Conversation started Jun 22, 2014 at 6:21.
Jun 22, 2014 06:21
If you don't mind, could I also ask you about one more thing?
Sure.
We've been getting some questions that basically ask for the scientific justification behind particular Hindu religious practices.
For example, "What is the science behind wearing red tilak and sandal wood tilak on foreheads?"
@senshin The real problem is going to be educating enough people on the nature of the problem with those sort of questions that you get critical mass behind keeping them off topic. It's a lot easier to see a couple years down the read how they don't go anywhere productive, but in beta it was a real doozer to convince folks that we didn't want to go there.
I am of the opinion that these questions should be closed (possibly migrated to a relevant science site, e.g. Physics.SE or Biology.SE) because the people on a site about Hinduism aren't experts on science - they're experts on Hinduism.
There's some backlash against this idea, basically because there's apparently a contention among many Hindus that Hinduism is a "scientific religion" and that all of modern science is encapsulated in Hindu scripture and so forth.
I'm not really sure how to deal with this - obviously, we're not going to be able to get these people to change their opinion on what appears to be a fundamental article of belief (i.e. that all truth, including modern science, is found in Hindu scripture).
@Caleb Right, makes sense.
@senshin That's actually a tricky one. (I'll be back in a min)
Jun 22, 2014 06:31
Sure, thanks.
@senshin Okay so that question can actually take a lot of forms. Deciding how to handle them might actually take a bit of expertise in Hinduism that I can't offer, but a couple patterns I've seen on C.SE go like this:
If they are realy asking as science question (e.g. is there a scientific reason for X) then they are off topyic. Either skeptics for myth busting or one of the science sites for analysis of a known phenomenon.
On the other hand a lot of time what they have in mind is a doctrinal question and science can ether play along or not (e.g. what does group X believe about phenomenon Y). That's a doctrinal question about a specific group and answerable on C.SE as is. They might or might not cite science and they might be right or wrong in their use of it, it really doesn't matter. The question is about the beliefs of X, not science.
Of course the problem is people usually think they are asking the former when really they are asking the latter, and people assume they are answering the former when they aren't and everything goes haywire. Sorting out which is which is really a case by case thing and I find you have to edit the questions to be very explicit and then insist answers stay in that scope.
Does that make any sense? Obviously the intersection between disciplines is going to be very different for H that it is for C and you will have to figure out how to break that down for your context, but the issues with the SE format might be similar.
Jun 22, 2014 06:46
@Caleb Yeah, that definitely helps. In the particular case I mentioned, all parties involved did believe they were asking a science question (not a doctrinal question), but I can see a strategy of redirecting these questions towards doctrine being fruitful.
@senshin I don't know a lot about how Hinduism works or how segmented different variations are, but my guess is that i they can't be convinced that they are not asking science questions, they are going to be trouble for your site. If they can be convinced to make them explicitly doctrinal, they might get along fine. The SE platform can handle science stuff quite well but it does not mix and match side by side with questions with other basis for judging the quality/usefulness of answers.
@Caleb This is sort of the problem - a lot of the people who are best-read in Hindu scripture are also the people who are having difficulty separating Hindu doctrine from modern science.
I just hope we can resolve this in some way that keeps those users around while keeping science questions out.
@senshin Good luck with that, it can be quite a bug bear actually. We had much the same issue with the Young Earth / Old Earth Creationist views. Both sides think they are defending the role of science but in most cases they are really only qualified to speak for their respective doctrinal stances.
 
Conversation ended Jun 22, 2014 at 6:57.