Reason in the Balance and why Fundamentalists are Beyond Reason

sullivan-county.com ^ | Unknown | Lewis Loflin

[Kerberos]

A long read but it is the best explanation I have seen so far as to why we have fringe elements in both political parties. I know there are some here who will enjoy it. And for those who hate it, it is probably because it describes them.

[Kerberos]

Ping

[tiamat]

Got it!

thanks!

[Blue Screen of Death]

Bump for later.

[Theo]

Christian fundamentalists see it as undermining their understanding of God

Huh? I'm a pretty foundational Christian, and I see good science as only increasing my understanding and appreciation of God. This author has a chip on his shoulder against Christianity.

[RaceBannon]

read later

[dvan]

"Never use a gallon words to express a spoonful of thought!

[Esther Ruth]

Every knee WILL bow and every tongue confess that JESUS CHRIST IS LORD!

[Theo]

Lots of Straw Man fallacies here. I apologize in advance, but I'm really too bored by the nasty misportrayals of thinking Christians to comment further....

[Kerberos]

"This author has a chip on his shoulder against Christianity."

I beleive he states in the article that he is a Christian.

[Cicero]

It's a vast and misleading oversimplification with religion. I doubt whether the author understands that Christians believe in reason too, and that science and technology developed in the West largely because of the way Christianity shaped our culture.

From Christianity we got the concept of free will. From Christianity we got the idea of the Logos, i.e., that the universe was created by a rational God. Therefore from Christianity we got the idea that nature is fundamentally rational rather than influenced by a lot of capricious gods and spirits running around and often fighting one another. Christianity, like Judaism, also supports the idea of making life better for ordinary people.

It was not accidental that science developed in the west. And, as Lynn Thorndike has shown in several books, many of the basic scientific and technological developments took place in the middle ages, well before the Renaissance.

[Kerberos]

"I doubt whether the author understands that Christians believe in reason too,"

He is talking about fundamentalist, which reason is a concept that is foreign to them.

[JasonC]

The problem is that it is riddled with basic factual errors. I don't mind the sentiment behind it. But supporting a position with faulty arguments is not a great favor. I will go through a few dozen of them.

[Theo]

I beleive he states in the article that he is a Christian.

I read through the article a 2nd time, and see no evidence -- either explicit or implicit -- that he's a Christian. He's just someone with some grasp of science (which is a great thing!!), and some grasp of history (again, a great thing!), and a big burden against Christianity. My guess is that he's been hurt by some Christians, and he's never dealt with it.

[Kerberos]

"Every knee WILL bow and every tongue confess that JESUS CHRIST IS LORD!"

Yep, that's what he's talking about.

[Servant of the 9]

I doubt whether the author understands that Christians believe in reason too, and that science and technology developed in the West largely because of the way Christianity shaped our culture.

Some Christians believe in reason.
The ones he is upset with are the ones who deny the products of reason if they conflict with their interpretation of scripture.

So9

[tiamat]

Esther Ruth wrote:

Every knee WILL bow and every tongue confess that JESUS CHRIST IS LORD!

---

Back it up, please!

That is, show me!

[AreaMan]

"This author has a chip on his shoulder against Christianity." I beleive he states in the article that he is a Christian.

I before E except after C.

There was a time in history when the statement," I am a Christian," meant something. That time has long past.

One can find groups or individuals that practice everything from deviant sexual behavior (Christian swingers) to mass suicide (Jim "pass the grape kool-aid" Jones and the Waco bunch).

It is therefore obvious to even the most casual observer that one must define the term "Christian" before using it as protection from the sheer stupidity and anti-Christian rant that is sure to follow.

[fuzzycat]

Thank you. That was a pretty good read except for one wrong statement. I majored in psychology and can tell you that the same rules apply as do other scientific endeavors. If a behavior cannot be shown to be statistically significant through rigorous experimentation and replication then somethings wrong with the technique or the reading of data. Reason-something terribly lacking in this world.

[King Black Robe]

Modern science is the product of a Christian worldview. It originated from Chrisitans who believed that because God designed the world, the truths about nature and its functions were knowable.

The rise of modern science can be dated to Copernicus (1475-1543) and Vesalius (1514-1564). The Greeks, the Arabs, and the Chinese had a deep knowledge of the world. The Chinese had general scientific theories but generally developed a medieval science that accepted Aristotle as the ultimate authority. Arabs were strong in math but they still considered science as one aspect of philosophy.

Modern science can be traced back to Oxford. That is where Grosseteste laid the philosophical foundation for a departure from Aristotle. That lead to fruitfulness at the University of Padua in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Of significance, the Renaissance and Reformation overlapped the Scientific Revolution.

Francis Bacon stressed the need to stop relying on accepted authorities and "to collect information to unlock nature's secrets."

The rise of modern science did not conflict with the Bible. Galileo (regardless of conflicts the the Catholic church) defended the compatibility of Copernicus and the Bible, and this was oneof the factors which brought about his trial.

Both Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) have stressed that modern science was born out of the Christian world view. Whitehead was a widely respected mathematician and philosopher, and Oppenheimer, after he became director of the Institutie of Advanced Study at Princeton, wrote on a wide range of subjects related to science, in addition to writing on his own field on the structure of the atom and atomic energy. Neither man claimed to be Christian, yet both were straightforward in acknowledging that modern science was born out of the Christian world view. It was because of "the medieval insistence on the rationality of God." Christian scientists and philosophers believed that every detailed occurence could be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles.

In other words, early scientists believed that the world was created by a reasonable God, they were not surprised to discover that people could find out something true about nature and the universe on the basis of reason.