Again, that’s just one factor. You aren’t considering how their religiosity (or the fact that they live in a religious culture, etc.) might have contributed to their advancements.
Well, isn’t that what we’re doing here? Making wild guesses about what would have happened in a person’s life if they weren’t religious? You imagine that if Isaac Newton wasn’t religious, he would have kept on working on various things he couldn’t solve without a religious explanation, and advanced science further than he did. I imagine that if Christianity didn’t value higher education and rationality as highly as it did, he wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did. It’s all just a bunch of guessing.
Yeah, they do the best they can to solve a problem, and according to you if they can’t solve it they chalk it up to God. But why think that if they didn’t chalk it up to God, they would have gone on to solve the problem? As you present it, they’ve already admitted defeat.
"It seems probable to me that God … " -From Opticks (1704, 2nd ed., 1718), pages 375-376
“He rules all …” -The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687), 3rd edition (1726), trans. I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman (1999), General Scholium, pages 940-1.
“And from true lordship it follows that the true God is living …” - The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687), 3rd edition (1726), trans. I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman (1999), General Scholium, page 941.
The roots of our Occidental scientific institutions - the universities - are our Occidental monasteries. So the first university scientists were monks. In other words: religion can lead to science, whereas science leads to religion (the latter development is currently observable). So if you are defending our current scientists, then you are defending the religious priest of the future. Universities were relatively free, but they have been becoming corrupt, thus more dependent (because of their increasing dependence of money for their research - which is exploited by the rulers). So at last the scientists can only choose to be functionaries and priests in the name of the rulers.
Throughout western culture, “to be human” is an analogy “to be christian”. For example the term “inhumane” directly refers to Christian morality. To be “human”, instead of literally christian, is a Protestant development and evolution. Protestants, in an attempt to further divorce yourselves from traditional Christianity, has changed many words around, but not their underlying meanings and invocations.
In my previous response, I already explained that you can be considered a religious person, without belief in a deity. Many atheists are “religious”. The literal meaning of Religion is a habitual belief. For example, believing in “Gravity” or Heliocentricism, are also “religious beliefs”. In other words, you maintain a belief in them over time. You have and impart faith in a series of premises and logical postulates.
Religion does not necessarily imply Deism. This is a grand fallacy of religious people (Protestants), who attempt to distance themselves from Christianity Proper.
How?
Prove it. Explain yourself. Give me a few examples of how morality, law, and justice happen without religious belief (religious meaning habitual belief that must be maintained over time).
Your definition of religion is wrong. Religion is the systematic worship or prayer to a deity or super powerful being. You’re literally changing the definition of what something is so that you can make it nearly impossible to come up with an example.
re·li·gion
rəˈlijən/
noun
the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
“ideas about the relationship between science and religion”
synonyms: faith, belief, worship, creed; More
a particular system of faith and worship.
plural noun: religions
“the world’s great religions”
a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.
People don’t worship the court room, they don’t ascribe it supreme importance… Law, justice, etc.
Atheists don’t worship gravity, science, etc. I don’t even see your definition of it being habitual belief under the word.
Theists try anything possible to try and point fingers at everyone else except themselves.
Ok we arent talking about religion being in school or academies, or even the people that invent or discover new things being religious. We’re discussing WHY they all of a sudden point to “gods divinity” when reaching a point in their learning that they cannot explain.
Well from what I know of the laws that were discovered there was no mention of god. I never said these people were not religious, the point is that they satisfied themselves with a false answer.
I had already pointed out Galileo being a religious man, and it could go for all of them. Them being religious isn’t the problem.
Let me check here. At the end of their lives some scientists invoked what you are calling religiosity to answer something they could not. And this caused delays. Why did it cause delays? It did not delay them, they could not, according to you, answer X. Why would it stop others? How did you determine that things slowed down? Did you use evidence based on scientific research or other alternative methods.
I want to point out an assumption also: it is always best if scientific knowledge advances at the fastest possible rate. How do we know this is true? Has this been tested? Could it possibly be tested?
Newton managed to perform revolutionary creation even though religious or perhaps in part because he was religious. But he also came up with secular faith around mechanical models. These also caused blockages, since mechanical models were limited. All models make some investigation more likely and close off other lines. Of course any paradigm will do this. But you can’t just peek back in history and say it would all have gone better if everyone was an atheist. Or that delays were created that led to net delays. And one strong reason why you in particular should not do this is that you are arguing in favor of scientific models and methods. Yet, you are engagining in something else here. You are speculating, wildly, in non-scientific ways.
Actually his ontology, from which he investigated and created models and looked for support were based on his belief in God and an immaterial one at that. It is foundational in his outlook.
Einstein did not give up his idea that God created the universe. He simply separated why questions from how questions and considered the latter to be appropriate for scientific investigations. Result–the general theory of relativity.
You didn’t disprove anything because it has already happened… Lol that’s the reason history is great.
This is not a hypothesis to disprove, this has already happened, the OP questions ‘Why’. My authority over language is fine, you’re adding things into the definition of religion which do not show being there. Definitions are definitions for a reason, to be abided by.
I know the definitions of both religion and spirituality due to the fact that I have studied what separates the two.
You had half or maybe even more than half of what you said right, but the definition of religion, no.
This is not just about Newton, the main part of this post has not been added yet, which is about Al Ghazali and the downfall of the middle east due to religion. That is a huge part and proof of what I am saying.
He may not have been able to solve it, but he could have continued his work without putting the label of “god” onto something he did not understand. What is even funnier is the 100-200 year delay it took to solve that question, which Laplace DID. So it proves it is not “god” but very human and provable.
We need to figure out ways to continue without time delays, or at the very least minimalizing them. We don’t need claims like “god is the answer” when dealing with something unknown. We should make it more clear, not confusing.
Well technically he found his book on mathematics at a fair. At that time he was in college to be a lawer. Not until he theorized on his own things did he obtain his masters.
Newton must be just about the worst example that could be used in this thread. He had strong religious beliefs and enormous scientific accomplishments.
It’s pretty obvious now that you have a gripe with Christianity, not “Religion”, since you don’t even know what religion is.
To claim that “religion” is horrible for humanity doesn’t even say or presume anything. Religion of what? Religion of whom? It’s pretty obvious that gravity, relativity, the belief that earth revolves around the sun, are all religious beliefs. The big bang is a pseudonym for creationism, another religious belief. Protestants like the OP try to be clever and proclaim “but I believe in science and facts!!!” But, do you, Artimas? No, you don’t.
You believe in “the big bang” without realizing that, that too, is a religious belief. Science and religion is not as separate as you desired it to be.
I’ll clarify and simplify my point and position so everybody can understand this.
All beliefs require energy, an upkeep, at least Memorization. Some beliefs are easier to maintain than others. A belief that is repeated, constantly, every year, every week, everyday, every second, is by definition a “religious” belief, religious meaning regular, habitual, and traditional. Some religious beliefs even go beyond a lifetime, and are passed between parent and child, or from one generation of a society to another.
Heliocentrism is perhaps the widest, most common, and easily understood notion of a religious belief “the earth revolves around the sun” passed from generation to generation to generation.
Therefore, you will understand and accept my meaning now, that a “religious belief” does not require a Deity, nor an “organized religion”. Religious beliefs don’t have to be popular, true, or even acceptable. In fact many people have very perverse and socially unacceptable “religious beliefs”.
LOL gravity is not religious. The planets rotations are definitely not religious either, go get a telescope. The reason it isn’t is due to the fact that it is OBSERVABLE and EVIDENT. Religious fairy tales are not.
Who said I believed 100% in the big bang? It also isn’t exactly creationism, the only reason it is believed to be possible is due to the fact that everything is moving in the same direction. But I guess you wouldn’t know anything about that since you’re science illiterate and obviously do not partake in astronomy.
You know exactly which religion I am talking about, it isn’t anyone elses fault that you twisted definitions of what it is. I provided the definition in which I am using.
I am responsible for what I say, type, or attempt at showing. I however am not responsible for your comprehension or lack of.
It wasn’t christianity that brought the down fall for mathematics in the middle east.
The difficulty with this account of events is that it ignores the fact that scientists were aware of the problem and they criticized Newton for invoking God as the solution. Leibniz did it when Newton was still alive and Leibniz had a very strong belief in God. So it’s doubtful that Newton’s attitude prevented people from trying to find a solution. It shows that the problem was difficult.
That is interesting, but there does have to be a way to shorten time delays, what other aspects have a role in these delays? The time delay between Newtons time and Laplace is quite a while… And even longer for the middle east, they still have not recovered from their collapse of education/math.
If this can somehow be solved or a method of shortening the delays or perhaps even avoided altogether I will be fine with religion, except the masses lack of knowing or thinking.
It can’t actually be that we have only a handful of elite scientists per century or however long apart.