Well, I think we can safely ignore that post in this thread.
ETA: kanicbird’s, that is. picker snuck in ahead of me.
Ha!
I’ve read many of the threads that ITR Champion has started, and while I’m hesitant to say that any debate was “lost”, I’d have to say his arguments have been shot down quite thoroughly time and time again. Yet he keeps coming back and getting trounced.
I’m noticing a certain amount of deliberate obtuseness on his part. It seems he faced a personal crisis at some point in his life, and chose to wholeheartedly put his faith in Christianity and shut off his mind to any contrary arguments. To a certain extent I understand this impulse. Whatever it takes to get you through the day, as long as it harms nobody. My practice of Zen has shown me that being too analytical and logical can drain the joy out of life. But it’s also possible to go to the other extreme.
But this board is dedicated to facts and logic, and in the realm of facts and logic religion loses.
Frankly, I think this pretty much takes care of it. The idea that Christianity is a necessity for science is just so fatuous it makes my head hurt.
“Well, when we Christians do it, it’s called science, but when somebody else does it, it’s called trial and error.”
I suppose you could argue that the modern scientific method was codified by Christians. Guess what? That’s it.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be off figuring out if the Chinese invention of gunpowder or the Indian invention of zero or the Egyptian invention of the 365-day calendar means they were all secret Christians.
Still, they operated in a predominantly Christian environment. Individual brilliance owes nothing to religion.
The new testament has very little to say about science. It is also weak on laws and the bible itself is subject to myriads of interpretation. Christianity was so divided prior to Constantine, that the government instituted a top down arrangement to solidify and control the religion. Hence the dark ages where Christians like any other organized society of the time basically did what they were told.
The breakdown came with the invention of the printing press and the availability of of bibles in the vulgar text.
This was followed by a fragmentation of Christianity, its inherent condition, into numerous denominations as well as degrees of deism all the way to significant atheism. No longer one voice in absolute control. The significant result of this is a mindset of freedom to explore.Springing from the wells of knowledge held by Christian institutions the bonds of dogma, were insufficient to constrain the advance of science.
Today, there is much to do about science vs. religion, religion generally meaning Christianity. What is interesting is what I heard from some scientists working at Muslim universities where there is no debate at all. If science conflicts with Islam, Islam wins period.
I’ll give religion credit where it’s due: the dissemination of the Word of Almighty Whoever You Worship and the dissemination of precise, scholarly work are both assisted by a common language and literacy. The use of Latin across continental Europe certainly gave philosophers and scholars a means to communicate with each other. And the movable type printing press helped, too. Where would science be today if Gutenberg hadn’t wanted his Bibles printed?
Pretty much the same place it is today, I’d reckon. The first inspiration happened to be Bibles but it could just as easily have been Chinese restaurant menus, newspapers or opera programs–anything someone wanted to print and to print lots of them. In the absence of Guttenberg, it would have been invented sooner or later; probably sooner rather than later.
Well, since the first thing Gutenberg printed was a poem, presumably it’d be exactly where it is now.
Admittedly, the poem was religious in nature.
Well, this is easily testable – let’s murder Christ! And I don’t mean that phony death he pulled off in 32 A.D. (what was that all about, anyway? Insurance fraud?) Let’s bind him to a pentagram and allow his soul to be raped by Satan. Then we’ll see if the universe still exists or not. You seem to have a direct link to Jesus Christ, think he’ll agree to this experiment?
(And will you reply to your Pit thread already?? Without you, Liberal’s hogging the spotlight, and it’s getting annoying.)
Somewhere, Kevin Smith just started writing the screenplay for Dogma II.
I’m not sure what I find more disturbing about that image: Satan’s tentacle penis, or the fact that his right leg appears to be about nine feet long.
Ah, but ITR’s points are very much grounded in the human sphere - that science is a creation of Christian civilization and Christians. To be more accurate, his point appears to be that before Jesus walked as a man, before the creation of the Bible and from those things the underpinnings of Christianity as it is understood by people, and from that Christian civilization and institutions relying upon those ideals, there was no science. In a way, I think you’re in as much disagreement with him as I am; you and I would seem to agree that before Christian civilization there was science, we’re just coming at it from opposite ends.
Are there religions that DON’T claim to have a revealed truth?
Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, plese, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, PLEASE get some help. Like, find that disturbingly cute redheaded girl with the little and the ruby slippers and go with her to Emerald City and get the wizard to give you brain. Okay?
The worst part is, ITR is a science teacher. Does he teach this nonsense to kids?
Only the Christian ones. Obviously there’s no point teaching the other kids.
That means everyone, right? Since America is a Christian nation?
See the “and”. Things are a bit freer, and drift more, when there is no one waiting to burn you at the stake for doubting the official view of reality.
In Judaism, for instance, because there is no central authority deciding things, people argue logically on all sides of an issue, very much like is actually done in science. Nothing ever gets resolved, but the skills make for good scientists, which might well be one reason we are so over-represented in science.
Remember that Oz gave nothing to the Tinman that he didn’t already have. Giving kanicbird a diploma just creates a moron with a diploma.
Well I could say that the UU’s claim world is complicated and we should all come to our own conclusions, but I’d probably have to put a motion to the committee, then have it tabled for consideration where board could conditionally allow me to make a related statement that the congregation approves of.
That, and the fact that at least Der Trihs has reality on his side.