And lo, the eggy one did spake unto them, and his words were wise.

When you start offending people it's a sign that you might be on to something.

My wife once said "respect ALL beliefs" and even suggested my morals are all bent and twisted as that's a basic lesson you get taught as a child.

Cool. Let's respect Nazism and racism then yes?

Religions hold no right for their beliefs to be "respected" more than any other belief system. You have the right to believe whatever you want and I have the right to find that belief ridiculous.

I'm sure civilisations managed just fine without the Abrahamic religions' commandments. Not only that but if a God was to hand down some rules to live by you'd think an all knowing all powerful being might do better than don't work on a Sunday and be careful how you use my name.



Was it?

LOL! I actually thought this.

I was going to pull the whole, "questioning your faith should just make it stronger" line but decided to leave it.

That's the funny thing isn't it? Murder is rife in religious texts when dealing with blasphemy, homosexuality and spreading the good word for example. Aplogists will probably tell you it's all disregarded now or metaphorical Old Testament stuff but that doesn't wash either.

Violent times. They (the Jews and Porto-Christians) stoned people to death for various misdeeds. We still see that kind of punishment today in certain parts of the world. I often think that we're seeing life as it was in the Holy Land 2000 years ago when various news reports surface of various humane practices and punishments. It's a trip throb time.

One interesting discussion I had with my parents (my mum's regular church goer) is to do with a logo for a group she belongs to. Long story short: mum's a vegetarian and campaigns for animal rights. The group she belongs to has a logo of Christ carrying a lamb, and has an animal rights agenda. "Oh", says I (vaguely tongue in cheek), "he's bringing home dinner". It was explained that, no, it's a symbol of Christ's caring and it's a metaphor. I reminded her that people 2000 years ago didn't keep such animals for the love of it. They provided clothing and food, and their slaughtering methods would have been very Jewish. I left it there. I think there's a little too much rose tinted spectacles in use in certain places.

Yes, it was. Well, proper science was. Around the time of the Enlightenment, mid-17th century onwards, natural philosophy was born out of trying to understand how the world was put together in order to better understand Creation and, by extension, God.

The Royal Society was founded in the 1660s, and from that, essentially, all the various branches of science as we know it today were born.

Hmm.. The scientific method was first formalised by Aristotle well before the 17th century. Now he may have been a religious man but I'm not sure it was his primary motivation. The pragmatic model was indeed 17th century but I'm not sure I'd define that as the origin of science, to be honest.
Jon

Yep, I accept that.

Let's put it another way, then. The modern "sciences" - physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc - became more recognised and formalised from the 17th century. The likes of Boyle, Newton and company were all religious men who were keen to understand the world their preferred deity was supposed to have created. In that way, if you like, the modern sciences were built on faith, probably more so than the Greeks and others.

I'm not sure I agree. Christianity for example was around a good while before the scientific boom in the 17th Century so why did it take so long? It could also be argued that the scientific men/women were religious because most of the population at the time were. Sure, members of those religions gave birth to the ideas but the religion itself did not. My opinion, of course.

I don't know, either. Here's the Wikipedia page on The Enlightenment, which can probably explain it better than I can!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enlightenment

There are other factors. You can't do modern chemistry without decent glassmaking and the ability to accurately measure things like mass and temperature, for example. Same with Astronomy, you can't do that in the way we understand it without effective telescopes. Most sciences beyond a certain point have requirements which are only fulfillable by a certain level of technological development - you can do the basics by observation of the world; see Newton and the apple as an apocryphal example or Mendel's observations as the basis for genetics but once you get to a certain point you need technology; you need refined metallurgy and glassworking and the printing press and a working postal system to allow scientists to experiment, collaborate and discuss.

Basically, you can't have modern science without a civilisation capable of supporting it. And for all except maybe the last 500 years or so, that hasn't really existed.

Has Christianity contributed to the creation of that level of civilisation? Possibly, yes. It some ways it helped, in other ways it hindered.

Jon

science was born out of religion (in the early days) but only by necessity
it was the only way they could carrying on/out studies and be feed/watered
while carrying out these vocations that the average person (of the time) could not do.

in more modern times religion has become organised gang membership
which has shown to be true by certain segments of certain religions

put everything in its time and place then it will become crystal clear ...

I’m not sure if it’s science in general, or science in a Christian society that’s being discussed here. The Islamic world was doing a lot of maths to understand the mechanics of the skies - and coming up with the kind of results that would make any one of the various Popes excommunicate, and then consider burning, the people responsible for making similar observations and calculations in Europe.