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[Teneb]

The modern "anti-science" push in Christianity didn't really get firm ground until the 19th century - and developed primarily because prominent atheists of the era had a tendency to hold up every new "discovery" (most of which have since been proven to be bunk, like spontaneous generation and the luminous aether) as proof that all religion was false.

Incorrect, actually. The rest of your post is mighty fine, but this is not.

The Christianity vs Science was born in the 20th century. Specifically, in 1910. For pretty much all of Christianity's history, it was simply accepted by pretty much everyone that the Bible was full of allegories and was not 100% the Truth and Infallible.

In 1910, the current scientific method was gaining ground. People were learning to demand solid evidence whenever someone made a dubious claim. The tales in the Bible were taken as that: tales written by ancient peoples that didn't know how the world work as well as people in the then-present (1910). It didn't mean that there weren't miracles and other things like that, but that quite a few of those might've been misunderstood natural phenomena or even made up because the writers wanted to make an event grander.

Some religiously conservative groups reacted to this by trying to return to the "roots" of their religion. The fundament, if you will. They started to engage in "Religious Archaeology" (most of the drivel on the "History" Channel is a good example). And also, in 1910 in the United States, a group of conservative protestant priests decided to convene. This also coincided with the Scopes Monkey Trial.

In this meeting, these priests came up with the concept of an infallible Bible. They also came with a lot of "Christian traditions" that are now seen as something that's been around for ages. What are those "traditions"?
-Jesus being born from an actual virgin.
-Jesus sacrificing himself as divine justice instead of just being murdered by romans.
-Jesus ascending to the Heavens after his rebirth.
-Jesus will come back.
-Creationism

It should be noted that this group of priests was composed of some pretty different sects, including whites and blacks in a period where such were segregated pretty damn heavily. And once they pushed that out, the other types of Christianity (Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, etc) look at it and thought this was actually pretty damn cool and started copying them.


The whole concept of Intelligent Design appeared as an attempt to compromise this whole Religion vs Science conflict that was utterly fabricated in 1910.


EDIT: My source was a lecture I had the opportunity to attend last year by Professor André Leonardo Chevitaresi

[Lord Shonus]

The modern "anti-science" push in Christianity didn't really get firm ground until the 19th century - and developed primarily because prominent atheists of the era had a tendency to hold up every new "discovery" (most of which have since been proven to be bunk, like spontaneous generation and the luminous aether) as proof that all religion was false.

Incorrect, actually. The rest of your post is mighty fine, but this is not.

The Christianity vs Science was born in the 20th century. Specifically, in 1910. For pretty much all of Christianity's history, it was simply accepted by pretty much everyone that the Bible was full of allegories and was not 100% the Truth and Infallible.

The earliest such conflict I'm aware of is the pushback against Darwin in the 1870s.

[Naturegirl1999]

I understand people in the religion can be motivated by bettering the world, the mask and facade I am mentioning is the reason the religion was created in the first place, to control people. I understand people join them for various reasons.

Whenever you start talking about "pulling back the mask" on anything, you're entering into serious "I'm the only thinking person among all these sheeple" conspiracy territory. In virtually all cases, it is closer to "I ripped the face off so I could inject my own biases into this, now I'm convincing other people who are in exactly the right frame of mind to swallow all my arguments without question."

To use an example, you see enormous numbers of people repeating the religious claims from The Da Vinci Code as fact, but a little research will show that virtually every verifiable claim Brown makes is false, and the claims that are not verifiable are not supported by much of anything. Yet people believed him wholeheartedly because they had exactly the right level of skepticism toward the Catholic Church at the time to buy into it.

All I meant by this is that religion is yet another tool for gaining power. I’m not saying everyone in a religion is stupid, I’m saying that religions aren’t as pure as some would like you to believe. I used to think Christianity was actually about helping people, then I took an intro to Western Civ class and learned its origins, and that it has been and is still used by popes and clergy to keep and gain power, sometimes by telling the followers that reality is a lie. The “mask” I’m referring to is simply the claim that religions have no ulterior motive. I don’t want anyone to believe someone without question, no matter how much they say they are good intentioned. I want people to think critically, to ask questions, to research, to experiment, to discover. I’m not saying “listen to me, follow me without question” I’m saying “I used to think religions were about helping people, I eventually learned this was not the case” While it might help some, its main purpose is control/indoctrination. If people never learn to question anything, they will be more easily indoctrinated with anything. Religion seems to be a common example, but it is certainly not the only one.

"Intro to" history or sociology classes generally provide nothing more than the most sweeping overview and are generally not worth much except as a "we're getting everybody on the same page for the class that will actually teach you something." primer. To make matters worse, these are usually assigned to either novice instructors or to the tenured old assholes that have an agenda to push, because the more capable teachers don't want to waste their time. From everything you've said, what you've been taught is on the level of the "PEARL HARBOR WAS A FALSE FLAG!" nonsense that some local professors are pushing.

I was never taught Pearl Harbor was a false flag. What I was taught, is that various leaders used various religions to get the people ready for war, that the Pope had power on par with the long, and that when Christianity had more power than the state, the pursuit of knowledge was suppressed, and that various empires fell due to civil war as well as conquerings from the outside

You misunderstand me. I'm saying that what you have been taught is about as historically accurate as "Pearl Harbor was a false flag" not that you'd actually been taught that. To be more explicit since you've provided details:

What I was taught, is that various leaders used various religions to get the people ready for war,

This happened, but rarely. Much more often, religion was used as a shallow justification for wars fought for other reasons. For example, the 30 Years War is often cited as a Catholic Vs. Prostestant holy war, but this is true only on a surface level. The Protestant-Catholic fight had already been settled in the HRE by the establishment of Cuius regio, eius religio in 1555, declaring that the official religion of a holding was determined by the religion of the landholder. There was some conflict caused by the fact that newer branches of Protestantism such as Calvinism and the Anabaptists were not included, but it stabilized things quite well. A much more important factor in the war was struggles for dominance between the two branches of the Hapsburg dynasty, complicated a little later by the Vasa dynasty of Sweden on the "Protestant" side (who was supported by Catholic France in order to strengthen the relative power of the House of Bourbon - this paid off well enough that the throne of Spain passed from the Hapsburgs to the Bourbons). Or, in other words, it was as much a Hapsburg-Hapsburg-Vasa war that Bourbon won as it was a religious conflict.

that the Pope had power on par with the long,

Rarely true. Even in those times where the pope did have real power, he was often heavily influenced by one or more "lesser" kings, most famously Philip II of Spain.

and that when Christianity had more power than the state, the pursuit of knowledge was suppressed

Total myth. Most of the great scientific discoveries of the Middle and Renaissance era were made by clergy or "natural philosophers" working directly under the auspices of the Church. Persons such as Galileo are often pushed as "science martyrs", but there is almost invariably far more to the story than this simplistic statement suggests. The primary charge against Galileo was, for example, not simply promoting heliocentric-ism (after vehemently denouncing it when his rival Kepler proposed it) but for promoting it as fact without sufficient evidence - at the time, it was assumed that orbits (regardless of what body they were going around) were circular, and observational data fit a circular orbit around the Earth much better than they did a circular orbit around the sun. It wasn't until Kepler's notion of elliptical orbits was accepted that solar orbits began to fit with the data. When Thomas Aquinas - who, among many other scientific accomplishments, postulated a crude version of the theory of evolution - was up for canonization, the Church waived the protest that he had no attributed miracles by declaring that his scientific research was miracle enough.

The modern "anti-science" push in Christianity didn't really get firm ground until the 19th century - and developed primarily because prominent atheists of the era had a tendency to hold up every new "discovery" (most of which have since been proven to be bunk, like spontaneous generation and the luminous aether) as proof that all religion was false.
 
Of equal importance, there was no time when "the state" existed as a concept when Christianity was more powerful. The concept of statehood is a very modern one, not cropping up until the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Prior to that, you had broad cultural identities, but most people didn't particularly care that they lived in Saxony instead of Bavaria unless one lord or the other was far more intrusive.

, and that various empires fell due to civil war as well as conquerings from the outside

This was a normal part of the life cycle of nations for centuries, and may still be today.

The modern "anti-science" push in Christianity didn't really get firm ground until the 19th century - and developed primarily because prominent atheists of the era had a tendency to hold up every new "discovery" (most of which have since been proven to be bunk, like spontaneous generation and the luminous aether) as proof that all religion was false.

Incorrect, actually. The rest of your post is mighty fine, but this is not.

The Christianity vs Science was born in the 20th century. Specifically, in 1910. For pretty much all of Christianity's history, it was simply accepted by pretty much everyone that the Bible was full of allegories and was not 100% the Truth and Infallible.

In 1910, the current scientific method was gaining ground. People were learning to demand solid evidence whenever someone made a dubious claim. The tales in the Bible were taken as that: tales written by ancient peoples that didn't know how the world work as well as people in the then-present (1910). It didn't mean that there weren't miracles and other things like that, but that quite a few of those might've been misunderstood natural phenomena or even made up because the writers wanted to make an event grander.

Some religiously conservative groups reacted to this by trying to return to the "roots" of their religion. The fundament, if you will. They started to engage in "Religious Archaeology" (most of the drivel on the "History" Channel is a good example). And also, in 1910 in the United States, a group of conservative protestant priests decided to convene. This also coincided with the Scopes Monkey Trial.

In this meeting, these priests came up with the concept of an infallible Bible. They also came with a lot of "Christian traditions" that are now seen as something that's been around for ages. What are those "traditions"?
-Jesus being born from an actual virgin.
-Jesus sacrificing himself as divine justice instead of just being murdered by romans.
-Jesus ascending to the Heavens after his rebirth.
-Jesus will come back.
-Creationism

It should be noted that this group of priests was composed of some pretty different sects, including whites and blacks in a period where such were segregated pretty damn heavily. And once they pushed that out, the other types of Christianity (Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, etc) look at it and thought this was actually pretty damn cool and started copying them.


The whole concept of Intelligent Design appeared as an attempt to compromise this whole Religion vs Science conflict that was utterly fabricated in 1910.


EDIT: My source was a lecture I had the opportunity to attend last year by Professor André Leonardo Chevitaresi

Thank you for the info. The part about civil wars wasn’t referencing religion at all, it was among the list of what I learned in the class. Before then, I didn’t realize how common civil wars were in relation to conquerings

[Teneb]

The modern "anti-science" push in Christianity didn't really get firm ground until the 19th century - and developed primarily because prominent atheists of the era had a tendency to hold up every new "discovery" (most of which have since been proven to be bunk, like spontaneous generation and the luminous aether) as proof that all religion was false.

Incorrect, actually. The rest of your post is mighty fine, but this is not.

The Christianity vs Science was born in the 20th century. Specifically, in 1910. For pretty much all of Christianity's history, it was simply accepted by pretty much everyone that the Bible was full of allegories and was not 100% the Truth and Infallible.

The earliest such conflict I'm aware of is the pushback against Darwin in the 1870s.

I've simplified a bit, but yeah while it culminated in 1910 things don't just pop up overnight. It was a process and I should've made that clear. Also Darwinism saw pushback for another reason: White Supremacists loved to use it to hurt non-whites. Because of course they did.

[Dunamisdeos]

In this meeting, these priests came up with the concept of an infallible Bible. They also came with a lot of "Christian traditions" that are now seen as something that's been around for ages. What are those "traditions"?
-Jesus being born from an actual virgin.
-Jesus sacrificing himself as divine justice instead of just being murdered by romans.
-Jesus ascending to the Heavens after his rebirth.
-Jesus will come back.
-Creationism

That's.... not actually accurate. I'm at work, and busy, so I can't go all ham like I usually do, but the idea of Mary's Virginity or Jesus' sacrifice and divinity are not recent inventions in any way. Hell, Islam references the idea of Mary as a virgin.

For instance, the virgin birth of Jesus is found in both Matthew and Luke, both of which are estimated to have been written in something like the 5th century, IIRC. Surviving texts from this time are able to verify the contents. The return of Jesus is referenced in Acts, manuscripts of which exist from the same vicinity of antiquity.

Jesus is referenced as sacrificing himself in a ton of places in the Bible. There are zero references to him portrayed as murdered by the Romans. I mean seriously, the entire scene in the Garden of Gethsemane shows that he knew what was coming, and in detail. Also, we can easily reference 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (All Scripture is God-breathed) for the idea of the Bible as the literal word of God, which also has reference material from way back.

Regardless, my understanding is also that the anti-science movement within Christianity began in the 20th century, and my belief is that it's the biggest damn plague upon rational thought of our time.

[Lord Shonus]

In this meeting, these priests came up with the concept of an infallible Bible. They also came with a lot of "Christian traditions" that are now seen as something that's been around for ages. What are those "traditions"?
-Jesus being born from an actual virgin.
-Jesus sacrificing himself as divine justice instead of just being murdered by romans.
-Jesus ascending to the Heavens after his rebirth.
-Jesus will come back.
-Creationism

That's.... not actually accurate. I'm at work, and busy, so I can't go all ham like I usually do, but the idea of Mary's Virginity or Jesus' sacrifice and divinity are not recent inventions in any way. Hell, Islam references the idea of Mary as a virgin.

For instance, the virgin birth of Jesus is found in both Matthew and Luke, both of which are estimated to have been written in something like the 5th century, IIRC. Surviving texts from this time are able to verify the contents. The return of Jesus is referenced in Acts, manuscripts of which exist from the same vicinity of antiquity.

Jesus is referenced as sacrificing himself in a ton of places in the Bible. There are zero references to him portrayed as murdered by the Romans. I mean seriously, the entire scene in the Garden of Gethsemane shows that he knew what was coming, and in detail. Also, we can easily reference 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (All Scripture is God-breathed) for the idea of the Bible as the literal word of God, which also has reference material from way back.

You are correct. All of these have been core beliefs for centuries. Teneb is correct in the influence of the early 20th-century Back To The Bible movment, but he exaggerates the details. Accurately addressing the concepts presented would require an extremely long theological discussion (entire books have been written covering these points), so I felt it best not to bring it up.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yeah, you're right, I'm sorry. I feel obligated sometimes to chirp up with this stuff.

Maybe we can just agree on the last part? That the idea of the anti-science movement within Christianity has done immeasurable harm? Certainly other anti-science movement have always existed, but Christianity was/is so prevalent in our society that it amounts to... well, really the biggest obstacle to human progress/rational thought that I can think of in any point within recorded history.

[Reelya]

In my schools, critical thinking was emphasized, apparently not all American schools are like this, that could be one of the reasons critical thinking isn’t as common as it should be, not all teachers want to take the time to teach it

In my schooling critical thinking was emphasized as a vague buzzword that mostly boiled down to "write longer essays about this thing you hate you miserable brats." I don't think the framework for school really supports genuine critical thinking very well, because you're perpetually taking orders from a jackass to do it.

The real place to learn actual critical thinking skills is in a debating club. Because you learn to get smacked down for not supporting your positions. If it's just "feel free to question everything you're taught" then it's just encouraging uneducated conspiracy mongering with a teenage sense of self-righteousness / know-it-all-ism. It encourages kids to think they really can out-think everyone else.

I want people to think critically, to ask questions, to research, to experiment, to discover.

The reason I say this is that the version of critical thinking is flawed is because it's only a skip and a jump from "what do those scientists know, I can see the horizon and it looks flat". Encouraging people to do all these things on their own actually fosters people to spin off into conspiracy theories. "Research" on a topic, on a personal level, often spins off into what's called confirmation bias. Similar if you "experiment", since reading the results of an experiment is very subjective.

Lastly, this version of critical thinking creates very flawed people because it goes down the "there is no truth" path, but without giving people the correct tools to evaluate their ideas. For example, you emphatically say religion is about nothing but "indoctrination and control", and say what's it give us? Which reminds of the Monty Python "what have the Romans done for us" sketch in Life of Brian. What do you think the middle-ages would have been like if everyone was a "there is no God, nothing matters" nihilist? Less violent? Or would there have been more violence because there was no fear of God at all?

[Dunamisdeos]

I think a lot of schools and even some universities inadvertently create a fear of critical thinking in their students. They want to teach their curriculum as fact, they have a time-frame in which to do it, and therefore actual discussion is frowned upon. It's often seen as disrespectful, or even outright wrong to ask questions that aren't in line with the establishment.

Conversely, if you catch a teacher or professor outside of school the will often while away the hours talking about alternate schools of thought and minutiae to the third degree in regards to their field of study or interest.

[Reelya]

I don't think that's necessarily a great loss. If you're in a classroom you're there to learn. Most of the "critical thinking" at that level is some uninformed know-it-all who says some variant of "bullshit, I don't believe that" when exposed to some sort of teaching from the teacher. It almost always manifests as a resistance to being taught, because they had a preconceived idea about something. That could just as easily or more easily be a kid questioning evolution because it's "just a theory" rather than someone questioning the political status quo.

How many times have you been in a class and some random disagreed with the course material and what they said was actually a profound revelation? Most likely, they're just wrong, uninformed or over-simplifying and wasting your time. Even more likely, they've failed to comprehend the frame of reference or scope of the topic altogether and are "not even wrong", since their objection probably has almost no connection to the topic at hand or they've misconstrued some of the terminology. It's like asking your car mechanic for tips on computer programming.

[Folly]

Remember that Iranian missile attack that Trump chose to ignore because nobody got hurt? We're now up to 50 cases of Traumatic Brain Injury diagnosed, with only 31 of those being approved to return to duty.

[Reelya]

Remember that Iranian missile attack that Trump chose to ignore because nobody got hurt? We're now up to 50 cases of Traumatic Brain Injury diagnosed, with only 31 of those being approved to return to duty.

It's still more sensible to ignore it than escalate. You'd have worse casualties than just 50 people with shell-shock then.

Getting upset because he hasn't retaliated is like poking a wasp's nest and getting stung then saying "are you going to stand for being stung by a wasp? Poke it some more, twice as hard!"

[Dunamisdeos]

Yeah, I mean I don't think the injuries should have been downplayed, but I'm pleasantly surprised that Trump didn't order the destruction of the Eastern Hemisphere as penance from the eastern lands, etc etc

[nenjin]

The reason I say this is that the version of critical thinking is flawed is because it's only a skip and a jump from "what do those scientists know, I can see the horizon and it looks flat".

I feel like a prerequisite of critical thinking is to, for a time, dismiss the ego and accept at least in theory that your very perspective is inadequate and flawed. You have to be willing to humble yourself before your own ignorance.

And a lot of the "what do scientists know anyways" people basically are incapable of that. Even when I'm like "look, you spent 22 years fixing truck engines right? If a dude walked up to you and said "wtf do you know about fixing shit", you'd make this point. And yet when someone has made their life work a study of things, like weather, climate, economics, suddenly they're not entitled to the same?"

"Oh well that's different."

*sigh*

What pisses me off isn't that they disagree with what the scientific community comes to. What pisses me off is the utter lack of respect for it. Which, I'm going to be honest, I think is rooted in insecurities about their own intelligence. I have hella respect for blue collar work, it's fucking hard, dirty, dangerous and doesn't pay great. But it literally keeps society oiled and the gears turning. And yet somehow the people who were smart enough to put the world in their goddamn hands are somehow a pieces of lying shit who don't do anything.

[McTraveller]

Debate clubs are not good for critical thinking - debate clubs are good for winning debates

Critical thinking is about understanding if a concept has merit and knowing how to separate out "a compelling presentation" from "a compelling argument" which are subtly different things. I bring that up because debate clubs are about compelling presentation, not compelling arguments.

I think the bigger issue we face today isn't actually anti-science - it is pseudo-science.  What I mean by that is consensus, intuition-based rationalization (flat earth arguments are replete with this one), and appealing to "the personally empirical" rather than the "rigorously empirical".  People using math and science words to explain the absurd.  I would rather have flat out anti-science than the perversion of science we have today.  I mean, people don't even believe statistics because it's not intuitive.  This is especially insidious, because if you do have correct science you will have consensus behind it (eventually - see quantum mechanics as exhibit A), but it is the science that makes it correct, not the consensus.