Ancient people who are too busy de-lousing each other and dying in childbirth to worry about calculus…
We can surely all agree that having the correct religion is one of the conditions necessary for an Enlightenment and a Scientific Revolution. Science and enlightement philosophy only arose in Christian nations, and had to be carried from there to the rest of the world. Hence, no Christianity would mean no modern science and technology, which would mean no time machine, which would mean no one going back in time to prevent the beginning of Christianity, and so forth until we’re caught in a causality loop. Someone ought to write a science fiction story about this.
I disagree. No Christianity would allow an Enlightenment and a Scientific Revolution earlier, as long as it wasn’t replaced by another religion. Christianity did it’s fair share to hinder scientific development for a long time, and without it I think things would have happened faster.
No, we all cannot surely agree to that, either. Those events only took hold in the European nations, after an 800-year period of stagnation, once Christendom rediscovered the philosophies of “pagan” Greece and Rome, and Western Christianity lost its centralized unity and dominance of the entirety of people’s lives. Any of a number of political and economic situations turns the wrong way, and the great boom of Christian-European Thought and Science we now call the Renaissance and Enlightenment could have petered out as did the great boom of Islamic Thought and Science five or so centuries before. THAT was my original point: that it would be extremely difficult to cause a lasting impact, because even as history was happening there were MANY who had great ideas who really were there, and left no footprint. At most, you’d send that civilization into their equivalent fo an Enlightenment – and the “induced” Enlightenment would NOT be our Enlightenment, ANYWAY, would it?
I asserted that Christianity was a necessary condition for Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution, not that it’s a sufficient condition. Hence, pointing out that Christian civilization went a long time without producing E&SR is not relevant to my argument; that’s a classic example of the converse error.
E&SR have certain requirements; certain philosophical concepts that must have widespread acceptance before they can take place. These include individual freedom and autonomy, support for open debate, strong government and academic institutions, and the lack of a tribal mindset. These factors only arose together in Christian civilization, never in a civilization based on any other religion or a lack of religion. They never could have arisen under any religion (or lack thereof) except Christianity.
As for insisting that there’s no relationship between Christianity and E&SR because things could have been different, that’s only a thought exercise. You could deny any relationship between any two phenomenon in human history if you accepted that standard.
I think there’s a big difference between saying “There is a link between E&SR and Christianity” and “E&SR could never happen without Christianity, never, ever”. After all, in order to know that, you would have to know all cases possible of non-Christian civilisations, which you don’t. I don’t necessarily deny a relationship, because I don’t have the historical knowledge needed. But denying that such things are even possible without Christianity is far more of a leap of faith than suggesting there *might * not be a relationship.
That last sentence there reads to me like a complete load of bull. Can you back it up with anything at all besides wishful thinking and a single example drawn from an absurdly small sample set?
Regarding the OP, if you were to attempt to present scientific knowledge as an alternative to religion to ancient people, it’d probably have the same effect then as it does now: essentially no effect at all. Atheism is not a very attractive religion, what with its no afterlife, no reward, no justice, no promised bonuses to believers, no cosy imaginary friends or protectors, and no simple answers about creation or reality. At best you’d be able to sway a handful of thinkers or leaders, but you’re not going to catch the common man with that carrot. (Plus you’d practically have to set up an entire school system to catch even the thinkers, since atheism’s explanations for evolution and universal creation can’t exactly be delivered convincingly from a soapbox or door-to-door.)
With all due respect to Voyager’s plan, I think that by following it you’d end up with a lot of leaders putting on a show of atheism to garner your good will and favors, while their populace (and probably themselves as well) carry on with the notion “Those nutters in Techtown make cool weapons; with the gods on our side those tools will serve us even better!” Now, this would probably seriously hamper the establishment of state religions, and thereby put a dent in religion’s sway over governments and the people in general (especially if you refuse to deal with states without freedom or religion), but I don’t see you eliminating religions entirely this way.
I think that a much more efficient way to use a time machine to snuff out religion would be to go back in time to meet the fellow who started any given religion X, and re-educate, capture, or kill them. If you methodically do this to each religion you find cluttering up your present-day, you’ll eventually be left with a religion-free planet --especially if you leave word of why you silenced them, allowing a fear of ‘the shaman-killer’ to spread across the globe.
I form my conclusions about what can happen based on what happened in human history. How many civilizations, other than Christian civilization, gave us universities? How many civilizations, other than Christian civilization, encouraged scholars to freely exchange ideas? how many civilizations, other than Christian civilization, produced government documents guaranteeing certain rights to all individuals?
The origins of our modern institutions can be traced back to Christian beliefs. Government based on equality and individual rights arose because Christians believed in those thigns. A democratic government could never have arisen in India, for instance, because the rigorous caste system prevented them people from even considering the idea of universal equality. The modern system of academics depends on the Christian notion of everyone working together to build a more perfect society. In many other civilizations, there was no such notion. In ancient China and Japan, scientists and mathematicians were often expected to keep their ideas secret from each other; hence there was no collaboration.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I thought Muslim civilization had many of these same attributes. If we take the freely exchanged ideas part out Confusionism would also fit the bill for some of this…and some of the other Eastern religions.
-XT
You don’t necessarily need to take that part out; there’s Shuyuan and to a lesser extent Seowon (not sure what the plural of those would be) in Asia which I think would count.
A lot of the old Greek masters taught at university-similar places. Aristotle and Plato, off the top of my head, and certainly there seemed to be a great deal of “let’s teach people and debate things” going around. Good many years even before Jesus’ birth. You could cite them also in terms of “guaranteeing certain rights to all individuals”; women and slaves didn’t get a vote, but then we still had slaves and voting restricted to men relatively recently.
I’m not sure we are hardwired for it, but certainly parts of it.
We are hardwired to start out looking up to our parents, like all monkey babies.
And we are hardwired to learn that when parents leave that they will return.
So when they die and don’t return, or simply take a hike, we can wait for them a long time. This, I think is the seed of ancestor worship. “When your father returns from the hunt he will settle your arguments” So people are taking second hand advice from the relatives that stayed behind, revering the now-invisible expert.
You are going to have to go back a lot further than that, all the way to the cave man. Paintings on cave walls, the way they buried their dead and other signs indicate they believed in an after life. If you went back only two days you couldn’t explain the real scientific nature of the universe to anyone. Science doesn’t have anything “real” only theories of it all. No, we are not hard-wired for religion or anything else. We learn through experience, personal experience is all we have to determine the reality of our world. People experience God, religion, and such just as they experience love, hate and joy.
I would argue that love, hate and joy are hardwired. If they are experienced the same as the God experience then we are hardwired for religion.
Probably not.
We could go back, film the crucifixtion (if it actually happened), then follow the body all the way through decomposition and a crew of moonbats would immediately claim that it was faked and cite the moon landings as proof.
Alternatively, you could film the Crucifixion and the Resurrection both, and start some wacked-out conspiracy theory about how it was all faked up by space aliens with superior technology 'cos that’s way more probable than God existing. :dubious:
I haven’t seen a single piece of physical evidence yet to show we are hardwired for anything. Do you have any? Millions of people experience God everyday, so why wouldn’t mankind believe in God? Science has proved nothing concerning religion.
Not sure about religion being hardwired, but gullibility is. Which can lead to faith in nonsense.
That is, people, like a great many animals, are willing to trust others of the species without being able to confirm that they are acting honestly.
And some are hardwired to mislead their cohorts.
You have some cites on those assumptions? I bet not.
The most gullibile people I have met are those that believe anything science says and nothing anyone else says.
Are you rejecting the whole of modern behavioral psychology and neurology?
On the contrary, it’s disproven a huge number of things. Most obviously, the various religious creation stories. Over the centuries, religion has been forced to retreat into narrower and narrower zones of ignorance and delusion by science. When the two come into contact, religion always loses in the end, because it’s wrong.