Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Unexpected visitations.
Well, I was doing some reading in prep for posting a little information about this MeFi entry on an Earth Impact Database tied into Google Earth which will allow you to go right to impact sites and see them from above.
And what should I stumble across unexpectedly than an interview done with Vatican astronomer Dr. Guy Consolmagno by Astrobiology Magazine. Dr. Consolmagno is a Jesuit, and his perspective on how Christianity made science possible is, um, interesting:
The whole scientific enterprise really does coincide well with Christian theology. The whole idea that the universe is worth studying is a Christian idea.
He also says:
And the one time in history that they screwed up on this, the Galileo affair, the Church was wrong. And we've admitted it was wrong. How many times has science abused the Church? How often have you heard a scientist apologize to the Church?
There's also a lot of nonsense about how the Church actually protected the rights of indigenous peoples in the face of European exploitation, how any scientist who thinks that they can investigate and understand the universe therefore has a belief in God, and more. Fascinating stuff - I don't mean it's fascinating in that it is convincing - just that it is fascinating to watch such an obviously intelligent and educated person perform the mental gymnastics necessary to maintain his belief in religious dogma. Take a look at the article if you have a chance.
Jim Downey
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Religion is about
Religion is about manipulating people into believing something that is 100% false - how could that have spawned science.
Religion has absolutely no claims on marality. Morality is a product of CIVILISATION.
Religion exploits people's ignorance, and as we were necessarily far more ignorant in the past, so religion had a greater hold.
Science from the Church
I've been saying for a couple of years that science actually DID spring from religion.
I believe religions really originated as attempts to develop working models of the real world. The people of their (ancient) times were doing the best they could with what they could figure out. They wanted to understand; they made up stories to help.
Problem was, along with all the true stuff discovered by religious people (Gregor Mendel’s peas, for instance), there was a lot of ritual and just-so stories polluting the total pool of retained knowledge.
There was a final moment in history, along about Darwin's era, say, when scientists and churchy people worked together, out doing geology or entomology or gathering specimens of frogs and birds, etc. The local vicar could be the preeminent geologist of the region, and give talks on it.
It was only after rudimentary science starting peeling itself out of the religious mold, and showing its power to explain and understand (thus threatening the magical froth at the foundation of religion), that the two parted company. Darwin was one of the pioneers at jettisoning the religious froth from his head, and seeking answers exclusive of it.
Science became Science, the ultimate tool of understanding. What was left behind in Religion was an empty husk with no explanatory power – a confining framework of unthinking ritual and anti-mind coercion that eventually had almost no bearing on the real world at all.
One unfortunate thing happened, though, when the two parted: Science jerked Reason out of the confining clutches of Religion, and made it its own. But Religion reacted by skulking away with Morality, furiously declaring it its own exclusive domain.
(We're gonna have to get that back someday. Long as we leave it in THEIR hands, they'll continue to fuck it up -- for instance favoring death for sick adults over the therapeutic use of pinhead-sized clumps of cells containing mythical "souls," or declaring that contraception, and even sex education, in a drastically overpopulated world, is wickedly sinful.)
Seems to me that, no matter what anybody else says, Science and Religion are complete enemies these days. We're seeing with extreme clarity that Religion can't even claim moral superiority anymore. Religion has just turned into poison, now. (Tolerable, low-dosage poison sometimes, but poison nonetheless.) I don't think it's a coincidence that fundamentalists have popped up both in the Christian and Muslim worlds simultaneously.
Seriously, I really believe this is the moment in history in which the coercive power of Religion will die its final death ... or else will destroy civilization.
church from science
Good points. You could say that science as we know it sprang from religion, but I really think that religion sprang from the same roots as science (call it the evil twin). Those roots were the desire to understand the world. And ya, if you don't have much in the way of tools you're going to extrapolate stories, like lightning being caused by some god's anger or thunder being from a boulder rolling down a hill or giants.
One thing with morality is that until very recently science hasn't been able to explain things like morality and altruism in nature. Studying ethology I can say with certainty that the basis for our "morality" has evolved naturally as we've evolved into a social organism. You can actually see parallels to most every human behavior pattern in nature. However, there is something else religion offers that must be wrested from it, that religion (expecially those like Christianity that describe humans as something created in god's image) offers people the illusion of being different, special somehow. That is a very powerful illusion, and difficult to dispel.
With Mendel's peas and other scientists in the church: there were two very good reasons that favored scientists in church, one was, as Jim Downey notes, that they were literate and so could record their observations. The other was that when you've taken vows to remove yourself from sinful society you get very, very bored. One of the jokes in class was that since priests can't have sex they got their jollies watching mice doing it, and so hereditary genetics was born (not that this is accurate, but like I said priests had more time to kill than farmers).
I think we'll reach a sort of tipping point, where one of three things will happen; either science will win out and religion will disappear; religion will win out and science will be reduced to only those things that make people easier to control (TV anyone?) and those things that might potentially raise, uncomfortable, questions will become forbidden; or science will essentially win out but religion will evolve into something that can coexist with this new type of science (it's happened before).
Nah.
Hank said:
Nah. The Greeks were pretty far along to developing the tools which we now consider to be the scientific method. Granted, they had some ways to go, but still it's been a pet theory of mine that Aliens looked at what was happening in ancient Greece and decided that they needed to really screw us up before we developed real technology too quickly, so introduced monotheism.
OK, your point is good, there is some truth to the notion that the thinkers of the church did help establish science. But wasn't that simply due to the fact that for a very long time it was only the clerics who were literate and had the time to develop critical thinking skills? Peasants and tradesmen were too busy just surviving, the secular rulers were too busy suppressing the peasants and bashing one another - it was only the monks who had time to really contemplate the universe around them. Naturally, from this class would come those few who did more than just rotely repeat dogma.
"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
Hank - well said ... very well said
Still it amazes me how very intelligent people, people very rational in everyday life, will proudly be a member of a religion and profess belief in "the power of god" etc.
I can see the hypocrisy and inconsistencies why can’t they? I am not saying these basically fine people are “criminal hypocrites” (e.g., people who strongly denounce normal adult sexual relations while they are abusing children) but they are nonetheless being hypocritical.
Many of us know the Catholic who says enough and uses contraception, or the Jew who is not kosher. But more significantly most of us know “believers” who would without a second thought seek the finest medical care SCIENCE offers for their very sick loved one in lieu of JUST praying to God. They don’t really trust Him anymore than I do. I say look at people’s actions in “life and death” situations to judge belief. Fortunately sane and knowledgeable people act as if they are atheist when the chips are down! You really have to be super ignorant of the modern world and/or be insane not to act atheist! Ergo sane people should fess up to the fact: they no more believe in that god crap than I do.
Although I cannot bring myself to confront people that are good and not bothering me, I think we should. I think the most effective way to argue our case and finally get people to admit what they really know is true, is simply to challenge the inconsistencies and not let it go when we see them. Make it embarrassing for them to pretend the unreal is real. But like I said, I could not offend someone especially publicly to make a point like that with provocation. And that is part of the problem; we are too polite (for good reasons in most cases) to fight this insanity that plagues the World.