
What I've a problem with is with people like you [See ? No, I'm really talking about you] who can't seem to conceive that OTHER PEOPLE CAN HAVE PERFECTLY GOOD REASONS FOR DISAGREEING WITH YOU !
Us, you and me, being in disagreement doesn't mean someone or the other is thinking wrong !
It just means we're thinking different thoughts because we're different individuals.
And I don't care at all if you think you're right because SCIENCE !
Being unique is easy. Being right is hard. Being unique AND right? Thats genius.
That's being oneself to the best of his/her abilities.
Pessimism isn't enlightenment, it's just pissed off ignorance.
Pessimism is pessimism. Optimism is optimism. Dissing on other people's views simply because you happen to disagree with them, and to attribute that disagreement solely to their ignorance, is benighted arrogance.
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Back to nuclear weapons. If having them and not using them is so copacetic, why are so many informed people against them?
Because not having them is the best way not to use them.
s for extended human lifetimes. A good argument can be made that we have largely extended dying by a decade plus in the last half century. So instead of a week on our deathbed we spent ten to fifteen years giving our life savings to the "health care" machine, live in relative misery, and then die anyway.
An argument, maybe. Not a good one. There are plenty of 60+ people with no real serious medical conditions who are plenty happy with their lives.
About the "unprecedented communications" we all enjoy. The rise if ISIS would not have been possible except for modern communication techniques. Things like smartphones, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter, etc.
So we have one bad thing (which could just as easily be replaced with any other terrorist organization anyway, ISIS is not unique), and an uncountable number of good things that came out of it. Seems a fair trade.
Obesity and diabetes may be on the decline in your neighborhood but nationally it really hasn't budged. It just wanders around a mean of "WTH are you people shoving in your faces"? Meaning that we haven't so much learned a lesson as reached the point where we can't really make it any worse.
Last figures I saw, new cases of diabetes were down 20%. Of course the old cases still exist, but even then it's more manageable than ever.
Not sure the numbers on obesity.
We have a greater understanding of the universe? If you mean by that, we understand that we don't know #### about the fundamentals, then... k, I'll give you that one.
That's a complicated area, but knowing in general what you need to be looking for or at least suspecting you know where NOT to look is a damn sight better than it used to be.
If you want to go live in a hut somewhere without the evils of technology weighing you down, go for it man. If not, just recognize that using technology to reach a wide audience of people you would not otherwise be able to reach to talk about how technology is ruining everything is pretty hypocritical.
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Using science to dogmatically squash the opinions of people who think differently goes pretty much against the impetus of science which IMO is discovery and maintaining an open mind
YMMV
Does a smelter hate steel? or do they know that the heat will get rid of the slag?
Using science to try to crush ideas IS science, because we can be sure the truth will survive the process
BTW what do people think of scientists who do believe in God ?
Generally I don't have a problem with them. In most cases, faith and science are orthogonal because one deals with how and the other deals with why. For example, I don't have a problem with scientists who happen to be Christian and treat scripture as largely metaphorical -- in particular, where a passage would contradict well-established theory if taken literally.
Specifically I do have a problem with the ones who let their faith get in the way of their work. For example, I absolutely reject Christian "scientists" who cherry-pick and rationalize data into flat-earth/6000-year/other wacko beliefs, because they're starting with their literal interpretation of scripture and then tracing an elaborately convoluted line to get there. They're failing the last step of science: That scenario which explains all the data with the most evidence and the fewest unknowns is the most likely.
BTW what do people think of scientists who do believe in God ?
It never comes to my mind. I'm interested in their science, not their private lives. If the science they do is good, it's good. If it's flawed than the question becomes why. The why might be a flaw in procedure... or a blindspot caused by a religious-based predilection.
Using science to dogmatically squash the opinions of people who think differently goes pretty much against the impetus of science which IMO is discovery and maintaining an open mind.
YMMV.
Does a smelter hate steel? or do they know that the heat will get rid of the slag?
Using science to try to crush ideas IS science, because we can be sure the truth will survive the process
If you think you're using the scientific method in this thread to squash other's people ideas, you're IMHO, thoroughly mistaken.
BigNorseWolf: This is not a science forum, and you're not a scientist.
You could use your understanding of current scientific ideas to debate (mostly metaphysical) ideas with your fellow peers gamers. And that would be okay.
But you're using the trappings of science - mostly by alluding to the conclusion of scientists - to prove you're right.
You're not conducting an experiment to try to falsify an hypothesis of yours.
You're trying to prove you're right, because you think you have science on your side, but you're not conducting a controlled experiment which will be reviewed by a body of your scientists peers.
You're saying you're right because you've metaphorically donned the white lab coat of scientists, and you magically think that makes you more astute and clear in your views than those who happen to disagree with you, for whatever reason.
You're saying: "I'm right, and you're wrong, because... Science !"
Can't you see that ?
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Nope.
You haven't noticed it's a little self contradictory?
I write my thoughts the way I want to. I can't help it if you've decided to take it all personally.
You are using it personally. Instead of addressing concerns with whats being said you are insulting people and implying that there's something wrong with them, and thus their ideas. It's a large part of the fact that...
I'm not here to hold your hand, I'm here for debating.
...you are not debating. you are not addressing points, you use ad homs extensively if not exclusively, you do not respond when serious logical errors are pointed out in your reasoning, and there is a major disconnect between what you say you have evidence for and what you show.
That is not debate. It isn't even a discussion. It is rank polemics and rhetoric.
Part of what I've said is surely wrong, or unconvincing. If, after some more thinking, I realize it's been the case, I will accept it, shed it, and move on.
Much of what you said is not merely unconvincing it is completely, totally, and utterly wrong and those are not the same thing. Finding people that agree with you to find that they agree with you is not evidence it's texan sharpshooting. Experimental error is not a new development in science. Science does have a fair bit to say on aesthetics, imperfection in science does not suddenly make any competing framework viable, god of the gaps is a fallacy, not proof, Neil deGrasse Tyson is not a conspiracy nut and most importantly Science is not a random cultural doxa: it works so well precisely because there is an external check on ideas in the form of experimentation that will weed out incorrect ideas and improve the accuracy of good ones. This is not subjective opinion
What I've a problem with is with people like you [See ? No, I'm really talking about you] who can't seem to conceive that OTHER PEOPLE CAN HAVE PERFECTLY GOOD REASONS FOR DISAGREEING WITH YOU !
Rational people can disagree with me (rational people should disagree with me a LOT) , but not on the fundamental process for figuring our reality based on facts, reason, and evidence
This is off-topic, but this has been percolating in my head for a while and I figure this is a good thread to ask this:
The Argument: There are endless metaphysical possibilities.[...]
But notice how possibilities with the most emotional satisfaction tend to become the biggest and most successful religions, while the possibilities with no or negative emotional satisfaction tend to get few to no adherents, even if the latter provides a much simpler explanation for reality.
This has not always been the case. For example, according to the Greek religion of the classical era, when people died, there were 3 places they could go after shuffling the mortal coil:
1) Elyseum, where the heroes went.The greek version of Paradise. It's safe to say only a tiny tiny minority of Greek souls were supposed to go there. Heroes are rare.
2) Tartarus. The Hells of classical greek religion, reserved for villains or people the gods simply did not like, e.g. Prometheus who dared give fire to humanity against the command of Zeus, king of the Gods.
Tartarus was bad. If you went there, it was not emotionally satisfying.
3) The Plain of the Asphodeles
A mourn realm of twilight ghosts, as seen in Virgil's Aeneid. An eternity of boredom.
Those greeks who were neither heroes nor villains - the vast majority - went there.
Conclusion: Given competing unevidenced possibilities, people overwhelmingly choose the most feel-good possibilities, regardless of other considerations. For many believers, reason simply isn't an issue. For religious philosophers, reason is employed only after the premise of their faith is axiomatically accepted. Thus, nobody can be trusted -- in purported experience or claimed knowledge -- when it comes to the metaphysical.
Maybe our human soul gives to many of us the inner sense - and remembrance - that the Universe is not a place of horror, but one of wonder, beauty, and hope.
Not everyone of us can be like Howard Philips Lovecraft ;-).
Rational people can disagree with me (rational people should disagree with me a LOT) , but not on the fundamental process for figuring our reality based on facts, reason, and evidence.
Rational people can disagree with you in whatever way they deem fit. They can even disagree with your fundamental process for figuring out reality, and be perfectly rational.
You don't have a monopoly on the process of figuring out reality. You only think you do.
In other words: there's no good reason to think that those who disagree with the fundamentals of your world view are ipso facto dishonest, dumb, illogical or irrational.
During the Inquisition, such people who disagreed with the Revelation of Christ and the tenets of the Christian faith - the only world view admissible by the powers that be at the time - were burned at the stake.
The english pilgrims even fled their old country to have the freedom to think as they wanted.
So people will disagree with you in any way that they deem fit, and there's nothing you can do about it, whether you like it or not.
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The repetitive use of "occidental" in those posts is particularly amusing given that the US and most of Europe are less effective at science education than Singapore, Japan, Vietnam, China, and Korea.Emphasis mine.
And:Going by those numbers, I have a feeling that the average "occidental" is probably worse at spotting pseudoscience than the average Asian.Perhaps.
If this is the case, that isn't in contradiction with what I'm saying.
I'll rephrase the last sentence of my previous post in the following excerpt, this time using your own term above to substitute some of mine, to wit :"the materialistic science card"
"The occidental mind is prone to using pseudoscience to discard phenomena and ideas which challenge the common (doxographic) world view."So, you see, your commentary was amusing to me too. There's no reason debating should be a dry, humourless, practice :-).
The problem is that the things you are supporting in your posts are pseudoscience at best, not even science at worst. That you don't recognize pseudoscience yourself leads me to wonder if you describe yourself unwittingly.
If you don't understand the disconnect between logic and faith, then I can only assume you've never debated any Christian about matters of belief (particularly creationism).Poking around the Net at religious colleges/universities and I see that they all teach courses in logic/philosophy/critical thinking and are often using generally approved text books.
*shrug*
Many technical universities also offer courses on religion. That has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Instead, try a practical experiment. Choose an obviously illogical belief held by a member of a religion. Construct a valid, true, and comprehensive logical argument that shows that the belief is illogical, and unlikely to be true. Present this argument to a member of the religion that holds the belief. Observe the results.
...And then measure for the Backfire Effect?
Pretty much. You'll get denial, perhaps an attempt to invalidate your argument by changing terms, a fallacy like appeal to tradition (or bandwagon, or ad baculum), or the dead end "deus vult".
What you won't get is acceptance of logic and a change in belief. Because logic and faith are not connected.
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In other words: there's no good reason to think that those who disagree with the fundamentals of your world view are ipso facto dishonest, dumb, illogical or irrational.
During the Inquisition, such people who disagreed with the Revelation of Christ and the tenets of the Christian faith - the only world view admissible by the powers that be at the time - were burned at the stake.
The english pilgrims even fled their old country to have the freedom to think as they wanted.
So people will disagree with you in any way that they deem fit, and there's nothing you can do about it, whether you like it or not.
You should check your history.
The Separatists came to the New World so they could burn people at the stake for violating what they saw as the true word of God. They didn't come here in order to establish a place of religious freedom, they came to establish a place for their religion and violently excluded others.
The Massachusetts colony was a religiously authoritarian place and had much more in common with the Inquisition than you give them credit. For example, they executed Quakers.
Guy Humual- agreed, that's why I worded my post as I did.
It may interest you to know that I myself am a skeptical person. I looked for other explanations for the things I experienced. For a time I wondered if I might have a brain tumor or something to that effect.
But, and this is something only to consider, one of the manifestations I witnessed started off with the sound of breaking glass....which two other witnesses (family members) heard as well. This occurred in a rural farmhouse we lived in so it wasn't neighborhood noise (the closest neighbor was a mile away) Anyway, as you might suspect, we did not find any broken glass in the house after the event. (My family members did not see the apparition before it vanished)
Anyway, none of this can be proven or disproven, I only offered to share because the question was asked. I am, however, confident that one day these type of things will be better understood. Meanwhile, it is a tragedy that so many people purposefully fake stories on possibly real phenomenom and muddle any serious attempt to study or investigate such things.
I might add there have been more than a few things "science" considered hogwash at different times in human history: the fact the earth is round and not flat, that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa, tales of ape men (gorillas) when Africa was first being explored, etc. Note: I am not opposed to the scientific method here, science amends itself when proven wrong
This article may be of interest.
The abstract of the study is here, but the study itself is behind a paywall.
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I might add there have been more than a few things "science" considered hogwash at different times in human history: the fact the earth is round and not flat
I don't know how far back you have to go for that to be considered true, but I'm pretty sure it would put you before science was really a thing. The story of columbus being nay sayed about a flat earth is false. People not only knew the earth was round, they had a pretty good idea of how big it was since the ancient greeks and warned him he was gonna die because his estimates for the planet were too small, and his estimates for how big asia was had a conversion error.
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I might add there have been more than a few things "science" considered hogwash at different times in human history: the fact the earth is round and not flat, that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa, tales of ape men (gorillas) when Africa was first being explored, etc. Note: I am not opposed to the scientific method here, science amends itself when proven wrong
I'm afraid you picked three bad examples there, since those are all highly anachronistic. Using Copernicus and the 1500s as reasonable but awfully early start for "science,"...
* The roundness of the earth and indeed its approximate size had been known from antiquity, as BNW pointed out.
* The helocentric model of the solar system was devised by Copernicus himself and accepted by "science" almost immediately; the only significant opposition by a scientist was from Tycho Brahe. As I pointed out above, the primary opposition was from the theologians.
* Gorillas are slightly more problematic; they had been described (badly) by a Greek explorer Hanno in the 5th century BC, but the ancient Greek bestiaries were, to put it bluntly, as unreliable as a chocolate tea kettle. Given the other things described by his contemporaries (Pliny, for example, is notorious for his tall tales, exaggerations, and presentation of myths as though they were real), it's quite reasonable no believe that the gorilla was no more real than the monopod, the cyclopes, the griffin, and the unnamed tribe of humans with their legs on back-to-front (Pliny, Natural History, Vol 7, Ch. 1)
Certainly, there are a lot of examples of "science" rejecting low-credibility traveller's tales that later turned out to be correct, such as the existence of meteorites. (Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States and himself a scholar of note, correctly expressed a very powerful counter-hypothesis when he famously said "Gentlemen, I would rather believe that two Yankee professors would lie than believe that stones fall from heaven.")
If you're going to suggest that Pliny's monopods don't exist and that Pliny was lying or mistaken, how are you going to differentiate that case from Hanno,.... or from Quiche Lisp?
*Raises hand* I feel like I should note that many Christians believe that Deuteronomy (and, indeed, all of the first five books) were part of the Old Covenant made with the Israelites, which has been replaced by the New Covenant. That is, we have no particular obligation to follow (most of) the laws and regulations given there*. There's much more of an emphasis on the teachings in the New Testament, which includes things like "Love your neighbor and your enemies alike" and "Blessed are the peacemakers".
*: Although a few parts are addressed in the New Testament and still generally followed.
Religion, on the other hand, doesn't change but what people chose to ignore does.
I'm afraid that once you strip the nasty prejudice out of this statement, it's not only wrong, but contradictory. How people interpret their religion (a more accurate statement than "what people chose to ignore") is part and parcel of any religious practice, so people changing the interpretation is religion changing.
And religions do change. Demonstrably. This is sometimes explicit, as with Talmudic scholarship enriching Jewish practice, as with theologians updating the Catholic magisterium to reflect new learning, or as with new revelations in any religion that accepts such (a rather famous example is LDS First President Kimball's 1978 revelation that blacks should be ordained to the lay priesthood and permitted to participate in temple "ordinances," meaning rites).
Sometimes it's less formal. When churches don't have formal doctrine (as many don't), the choice of interpretation is often left up to the individual congregation or pastor, and a group of like-minded people will often interpret a passage differently than other groups. That's, for example, how the Amish came into existence (as an offshoot from other Swiss Anabaptists) and how the various Amish communities in the United States have chosen to regulate themselves differently. As a simple example (thank you, Wikipedia), the Lancaster Amish do not allow themselves to use bulk milk tanks; the Kalona Amish do, and I assure you that the phrase "bulk milk tank" does not appear anywhere in Scripture. The difference then, is not Scriptural, and it's not a question of what they ignore. It's a question, instead, of what they interpret and draw from the Scripture, along with the rest of the cultural practices.
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The New Testament says nothing about gays.
Er,.... you're not acquitting yourself well here.
Rom 1:26-27 For this reason, God gave them up to passions of dishonor; for even their females exchanged the natural use for that which is contrary to nature, and likewise also the males, having left the natural use of the female, were inflamed by their lust for one another, males with males, committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was fitting for their error.
1 Cor 6:9-10 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind
1 Tim 1:9-10 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine.
and from the Gospels themselves.
Matt 15:19-20 And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, sexual impurities, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.
It's very easy to interpret any of those passages as forbidding homosexuality. It's also very easy to interpret any of those passages as not forbidding homosexuality, especially if you resort to enough smoke and mirrors about whether the Greek word "porneia" translates to immorality, to specifically sexual immorality, or to any specific acts. (The correct answer, of course, is that the word appears in several contexts and therefore there is no clear-cut answer. Ergo, we need to rely on extra-textual sources.)
I could go into a long discussion on why that is... but I feel like that would be taking us further astray from the actual topic of this thread. XD