Religion is of no use to science.

Captain Kremmen

Captain Kremmen

All aboard, me Hearties!
Valued Senior Member
First of all, let me state my position.
I am a person with spiritual beliefs who holds the post title to be true.

People accuse people with spiritual beliefs as worshipping a "God of the Gaps"

In other words, they will weigh in with views on science, but only where it is doubtful, and say "Ha! You have no explanation for that. It must have been God. Disprove it."

My own point of view is that you can have a religious belief and be a rationalist, but you must be a rationalist in order to be a scientist.

The difference is what evidence you will accept.

With a scientist, the evidence needs to be something that can be experienced
or acknowledged by anyone.

With religion, the evidence is found within oneself, and is empirically unprovable.
 
Ever work in a lab? You need plenty of faith to be able to go on with your work. Or a really massive ego. :D

Jokes aside, I believe religious people are more creative in their thinking. All of the biggest breakthroughs in scientific thought have been by the religious or during periods of religious renaissance.
 
No. I've never worked in a lab.
But if I was a whipper snapper, and could choose my path again, I would love to work on Abiogenesis, the scientific missing link between amino acids and self replicating molecules.
It must exist.
I have faith in science.
 
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S.A.M. said:
Jokes aside, I believe religious people are more creative in their thinking. All of the biggest breakthroughs in scientific thought have been by the religious or during periods of religious renaissance.
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Logical fallcay.

You don't take into account that being "atheist" was not really an option for most of history... especially if you wanted funding for your research, or wanted to stay alive (in some cases).

Secondly, you need to define (or at least give examples of) "biggest breakthroughs" - taking into account that science only has a limited number of them, as the process is always one of refinement of existing theories. And it is the nature of science that one must make the fundamental breakthrough before being able to refine. Further, it is always curious to see what the layman considers a "big breakthrough" compared to what scientists might.

Presumably you're talking about Newton's laws of motion? Einstein's theory of relativity? Care to mention anything else as an example?

So in essence, saying that "more big breakthroughs occurred in a religious history" is not really saying anything... and is more a result of the environment (i.e. be religious or dead) than of the science and scientists.
 
S.A.M. said:
Jokes aside, I believe religious people are more creative in their thinking. All of the biggest breakthroughs in scientific thought have been by the religious or during periods of religious renaissance.
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You mean despite the religious renaissance, right?
 
Sarkus said:
Logical fallcay.

You don't take into account that being "atheist" was not really an option for most of history... especially if you wanted funding for your research, or wanted to stay alive (in some cases).

Secondly, you need to define (or at least give examples of) "biggest breakthroughs" - taking into account that science only has a limited number of them, as the process is always one of refinement of existing theories. And it is the nature of science that one must make the fundamental breakthrough before being able to refine. Further, it is always curious to see what the layman considers a "big breakthrough" compared to what scientists might.

Presumably you're talking about Newton's laws of motion? Einstein's theory of relativity? Care to mention anything else as an example?

So in essence, saying that "more big breakthroughs occurred in a religious history" is not really saying anything... and is more a result of the environment (i.e. be religious or dead) than of the science and scientists.
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It must also be taken account that for a great part of the classical scientific breakthroughs, the cleric was sitting on money bags and had nothing to do but read all day, while everyone else was busy scavenging their garbage for something to eat.
 
The clerics were sitting on money bags and funding research. In fact, scientific research for much of history was funded exclusively by clerics. The athiests were the materialists. Who kept their money bags.

There was no earthly reason why clerics should spend their money on funding art, architecture and research. Was there?
 
Yes, along with the nobility, were the only people who could afford to fund research.
Does that translate as a special quality of the religious mind to you?
Maybe the wit to manipulate people into sponsoring their comfortable existence so they could ponder about the universe and shit.
 
Varda said:
Maybe the wit to manipulate people into sponsoring their comfortable existence so they could ponder about the universe and shit.
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Isn't that what the western world does today? :p
 
It seems that you are trying to shift the discussion so you can avoid offering sustentation to your argument, and replying to the question on post #8.
Are you going to abandon your argument from post #2?

If you want to talk about the western world today, I would say that is a unrelated subject, and it might be a bit of a stretch to try to fit that into this thread. But we can try.
 
Guys, just ignore her. She's only here to make a fucking ludicrous claim like that to stir us up. She knows there's no merit to it, and you'll never get out of her what you want (a "maybe I was wrong, guys") so why bother? She's a troll, so put her on ignore and she'll go away.

First of all, let me state my position.
I am a person with spiritual beliefs who holds the post title to be true.

People accuse people with spiritual beliefs as worshipping a "God of the Gaps"

In other words, they will weigh in with views on science, but only where it is doubtful, and say "Ha! You have no explanation for that. It must have been God. Disprove it."

My own point of view is that you can have a religious belief and be a rationalist, but you must be a rationalist in order to be a scientist.

The difference is what evidence you will accept.

With a scientist, the evidence needs to be something that can be experienced
or acknowledged by anyone.

With religion, the evidence is found within oneself, and is empirically unprovable.
Click to expand...

I agree, for the most part. Religious folks don't tend to be critical thinkers, which is why they don't understand the old saying "an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", and they do jump around and claim "God Did It" every time you can't produce a fossil or explain something about the universe.

There are obviously religious people who are critical thinkers, but I believe they are far fewer in number than you'd think. I tend to believe that a lot of people today who claim to be religious really aren't religious, but say so because they feel they should because of family tradition. I mean, if there were really as many religious folks in this country as the statistics say, then why are churches closing at a record pace all over the country? Exactly.

Anyway, I'm not convinced that God is provable or unprovable yet. There's still a chance either is true. I tend to believe that science will at least one day be able to tell by the shape and/or size of a part of your brain whether or not you're going to be more or less religious. And if they manage to do that, then I think it will throw a wrench in the idea of religions as we know them. At least the dogmas.
 
I like it how sam not only dropped her argument, but gave up on this thread altogether.
 
JDawg said:
Guys, just ignore her. She's only here to make a fucking ludicrous claim like that to stir us up. She knows there's no merit to it, and you'll never get out of her what you want (a "maybe I was wrong, guys") so why bother? She's a troll, so put her on ignore and she'll go away.
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..... :eek:
 
lol Varda, you're hilarious. Perhaps you'd like to poke holes in her statement, besides merely suggesting that the religious are as human as the irreligious. You do realise that during the time periods involved, there were no atheists, only religious clerics and religious nobility, or would you like to point out a western or near eastern scientist or science funder that was an atheist?
 
Religion and Science once went hand in hand, and now they have split, with people trying to drive wedges to further seperate the two. They do not interfere with each other, really only being different interpretations of the same data.
 
Captain Kremmen said:
My own point of view is that you can have a religious belief and be a rationalist, but you must be a rationalist in order to be a scientist.
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once youre rationalist,youre no longer religious imo.

and if you believe that god did it all..,why would you want to be scientist,
as theists think they have all the answers already. ;)
With religion, the evidence is found within oneself, and is empirically unprovable.
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if its empiricaly unprovable how the F do you confirm it?
 
Metaphysics means things which come after Physics.

"Science without religion is lame..." -- Albert Einstein, physicist, 1941
 
Captain Kremmen said:
Yeah, Sam, just like her,
always shying away from an argument...............................
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Thanks toots. /blows kiss

I thought it was self evident

Aryabhatt
Alhazen
Khwarizmi
Copernicus
Galileo
Mendel
Newton

all devout theists

I'll even throw in Christiaan Barnard.
 
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