From NBC News Science:
Hmmm...
The genetic lineage of Europe mysteriously transformed about 4,500 years ago, new research suggests.
The findings, detailed Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, were drawn from several skeletons unearthed in central Europe that were up to 7,500 years old.
"What is intriguing is that the genetic markers of this first pan-European culture, which was clearly very successful, were then suddenly replaced around 4,500 years ago, and we don't know why," study co-author Alan Cooper of the University of Adelaide Australian Center for Ancient DNA said in a statement. "Something major happened, and the hunt is now on to find out what that was."What could have happened?
Hmmm...
Personally, I blame global warming. After all, look at the stuff scientists know it cause(es/ed):
ReplyDeleterise in infectious diseases
food-poisoning outbreaks
flooding coastlines
crumbling roads, buildings and sewage systems
birds face longer migrations
damselflies in distress forced back to UK
crocodile "gender" balance (it's socially constructed, remember?)
worsening HIV epidemic
increasing Cambodian sex trade
Dartford warbler plague
coffee borer infestations
African holocaust
decine in circumcisions
alligators in the Thames (from the Herald Sun, no less)
dry weather
wet weather
cold weather
hot weather
changeable weather
etc, etc, etc
And that is just a smattering of the scientific findings to date. The complete current list can be found here at Numberwatch.
Popeye, posting lyrics from "The Cry of the Ignorant Tool" might be a copyright violation. You should check with Think Progress.
ReplyDelete[This illustrates why religious fanatics suck at science and have never contributed to our understanding of the natural world.]
ReplyDeleteReligious fanatics:
Bacon
Copernicus
Galileo
Newton
Kepler
Descartes
Pascal
Boyle
Linnaeus
Faraday
Pasteur
Mendel
Maxwell
Kelvin
Planck
Schrodinger
Sherrington
Thompson
Eddington
Compton
Lemaitre
Dobzhansky
Heisenberg
Gödel
Eccles
Fisher
Collins
Historian Rodney Stark has pointed out that nearly all of the scientists of the Scientific Revolution were religious, and half were what we would now call "fanatics". The scientists who gave us modern science were on the average considerably more religious than the average person of their time.
Even Einstein, who embraced Spinoza's concept of God, thought atheists were idiots.
Let's see your atheist list of great scientists, KW.
In what way, KW, does the faith that there is no rational cause for the universe advance science?
Admiral, you’re babbling again. You’ve got the illness real bad. Soon there will be a pill to cure you. You’ll resist at first, but after taking it you will thank us.
ReplyDelete-KW
Which of the Stark books do you recommend for a discussion of the Judeo-Christian basis of science? I hadn't run across his work.
ReplyDeleteNo pills, Popeye. I'm trying to go "strait".
ReplyDeleteThe great western scientists who claim to be Christian were only successful because they worked from the assumption that there where materialistic explanations for whatever they where investigating. They put their religion in a box so they could get on with the science. These guys where not fanatics. Even you admit that you put your religious beliefs aside while you were going to school.
ReplyDelete-KW
Michael,
ReplyDeleteYou forgot one name on your list of religious scientists.
Charles Darwin, whose one degree was in theology from Cambridge. He was destined for a career as a clergyman, until he went on the voyage of the Beagle.
He denied ever being an atheist, describing himself as agnostic - granting the existence of God, but not knowing his nature.
Almost all of the scientists you list were in times when it was dangerous to be an atheist. Professionally if not life expectancy-wise.
Newton was a non-orthodox Christian, since he denied the Trinity.
Anyway, Darwinism isn't necessarily atheistic. Francis Collins, Ken Miller and Robert Asher are all Christians who accept Darwinism as being true. Stephen Meyer in his latest yawnathon 'Darwin's Doubt' criticises Robert Asher's book 'Evolution and Belief' because it demolishes ID - and doesn't include the book's subtitle, which is 'Confessions of a Religious Paleontologist'.
ADM:
ReplyDeleteStark is superb. He's a sociologist by profession, but he's probably the best modern historian of Christian influence on Western Culture.
He discusses the absolute dependence of modern science on Christian theology and culture in several books. Victory of Reason is superb, as is For the Glory of God. In Victory of Reason, he compares the development of science in Christian culture with science in other cultures.
In addition, The Rise of Christianity is a classic, and Discovering God is probably the best 'history of religion' book I've read.
I can't recommend Stark highly enough. He is brilliant, a great writer, and is emphatic about the centrality of Christianity in the best aspects of Western civilization.
Curiously, he's not a Christian personally, although he says he has great respect for the faith. As best I can tell, he's a deist or something similar.
Dr Egnor,
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of something a little more... wet. Something more along the lines of Genesis 6-9.
Bach,
Wiggle all you want, but there is no room for doubt. These men were Christian and inspired by it. They may have been of different denominations and had their own ideas on various aspects of it, but they were Christian none-the-less. What do you call that argument anyway, an inverted no-true-Scotsman?
KW,
Who told you about that 'box' idea, was it a comrade professor or the Venusians again? Just curious.
Just a quick FYI: Theology is like cosmology. It's a VERY big 'box' that includes everything - even tools like science, art, and philosophy.
@KW:
ReplyDelete[The great western scientists who claim to be Christian were only successful because they worked from the assumption that there where materialistic explanations for whatever they where investigating.]
Christians know that nature is the creation of a rational Person, and they look for rational material explanations in nature.
What makes Christians so effective in science is their faith in the rationality of science. Atheists have no coherent reason to expect nature to be rational. Christians do.
That is the reason that atheism has contributed nothing to science. In fact, in cultures in which atheism is ascendant (dynastic China, communist countries), theoretical science is non-existent or is bastardized and used for political purposes (Lysenkoism).
[They put their religion in a box so they could get on with the science. These guys where not fanatics. Even you admit that you put your religious beliefs aside while you were going to school.]
Not at all. They knew that they were discovering God's thoughts when they studied nature. Many (Kepler, Newton) were quite explicit about it.
I ask this again: if nature has no rational cause, why look for reason in it?
@KW:
Delete[These guys where not fanatics]
Yes they were. Most scientists of the scientific revolution would have considered you (as an atheist) insane if not actually demon-possessed.
Kepler referred constantly to God in his Harmony of the Worlds (http://www.sacred-texts.com/astro/how/how01.htm). Newton was obsessed with prophecy, and referred to God in Principia.
You're historically ignorant, KW. You've bought into the new atheist ignorant myth about the relationship between Christianity and science.
All modern theoretical science is built on Christian foundations. All of it. Even atheists who do science use Christian assumptions-- nature is rational, nature is consistent, man has access to nature's secrets, etc.
You're just too stupid to understand the origin of your presuppositions. Hint: atheism has contributed nothing to science. "Shit happened" ain't science.
Christians know that nature is the creation of a rational Person
DeleteChristians don't know that. That's a lie the gullible suckers have swallowed.
All modern theoretical science is built on Christian foundations. All of it. Even atheists who do science use Christian assumptions-- nature is rational, nature is consistent, man has access to nature's secrets, etc.
Ludicrous. Christians believe in miracles and demonic possession - believes that have retarded scientific progress for centuries. Christians have been hell-bent from the start to destroy all non-biblical sources of knowledge, retarding scientific progress for centuries. Christianity has been nothing short of disastrous for science. And still is. Look at the wedge strategy of the Dishonesty Institute.
@troy:
Delete[Christians believe in miracles and demonic possession - believes that have retarded scientific progress for centuries]
Nearly all great scientists have believed in miracles and demonic possession. Many of them would make a snake-handling fundamentalist of today seem conservative.
I'm curious: just how has science "disproven" miracles and demonic possession?
Belief in miracles presupposes the rationality of nature-- if nature is not rational, nothing is a miracle. If there are no rules, there are no exceptions.
Demonic possession is the belief that immaterial souls of demons inhabit the immaterial souls of human beings. How did science disprove that? Does science address immaterial questions? If so, is demonology science?
Regardless of their professed faith, every one of the scientists on Egnor’s list would roll their eyes or laugh in his face for suggesting the story of genesis might contribute to the answer to a 4500 year old genetic mystery.
Delete-KW
@KW:
DeleteEvery one of the scientists on the list believed that the universe was created in a flash of light at a measureable time in the past.
They believed it because as fervent Christians they believed that Genesis was God's Word.
Einstein and Hubble and Lemaitre confirmed the Genesis account, although atheist scientists (eg Hoyle) fought against the science for decades because it did not conform to their atheist mythology.
M.Egnor: "Many of them would make a snake-handling fundamentalist of today seem conservative."
DeleteI *really* wish that people, especially other Christians, would stop repeating this sort of bullship about "fundamentalists". Snake handlers -- are there really any left? -- are not, and never were, "fundamentalists".
Ilion:
DeleteGood point. I meant it to slap the atheists, but you're right that in doing so I perpetuate a myth about our fellow Christians.
I was wrong, and will try to avoid such rhetorical mishaps.
Thanks for pointing it out.
No need to apologize Dr. it's no myth. Search “Christian snake handlers” on You Tube. You’ll see that the practice is alive and well.
Deletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwBVcsWYJd8
-KW
“Einstein and Hubble and Lemaitre confirmed the Genesis account.”
DeleteI’m familiar with the Genesis account; your statement is laughable.
-KW
The Genesis account states that our universe began a measureable time ago in a burst of light.
DeleteAtheists in the mid-20th century understood the remarkable parallel in Big Bang cosmology, and fought it with every trick their little atheist minds could muster (the trick was called the Steady State Theory).
Penzias and Wilson put that theory to rest.
Not atheists are working on the multiverse, which is kind of a steady state theory generated after anthropic panic.
Atheism is a wild ride.
@KW:
DeleteIt must hurt to have your foolish statement about "religious fanatics" in science shredded so easily.
Atheists in the mid-20th century understood the remarkable parallel in Big Bang cosmology, and fought it with every trick their little atheist minds could muster (the trick was called the Steady State Theory).
DeleteBullshit. The first proponent of an accelerating universe was Alexander Friedmann, not exactly a religious fanatic. George Gamow (another atheist) promoted the theory in the 1930s and 40s. Edwin Hubble, the discoverer of the cosmological red shift, was an agnostic.
George Lemaitre himself thought that the Big Bang had zero intersection with religious dogma:
As far as I can see, [the Big Bang] theory remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental Being. He may keep, for the bottom of space-time, the same attitude of mind he has been able to adopt for events occurring in nonsingular places in space-time. For the believer, it removes any attempt at familiarity with God, as were Laplace's "flick" or Jean's "finger [of God agitating the ether]" consonant, it is consonant with the wording of Isaiah's speaking of a "Hidden God," hidden even m the beginning of creation.
Scientists of the past were Christian because pretty much everyone living in the Old World was Christian. Today's scientists are predominantly agnostics or atheists because disbelief in God is no longer a punishable offense. Success in science has no correlation with belief in God. Richard Feynman was an atheist and he was a great scientist.
Hoo
“The Genesis account states that our universe began a measureable time ago in a burst of light.”
DeleteIt states allot more than that. When stated in full, it sounds allot like any other primitive creation myth.
And as much as you may be disappointed, no, I’m not hurt by your (snigger)“shredding”. Ha Ha! You’re like a smug 10 year old that doesn’t realize what a dolt they sound like.
-KW
@Hoo:
DeleteResistance to Big Bang cosmology was closely related to discomfort with it's theological implications. Steady State cosmology, which for decades was the atheist alternative to Big Bang cosmology, was an enormous impediment to science, just as junk DNA (an inference from Darwinism) has been an enormous impediment to science in recent decades. That's merely a matter of historical record.
Agnostic astronomer Robert Jastrow commented on the implications of Big Bang cosmology:
"Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact."
As to Lemaitre's discomfort with drawing theological implications from the Big Bang, I understand where's he's coming from. He does not want to tie Christian theology to a particular scientific theory. But the parallel with Genesis is obvious and only a liar (Hoo would I be referring to?) would deny it.
Regarding Feynman, your characterization of him as an atheist is too facile. He believed that the God of organized religions was inadequate as a rigorous description of the Creator-- a view many Thomists would share.
Feynman:
"What I mean is this: the probability that the theory of God, the ordinary theory, is right, to my mind is extremely low. That's all. That's the way I look at it."
Feynman believed that God was not identified with the laws of nature nor with the pieties of organize religion. God was not nature. His argument was more against Spinoza's God than Aquina's God.
Feynman's views on God are much more subtle than the usual New Atheist swill. New Atheists have always kept a respectful distance from Feynman, for that reason.
[Scientists of the past were Christian because pretty much everyone living in the Old World was Christian.]
Probably not true. The fraction of the population that is atheist or functional atheist is probably not much different over the centuries. Historians have pointed out that church attendance has probably been higher in the 19-20th centuries than it was in the Middle Ages.
Atheism has found a niche in certain industries (entertainment, journalism, academia, etc) but that probably does not reflect a significant a significant change in the proles.
And for the purposes of this argument, it doesn't matter. The overwhelming majority of scientists during the Scientific Revolution were devout Christians, and they produced the best science in the history of man.
Q.E.D.
Feynman's views on religion were not subtle. He was a self-described atheist. In the essay "The meaning of it all" (from which you excepted a quote), he wrote:
DeleteBut my atheistic scientific colleagues, which does not include all scientists—I cannot tell by their behavior, because of course I am on the same side...
One can split points about whether Feynman was an atheist or an agnostic (he wrote that it is impossible to disprove the existence of God), but it hardly matters. Feynman did not believe in God. He was neither a theist, nor a deist. He wasn't a militant atheist, but hey, neither am I.
Hoo
Egnor: Resistance to Big Bang cosmology was closely related to discomfort with it's theological implications. Steady State cosmology, which for decades was the atheist alternative to Big Bang cosmology...
DeleteBullshit still. I have provided names of the major proponents of the Big Bang, who were atheists or agnostics. Friedman, Gamow, Hubble. According to you, they should have been on the other side.
Hoo
Of course the irony is that the accumulated knowledge and president that these great scientists represent are what allow me to be confident of my atheism. In a very real sense, I am an atheist because of these men.
DeleteThey well knew the theological implications of their discoveries, theories, and methodology. That did not stop them from undermining the very belief system they sometimes paid tribute to. That they would genuflect for the political powers and patrons of the time is to be expected. Even so, the conflict between the church and some of these men is well known.
What’s stunning is that Darwin didn’t make your list, for he was perhaps the best Christian of them all. He delayed publishing Origin of the Species because of its theological implications. He cares so much about Christianity that he keeps arguably the greatest theory of all time secret until it was clear that Wallace was getting ready to publish something similar.
Even Darwin was no fanatic however. If he was, he would have done what you did, proclaimed genesis as the answer.
-KW
Michael,
DeleteAnd how exactly was Steady State cosmology an impediment to science?
Junk DNA wasn't a prediction of Darwinism. It was an explanation of why the size of the genome of similar species varies so widely, with no relationship to 'complexity', including one of around 500 billion base pairs (x180 humans) in Amoeba dubia.
Stephen Meyer is continuing his lies, claiming in 'Darwin's Doubt' that ENCODE showed at least 80% of the human genome is functional, whereas it was between 20 and 80% (probably closer to 20%, since 8% is conserved and 12% are markers for disease - and hence have some function)
@KW:
DeleteDarwin was a nominal Christian, but he certainly wasn't devout.
I didn't include him on the list because the list is only of scientists of the first rank.
Darwin's primary accomplishment was the cataloguing of barnacles. He wrote some pseudoscientific drivel about survivors surviving, but tautologies aren't real science.
@KW:
Delete[Of course the irony is that the accumulated knowledge and president that these great scientists represent are what allow me to be confident of my atheism. In a very real sense, I am an atheist because of these men.]
You're being very honest.
One of the most bizarre things I've encountered (and I've encountered a lot of bizarre stuff) is the belief that science somehow disproves God. I find it difficult to think of a more convincing argument for God's existence than the elegant order of nature and the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in describing it.
Science points to God in a powerful way. Science is quite literally a way to know His actual thoughts.
Yet countless atheists use science to deny the obvious. I simply can't get my mind around something that stupid.
@KW:
DeleteRegarding Darwin, I quite honestly believe that he was a third-rate scientists, at best. His "theory"-- that variation and survival of survivors explains adaptation-- is banal to the point of immunity to satire. It is as if a particle physicist explained quantum mechanics by positing that particles change and particles survive that survive.
The only things of note that Darwin "accomplished" was the prediction of universal common ancestry-- which remains highly dubious-- and the "tree of life", which was really Aristotle's idea and culminated in Linnaeus's system.
If I were Darwin's thesis advisor, I'd suggest he stick to the barnacles (at least that's real science), and perhaps consider a career in fiction writing. He was a good writer.
If he persisted in his "survivors survive is a theory" shit, I'd have recommended psychological counseling.
Michael,
DeleteDarwin did his 'PhD' on the Beagle. 'Voyage of the Beagle' was his thesis.
Everything thereafter was his post-doc. He didn't need an advisor.
Darwinism is alive and well. 'Survivors survive' is an idiot's description of natural selection.
People will still be discussing Darwinism in 2059, unlike 'Egnorance', which will be long forgotten.
Egnor: Science points to God in a powerful way. Science is quite literally a way to know His actual thoughts. Yet countless atheists use science to deny the obvious. I simply can't get my mind around something that stupid.
DeleteIt is merely a sign that you have a small mind. Lemaitre (a Catholic priest!) saw that science is decoupled from metaphysics. Reread his quote and ponder why he wrote that.
And no, the Big Bang is rather at odds with Genesis One. Only if you pick parts that you like and throw away ones that you don't. Like the 6-day creation story. It makes no sense to have days without light. Was the Earth orbiting a dim Sun? The story was concocted by ancient people who had no idea about cosmology. That modern Christians would believe it literally boggles the mind.
Hoo
Hoo,
DeleteYou have to take a very simplistic view of the nature of time (and even matter) to take the position you have posited. It is not the Christian perspective - at least not the rational creationist perspective.
A dim sun? Try: No sun. No moon. No light. No heavens. No Earth. No time. No space. No life.
Nothing in what we call the 'universe' until the act of creation.
At the moment of God's observation/participation, the universe coalesced into the potential for what we have now. This is not determinism. On the contrary: It is the potential for all.
Creation could be compared to something like what an atom does when observed by a physicist. From wave to particle in an instant. Until that point in 'time' the particle is everywhere and nowhere. From that moment the particle is observed it has a history. Before that moment it had none. It was sheer potential of form; a 'waveform'.
That 'now' (the moment of genesis) was then. That 'now' is now. That 'now' is what will be, and all that can be.
God is the original mind. The first and final causation. The Alpha and the Omega. The potential of all (good) is God's grace. He IS.
That is theism. The constant creation of all. Six days or 6 billion years (from our human perspective) makes no difference.
You do have a singular point though. Genesis was penned by ancient peoples. Their means of expression was far more image based than our own. The book of Genesis attempts to be timeless, and in doing uses an eternal form of language.
Taking that fact into consideration the analogue of the 'big bang' is even more apparent - even if the 'big bang' is sorely lacking in meaning by comparison. If I were to compare the two, I would say the 'big bang theory' is akin to a chalk board with 2+2=? scrawled on it, while the reading of Genesis could be compared to a baroque panel of 4 trees growing from a riverbank during a glorious sunny moment.
A dim sun? Try: No sun. No moon. No light. No heavens. No Earth. No time. No space. No life.
DeleteHow do you define a day then?
Hoo
“His "theory"-- that variation and survival of survivors explains adaptation-- is banal to the point of immunity to satire.”
DeleteThe fact that you find Darwin’s theory so banal is a tacit admission of how obvious it is in retrospect.
-KW
Hoo,
DeleteThat's the whole point. I do/did/wont ever define a 'day'. I can measure it. I can observe it. I can analogize it.
But I cannot set the definition of what a day is. I do not set time in motion, or alter it's courses. I cannot set its obviously relative constraints.
I am a mortal human being. I am subject to time (days included). That is the whole point of illustrating the 'days' in Genesis one: To show how they (time) were/are initiated with a will.
That will is the will of God. The creator. The original Mind.
mregnor
Delete[What makes Christians so effective in science is their faith in the rationality of science. Atheists have no coherent reason to expect nature to be rational. Christians do.]
Yup, and as Steven Novella helps to demonstrate, the moment atheists gain power within science, they go about tearing down its rationality and objectivity again. The practice of scientific discovery will not be able to survive a bunch of post-modernist materialists who think that reality is all a subjective neural construction.
The PoMos turn every discipline they touch into crap, and they're responsible for the subjectivist, politicized corruption of science in places like the USSR and China.
Deuce:
DeleteYou're right. Eugenics and Darwinism and DDT hysteria and Global Warming garbage are tastes of atheist science. It's going to get worse.
"Politicized corruption" (an apt term) is what science will become. It already has, in some fields.
The PoMos turn every discipline they touch into crap, and they're responsible for the subjectivist, politicized corruption of science in places like the USSR and China.
DeleteThen you should worry about postmodernism in intelligent design. Phillip Johnson, the father of ID, was the one who brought po-mo into the movement. Steve Fuller is an active proponent of the approach.
The irony is delicious.
Hoo
mregnor:
DeleteIndeed. One thing that's important to keep in mind when dealing with left-wing atheists like the ones here is that they don't actually believe in objective truth, or in the ability of our senses to attain objective facts about the world, or in logic as inviolable guide to moving from true premises to true conclusions.
All of those notions contradict their materialism, and this affects how they think, act, and argue, whether they have the philosophical wherewithal to consciously realize it or not.
To them, the "truth" is socially constructed, and arriving at it is a matter of screaming loud enough rather than using observation and reason. It's not that they think we're objectively wrong and need to be corrected with facts and logic. Rather, they think we're evil, and they're terrified that our evil "narrative" will become the "truth" if they don't succeed in shouting, insulting, pressuring, and lying enough to form a consensus around their own "narrative." Even when they happen to be right about something, they don't think of it as being true in the same sense that you or I do.
Poo:
LOL, oh look, an article by professional logic-chopping spin-artist Nick Matzke quoting an article by professional logic-chopping spin-artist Rob Pennock, accusing their mutual enemy of being relativists about the truth.
Deuce,
DeleteArgumentum ad hominem has never been an effective rebuttal. Here you can read Johnson's praise for postmodernism in his own words.
Your best option now would be to slither back into the gutter whence you came.
Hoo
That's it? A single 1999 interview paragraph in which Johnson says he thinks that post-modernism has some positive effects as a counterweight to excessive rationalism (he's wrong about that btw; PoMo nihilism directly follows from rationalist materialism) shows that he's a post-modernist who introduced post-modernist relativism of truth into the ID movement and made it rife among proponents?
DeleteMy mockery of the use of Matzke and Pennock for your authorities is based on my familiarity with them, particularly Matzke, who is a veritable font of equivocation, guilt-by-association, and tortured logic in general.
Your best option would be to keep talking, so people can continue to see how smart you are.
Deuce, if you were not such an idiot, you could easily find Johnson's statements directly showing his reliance on the postmodern approach to promote his brand of creationism. Google a bit and you can find his interview with Amy Binder, a sociologist from USC.
DeleteHere is an excerpt. Enjoy.
Hoo
Johnson: I've learned a lot. I'm no postmodernist, as you know, no follower of Foucault…but I've learned a lot from being intimately familiar with that debate in academia. Of how people read texts as filtered through their cultural situation. And, boy, is that true of science educators and elite
reporters!
[Asked if Foucault’s arguments about authoritarian discourses resonated with him]: Oh, yeah, that’s what I mean when I say I’ve learned. But you see, what I find ridiculous about the postmodernists is that they apply it to all the wrong situations. I mean, Foucault, himself, was a pampered intellectual, laden with honors. I mean, he's part of the oppressor class, from my point of view, who does this sort of thing.
Did you read about this Social Text hoax?…The writers in Social Text use these ideas of empowerment and resisting authority in such a narrow, tendentious, political agenda, when it is really much more broadly applicable to themselves. So, yes, you are right: I read that stuff with a great deal of interest. I just apply it differently.
And that’s one of the things that is very funny about my intellectual method. Because while [my] conclusions are considered outlandish in the academic world—you know, “natural selection can't really create, and all that”—the message it generates, though, is dead-bang mainstream academia these days. You know, [I’m] looking for the hidden assumptions, the power relationships…it’s a very fashionable method, it’s just that nobody ever dreamed that it
would be applied to this particular sacred cow, [evolution]…
Schrödinger was an outspoken atheist and Heisenberg was no Christian either. There are probably more who don't belong on that bogus list.
ReplyDeleteChristianity has retarded science by many centuries, costing billions of lives.
Troi, I would respond to your comment if there had been intellectual content to respond to. Sadly, it's just hate, embroidered with revisionist history. You're been a good little dhimmi, though. Maybe your masters won't throw you off a building today.
ReplyDelete@troy:
ReplyDelete[Heisenberg was no Christian]
I didn't say he was personally Christian. He was no atheist, and he certainly believed in God:
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
Schrodinger was intensely interested in Vedantic Hinduism his entire life. If you consider Hinduism a form of atheism, then we can compare and contrast Hindu (atheist) and Christian contributions to science over the past millennium.
crus:
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought of the Deluge. Very interesting point.
@bach:
ReplyDelete[Almost all of the scientists you list were in times when it was dangerous to be an atheist. Professionally if not life expectancy-wise.]
It has never been physically dangerous to be an atheist. Witch hunts/Inquisitions were all aimed at heretics, which was not a category that included atheists.
Atheists were (understandably) considered insane, and were no more punished than neurosyphilitics or schizophrenics. Why, as philosopher Mary Midgley wrote, would one bother to attack an atheist? She explained her sufferance of Richard Dawkins thusly: she had "not attended to Dawkins, thinking it unnecessary to break a butterfly upon a wheel."
A mistake, history shows. It can be said that the seminal error of Modernity was not breaking atheism.
Unbroken atheism rose with the French Revolution and Marxism, and remains the most lethal threat to man. Like a plague bacillus, only harder to eradicate.
bachfiend: "Darwinism is alive and well. 'Survivors survive' is an idiot's description of natural selection."
ReplyDeleteAh! So Himself (that is, St. Chuckie) is an idiot? For, after all, in the later editions of his own turgid tome (*), The Maaster, Himself, explicitly says that the phrase "survival of the fittest" (**) was a better, more descriptive, term for his (cough) theory than was his own phrase, "natural selection".
(*) I'm sorry, Mr Egnor, but Darwin was *not* a "good writer", I mean, even aside from being illogical/irrational, and loving it, he's all but unreadable.
(**) and where 'fit' was being used in its normal sense, rather than in the tautological sense later invented by the neo-Darwinists, by which "survival of the fittest" comes to mean nothing more than "survival of the survivors".
==========
KW: "The fact that you find Darwin’s theory so banal is a tacit admission of how obvious it is in retrospect."
Darwin's (ahem) theroy -- I mean, the bit of it that is actually both rational and observable -- is so "obvious in retrospect" that it's actually right there in a certain famous "Bronze Age religious text" -- Darwin was scooped by Moses, more than 3000 years ago.
So God revealed natural selection as his method of creation to Moses? Do tell.
Delete-KW
KW: "So God revealed natural selection as his method of creation to Moses? Do tell."
DeleteAren't these fools just the cutest little things?
I mean, if one disagrees with their atheistic/materialistic pseudo-scientific non-theory -- if one shows, logically why it is false, and cannot be true -- then they shriek like howler monkey that one is "ignorant" (*).
But, what this fool said -- "... natural selection as [the/a] method of creation ..."
This fool -- who we all know will (falsely) accuse me of "ignorance" about "evolution" because I am a DarwinDenier -- doesn't even understand "evolution" well enough to know-and-understand that 'natural selection' does not, and cannot, create anything.
(*) As The Deuce so rightly points out, this is just leftist post-modernism in action -- they don't believe in truth, and they don't believe in knowledge. But they do believe in shouting ... and in using force and/or violence whenever they think they have the upper hand.
Ilion,
DeleteI've pointed out numerous times that 'survivors survive' is an idiot's characterisation of natural selection. It's actually 'differential reproductive success' in producing more surviving offspring and surviving 'great-offspring' than others in the same population.
As an example, the female giant Pacific octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini) spends 1 to 2 months lovingly tending her only batch of eggs, ensuring that the maximum number survive, starving and neglecting herself. And then dies. She doesn't survive.