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[majikero]

Now for something completly irrelevant.

Did you know there's a Cardinal with the last name of Sin(Xin in Chinese)?

[Darvi]

Most large empires were kept together by a single religion, and would have fallen apart otherwise.

They did.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

1.) Hilarious

2.) Let's all agree that in the modern era of polico-economic motivators religion is superfluous

[Owlbread]

1.) Hilarious

2.) Let's all agree that in the modern era of polico-economic motivators religion is superfluous

Put simply, we have outgrown it. Now it mostly causes problems and is driving the middle east backwards while we're going forwards - stem cell research, cloning, all sorts wouldn't be possible without the decline of religion's influence over us.

[Micro102]

Albert Einstein was said to be religious and his discoveries are "God's work in action".

I can't remember where I read/heard that though.

Albert was a jew, Newton was Catholic, the inventor of the Big Bang theory was a priest. There's a bloody lot to choose from.
Most large empires were kept together by a single religion, and would have fallen apart otherwise.

Please provide evidence that [Insert anything you want here] was a force that led to an important discovery that might of not been discovered earlier without [Insert anything here]. And I would take any amount of advancement over works of art, even if the artists weren't able to get inspiration from anything else.

Really, give a thousand monkeys a thousand typewriters and they will eventually produce the complete works of shakespeare. Doesn't mean he wasn't a good playwright though.

Even if i was catholic, i would have a hard time believing anything the pope says. The Pope is supposed to be the very voice of god... and yet... throughout history the popes have had wildly different opinions on various issues, and occasionally have backed things that are factually *wrong*. Either the God whispering in their ear is fickle, the Popes have been liars at various parts of history or... dare i say it... the Popes have *not* had a phone line with God.

Speaking of which, I'm not sure if the Pope is even referenced to in the Bible. I believe he isn't.

As for bible related sciences:
Bible intrepretation
Religious studies

In retrospect the thing that religon has given to the scientific community is that early on, monastic communities had alot of time to study and observe due to their lifestlye. In fact early genetics research was conducted by monks.

Was religion the driving force? No, another circumstance would have arisen, but... ya.

Nothing is caused by a single factor. If someone went back in time and shot Einstein, we would still have discovered the theory of relativity. Only later.

You are making a hell of a lot of assertions. Please provide some sort of evidence for these.

As for things inspiring discoveries... a want for a trade route to India, exploration into unknown waters, found America instead. The evidence? Tons of documentation. See how easy that was? Now, do the same with religion in there or I can't take your dismissal of my statement as serious.

[Leafsnail]

As for bible related sciences:
Bible intrepretation
Religious studies

Interpretation of text isn't a science.  That isn't to say it's useless, but it simply doesn't fill any of the requirements to be a science.

Religious studies... well, it is a science, but it's about studying the nature of religious beliefs rather than examining whether they're true.  The fact that legitimate scientific papers have been published which examine why people believe conspiracy theories doesn't mean that the conspiracy theories themselves have scientific basis.

[Starver]

Religion has been a motivating force for some great discoveries and beautiful works of art.

It has also been a motivating force for suppressing or even destroying art.

Usually of opposing[1] or actually very similar[2] other religions, admittedly, but that's probably because purely secular arts are harder to come in the historic times where religious patronage was the source of most of these "non-essential productions".

When it comes to discoveries it's a bit easier to talk about.  Galileo is an obvious one.  Research into stem-cells is a more modern example (separation of church and state? nope...).  That art of Crop Rotation was certainly suppressed at times (although often farmers and others may have just ignored such stupid rules).

The early Islamic world did indeed help support (and develop) the sciences whilst the European situation abandoned such fripperies during the Dark Ages (give or take), but there are certainly significant parts of the 'modern' Islamic world where stagnation and even regression has set in.  It's probably more a matter of those with power keeping those without it oppressed, which of course is not unique to a certain religion (or even religion at all).  But it's at least as handy a doctrine as (frexample) a Communist state of recent times might have used to repress its population into a subservient 'people machine'.  (More contemporary situations in various other ostensibly secular situations could also be mentioned, but may be hard to assess quite so thoroughly without the benefit of hindsight.)


What?  12 new replies?  Sheesh.  Hot topic.

[1] Buddhist statues dynamited by the Taliban

[2] Historic church paintings whitewashed over by puritans.

[10ebbor10]

As for things inspiring discoveries... a want for a trade route to India, exploration into unknown waters, found America instead. The evidence? Tons of documentation. See how easy that was? Now, do the same with religion in there or I can't take your dismissal of my statement as serious.

Say that Columbus's ship sunk. We would have found America anyway, because a Portugese ship had lost is course while on it's way to Africa, and hit South America. (See, even without the want for a shorter route, America would have been explored).

As for the other things, google them. Wikipedia can easily provide the answers you need. Why did you think Einstein moved to America?

As for bible related sciences:
Bible intrepretation
Religious studies

Interpretation of text isn't a science.  That isn't to say it's useless, but it simply doesn't fill any of the requirements to be a science.

Religious studies... well, it is a science, but it's about studying the nature of religious beliefs rather than examining whether they're true.  The fact that legitimate scientific papers have been published which examine why people believe conspiracy theories doesn't mean that the conspiracy theories themselves have scientific basis.

Sorry, I meant Hermeneutics, which is indeed the art and science of text intrepretation. Exegese is just when it happens to be the bible.

[Leafsnail]

Yeaaah I guess it's "scientific" in that it's the study of something but that's still pretty much splitting hairs.  It doesn't mean that the Bible's claim have any scientific basis.

[Starver]

Please provide evidence that religion was a force that led to an important discovery that might of not been discovered earlier without religion.

If you don't mind a generalistic example, there have been any number of scientific discoveries by ecclesiastical persons (Gregor Mendel and his peas, for example), who would have ultimately been at least partially supported by the church system's tithes of the general population who couldn't afford to think outside the box (probably bred strains of peas of their, but never would have had time to formalise their discoveries or ultimately spread their knowledge to the same extent, perhaps just to fellow pea-farmers, assuming these weren't to be closely held family secrets... which would be ironic, in its own way).

Without religion?  Maybe the peasants would have needed less time to support the non-existent church establishments, or maybe not.  There's the other privileged classes in such hierarchical societies.  I wouldn't presume to say one way or another whether a (subtly different) rerun world would have gotten better or worse developments.  Different, though.  Definitely different.

[fqllve]

Please provide evidence that religion was a force that led to an important discovery that might of not been discovered earlier without religion. And I would take any amount of advancement over works of art, even if the artists weren't able to get inspiration from anything else.

How can I provide evidence that doesn't conflict with speculation? We can say anything might have been discovered earlier and justify it with the presence or absence of any number of things. What I will say is this, any good that religion has done could have been done through means other than religion. But the opposite is also true. Religion has caused no harm that could not have been caused without religion.

Also, I find the idea that progress in all cases is greater than art to be a little brash. Art inspires and is inspired by progress just as much as anything else and progress has caused problems as well as given us solutions. I also think art is more important to society than you're giving it credit for.

[Starver]

Albert Einstein was said to be religious and his discoveries are "God's work in action".

I can't remember where I read/heard that though.

Albert has often been misquoted/misinterpreted in this regard.  It didn't help that he used lines like "God does not play dice with the universe".  He self-identified as agnostic and a non-believer (but not hard-line atheist, which he also criticised), having been ethnically Jewish but largely become non-observant even during childhood, IIRC, and I think Spinoza comes into the equation, somewhat, but it's hard to tie down any particular person's viewpoint as being the same as another so I won't even try.


(Oh yeah... fqllve's reply, just put in, reminds me...  It's "...that might not have been...".  Sorry, but it's an annoying grammatical mistake that, for me.  I'm sure you can find something in my text you don't like, in return.)

[10ebbor10]

Yeaaah I guess it's "scientific" in that it's the study of something but that's still pretty much splitting hairs.  It doesn't mean that the Bible's claim have any scientific basis.

It does mean that the intrepretations ain't something someone just made up. Which was the point I was trying to prove.

And yeah, it's possible that religion as a formalized institute is outdated. Historically, it's been having a strong decline in recent years. Which makes sense if you view it on basis of certain theories. One of which is an interesting one that said (I'm cutting corners here, and basing it on memories from like 2 years ago) that religion was founded out of an "attempt" to prevent unnessecairy violence, and as a basis for a moral system. In that case you can see a pattern. First you got nothing, then primitive religions, later you get more complicated religions, after which they are gradually replaced by nationalistic/imperialistic tendencies, which are then replaced by individualistic tendencies. Each is replaced by the next when it goes wrong, and you get a massive slaughter of some kind.

Do note that this is just a theory, and that even in it's original form it didn't cover the entire point.

[fqllve]

Speaking of Spinoza, I would say he's one of the best examples of how theistic belief can motivate scientific discovery, because Spinoza believed the the appropriate response to a deity was curiosity, study, and analysis. And yeah, I think Einstein's admiration of Spinoza is probably the biggest reason people ascribe theistic beliefs to him, although I can't say I've ever heard any compelling evidence.

[Starver]

Albert was a jew, Newton was Catholic, the inventor of the Big Bang theory was a priest.

Already dealt with Albert.

Newton had some weird shit going on in his personal philosophy (and lived at a time when you basically had to be religiously interested, at least superficially), and I think thought that worship of Christ was idolatrous.

Do you mean Lemaitre?  (He was a priest, yes.)  It's popularly supposed that Hubble was the guy to thank (or Hoyle), although he's just the guy who popularised it (or, for Hoyle, the one who gave the idea the name we know it by, albeit while being a bit of a sceptic about it).

The last example shows that there was, indeed, not just one person to thank.  But there may still have been ideas that were only thought of by one person (then developed by others, who would not have reached the same conclusions without that progenitor).  Who knows how many ideas one person did not come up with (or did not get into the public domain), and thus we find ourselves denied something synonymous with the Theory Of Relativity or Evolution or whatever...


However, back to a prior point, certainly in Newton's time the college system that he inhabited plainly draws upon the ecumenical schooling system and only by his being able to be hothoused in such an institution (regardless of personal belief) might he have attained his legacy.  Also the invention of the cat-flap, allegedly.