patrick.net

You can belittle the accomplishments of science all you want with merit-less gripes, but it doesn't change the fact that the accomplishments of science far exceeds that of any other human enterprise, whereas the greatest accomplishments of religion have been mass pedophilia, genocide, and slavery.

Dan8267 says

whereas the greatest accomplishments of religion have been mass pedophilia, genocide, and slavery

Dan, always the unemotional unbiased objective logician scientist.

Just kidding, this comment tells you everything you need to know about Dan. Always taking the balanced approach in his analysis.

And yes, you were just off ignore for me to read the last half of that priceless sentence.

Dan is so extreme he makes Dawkins look like an intelligent and balanced well adjusted human being.

marcus says

And yes, you were just off ignore for me to read the last half of that priceless sentence.

For someone who is ignoring me, you sure seem to follow my posts a hell of a lot.

marcus says

Dan is so extreme he makes Dawkins look like an intelligent and balanced well adjusted human being.

1. Dawkins is an intelligent, balanced, and well-adjusted human being. And if you think he's not, then you're retarded.
2. The only thing I'm extreme on is telling the truth. You might as well accuse me of being an extreme Round-Earther because I believe that communication satellites are orbiting our spherical world.

marcus says

Always taking the balanced approach in his analysis.

You don't need to tell both sides of the story when one side is complete bullshit. For example, we don't teach students both astronomy and astrology, both chemistry and alchemy, both calculus and numerology.

Being objective and impartial does not mean striving to make both sides look equally good. An impartial report of the Holocaust is still going to make the Nazis look like assholes. Sometimes the truth is all on one side, and impartial treatment would reveal this. But I don't suppose you'll ever understand that simple fact.

Any dipshit adolescent with an IQ above 70 can easily point to the negatives of religion and logic of being a good person independent of fear of punishment or the possibility of a reward in afterlife.

But, I still say that these kids have obvious conflicts and fears that are driving their biased view if they can't comprehend most of the positives.

In the sciences it was the Jesuits in particular who distinguished themselves; some 35 craters on the moon, in fact, are named after Jesuit scientists and mathematicians.

By the eighteenth century, the Jesuits had contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter’s surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn’s rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon effected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light. Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics — all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents [Jonathan Wright, The Jesuits, 2004, p. 189].

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0101.html

To say that the Church played a positive role in the development of science has now become absolutely mainstream, even if this new consensus has not yet managed to trickle down to the general public. In fact, Stanley Jaki, over the course of an extraordinary scholarly career, has developed a compelling argument that in fact it was important aspects of the Christian worldview that accounted for why it was in the West that science enjoyed the success it did as a self-sustaining enterprise. Non-Christian cultures did not possess the same philosophical tools, and in fact were burdened by conceptual frameworks that hindered the development of science. Jaki extends this thesis to seven great cultures: Arabic, Babylonian, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, and Maya. In these cultures, Jaki explains, science suffered a "stillbirth." My book gives ample attention to Jaki’s work.

Catholic Encyclopedia - there's an unbiased source about the relationship between Church and "Natural Philosophy" in history.

Sure, compared to some Fundy Proddy sects today, the Church isn't backward. Sure, the Jesuits have placed a high value on learning, that's how they got"ins" to the Courts of Chinese Emperors and Malay Kings, their knowledge of astronomy and languages.

Since the French Revolution and the rise of anti-clericalism, the Church has been far more open to science. Before that, it's a whole other kettle of fish. Asserting that he Church has always been the handmaiden of science distorts the other ~1700 years of Church history.

Science comes out of Greco-Roman tradition, not the Judeo-Christian tradition.

T says

I guess it wouldn't be so bad if the Catholic church didn't have history in destroying the progress of science. Not because the theory itself was bad, but because it went against their definition of the Book.

The Catholic church has a mixed history in regards to science. They have actually been relatively pro-science (some of the first universities and all that) except when science goes against dogma. Then is when you get your Galileos.

leoj707 says

The Catholic church has a mixed history in regards to science. They have actually been relatively pro-science (some of the first universities and all that) except when science goes against dogma. Then is when you get your Galileos.

The Catholic Church has always supported any academic thesis that it can use to convince the masses that they should follow the Catholic Church. That's why the Church loved Ptolemy and Aristotle. Anything that increases their power is good, and anything that decreases it is bad. Hardly a benign or noble motive.

What really stinks about the whole monotheism thing is that it's so specific and arbitrary. Why believe in a god or afterlife in the first place when nothing in the universe suggests that they exist? Why believe in only on god? Why believe that the creator of the universe should know about or give a rat's ass about humans? Why believe that the creator of the universe should be benign instead of evil? Monotheism makes dozens of ridiculous assumptions justifying none of them and ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

T says

The key difference is that science is based on observed collection of facts and data. Big bang might be possible to prove with science, but it builds up to that, not the other way around.

On the other hand, religion is based on a supernatural being or god, where the whole faith is based on that entity and the faith crumbles if that entity is proven to be false.

Science is proof without certainty -- religion is certainty without proof.

Religion(s) will never be proven false. They will just redefine god(s)/spirits to work with the current level of evidence.

Dan8267 says

Hardly a benign or noble motive.

Yes, and religious or not I would be willing to bet that many scientific advances happen because of motives that are not benign or noble.

Dan8267 says

Why believe in a god or afterlife in the first place when nothing in the universe suggests that they exist? Why believe in only on god? Why believe that the creator of the universe should know about or give a rat's ass about humans?

Dan, you need to don the god helmet.

People have the same experience provided by the god helmet naturally. Just as your touch, sight, taste, hearing and smell provide you with evidence of the world around you there are those believe their god helmet feelings also proved them with evidence of "truth".

leoj707 says

there are those believe their god helmet feelings also proved them with evidence of "truth".

In the same way that crack cocaine is evidence of "truth" like my hand is soooo groovey.

Thanks, but I'll pass. Just because something feels good, doesn't mean it's good for you. Religion is like crack, only more dangerous.

Dan8267 says

In the same way that crack cocaine is evidence of "truth" like my hand is soooo groovey.

Physics, math, science, etc. all these things I would come to you with questions. Apparently however drugs is not among these things.

*ah-hem*

While I am no expert myself "groovey" should never be used as an adjective for "cocaine". You are thinking of magic mushrooms; which coincidentally have been shown to have very positive side effects
. We would probably be a lot better off as a country if more people took courses of mushrooms every few years or so.

That said, yes religion is like effects of drug, but without the actually use of drugs. Like going for a run can feel like cocaine. There is a big difference in perception when someone knows an effect is due to an external drug and when it comes naturally -- and perhaps even brought on by prayer, meditation, temple ceremony, snake handling, or whatever is the spiritual ritual de jour…

leoj707 says

That said, yes religion is like effects of drug, but without the actually use of drugs.

Actually, I think that pretty much all those ancient religions were based on drug trips. Burning bush -- opium. Talking snakes -- Mary Jane. Christians and Jews could legitimately claim that doing narcotics is a religious practice since all their theological myths are based on drug induced hallucinations.

Dan8267 says

Christians and Jews could legitimately claim that doing narcotics is a religious practice since all their theological myths are based on drug induced hallucinations.

Yes, and the "natural" religious experience can also prompt visual, auditory and tactile hallucinations without the aid of drugs.

Drugs being much more reliable, all kinds of religions past and present use chemicals to launch or enhance the religious experience. However, I don't think that drugs -- or the god helmet for that matter -- "convert" anyone to belief. I would guess that those who view drug experiences as religious "truth" already were believers of some flavor, and the drugs are just reenforcing what they already believe -- be it UFO's, Huitzilopochtli or Jesus.

OK, so you don't want to try the god helmet (I don't blame you, I would not put that on my head) or drugs. Do you like spicy food? Eating a rack of the hottest BBQ ribs you can find can bring your mind to a kind of proto-psycadelic state.

Ribs aren't Hot. I bet you've never even seen a rib.

Plenty of non-intentional ways to hallucinate in the pre-modern world as well.

A little too much tansy or wormwood in a jug of wine would do it. Not to mention Ergot in rye breads. I imagine some other forms of food poisoning could bring on hallucinations.

A little wiki searching shows that Ergot was called "Saint Anthony's Fire" and a whole hospital order of monks specialized in mitigating the effects, which was believed to be spiritual in origin at the time.

thunderlips11 says

A little too much tansy or wormwood in a vat of wine would do it.

The hallucinogenic effects of wormwood are vastly exaggerated and steeped in myth. Absinth is no more hallucinogenic than a redbull and vodka.

Tansy I am not familiar with.

thunderlips11 says

Not to mention Ergot in rye breads.

Ergot? Or was it actually witches...
http://www.damninteresting.com/bad-rye-and-the-salem-witches/

leoj707 says

The hallucinogenic effects of wormwood are vastly exaggerated and steeped in myth. Absinth is no more hallucinogenic than a redbull and vodka.

Wormwood contains thujone that can cause seizures and hallucinations in high doses, and yes, in typically much higher amounts than found in Absinthe.

However, herbs were used frequently as treatments for ailments.

It's not unlikely that people drank infusions or drinks with wormwood or tansy in ludicrous amounts. Many western and Asian traditional medicine nuts poison themselves today with overdoses of herbs that are harmless in normal quantities, including a few that are normally culinary herbs. Especially if they mix essential oils in drinks.

We do know that "Midnight Tea" or other similarly named concoctions were used to induce abortion, and they contain large amounts of pretty common herbs.

thunderlips11 says

It's not unlikely that people drank infusions or drinks with wormwood or tansy in ludicrous amounts. Many western and Asian traditional medicine nuts poison themselves today with overdoses of herbs that are harmless in normal quantities, including a few that are normally culinary herbs.

Yeah, with wormwood at least I thought that at hallucinogenic dosage levels you were just as likely to kill yourself.

I think that Absinth was originally a "preventative" tonic.

leoj707 says

Yeah, with wormwood at least I thought that at hallucinogenic dosage levels you were just as likely to kill yourself.

True. I do know that wormwood is traditionally believed to be a way of ridding yourself of parasites, hence the name.

Some village wise woman dosing people with copious amounts of wormwood is possible.

But you're right, googling I see the range of dosage between getting the fireworks and killing yourself seems to be very narrow.

leoj707 says

thunderlips11 says

Not to mention Ergot in rye breads.

Ergot? Or was it actually witches...

http://www.damninteresting.com/bad-rye-and-the-salem-witches/

Great article, thanks Leo.

It mentions another religion-inducing substance, Kykeon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kykeon

Antikythera mechanism and the pyramids. Beat that.

Bap33 says

Antikythera mechanism

Awesome.

Cloud says

and over here we have Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, Galilei, Descarte, Pascal, Newton, Boyle, Fraraday, Mendel...and on and on.

That is an immensely stupid argument. Have you actually considered what their views would likely be if they had been born in this day and age?

Bigsby, please see my last post, and recall the time frame of such creations, and then argue why today's minds are better than the minds that knew/realized/expressed/investigated a spiritual world as well as a physical world. Please.

This is ridiculous. What kind of society do you think they were born and raised in? What kind of knowledge of the world did they have? They may have been great men of their time, but their knowledge of the sciences was a tiny fraction of what we know now. Why not do a quick Google of the beliefs held by scientists nowadays? Do you not see the point? You can't turn round and say 'well all these scientists in the past believed in God.' Well pretty much everyone believed in God then and if they didn't they very much kept it to themselves for some very obvious reasons.

thunderlips11 says

Bap33 says

Antikythera mechanism

Awesome.

Homo Economicus. A Legendary Creature, like Bigfoot, claimed to exist by Pseudoscientists.

Yeah, pretty cool. I think it is up there with the Baghdad Battery.

Cloud says

Oh I get the giants of science were stupid about God back then.

Today scientific knowledge as far surpassed what they knew back then. That does not make them stupid.

The fact is though that the god(s) of the gaps has shrunk considerable sense their time(s), and as a result a large majority of their contemporaries do not believe in god(s). So, it stands to reason that if they were born today most of them would not believe in god(s).

Bigsby says

Well pretty much everyone believed in God then and if they didn't they very much kept it to themselves for some very obvious reasons.

Ha ha, yes consequences were much more severe for an admitted non-christian then than today.

Bap33 says

Bigsby, please see my last post, and recall the time frame of such creations, and then argue why today's minds are better than the minds that knew/realized/expressed/investigated a spiritual world as well as a physical world. Please.

?

You do realize that it is because of the investigations into the spiritual and physical world by the great minds of yesteryear that the great minds of today don't bother to investigate the spiritual world today.

Investigations into the physical world have yielded fruits that we all enjoy/dread today. However, spiritual investigations have not yielded anything really.

If you were running an R&D department for the last 10,000 years where would you put your research effort in?

Bigsby says

This is ridiculous. What kind of society do you think they were born and raised in? What kind of knowledge of the world did they have? They may have been great men of their time, but their knowledge of the sciences was a tiny fraction of what we know now. Why not do a quick Google of the beliefs held by scientists nowadays? Do you not see the point? You can't turn round and say 'well all these scientists in the past believed in God.' Well pretty much everyone believed in God then and if they didn't they very much kept it to themselves for some very obvious reasons.

ummmm . no. You see my friend, the things I mentioned were not picked by accident. Most ancient stone work can not be duplicated nor explained by modern science. If you feel Egyptians carved the huge stones with copper tools, and placed the stones using vine ropes and slave labor, then you and I disagree. If you feel the study of the stars in a lifetime (about 50 years back then, but lets get crazy and call it 75) was enough to be able to plot and predict the Earth's position in the solar system, lunar and solar eclipses, and astroligical procession, then you and I disagree. I believe that info was wrote down and passed along with just as much detail as the Noah Flood story or the Adam story. ..... why would the same people be so correct about the details of their physical world, and yet be so incorrect about the details of their spiritual world? Ever hear of Enoch?

@leo,
that is a good point, given what we know today. But, I do not think we have a 10K historical reference in play today ... I put our reference at about 3K years of current human development. It seems like something really big and bad took place pre-3K to about 12K ago. Man was as we see him now, but the mind, the universe, the planet, and the spiritual world were different back then, some how. Maybe when Atlantis exploded it set us back a few K in development? Or, when the Tower of Bable was destroyed it was a set back?? Not sure.

Bap33 says

If you feel Egyptians carved the huge stones with copper tools, and placed the stones using vine ropes and slave labor, then you and I disagree.

They used a proto-concrete quicklime, and all most of the stones were local. We've already found ramps and docks for moving more distant stone, and the evidence for the existence of massive ramps to move the stone up the pyramid face.

No "unknown metals from the planet Zoltan" have been uncovered near the Pyramids.

They had more than 50 years. Egyptians had writing, and could have been tracking the stars for hundreds of years.

Bap33 says

I put our reference at about 3K years of current human development.

Fair enough, 3k years is probably a better knowledge advancement point.

Bap33 says

Maybe when Atlantis exploded it set us back a few K in development? Or, when the Tower of Bable was destroyed it was a set back?? Not sure.

While we may *ahem* disagree on some "historical" and geological events, I do think that the progress of knowledge has not been a smooth curve. There have been ups/downs, lost knowledge, re-inventing the wheel, etc.

leoj707 says

thunderlips11 says

Bap33 says

Antikythera mechanism

Awesome.

Homo Economicus. A Legendary Creature, like Bigfoot, claimed to exist by Pseudoscientists.

Yeah, pretty cool. I think it is up there with the Baghdad Battery.

OK, not as ancient but certainly an "out of its time" invention.

Charles Babbage's computer built in the early 1800s is a great example of how a huge scientific leap can happen then fade away only to be picked up 100s of years later.

dude .... lol ... the great pyramid covers 14 friggin acres and is sitting dead flat and aims perfectly NSEW at the corners (the sides bow inward).

It had no friggin door, had no treasure, no body, vents that stopped short of the exit, and a use that remains unknown.

The huge granite slabs in the Kings Chamber are not friggin local, they are way far away and too big. Granite cant be beat on with copper to be made flat or shaped.

We have found ramps? Really? (link please) I wonder where did the dirt go to, or come from.

I don't claim to know what's up with the huge stone work of ancient man, but I do think Egytian muslamists are fibbing about the pyramids.

Bap33 says

We have found ramps? Really? (link please) I wonder where did the dirt go to, or come from.

Number of people and time to build pyramid:

But the process of building pyramids, while complicated, was not as colossal an undertaking as many of us believe, Redford says. Estimates suggest that between 20,000 and 30,000 laborers were needed to build the Great Pyramid at Giza in less than 23 years. By comparison, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris took almost 200 years to complete.

According to Redford, pharaohs traditionally began building their pyramids as soon as they took the throne. The pharaoh would first establish a committee composed of an overseer of construction, a chief engineer and an architect. The pyramids were usually placed on the western side of the Nile because the pharaoh's soul was meant to join with the sun disc during its descent before continuing with the sun in its eternal round. Added Redford, the two deciding factors when choosing a building site were its orientation to the western horizon where the sun set and the proximity to Memphis, the central city of ancient Egypt.

Bap33 says

The huge granite slabs in the Kings Chamber are not friggin local, they are way far away and too big. Granite cant be beat on with copper to be made flat or shaped.

Dolerite.

According to Redford, ancient Egyptian quarrying methods -- the processes for cutting and removing stone -- are still being studied. Scholars have found evidence that copper chisels were using for quarrying sandstone and limestone, for example, but harder stones such as granite and diorite would have required stronger materials, said Redford. Dolerite, a hard, black igneous rock, was used in the quarries of Aswan to remove granite.

During excavation, massive dolerite "pounders" were used to pulverize the stone around the edge of the granite block that needed to be extracted. According to Redford, 60 to 70 men would pound out the stone. At the bottom, they rammed wooden pegs into slots they had cut, and filled the slots with water. The pegs would expand, splitting the stone, and the block was then slid down onto a waiting boat.

Ramps and Slipways used to move stone quarried elsewhere; you can pull multi-ton stones with rope:

Teams of oxen or manpower were used to drag the stones on a prepared slipway that was lubricated with oil. Said Redford, a scene from a 19th century B.C. tomb in Middle Egypt depicts "an alabaster statue 20 feet high pulled by 173 men on four ropes with a man lubricating the slipway as the pulling went on."

Once the stones were at the construction site, ramps were built to get them into place on the pyramid, said Redford. These ramps were made of mud brick and coated with chips of plaster to harden the surface. "If they consistently raised the ramp course by course as the teams dragged their blocks up, they could have gotten them into place fairly easily," he noted. At least one such ramp still exists, he said.

When answering to skepticism about how such heavy stones could have been moved without machinery, Redford says, "I usually show the skeptic a picture of 20 of my workers at an archaeological dig site pulling up a two-and-a-half ton granite block." He added, "I know it's possible because I was on the ropes too."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080328104302.htm

Alternative Ramp theory (Pyramid built from inside out):

The little thermometer/compass clipped to my bag read 111 degrees as I began climbing the Great Pyramid in search of evidence for how it was built. We know it was the tomb of the pharaoh Khufu and that Hemienu, Khufu's brother, directed its construction some 4,500 years ago. But how the massive limestone blocks were raised has been debated since at least the fifth century B.C., when local priests told the Greek historian Herodotus that cranes were used.

All of the current theories--a long, straight ramp, a ramp that corkscrewed around the outside of the pyramid, or cranelike shadoufs (used in Egypt until recently for irrigating fields)--have serious flaws. In the May/June 2007 issue of ARCHAEOLOGY, architect Jean-Pierre Houdin and I presented a radical new theory: that blocks of stone were raised to the very top of the pyramid on an internal ramp.

We gave what we felt was strong evidence for the theory, which explains a French team's microgravemetric survey in the 1980s that recorded variations in the density of the pyramid. Although the researchers didn't recognize its importance, an image from the survey may show a ramp still open inside the pyramid, running parallel to the outer face of the structure and turning 90 degrees at the corners, corkscrewing up to the top. In the article, we suggested other nondestructive methods of surveying, including infrared and sonar that could yield conclusive proof of an internal ramp. We remain hopeful that we will receive permission to conduct such a survey.

http://www.archaeology.org/0907/etc/khufu_pyramid.html

Interesting that after many centuries passed since the Pyramids were built, the Egyptians remembered cranes being used, but didn't mention aliens or Jedi-like Psi Energy being used to lift the stones. There is also evidence of ramps and carvings showing knowledge of building with those techniques via bas reliefs, but no illustrations of UFOs and no tame, trained Giant Bigfoots hauling or teleporting stone.

Furthermore, the idea kicks Occam's Razor out the front door. I imagine that an interstellar civilization capable of FTL travel between stars would be capable of navigating without having to build a massive landmark to use for dead reckoning:

"Yeah, Zdffaspfffth! We can navigate precisely between Qualuude IV and Sol III 73 Light Years away with our Uranium-Plutonium Warp Drive, but GPS, radio beacons, basic flight instrumentation and mapping, etc. we never invented. So we got the intelligent apes to build us a ridiculously large limestone Pyramid we can navigate by. And other ape tribes to draw lines in the sand in the shape of birds."

Cloud says

I'll stick with the Giants of Science who were beleivers. You folks can toil.

Yeah, that explains why when religion the dominant force, ~400-1400, except for chainmail, ox collar yokes, and windmills, not much else happened. Certainly not on the scale of what happened during and after the Enlightenment, when superstition was put in it's place.

Redford is full of crap.

Watch the whole show when you have time, but for now here's just a little bit: http://www.youtube.com/embed/pOjhcfIIIjw&feature=relmfu