May I just say that I’ve been a dormant observer for quite some time on this board and it has always been a pleasure to read your posts. I, being an atheist, always find your theistic/deistic arguments refreshingly intellectual and sound (a rarity on boards like this, even more rare from non-athesits). Anyway, the reason I was so passive in this board was that I was so freakin intimidated by how smart everybody here is! I often had nothing of value to contribute, and if I did, I was almost always beat to the chase by someone who ended up saying it better that I could have anyway.
But I’m posting now in hopes that I finally have something to contribute, concerning what I have bolded in your response:
This is a very desirable and relaxed approach, one that I truly wish was more realistic. The problem though, is that this respect given by you to those un-challenged is not reciprocated in the slightest from them to the challenged. As it has been noted in here, any deviation outside the taboo of a large number of religious circles is grounds for excommunication, social ostracization, and worse. If your Utopian ideal is to ever be realized in practice, the un-challenged would have to recognize their latency AND the challenged spirit of those like you and me, and subsequently giving their deviations/ideas fair consideration. Needless to say, this is far from common.
So this means that as admirable as your sentiment is, it shouldn’t be practiced, as you are allowing yourself–a very intellectual person from whose contributions, many could refine and better themselves–to be a doormat and a great potentiality that is lost.
Please, my head is so big I can barely fit my hat on as it is. Thank you though.
Your point is well taken, and you are right to an extent- if we wait for other people to want to learn, most of the really problematic people are never going to give us the opportunity to teach them. I think where I’m stuck is, what’s the alternative? Keep in mind, when a religious person wants to tell the world about the truth as he sees it, we expect him to be completely respectful of people who don’t want to hear it, and leave them alone. I get the impression that we have a negative view of Mormons going door to door, or people putting leaflets on cars about Jesus. So what can we do without making hypocrites of ourselves? Do we get to break the rules because we know we’re right?*
Keeping in mind that in the end, you and I will disagree about a great deal.
Yeah great point. Let’s see what I can come up with…
Firstly, in response to you being stuck. What you’ve described would be a perfectly tolerable stance to be in; “they don’t want to be taught? fine by me, that is their loss.” and move on with your life. You’ll inevitably, though, come across the implications and actions of their unwillingness, which are–not overly common, but far from frequently–destructive. So in essence, you’ve let them impose their convictions upon you and gotten nothing in return; you are inconvenienced from their beliefs while you’ve given them complete pardon from yours.
This is evident in the example of a religious person that you give. This inconvenience could be as trivial (but certainly still obnoxious) as a visit to your door or as serious as death. If you’re like me, you don’t wish to be iconoclastic and you do wish to be sympathetic, but where is the line to where you must do something? A problem, indeed.
This is what I think the originator of this thread was saying; not necessarily that he wants to rid this world of religion (could it even be done?) but to expose these inconsistencies and porous ‘answers’, if only for the religions’ better health.
I do not advocate destruction of people in any way, I am a very peaceful person, but I do advocate reformation of these people’s ideologies. I truly see it as a cancer and I am going to do as much as I can to help out (without being too authoritative). What alleviates me as a hypocrite in this is that it is not merely my word versus theirs. Science is the great bridge that takes everyone out of their bias opinions and places them on the communicable, universally understandable and applicable ground of rational thought. It is by this that I am an atheist and it is by this that I make my assertions.
You’ll see that this swallows your last question in a higher point; the only thing that can be called truth is that which has solid scientific grounding.
Mmm. I like what you said about accepting an imposition without giving one in return- it does have that effect.
I have no problem with exposing inconsistencies in religion, I do it myself when I have the time, and it’s clearly not because I want to do away with religion. OK, so you make a website about how foolish some religious beliefs are, you present your arguments, there you go. The people who come to your site come to it, the people who don’t, don’t. That’s all well and good. But if what you’re saying is that’s not enough for you, then I think we need to explore what you mean by ‘expose’ in a little more detail. Are you advocating getting legal enforcement on your side, or doing social activities that the world at large would consider obnoxious, or what exactly?
Unless we’re talking about diets, global warming, or whether or not so-and-so murdered so-and-so, eh? I mean, I could say that same thing about analytic philosophy, and it would seem true (application of logic and reason and all that) but it doesn’t cure us of a plurality of views.
And of course you know I’d disagree. But I don’t think we need to explore that point, necessarily. If you need to justify scientific materialism as true before you can justify whatever approach towards religion that you have in mind, then we’re back to square one, aren’t we? Is there some way I can see eye-to-eye with you on this without becoming an atheist first? Because after all, I do agree that foolishness in religion is a problem, and it would be nice to do something about it, but my desired result wouldn’t be the same as yours. It still doesn’t sit right with me that atheists should be ‘allowed’ (whatever that means) to proselytize and religious people not.
The ‘five years’ part is your first clue. Once you give a satisfactory response, then poof! I know, I know, God would smite you for such blasphemy and it’s your deep desire to remain in his/her/whatever’s good graces. So consider defending the indefensible as your eventual retirement hobby. There are worse, at least it’ll keep the mental cogs turning as the body slows. Not to mention that, in the end, it’ll be you who gets to sit on a cloud playing a harp with your righteous folk around you, all of you laughing at the rest of us burning in eternity. "Man, if they’d only listened to us!:
Well then, if it’ll help to keep your head warm, I’ll offer that I think you hide behind logic because it gives you a certain ability to move the direction of most discussions away from the Big Thing You Can’t Address. If you were an idiot, you’d probably not find it so frustrating. But you’re not, and that’s the basis of my compassion for your plight here. That you do this logical sleight-of-hand fairly skillfully (no offense, but satyr and tab are my role models and for some strange reason they don’t post on this forum much, lol) doesn’t disguise what it is. But still, I’ll always ardently support your right to do it, even if I’ve experienced it as a form of suffering. I figure everyone gets to the truth, either in this lifetime or a future one. And if there are no future ones, then it’s irrelevent anyway and the only truth is that we’ve all been born and we’re all going to die. Belief in anything else is illusory now, so the source of the illusion will be gone once I’m dead. That’s partly why I can see the illusion of it; the other part is because I note that the one great equalizer is that we’re all really existent only in the very moment. If you take issue with that, then please do speak to it. It’s only our bad mental habits (attachments to belief, for example) that prevent us from knowing the peace and equanimity of living that way.
It’s a cultural taboo, so it’s out there for all to deal with. You can count the brave souls who’ve violated it in any major way (meaning publicly) on one hand, maybe one and a half. Anyway, it seems to me that before anyone could be called a religious person with an informed opinion, he or she would need to have a working knowledge of the major religious doctrines on the planet. Beyond that, he or she would also need to have some understanding of the various theories as to why the mind develops religious belief in the first place. You simply can’t explore and question something adequately when you stop along the path with “I feel in my gut that it’s true that there’s this superntural thingie out there.” Or “this was believed a couple thousand years ago, so it must be true.”*
We don’t care. Again, we don’t care. I know I’ve written this before, but wonder if I’ve written it enough times to get the point across. Because I can sure write it again. That’s the perpetuation of the taboo. It takes enough of us to insist, “we don’t care whether the religious folk like it or not” in order to break the taboo down.
Along those lines, the point that the OP makes is that this taboo is distinctive. It’s about a presumed superiority of a religious thought versus thoughts about other, more mundane, things. Because theistic thoughts are considered somehow beyond question (indeed, it’s blasphemy to question them–really, how does someone not see the meme working?!), they’re ‘divine’, ‘eternal’, ‘of God’ and therefore of something infinitely greater than we mere humans on this mere earth. You cannot even speak to the violence of Islam without mitigating the offense of that statement by adding that it also has a gentler, more peaceful side. And we’ve allowed an administration that believes it’s doing the evangelical Christian God’s work by taking us to war. It’s truly a time of national religious INSANITY.
The wrinkle here is that the only reason that religious thought exists in the first place is because we mere humans perpetuate it. And we are capable of both sublimely good and devastatingly evil behaviors. Always have been, always will be. Capable, that is. And the best explanation for this that religious people can come up with is a bad external force who never is overcome by the good extrernal force. Why is that? Because the only reason that this religious thought exists in the first place is because we mere humans perpetuate it. And we continue to be capable of both sublinely good and devastatingly evil behaviors.
As technology has advanced, it’s also subject to being used according to our good/evil natures. The reason that we (finally!) seem to have the beginnings of a true exploration in the public forum of the sociobiological basis of these beliefs is because we’re learning more about genetics and how the brain functions and because science is being applied more rigorously to the study of individual and group behavior, as well. Problem is that the religious meme can also use technology (and I’m including using the power of mass media to elevate what might otherwise be a singularly isolated incident like a car bomb into a major insurgency) to perpetuate itself. The negative side is that this can also result in moving the world into a state of religious war. Little peaceful religious people have no say in this. All they can do is cling desperately to the parts of their religions which give them comfort and a basis for making moral choices in their lives. They’re powerless to control the force of the meme unless they’re willing to take action that may ultimately result in having to give up their source of comfort. They won’t do this, because the alternative is way too frightening. There might be, oh no, sweet Jesus, save me!..there might be no meaning!!! Oh, do not speak this!!!
It would be nice to think that another age of enlightenment is being inspired by science, but I think it’s unlikely. If a nuclear weapon is detonated in Manhattan, the majority of people far enough away from the holocaust to do so will fall down on their knees, clasp their hands together and seek comfort in the only way they know how. And if anyone dares threaten that comfort by questioning why the nutty sort of deity they’re praying to would’ve allowed that to happen in the first place, then the comfort seekers will shake their morally superior fingers at the nerve of such intrusions into their comfort. Before they move on to the business of disposing of 100,000 corpses with the proper religious services, that is.
You’re alternatively a source of great humor and a great teacher to me.
Ah, but I’ll bet you’ve figured out a set of explanations for these inconsistencies, no? It’s either that or you accept that you must remain ignorant of this greater entity because, well, he/she/whatever can’t really be a greater entity unless you choose to remain ignorant of that which he/she/whatever knows that you can’t…right?
Oh wait, that’s still an explanation. Darn, looks like there’s nowhere else to go. I will now go to my knees and submit to the usual Uccisore outcry at my disrespect.
*Actually, what was believed a couple thousand years ago wasn’t ‘this’, because belief is always transient and constructed by each mind based on its perceptions of past experiences.
I am a bit lost myself on where I stand concerning this, I suppose I’ll discover more about that as we discuss. I do echo the originator of this thread in that religion gets a ‘social shield’ from the intellectual default of rigorously scrutinizing ideas. Most religious ideas, I dare say, would not hold up in such a crucible, and if that means their demise, then so be it. I’m not advocating totalitarian legal enforcement, just that that enforcement not be riddled with said religious ideas. Our president here in the USA is a proud (and discriminatory) Christian, perhaps even bordering on fundamentalism. It’s no secret that no atheist could dream of getting elected in North America’s current social context. It’s extremely reminiscent of the prejudice against black and women in previous centuries. I’m not sure what, but something definitely needs to be done.
This is debatable of course. Science does offer hard evidence. In the case of global warming, murders, etc it’s not that this has no application, just that it is still in the process of being resolved. But ultimately, these are and will be resolved by science, so I don’t see how my earlier point isn’t still valid. (Don’t smite-ith me!)
Not necessarily. Scientific materialism (as I understand it, which is admittedly vague) is justified by it’s unique ability to provide tangible evidence, I can’t think of any other enterprises that do so readily and convincingly.
I think it’d be beneficial to tell you that my declaration of atheism was not due to my distaste of religion (which I don’t deny that I’ve had for a long time), but instead the recognition of the only solid thing upon which truth can be discussed; namely science. Atheism just followed as a natural result. So I’m not out to convince you of the atheist persuasion by any means, but I do stress that science has leverage that no religion has, no matter how fair it may seem to give them equal consideration.
What you are using, though, is analytic justifications for a synthetic proposition. I’m not sure whether that follows. I don’t mean that rhetorically, I don’t have a strong enough background in Western philosophy to say with any degree of certainty whether that follows or not.
My (educated?) guess/loose understanding is that it doesn’t.
But, in that way, theism is like diets in that it is inferred based on the evidence/presuppositions/assumptions that people bring to the table coupled with evidence rather than existing on evidence alone (since the evidence is in some parts contested and in other parts lacking). Metabolism is good, hard science. Nutrition is a much weaker science . . . and by the time you get to applied nutrition (diets) the amount of bias introduced is so great that it may as well be voodoo. Some are good, some are bad, but they are all pretty far from their roots.
Theology is similar. There is a firm basis (generally a revealed text or some avatar of a deity in real life, or the chronicles of such a human deity). Now, that can be accepted or rejected, but since it is (largely) historical, it can be considered as valid as any other history from the time period that it was gathered from. Over time, this text melds with philosophies and practitioners and you get religions. Some are good, some are bad, but they are all pretty far from their roots.
I will also say that I agree with Ucci, I do think religion is exposed to that level of scrutiny. Just not in polite society, and that is largely because most people aren’t informed enough to really have an opinion worth listening to on the matter but most people do have strong emotions about it. Couple that with the secular tradition in the west where ‘Freedom of religion’ goes hand-in-hand with ‘Freedom from religion’ because the difference between a discussion and an endorsement is very slight indeed.
I disagree that it gets exposed and discussed adequately. I think the discussion is largely relegated to parts of academia (where it’s de rigueur to question everything anyway) or on the Net in particular forums. Where it needs to be is in a broader public forum, so that more people can feel free to openly express doubt, learn more about how moderation is a form of passivity that simply allows extremism to flourish, and to mull over ideas related to religion versus science and reason. I think that what we have now is a very fear-based society. And particular brands of organized religion have capitalized on this and gained a lot of political power over the past couple of decades. They work hard to frame the discussion as ‘for us or against us’.
The Net is helping some to mitigate this and I believe, so far, in its potential for becoming the true public forum we’re missing these days. I think there are a lot more people capable of having this discussion that don’t, simply because they haven’t seen it framed in the way that someone like Sam Harris has, for example. Not to mention that they’re mesmerized by a corporatized media that continues to feed their most base instincts in the pursuit of profit. Discussing issues that matter – and there are many – and promoting the public forum don’t make as much money as “American Idol” and “Desperate Housewives”. Or Oprah and her ‘spiritual journey’ pablum.
There ought to be at least one atheist show that challenges the TV ministers on Sunday morning.
A movement to truly bring scrutiny to religion on a broad scale is barely in infancy, not really even fully out of the womb. It ought to be possible for a politician to stand before a crowd and not feel obligated to say that he believes (or doesn’t) in a God in order to gain a basic foothold in a race, regardless of his stance on any of the political or social issues. It ought to be irrelevent, but it’s not.
Re: Atheists not being electable: nothing can be done there as long as people get to vote for their presidents, and the overwhelming majority of people aren't atheists. That's brings me to something that's been on my mind for a while during this thread, before you came into it actually.
If this is approached a certain way, it sounds a bit like a sucker-punch to me. Looking at atheism as a philosophical position, it's never been terribly popular or had a lot of support. When logical positivism was in it's heyday, it had dominance for a while, and it still has the numbers among old-guard philosophers, but the numbers are going back down rapidly. Culturally, non-religious atheism had reign in a handful of countries for a handful of years, but there again, it's never been spectacular.
The reason I'm saying all this is, from an outside perspective there's no obvious reason why you [i]should[/i] get what it is you're after. I'm sure, with enough political tactics and social maneuvering, atheists in the U.S. could manipulate culture so that the next generation grows up leaning towards atheism. But again, any belief system has the potential to do [i]that[/i], and I don't see why it's philosophically interesting. Should the Mormons get to convert the world if by sheer force of will they manage to carve their initials into our culture? 'Religion needs to be challenged' and 'atheism needs to dominate our culture' are two different goals, that ultimately will be handled in two different ways.
I guess what I'm saying is, I'm all for educating and challenging religious people, as long as 'conversion to atheism' isn't the only acceptable benchmark for progress. Atheism just isn't that good of a position to have that dominance by default.
Indeed, science is the process of acquiring hard evidence.
Mm, not of itself, though. Again, science is the process by which we get the kind of evidence you like for the kinds of things that interest us as humans. It works very well. But science can provide no evidence for materialism, because that’s a metaphysical position.
And this is the tabboo in action. All the dancing about, positions being taken that are simply abstract non-positions, and blah blah blah without ever addressing a single thing about the disfunctional beliefs and how those beliefs are tearing at the fabric of society. I had the chutzpah to even suggest a “tabboo”, and it goes nowhere. So I’ll up the ante. Let’s just take one piece of irrational belief and see if we can’t either confirm it or dismiss it. ALL of us.
The great flood. Noah built an ark and the rest of the story. Given what we have discovered at this point, if Noah had taken just a male and female of every species of insect on the planet today, he would have needed two arks and possibly three more to hold the food for them for forty days. If we took a male and female of every known animal on the planet, the number of arks would have had to be a flotilla, not just one lousy boat. Then there is the water issue. Enough rain to cover all dry land on the planet. So where did all this water come from? Supposedly, the water receded. Where would all that water go? Where did it recede to?
This is simple stuff, folks. The story may contain a moral, but why is it impossible to keep the meaning and throw out the obviously ridiculous claims within the story?
It’s all there in the good book, and we still have people trying to find the ark on Mt. Ararat. Apparently they haven’t read or thought about the physics behind this story to see that it has to be pure allegory.
So come on, defend this. After all, it is the word of God, right?
Well, I think part of that amounts to a glorified stawmen. People who earnestly believe that the antediluvian world was surrounded in a giant sheath of water and that until that time, water didn’t have refractive properties aren’t going to have their minds changed by mere ‘discussion’.
These people have embraced a sweeping madness that goes beyond the scope of polite society. Using philosophy, of any sort, on a person handing out Chick Tracts is probably not an advisable course of action. But this isn’t any different from people who hold onto other out-there beliefs. You can show Gobbo and Sven source-after-source that contradicts their assertions and they’ll just claim that it is part of the “Information War” and that all sources except for a select group of random people on the internet (that they agree with) are absolutely compromised by aliens.
It isn’t so much that these aren’t discussed, but rather that they are wholly rejected in normal society so it really isn’t necessary to address them. Most people know these people are crazy and take it as a given. There is no point in discussing those elements because their mind has been made up.
So then it becomes more about how to deep religion should impact the day-to-day lives of non-practitioners. Given the huge debates surrounding abortion, stem cell research, gay marriage, and so-on, I would argue that these elements are being discussed and that there is no taboo. The only ‘taboo’ is not wasting time on people who already have made up their minds quite firmly.
By other “out there beliefs,” I’ll assume you are also referring to those who believe a man was born who was also God, who was resurrected to a place called “heaven,” and who will one day return to take the righteous with him.
Surely there are more people who believe this than the actual Noah’s ark story, and it’s just as “mad.”
Or you might be referring to those who believe Mohammad was a prophet of God. Or perhaps those who believe some folks are reincarnations of great teachers. Or perhaps those who believe in Krishna.
And I think that covers a little over 82% of the earth’s population, which is approximately 5,740,000,000 people. Which is why there is cause for concern. Talking about gay rights isn’t going to attack the issue at the roots, it’d be trimming some dead limbs off the tree.
I don’t give a flying anything where it comes from. Cleaning house is cleaning house. I don’t want to talk about pragmatism, I want the dialog to begin having some effect. If we don’t begin challenging the obvious irrationalities there is no hope of discourse about the values and compromises on the more difficult issues such as abortion or stem cell research. It is this “hands off because it is the word of God” thing that has to be addressed. There is too much religion, too many people who never examine their beliefs, and way too many of those beliefs result in suppression or violence. This isn’t about finding a philosophically comfortable position. There isn’t any - for any of us. It is about getting rid of the sacred cow attitude and begin finding plain old common sense solutions to the problems our great great grandchildren will face. As the world population grows, the deviseness will only grow worse… If we don’t challenge the beliefs now, when?
Shall we just wait for the second coming? The popularized Rapture?
I am most specifically not talking about wide-spread beliefs. To suggest that religion in general, and Christianity in specific, is anti-science is simply ahistorical. Modern science owes a greater debt to natural theology than it does to natural philosophy (not that there is terribly much separation between the two) and science itself was born in Christian cultures in a way it simply wasn’t in other cultures. Even if we take post-May Fourth Nationalist, like Hu, at their word and say that it was the Indianization of China that lead to its stagnation, the pre-Buddhist accomplishments of China with respect to science, while notable, aren’t particularly ahead of the curve if you factor things like stability, length of unification, ect. into it. So, clearly there was something very special in the European case that allowed for science as we presently understand it to be born.
I would argue that science arose not in spite of Christianity but because of it, for many of the reasons that Ucci has posted here. After all, many other cultures simply took an unknowable universe as a given. Wang Fuzhi, a favorite metaphysician of mine, wrote a few misguided essays on how the Barbarian systemitizers (Jesuit priests trying to demonstrate scientific principles) had it all wrong, since the world is completely unknowable. And his position wasn’t uncommon, quite the reverse!
So, no, I would argue that it isn’t the majority that I am worried about, but this new minority that mistakes allegory for reality. As Ucci has pointed out many times, there were Christians from over a thousand years ago who were suggesting that Genesis and other parts of the Bible should be understood metaphorically.
I have no problem with people using a metaphor to explain things they don’t specialize in – heck, I generally encourage it! Language is flexible in that it allows us to render abstract and difficult concepts in a readily understood form through things like metaphor.
Things like Baramins, or describing how the flood was possible using the nonsense I talked about earlier. That is what is what I think constitutes an ‘Out There’ belief.
As for trimming the branches vs. chopping down the tree – I think you forget that this is a load bearing tree. We need to prop the structure up with something else if we are going to remove this element.
If you are arguing that Christianity was more conducive to the spread of science than other religions, then I might agree. I say might because I don’t think there’s any way you could ever prove such a bold idea. Simply because science arose in a Christian culture doesn’t mean science arose because of a Christian culture.
Or maybe many special somethings. Maybe it was hundreds of variables. And maybe Christianity wasn’t one of them. Maybe it was. Point being, that’d be impossible to determine.
What I do know is that in most cases, religious belief closes the door to scientific inquiry, which is why it seems so obnoxiously absurd, bold, and unfounded to claim that religion somehow helped progress science.
When one thinks that God created the heavens and the earth, why would one ever explore the origins of life on earth? Or the heavens?
If the reason it rains is because God caused it, what question is left to be asked? If our purpose on earth is to serve God, why search for any other purpose?
Science progressed on its own accord, and although religion has attempted to smother its progress throughout time, science has prevailed.
And what was their reasoning? Did they have any specific reason to doubt the Genesis account? Why didn’t their philosophy catch on?
It doesn’t seem very convincing to state the Genesis account should be figurative, and then have absolutely no reason why. Did those same Christians then press for the scientific understanding of how life arrived here or why it existed?
I would love to see some of the quotes from those Christians to support your claims.
Before scientific inquiry, I fail to see why anybody would question the stories written in the Bible, especially considering how long the majority of churches taught the stories as absolute truth.
If I was operating under the assumption that religion provided some kind necessary support for people, then I imagine I’d agree. But I liken this to making puppy-killing an occupation just to provide jobs for the unemployed. Maybe religion does offer some kind of pseudo-moral and purposeful basis for peoples’ lives, but it’s frankly filled with shit that causes mankind to discriminate against one another, and continues to divide our race.
Why didn’t their ideas catch on? They did. There aren’t any (to my knowledge) Christian sects in existence right now that weren’t influenced by Augustine. He is pretty much the commentator on the Bible, to my understanding, with Aquinas coming in at a distant second and, lo, Aquinas also took it allegorically!
It isn’t that these ideas “didn’t take on”, they very much did. However, there are presently some strains of Protestantism that reject their wisdom and they’ve grown in influence/number. Those are the people we need to worry about, not your usual day-to-day Christians.
As for the notion for Christianity being a requirement, well, I was admittedly trying to get your goat there But I do think that it is fair to say that Christianity is, if not more conducive to the development of science, it would seem to be at least more permissive. Now, since we don’t have multiple different versions of history to compare, I agree this is conjecture at best. However, it does at least demonstrate that there needn’t be a butting of heads here, even if there is one now.
As to the question of “why”, well, all you need to do is look at why Monks and other religious individuals kicked off what would become modern science: they wanted to understand God. As we all know, we can’t phone up God and ask him how’s the weather up in Heaven, so instead they decided to look at the material world (which God made) and try to understand God through his creation. This is also what allowed God to eventually sort of be worked out of modern science, since it began the path of infinite regression where God became a “God of the Gaps.” When someone hit a rough patch, they said, “Now I’ve found God!” but it clearly wasn’t God and everybody knew that, so somebody else pointed out, “Err, well, what if you look at it this way?” and so God was slowly moved further and further away from day-to-day causality.
When Darwin said that he had, “Killed God” that is what he meant – he had taken God out of the equation in terms of having made the diversity of life that we see in the world, up to and including humans, but this was just part of the larger trend that was kicked off by those devout individuals desperately trying to understand their Lord.
Xunz, Christianity fostered science??? I’m sure Galileo would appreciate the irony of that. Any idea how long it would have taken western religion to sponsor the development of mathematics pursued by the arab world?
Just a few protestant groups? Which major religion discourages the use of condoms when the science tells us it can prevent the spread of aids? I think you may have missed a few…
Another one of those impossible to prove one way or t’other deals, here we go again. I can give you arguments for, arguments against. For: human need to know God better spurred the mind to inquire into the world he/she/whatever created and the divine gift of reason made it okay to embark on that path. Against: why the heck did it take so long for Christianity to motivate or generate scientific inquiry?
There’s kind of a Muslim dilemma in there, too, and maybe some ancient pagan Greeks that had a bit of influence.
So what if there is some degree of causality, anyway? If that’s the case, the child long ago outgrew its parent. I think science will stand fine on its own. That is, if huge segments of the population don’t end up just ignoring science or teaching their kids that Fred Flinstone really did have a pet named Dino and used a Brontosaurus for his quarry job.
But I do think that it is fair to say that Christianity is, if not more conducive to the development of science, it would seem to be at least more permissive. Now, since we don’t have multiple different versions of history to compare, I agree this is conjecture at best. However, it does at least demonstrate that there needn’t be a butting of heads here, even if there is one now.