From: popec@unkaphaed.gbdata.com (William C. Barwell)
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.bush,a
Subject: Re: Lifestyle Choices and Secular Reasoning 
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 93 06:06:58 GMT
Organization: Unka Phaed's UUCP Thingy, Houston, TX

entropy@world.std.com (The Entropic one) writes:

> In article <C0Ax5F.9K6@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> kellmeye@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (kellmeyer
> >howard@netcom.com (Howard Berkey) writes:
> >
> >>Because not everyone gives a damn about religion.  The majority of the
> >>world population isn't Christian.  (Although Catholicism is the
> >>largest single religion).  Besides, 'religious reasoning' sounds like
> >>an oxymoron.  
> >
> >Not everyone gives a damn about secularism either, but it appears to
> >be forced on the great majority of the population whether they will it
> >or no.  Furthermore, anyone who has spent any amount of time studying
> >the history of science would find your last statement to be absolutely
> >absurd.  The entire concept of a university was founded around advancing
> >theological study.  Indeed, the term "professor" began as a reference to
> >one who was a "professor of the faith" and who studied it regularly.
> 
> Learning technics are learning technics even if used to learn falsehoods.
> 
> >Historians agree that western science was defined and structured by
> >Christian concepts, beliefs, and attitudes.  Without Christianity, western
> >science, as such, would simply not exist.  
> 
> No it would have advanced for 2000 years instead of stagnating under the
> weight of the church. The church has a history of fighting scientific
> discovery, all the way from Galileo to the present.
> 
> >It is only in the last
> >100 years that science has developed this peculiar aversion to religion.
> 
> To bad it took so long :)
> 
> >Certainly, one can point to instances in which religious authority 
> >fought certain concepts and ideas that later turned out to be correct.
> >However, they performed no better or worse than did (or does) the establishe
> >scientific community today in terms of accepting radically new, correct,
> >ideas.  
> 
> Scientists can be closed minded at times, but they generally don't torture
> and condemn you to hell when your expermental results disagree with there
> theories.. 
> 
> >To say that religous reasoning is an oxymoron, or that secular
> >reasoning is somehow superior, is to profess an ignorance so profound that
> >it boggles the mind.
> 
> So what is religious reasoning? 
> Basically it is squabling over the meanings of passages in a 2000 year old
> book. 
> 
> -- 
> ------  Linux, Religion, and electronic shopping all in one place!
> \    / Repent of Bean eating, MS-DOS, OS/2, and windows NT, no sales man
>  \  / will hassle you, no priest will sacrifice you. Free 9600 baud download.
>   \/ Call the Virtual World Information Systems BBS at 508-793-9568        


Recommended reading.  Andrew D. White's "the Hisrtory Of Warfare between 
Science And Religion."   Science has been hampered by religous 
authorities every step of the way.  This book is a great primer on some 
of the ways this has been done.  Even now, Pat Robertson's people, the 
Christian Coalitian, is endeavoring to elect school boards who will put 
the pseudosciense of Creationism into school curicula even tho 
creationism has been proven false.

  By the way, Galileo is usually considered the first scientist. When the 
Church made him drop his studies of astronomy because it's findings 
contradicted their dogma's, he turned his attention to physics.  
(Actually he taught physics.)  Finding physics totally unsatisfactory and 
lacking in facts, he jettisoned physica as it was known in hius day and 
started from scratch.  Starting from simple observations, and 
hypothesises and testing them thouroughly.

The word Science was coined in 1848 by William Whewell.

Pope Charles

--
popec@unkaphaed.gbdata.com (William C. Barwell)
Unka Phaed's UUCP Thingy, Houston, TX, (713) 481-3763
1200/2400/9600/14400 v.32bis/v.42bis
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