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To: agooga
But science shows infinitely more promise of eventually doing so.

That isn't necessarily so, but keep believing as you will. I have found that science through the centuries have been wrong most of the time and failed to acknowledge real facts until years, and sometimes centuries, had passed. You do remember tomatoes being poisonous right? Or do you remember the ether? Maybe not but it used to be taught in schools. Also, many, many fake fossils have been submitted to schools and taught as fact. Still being done today. Evolution and creationism, as Christians see it, are both wrong and I am waiting for the truth but think I will not see it before I die.

41 posted on 08/08/2008 10:27:27 AM PDT by calex59
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To: calex59

I was not alive when the examples you talk about were believed to be real, but I am aware of them— and many more.

The difference between science and religion is NOT that either of them make mistakes. They both do. But that there are internal mechanisms in the scientific process that eventually correct the mistakes through testable, repeatable, peer-reviewed means.

No such provision exists in religion.

Right now, in probably many scientific theory we hold as “true” there are almost certainly flaws and errors that we have no idea exist. In time, these errors will be revealed and corrected.


44 posted on 08/08/2008 10:33:28 AM PDT by agooga (Struggling every day to be worthy of their sacrifice.)
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To: calex59
You do remember tomatoes being poisonous right?

Unless you’re talking about the recent salmonella outbreaks (and that tuned out to be in Serrano peppers and not the poor and often misunderstood tomato), then no, that was a “little” before my time :) ,

In truth, most of the world never considered the tomato to be poisonous. Originating in South America, tomatoes were eaten there and cultivated and eaten in Central America and Mexico and the South West long before the Europeans arrived. The Spanish and Italians took the fruit back with them and thank goodness they did because Paella and Lasagna as well as many of my other favorite dishes, would not be as nearly as yummy without them.

It was mostly in Protestant England and the Puritan Colonies, that tomato was given a bad rap. (And who in their right mind thinks that the cuisine of England is superior to any other?).

The “belief” that the plant was poisonous was because it bared a “resemblance” to belladonna and deadly nightshade (although it is true that the leaves and stems of the tomato plant are poisonous). In other words, it was contempt prior to any real investigation and therefore a very unscientific assumption.

I have found that science through the centuries have been wrong most of the time and failed to acknowledge real facts until years, and sometimes centuries, had passed.

Perhaps some of this stems from the fact that before the Age of Enlightenment and Reason and the birth of truly objective science in the late 1600’s and early 1700’s starting with Newton and his contemporaries; “science” was closely intertwined and interconnected with religious belief, dogma, local superstitions, the whims of Kings exercising their Devine Right and basic ignorance due to the lack of the tools necessary to investigate like the microscope and telescope.

That’s what got Galileo in trouble. He was proven to be absolutely right in his observations about a heliocentric solar system but the Church at the time, one that not only had great moral authority over everyone, but also great civil and legal authority to punish “heretics”, placed him on house arrest and suppressed his writings because it contradicted the commonly accepted literal interpretation of scripture that the religious were selling during his time.

And even the Christian Church at that time, admitted that Galileo was right but they didn’t want him to publish his findings because they thought it would be “bad for business”. The Catholic Church, after many centuries, eventually apologized for their mistake.
81 posted on 08/08/2008 2:15:57 PM PDT by Caramelgal (Just a lump of organized protoplasm - braying at the stars :),)
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