Christianity, Knowledge and Science

Straggler, I want to apologize for missing the replies from you, Woodsy, and AZ Paul3. Since the posts were over a month ago, I will not reply directly to them unless you wish.At times, if I have many replies, I jump right to the site and look through my recent topics. This topic was far down the list, and it is embaressing that I missed 3 posts, so, my apologies.

This is probably true, since I don't have any examples coming to mind of other oppositions to science.But, in the long range of history, religion has not been a huge barrier to science, as many great discoveries have been made by people from China, India, Europe, Arab countries, as well as ancient Greece, etc...all the while being immersed in a religious culture.We can really narrow the field today to two problem areas; Biblical inerrantism, and the issues surrounding human life.

Only they know Straggler. I don't know where they conversation can go if it is based on the hypothetical, and if those who obviously were not letting religion stop them from wanting to learn about the natural world, are not examples of anything. What kind of examples do you want? Do you want to say that only those who were not bound by religion in any sense were real scientists, or made the kind of progress that they 'should have'? Do you think that Newon would have stopped if he had somewhere else to go? Do you think that Gallileo would have gone further if he was not afraid? He was already outside the church. How much more out can you be? And what do you think would stop someone from leaving a religion? Plenty of scientists did so. If Gallileo hypothetically couldn't explore more because he was limited by religion, well, he was limited by himself. He was limited by his own abilities, and his own beliefs, and there is no point theorizing what any of us could be if we were someone else. It is entirely ludicrous in this day to imagine a person being imprisoned for life just for opposing a religion that they weren't bound to believe in the first place. Gallileo did not believe the earth revolved around the sun. He wasn't bound by doctrine. If he or Newton or anyone else choose to be bound by some of the other doctrines. they limited themselves. What you need to do is determine if religious belief is the only limiting agent or the greatest.I believe you have tried to address that. You feel that religion has more boundaries than any other life-style. Btu you may as well ask how many people were limited from being great scientists because of finances, or education, or family concerns. We limit ourselves.And by the way, science is good. It is not necessarily the best thing in the world for a man to devote himself to. I would rather there be more people who were not self-limited in their humanitarian goals. I only say this because your quote; Is so much a pitting of science and religion against each other, and even to the extent of hypothetical woulda coulda shouldas, as to make science seem like the ultimate goal of humanity. Isn't it a bit more vital to ask questions like how much society has hindered people from achieving in general? Religious society, ignorant society, a society which wants only pleasure and money, sex, immediate gratification?I know that is not the topic, but I can't help wondering from your questions; if religion has hindered science, and right this minute we should be more advanced in scientific knowledge, would this be a better world? Are we right now living in a better world than we were before science? In some ways, yes. In other ways, we seem stuck at the same old problems. In the future, people will view us as limited.This is not to say that you can't explore only one thought in a thread. It is a relevent thought. But if you examine the evidence and conclude that science has marched on in the face of religion, and that there is no where to go but to the hypothetical, maybe the best thing to do is to say that relgion, like anything else in a person's life, can limit their achievements.

I will try to make this my last post in this thread. I responded originally to the OP because I felt that it was a straw man argument to claim that religion is set-up as intrinsically anti-knowledge.I will not argue that sometimes religion has stepped in the path of progress. Belief in Biblical inerrancy such as that which imprisoned Galilleo, is a sad limit to science and to religion itself. But that was a completely different mind-set than what we have now. Gallileo was not seen as a scientist in the honest sense we see him now. Folks then didn't trust science as anything which gives evidence or anything close to veracity. They saw it as quackery, and an attempt to cook up a crock of stew in your own fallible brain and sell it to others.What I mean to say is that religion suffered the same stunted growth as science did. And sure, the whole thing became a cult of ignorance which fed off of itself. If there was no ignorance, there would be no ignorant people limiting the Bible in the way they did and still do.Aside from inerrancy, you get into ethics. Ethics stop progress, religious ethics or otherwise. So if you look at ethics in general, progress has stopped many times, or slowed down. We have environmental concerns, PETA people, humanitarian concerns, etc. No one complains because scientific progress was stopped when we stopped allowing people to experiment on Africans. No one complains when we try to work around using animals to test products. There are things that are not morally or ethically right that will constantly turn up as we progress. We WILL have to slow down and evaluate them, and we will have to stop going relentlessly on the same path when we discover that there are drawbacks. What we are seeing is that people who don't agree with other people's ethics are complaining, but not complaining about the obvious good sense that science must use in general. In other words, progress is not the only concern, and religious people are not the only ones concerned.