Posted on 03/25/2014 8:03:13 AM PDT by Heartlander
Do you believe that your mind was ultimately formed by mindlessness - lacking any intelligence?”
Science comes from Christianity. Only the ignorant say different.
Believe? No. It’s not a matter of what I believe to be true, but what there is evidence for.
I am asking what you believe based on the evidence - come on, you can do it... Do you believe that your mind was ultimately formed by mindlessness - lacking any intelligence?
But they did, and it may be that at some point when the church lost that Feudalistic power it once had that things eased up. But to try and gloss over Christian (under the guise of various Man made church organizations) persecution of advanced thinkers is undeniable.
There was a pretty long period of time of when the Church couldn’t control it, they destroyed it.
Yes, absolutely. Science and religion are opposed, and you shouldn't expect a discussion of one to defer to the other.
Yes, I know the history. But the history of something is not the thing itself. Talking about the history of science is not the same thing as science.
To its credit, the church was central to spreading and promoting learning. It did this to promote its own goals. It did not expect independent learning to conflict with religious truth. When it did the church could also be pretty vigorous about opposing it.
The reality is, religion and science have an essential conflict by their very nature. It's not about whether they agree on any particular conclusions, or not. It's about the method of arriving at truth. They claim opposite values. Religion values faith. Believe without reason. Science values doubt. Question everything, see for yourself. With one faith is a virtue, with the other a vice. One should not expect science or religion to be unbiased towards something that is essentially at odds with itself.
Now, some scientists — emphasis on “some” — do not like religion and are militant atheists. But many scientists are believers. So, again, there is no inherent all-or-nothing opposition between the systems.
Science wants to study the material world. And who would oppose that?
People of faith want to contemplate the immaterial world — but they may also be very interested in the physical world (we live here, you know). The history of science is largely the history of the Christians studying God's creation.
Lastly, if the show “Cosmos” simply wanted to talk about the physical world, and the current thinking of scientists about material things, that could be done in a pretty neutral way. Just stay focused. But they don't do that — they go out of their way to bring in the topic of believers and criticize them. And why? It's really unnecessary. But they cannot help themselves, because they feel threatened by people who engage in independent thought. Yes! If someone does not accept current scientific dogma, and if someone believes that something exists beyond the physical world, some scientists are very threatened by that. So they mock the believers. Meanwhile, people of faith are far more broad-minded. We accept both the physical world and the spiritual world and we have no need to discount half of that and say “There's just nothing there”.
You really will not find Christians who say "Science does not exist" but you will find some scientists who will say "God does not exist". They think they have proven a negative and their closed minds will not accept the idea that there is more to life than atoms.
I specifically identified what that inherent opposition was. I don't think it's necessary to post it again. If you think it's wrong you should explain how that is so.
When Galileo died of natural causes in Jan 1642, the Pope at the time was Urban VIII; not Benedict XVI.
Yes, absolutely. Science and religion are opposed, and you shouldn't expect a discussion of one to defer to the other.
There is no justification for a science program to be intentionally biased against religion or to mischaracterize religion in order to fit a false narrative. Science should not have an agenda and should be free to follow evidence wherever it leads. This Cosmos series is a mixture of Hollywood and science – and Hollywood comes with its own agenda , beliefs, and ‘faith’.
Beyond this, the ‘conflict’ between science and theism is fairly new. Excerpt from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1844, p. 464:
As this chapter is written in the early twenty-first century, the hypothesis that the universe reflect intelligent design has provoked a bitter debate in the United States. How very different was the intellectual world of the early nineteenth century! Then, virtually everyone believed in intelligent design. Faith in the rational design of the universe underlay the world-view of the Enlightenment, shared by Isaac Newton, John Locke, and the American Founding Fathers. Even the outspoke critics of Christianity embraced not atheism but deism, that is, belief in an impersonal, remote deity who had created the universe and designed it so perfectly that it ran along of its own accord, following natural laws without need for further divine intervention. The common used expression “the book of nature” referred to the universal practice of viewing nature as a revelation of God’s power and wisdom. Christians were fond of saying that they accepted two divine revelations: the Bible and the book of nature. For desists like Thomas Paine, the book of nature alone sufficed, rendering what he called the “fables” of the Bible superfluous. The desire to demonstrate the glory of God, whether deist or – more commonly – Christian, constituted one of the principal motivations for scientific activity in the early republic, along with national pride, the hope for useful applications, and, of course, the joy of science itself.
; )
Cardiac arrhythmia following a bout of pneumonia at age 77 yrs.
77 years of agony under the tortuous hand of Benedict XVI. No wonder they called him "God's Rotweiller".
Benedict retired in 2013.
; )
What's all this extra baggage that I never said? It wouldn't be correct for anyone to mischaracterize anything or make it fit a false narrative. But I never suggested that did I?
Science by definition is biased against religion. Religion doesn't require evidence and makes a virtue of believing in things without it. One of the fundamental ideas of science is to reject that idea. Of course it's biased against religion. If one chooses to take the religious approach seriously, fine. But it's not reasonable to expect that science should do so.
I pointed out a false narrative to you in post 24 as identified by the NCSE. Again, Peter Hess stated, “It is odd that a great scientific series on the cosmos should open with an attempt to single out one victim of the Inquisition and hold him up as a martyr to science… But Cosmos makes Bruno out to be a martyr who died heroically in the defense of early modern science, and this is a role he certainly did not play…”
And you responded with “ I agree that the Bruno segment was strange and out of place, and its connection to the subject was strained. But that’s not the point. Complaining about a bias against religion on a science program? That’s what I don’t get. Why shouldn’t it be biased?”
Now if you want to convince yourself and justify why this bias is acceptable – go ahead. But you’re wasting your time and mine if you think you are going to convince me…
So again I state, there is no justification for a science program to be intentionally biased against religion or to mischaracterize religion in order to fit a false narrative. Science should not have an agenda and should be free to follow evidence wherever it leads. This Cosmos series is a mixture of Hollywood and science – and Hollywood comes with its own agenda , beliefs, and ‘faith’.
It wasn't a false narrative. They actually said in the show that Bruno wasn't a scientist and he only made a lucky guess. Which underscores the question about why they used it, but what they said wasn't false, and it didn't mischaracterize religion.
Regardless, the question at hand is why it should be a bad thing for a science program to be biased against religion. You seem to load more concepts onto the word "bias" than it actually has. Bias doesn't mean dishonest. I might have a bias to tell the truth, which would make that bias more honest. I might be biased towards a correct belief. Bias doesn't mean dishonest or wrong.
"Science should not have an agenda and should be free to follow evidence wherever it leads."
Yes, and that very thing puts it in opposition to religion, because religion does NOT work that way. That's the point. In being free to follow evidence wherever it leads, science is necessarily biased against religion which requires not doing that.
Is that a bad thing? No. Christianity is biased against Islam, which it must be, and vice versa. Capitalism is biased against Communism, by necessity. They are incompatible beliefs. Reason is biased against superstition. Science is biased against religion, and vice versa. It is the nature of the thing.
And again I state, there is no justification for a science program to be intentionally biased against religion or to mischaracterize religion in order to fit a false narrative. Science should not have an agenda and should be free to follow evidence wherever it leads. This Cosmos series is a mixture of Hollywood and science – and Hollywood comes with its own agenda , beliefs, and ‘faith’.
With the addition of - Go peddle that crap to someone else 'cause I ain't buying.
Yup, that's what you did. Ignoring that I've already addressed what you said. So see my previous post. There's no need to say it again.
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