Spiderman
Veteran Member
Well, in that case, if there is indeed a Creator, he may be inspired to help convert people to atheism.
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Why Do Atheists Preach??
- Thread starter Mohsen
- Start date
Well, in that case, if there is indeed a Creator, he may be inspired to help convert people to atheism.
I must assume that he would feel the need, yes.
ecco
Veteran Member
For the 300 evolution disbelievers...
What is their view regarding the existence of humans on earth?
Do they all believe that God created everything 6000 years ago?
On what do they base their beliefs?
Audie
Veteran Member
That is so, for all that you are overselling the well
known.
My comments were the op, who seems to be of
the one true sky god sort.
For other superstitious folk elsewhere, divers gods
and spirits, vstying degrees of tolerance and flexibility,
as you noted.
Couldda saved you your fun if I'd phrased it a bit
differently.
Audie
Veteran Member
I know a dentist who is a scientologist!
Glen Beck says to buy gold.
Endorsements are fine, but facts are
better.
Having investigated alternative logics, I'm not 100% certain of 'logical absolutes'.
GoodbyeDave
Well-Known Member
How true! But I'm still waiting for your facts and your argments to explain your beliefs.
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
The bigger question is why is evolution being discussed in a thread about atheism?
ecco
Veteran Member
If you want to discuss "the psychology and neuroscience behind it", then discuss it. Just posting a couple of big words does nothing to further your argument.
Insofar as "the cultural dimensions", childhood indoctrination and peer pressure are a core part of cultural dimensions
Yes it would affect the worldviews and cultures of most of the world's people if it were removed. But I didn't suggest it could or should be removed, did I?
However, that does not alter my comment that we would be better off without religion. The world's population is currently about seven billion. We could not feed, cloth and house seven billion people without the advances made in science. Life expectancy is greater than ever in the history of mankind. This is also due to scientific advances. Plague outbreaks now get stopped before they kill significant portions of human populations because of advances in science.
Science has always been held back by religion. During times and places of extreme religious fundamentalism, science suffers the most. During times of comparative religious "enlightenment", science flourishes.
If there had never been religions and beliefs in gods, science would be much further advanced today.
Augustus
…
The argument was that your reasons people believe in gods was incredibly superficial.
Gods/religions are ubiquitous in human societies and they didn't always result from indoctrination as they all started somewhere.
The cognitive science of religion is a topic that some atheists talk about, the details of it are irrelevant to this discussion.
Historically illiterate "conflict thesis" mythology.
Some scholarly views:
A widespread myth that refuses to die...maintains that consistent opposition of the Christian church to rational thought in general and the natural sciences in particular, throughout the patristic and medieval periods, retarded the development of a viable scientific tradition, thereby delaying the Scientific Revolution and the origins of modern science by more than a millennium.
Historical scholarship of the past half-century demonstrates that the truth is otherwise.
David C Lindberg in the Cambridge companion to science and religion
No institution or cultural force of the patristic period offered more encouragement for the investigation of nature than did the
Christian church. Contemporary pagan culture was no more favorable to disinterested speculation about the cosmos than was Christian culture. It follows that the presence of the Christian church enhanced, rather than damaged, the development of the natural sciences.
Michael H. Shank Ch2 in Galileo goes to jail and other myths about science and religion - Harvard University Press
Historians have observed that Christian churches were for a crucial millennium leading patrons of natural philosophy and science, in that they supported theorizing, experimentation, observation, exploration, documentation, and publication. Noah J Efron
No account of Catholic involvement with science could be complete without mention of the Jesuits (officially called the Society of Jesus). Formally established in 1540, the society placed such special emphasis on education that by 1625 they had founded nearly 450 colleges in Europe and elsewhere... It is clear from the historical record that the Catholic church has been probably the largest single and longest- term patron of science in history, that many contributors to the Scientific Revolution were themselves Catholic, and that several Catholic institutions and perspectives were key influences upon the rise of modern science. Margaret J Osler
Although they disagree about nuances, today almost all historians agree that Christianity (Catholicism as well as Protestantism) move many early-modern intellectuals to study nature systematically.4 Historians have also found that notions borrowed from Christian belief found their ways into scientific discourse, with glorious re- sults; the very notion that nature is lawful, some scholars argue, was borrowed from Christian theology.5 Christian convictions also affected how nature was studied. For example, in the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries, Augustine’s notion of original sin (which held that Adam’s Fall left humans implacably dam- aged) was embraced by advocates of “experimental natural phi- losophy.” As they saw it, fallen humans lacked the grace to understand the workings of the world through cogitation alone, requiring in their disgraced state painstaking experiment and ob- servation to arrive at knowledge of how nature works (though our knowledge even then could never be certain). In this way, Christian doctrine lent urgency to experiment.6
Historians have also found that changing Christian approaches to interpreting the Bible affected the way nature was studied in crucial ways. For example, Reformation leaders disparaged allegorical readings of Scripture, counseling their congregations to read Holy Writ literally. This approach to the Bible led some scholars to change the way they studied nature, no longer seeking the allegorical meaning of plants and animals and instead seeking what they took to be a more straightforward description of the material world.7 Also, many of those today considered “fore- fathers” of modern science found in Christianity legitimation of their pursuits. René Descartes (1596–1650) boasted of his physics that “my new philosophy is in much better agreement with all the truths of faith than that of Aristotle.”8 Isaac Newton (1642–1727) believed that his system restored the original divine wisdom God had provided to Moses and had no doubt that his Christianity bolstered his physics—and that his physics bolstered his Christi- anity.9 Finally, historians have observed that Christian churches were for a crucial millennium leading patrons of natural philosophy and science, in that they supported theorizing, experimentation, observation, exploration, documentation, and publication. (Noah J Efron - Ch9 in Galileo goes to jail and other myths about science and religion - Harvard University Press)
Again, that you think your opinion is objective fact, despite the vast majority of academic historians of science disagreeing with it, is the mark of an ideologue.
Pure speculation, and very dubious as religions were important for cohesion helping larger societies forming beyond genetic and narrow tribal interests, and also given the above views of academic historians (not apologists).
ecco
Veteran Member
Gods/religions started when man began questioning. Instead of honestly stating "I don't know" Tribal Leaders answered with variations of "The Magic Man in the Sky". The concept of The Magic Man in the Sky was passed on from generation to generation - AKA religious indoctrination - AKA peer pressure.
Religion started when the Tribal Leader appointed a "Spiritual Leader" to continue and expand upon the myths. Why have all the game animals gone away? We have angered The Magic Man in the Sky. How do we find the animals again? We must give something to The Magic Man in the Sky - let's sacrifice a virgin.
Since you think my concepts are "incredibly superficial" tell us...
Where do you think gods and religions came from?
Why do you think most people follow the religion of their parents?
Audie
Veteran Member
I dont just say things, I am not a religionist into
making up or "interpreting" as it suits me. I can
always back what I say.
Your request tho, if that is even what it is,
is awfilly broad and vague.
ecco
Veteran Member
From your long cut and paste I took the time to look at one of the works of Lindberg: When Science and Christianity Meet.
Amazon permits reading selections from the book. It didn't take long to realize that Lindberg is far from the objective historian you would make him out to be.
On the cover of the book is a sculpture of an angel. The book is a series of essays playing down the negative impact of religion on science. One of the selections in the book is about reconciling the Genesis Flood with science.
Are the rest of your "vast majority of academic historians of science" cut from a similar cloth?
Nevertheless, I did previously state:
During times and places of extreme religious fundamentalism, science suffers the most. During times of comparative religious "enlightenment", science flourishes.
This is true of Christianity and Islam as well.
Augustus
…
You make it seem like reading scholarly sources and identifying relevant quotes from them is a bad thing
The problem with this topic is that "common knowledge" is that religion has always held back science and "everybody knows this". As such when someone tries to counter this narrative it is assumed they are a religious apologist who can be dismissed out of hand.
The history of science though is one subject area where "common knowledge" is massively out of step with what scholarship says on the matter. The conflict thesis, which you are advocating, is not something that has any real support among experts these days, despite remaining common in popular culture.
Re Lindberg, this is his bio:
Lindberg was the Hilldale Professor Emeritus of History of Science and past director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He held a degree in physics from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science from Indiana University. Lindberg was the author or editor of more than a dozen books, received grants and awards from organizations that included the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, the History of Science Society, the Medieval Academy of America, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. With Ronald Numbers, he co-edited two anthologies on the relationship between religion and science. Also with Numbers, Lindberg was general editor of the eight-volume Cambridge History of Science and with Michael Shank editor of its volume on medieval ccience. He served as president of the History of Science Society and was awarded its highest prize for lifetime scholarly achievement: the Sarton medal.[1]
If you value reason and evidence, cover art is not a very good reason to reject scholarship.
While I've no idea what Lindberg's personal religious views were, his co-editor Ronald Numbers is an agnostic and the featured scholars are from diverse religious and non-religious backgrounds.
That chapter, written by a professor of the history of science at Harvard and former editor of the British Journal of the History of Science, discusses how the biblical flood narrative influenced scientist who believed in it.
It is not about "reconciling the Genesis Flood with science" apologetics, but about how specific individuals reconciled their belief in the flood with their scientific beliefs and practices, and how it influenced their attitudes to the fossil record, age of the earth, etc.
It is about what people in the past believed and how this influenced the historical evolution of the sciences.
As you can see from above, you misrepresented him.
All authors cited are respected historians of science from diverse backgrounds, rather than being religious apologists, and the sources are scholarly texts published by legitimate academic publishers (Cambridge University Press, Harvard University Press).
If you value scholarship, and ration, evidence based discourse (which I assume you do), how do you reconcile you support for the conflict thesis with its rejection by the vast majority of academic historians of science? Are they all biased or mistaken?
The thing is this isn't really true either. It's more an assumption that the obviously anti-scientific forms of modern fundamentalism have historical analogues with similar effects.
Due to the Reformation, the Renaissance saw far more religious intolerance than the medieval period, yet is generally associated with scientific advancement.
Also, the Islamic Golden Age overlapped with the more austere forms of Islam becoming orthodoxy in the 9th-10th C
One difficulty is even defining what the word 'science' is prior to 1600AD. The scientific method, per se, was a fairly late development, but attempts to rationally investigate the universe are ancient. If we accept Aristotle's thoughts as early science, and Ptolemy's as elaboration on them, then some aspect of science existed in Greco-Roman times, but without adherence to the scientific method.
Taken from this perspective, the Christian church in the Middle Ages has a complicated relationship to science. There was a HUGE translation movement, often done by monks, of Arabic material into Latin that included much of the thoughts from the Greco-Roman time period. The issues brought up by Aristotle were hotly debated, with quite deep questions posed about things like inertia, the vacuum, the nature of motion, how to deal with things mathematically, etc. These investigations were *primarily* done by monks and clerics with approval of the overall Church structure.
On the other hand, the condemnations of 1277 dictated that certain specific conclusions of Aristotle were heretical. The interesting thing, though, is that there was not a blanket condemnation, so debate continued and even flourished after that. The effect was to inspire more questioning of Aristotelianism. The idea that there was 'one truth' and that the ancients had an aspect of it was common and promoted a lot of debate and curiosity.
You might be surprised if you actually correlate the time periods of fundamentalism and those of scientific growth. England during the time of Newton was hardly lacking in extreme fundamentalism. the times of Copernicus to Galileo and Kepler were rife with it, and the Protestant areas, where 'scientific thinking' was more common were also more likely to be religiously intolerant. The witch hunts were primarily a Protestant thing.
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Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
There are no “alternative logics”. Something is logical or it is not.
Simply not true. There are, for example, three-valued logics, logics that reject the law of excluded middle, intuitionist logics, etc.
And there have even been good reasons to study such alternatives. quantum logic has been applied to, you guessed it, quantum mechanics. The law of excluded middle has been challenged when dealing with infinities, with constructivist logics replacing it.
There is more out there on this than you might think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-classical_logic
Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
Yes, that is correct. I was not being clear about what I was trying to say. In each of those types of logic, something is either logical or it is not.
yes. But there are *alternative systems* of logic other than standard Boolean logic and propositional logic.
And, the existence of such means that I am not 100% convinced that 'absolute logic' exists. As I stated.
Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
Okay....