Debates of all sorts discussion

Okay this was kinda started in the chat thread, so I'll copy and paste what's already been said.

by Celine
But I just want to bring something to your attention, without religion science wouldn't be around.


by Cody, Ninja
Celine wrote: "But I just want to bring something to your attention, without religion science..."

No, that's wrong, religion has helped it at times but it has also hurt it very greatly. The original scientists and mathematicians where Greeks who where atheists (generally) and then the Catholic Church came in and pretty much called all scientists (or what we will call scientists0 heretics and burned them, giving us the dark ages, not till Galileo did science really start back up again and he was under house arrest for most his life.

by Celine
After the fall of the roman empire which had suppressed science it was the christians who reawakened it. Note that many of the great scientists were Christians, Newton for instance.

Cody, Ninja
But it was Christians who originally suppressed it. When the Catholic Church came into power they killed science. Bot till people like Galileo came in (who were religious but their religion did not effect their work) did it start up again in the renaissance.

by Celine
Actually it did effect Galileo's work, he obeyed the catholic church andstopped promoting his heliocentric theory.

by Cody, Ninja
Okay, yes but he was right, that is the church once more hurting science. His religion what he believed personally did not effect him realizing that the earth revolves the sun and that the earth is not the center of the universe like believed during that time.

Okay continue from there.

Yes I do... It's like... I was going to use a metaphor but I can't think of a good one... Basically it's like when something is so heavily discouraged and put down by something and they don't tell you anything from the other point of view, you begin doubting what they're saying and want to study the other side to find out if they're really that bad.

Agreed for sure...that's probably part of the reason I have such firm liberal beliefs, my family are really hardcore conservatives.

Very little biblical thought involved in modern science. I'm being bluntly honest here, the Romans had more tech then England did 1,000 years before, Christianity created a major tech gap. If Christianity was never founded, we'd be thousands of years ahead in science right now. We may all have a damn spaceship!

For sure...it actually pisses me off to think about. Plus, without religion, there would be far less problems in the Middle East (that's not science, but I'm just saying that the world would be better.)

Yep.

Believe what you want. I don't care. The problem I have is when religion effects society. It effects society greatly, so I fight it.

I believe in god, but i think religion has hindered science a bit.But i don't think the world would be better without religion,because faith/belief is very important to people, and religion does the world good too.

Aleph wrote: "i agree. the problem with fighting religion is that it's such a sensitive topic and it's hard to be rude about things like that."

I'm relatively okay with insulting people if it's necessary to make the world better, and without religion the world would be better.

Jodie♥ wrote: "I believe in god, but i think religion has hindered science a bit.But i don't think the world would be better without religion,because faith/belief is very important to people, and religion does th..."

No it doesn't all it gives you is false hope. It is better to believe in a sadder reality then a fluffy fantasy.

But it needs to go back to faith and belief! That's what we need to fight for, all governments and all societies to be secular with freedom of religion and freedom from religion.

But i don't think it is false, and even if it was it helps people with loss and pain, so theirs nothing wrong with religion.

But it's a delusion that is also used in justification to suppress other people, hell before slavery was abolished in the US slave owners used the bible as justifications to owning slaves. Just because something gives you hope doesn't mean it's true, you're just deluding yourself. That's like me saying it doesn't matter if I do my homework or not because I have magic faeries to do it for me. Of course I don't, there is no proof or evidence that faeries are real, and if I continue to believe this and don't do the homework I'll have to face the consequences.

But i don't rely on religion to do what is right, people have always used religion as an excuse, They are the ones who give belief/religion a bad name.

I agree with you.

Aleph wrote: "i've been discussing this topic with others and just discovered that einstein was over religious. he was very against a lot of scientific ideas because he believed in god very strongly. proving tho..."

Ummm no.

"Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment - an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections." Albert Einstein

He admitted to being a freethinker, which in a German context is much the same as atheism, but it's not clear that Einstein disbelieved in all god concepts.

Through science he became a freethinker. He may have been very religious at first, but near then end of his life he was a freethinker.

But his religion didn't effect his experiments. That's like saying because I have blonde hair it will effect the experiments I do... He kept his work and faith separate until his work degraded his faith...

Love ya Aleph! You are awesome at debating!

I'm not saying it stopped it completely! I'm saying it hurt it greatly... once I get home I'll show you this graph that shows the decline of tech during the medieval ages compared to the roman era then the skyrocketing tech once the church lost control.

Actually even now it is, there are people who are trying to stop things like stem cell research due to religious reasons, because the cell "Has potential for life." But I will admit it effects it less. This question was more through a historical standpoint then anything.

Oh and here's the graph

Embryonic stem cell research. Not just stem cell reasearch,adult stem cell is fine.
Als, Cody, have you ever thought of trying to find information from a source that slanders nither side?

Of course, I prefer factual websites, Just saying stem cell research was easier though and that graph is accurate.

Oh and I did say "It has potential for life" is the religious excuse so that obviously points towards embryonic stem cells... Which is really stupid, every time a women has a period the egg she's losing "had potential for life" every little sperm cell a guy loses on a daily bases "had potential for life"

This is mildly unrelated, so forgive me, Cody, but this came up in my class today:
A historian of science (yeah, haven't heard of those before either, lol) named Thomas Kuhn says that scientific research always works within a certain "paradigm", which is a closed systems of concepts and methods excluding nonconforming views which can't be fitted into the system. During these periods of 'normality', researchers simply refine theories and develop their implications; puzzling or anomalous results or facts are excluded. Gradually, though, these anomalies build up and trigger a crisis in which attention is suddenly turned to what was previously ignored, basic assumptions and long-held opinions are overthrown and eventually some new way forward emerges and the old system of ideas fails into disrepute and the whole science is again reworked under the new paradigm. Then things return to a period of 'normal science' again >.<

So basically when the Catholic Church was in charge they wouldn't find new theories but make what they had better? Is that what you're saying? Then once it was overthrown new science began anew?

I will admit to one thing though, during the medieval ages some great advancements in weaponry were made. Granted if they would have been researching normally before that they probably would have had guns several hundred years earlier.

In military terms it's pretty good. Actually death rates of war hasn't changed to overly much in wars. But in Medieval Times it was all at once basically in total war and now it's 10 here 20 there 15 over there etc, there are very few huge decisive battles (anymore, 70 years ago there were many more)

Cody wrote: "So basically when the Catholic Church was in charge they wouldn't find new theories but make what they had better? Is that what you're saying? Then once it was overthrown new science began anew?"

The Dark Ages are an exception to the usual progression of science history :P I wasn't talking about them.

Ah okay...

You guys shouldn't trash religion. :/ Debates aren't about trashing the other side, and I, for one, found that graph really insulting.

Anyway, I'll stay out of this one, except for that comment. I'm not much of a scientist, but I don't think religion "hindered" science. You can't look at religion through the lens of science. You'll just make yourself crazy trying to prove everything on earth when some things just can't be proven.

Well, you can't really look at science through the lens of religion either. Even if there is solid scientific evidence for something (i.e. evolution) there are still people who look at it and say, "Nope. The Bible didn't say that, so it must be wrong." Some things CAN be proven, yet religion chooses to ignore them.

Yes, I'll admit that some religions do that. I mean, I don't believe we evolved from apes or something, but we weren't just here as we are right now, either. Things can be proven, but I don't think we ignore that...I mean, I can't speak for "mainstream" Christians or religions. We have a prophet in our church, so we still recieve revelation from God and aren't totally in the dark that the Bible is all there is, as far as God's words. So I'm in the halfway, I suppose.

Thalia wrote: "Yes, I'll admit that some religions do that. I mean, I don't believe we evolved from apes or something, but we weren't just here as we are right now, either. Things can be proven, but I don't think..."

That's a misconception about evolution. We didn't "evolve from apes"; we just share a common ancestor with apes that branched into different species.

And I disagree with that; the ape thing.

Aleph, I've been religious since birth. I've grown up in my church. I mean, if you have to look at science and totally disregard your belief, what's the point in having the belief to begin with? Of course I believe the Bible is true--that's a part of being Christian. So of course I believe in Adam and Eve and the beginning. No scripture says that God created ape, and then man somewhere followed that.

You can't just...shut off your religious brain when you think about science. You have to accept there's a lot that can't be explained, and even if we have genetic DNA in common with them doesn't mean that we were somehow the same a long time ago.

If I'm going to disregard my religion when I think about science, then why do I have my religion at all?

I'm just saying, it's not like an ape one day suddenly turned into a human. It happened over millions of years, molecule by molecule. If humans had existed millions of years ago, their fossils would have been found. But instead, what archaeologists have found are fossils of organisms that have both ape-like and human-like traits.

The thing is, the Bible was written hundreds of years before evidence for evolution had been uncovered, so of course the people who wrote it wouldn't know about evolution. At the time, it would seem reasonable that all organisms had always been the same since the beginning of time, because science wasn't very advanced. Of course, this is coming from someone who believes that the Bible is purely a human invention and not the word of God, so if that's what you believe I don't expect to change your mind about it.

Brigid, I know what you mean. I know how evolution works and how long it takes, etc etc. But in the Bible, it says that Adam wrote and his children wrote (in a language close to Hebrew), and that was passed down and it was all compiled after a long period of time into the Bible. So, if you believe in it, Adam DID write, so...I mean, since he was there and all, I think he'd be pretty sure that he was a human being. And since he knew God (him and Eve), Adam also knew that he was created by God, and all that. I don't believe the Bible was just created a little time after Christ was born. Each book is a record from prophets; journal entires, if you will, that were eventually compiled into a book.

Obviously if you don't believe in it, that won't be enough for you. But it is for me.

And Aleph you think I just blindly follow my faith? I've had my share of experiences that make me believe very firmly that what I believe is right. And I would die for my faith, so nobody can tell me to just disregard it.

...it seems that it's a little of both. Like at first religion helped to destroy science but then it tried to make up for it by half way aiding to it.

Aleph, when you believe the Bible, you BELIEVE all of it. God wouldn't allow something false to be written as His word. And Adam was kind of there, in the Garden of Eden, and being cast out and having to "multiply and replenish the earth". He wasn't born. He was created by God, and then Eve was created. They were the FIRST of their kind, and they didn't evolve from anything. They were human from the start. "On the sixth day God created man", and all that.

I do not "mold" my beliefs for the things of the world. Scientists often try to figure explanations and come up with "evidence" for things that can't be explained. So what I believe is what you believe; and of course I won't believe some of what scientists think is right, because it doesn't coincide with my beliefs and what I know to be true. You do not "mold" anything. For me, my religion comes first and I FOLLOW it and I trust in it and it makes sense to me. It fills the billion holes that science can't explain, like where did the universe first begin? The other universes? It wasn't all just "here". There was a point where EVERYTHING had to start. And those who have religion have those answers, but people who don't have religion are still wondering.

Because it doesn't even make sense to me that NOTHING hit another peice of NOTHING and then created SOMETHING, because "according to science" you can't make something out of nothing. I don't see any possible way that a single atom (that someone came from another piece of nothing) collided with another atom (also from nothing) and then created all of THIS. Do you see our world? It's so freaking complex and there are billions of different species that all work a certain and our cells work perfectly to insure our own lives, and it's just too much of a coincidence to think that it just "happened".

And I don't know where God came from. I can't tell you. We're only human and we can only know so much; we won't know everything God knows. What would be the point in Him being God then if we were just as all-knowing?

Besides, even if religion "held some of us back" there are plently of scientists who don't believe in religion. So how come they haven't gotten farther than they are? Religious people are holding back scientists who don't believe in God.

You can't really explain faith to someone who doesn't have any. I don't know what else to tell you but that I know, with everything in me and with everything that I am, that there IS a God, and that the Bible is correct and true (as far as its translation is correct). I can't tell you anything else. It's impossible to explain to someone who needs proof that you sometimes just need a little faith.

Thalia wrote: "Because it doesn't even make sense to me that NOTHING hit another peice of NOTHING and then created SOMETHING, because "according to science" you can't make something out of nothing. I don't see an..."

Two things: one, the Big Bang Theory as I understand it says nothing about a collision. I believe it's actually the idea that for a fraction of a fragment of a millisecond, all the mass in the universe was compressed into a single point of infinitely dense matter. It exploded outwards, because that wouldn't be stable, and has been expanding ever since.
Now as to where that particle came from - well, I have no idea. I'm willing to accept on faith (because the idea that scientists don't have religious-like faith in their work is absurd) that there is a scientific explanation for it, but to be honest I don't get bothered about it. It's always seemed to me like the easiest way to reconcile the two sides was for religion to say 'well, God made that particle' and then everyone sort of shrugs and accepts it because there's no evidence either way.
(I apologize if that's at all offensive; it isn't my intention and I'm not sure how that sentiment would come off to a person of deep religious faith, so I just did my best.)

Second, we're waaaaay off topic.


I, personally, believe science has been hindered by religion. There are definitely areas even in modern research that are being stymied by religious objection (stem cells being the biggie), let alone in the past. But I also believe that the evolution of attitudes towards science over time is part of humanity's development, and a necessary one. Would I like to see expanded stem cell research with an eye towards curing Alzheimer's in my lifetime? Yes. Do I really expect society to change that quickly? No. It's a slow shift, but one of the things I believe is that over time it will happen and science will open up. And to be honest, though I find the idea that without the Dark Ages we would have achieved a modern level of technology centuries ago intresting, it also terrifies me. Give a world that hasn't learned from the sort of history we have things like the a-bomb? No, thanks.

Anila wrote: "Thalia wrote: "Because it doesn't even make sense to me that NOTHING hit another peice of NOTHING and then created SOMETHING, because "according to science" you can't make something out of nothing...."
I agree, and I like message 77.

Cody wrote: "Oh and I did say "It has potential for life" is the religious excuse so that obviously points towards embryonic stem cells... Which is really stupid, every time a women has a period the egg she's l..."

I agree with you, I think religion has stumped our thinking. We could use so much of our brains, but since we've fallen into religion, we make our thinking simpler. Instead of questioning everything and figuring it out with science we say "the wonders of god" just so we can comprehend it all better. I could go on but I think I got my point across :)

It's confused science and helped, it in some sence. Science can relate with many religions,their beliefs and teachings, but stuff like the scientific theory of the big bang, can't really relate to religion because, most religions say god created the world, and Science doesn't support the theory that god exists.