Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Frazzled wrote:Page 4, 675 Duh! right after instructions

Holy Crap ! He's actually right* ! And it's machine washable-- even at todays low temperatures. That's the sort of miracle a guy can believe in.



..


*it's just after the notice saying that the following is a work of ficttion, all copyrights protected etc etc.

No, the book of numbers just made your head swim thinking it said fiction. It really said census. And Josephus begat Bob, who begat Pat, who begat Mat...

That's what Dan Brown says in his well thought out exposes anyway.

*nods knowingly*

This has gone a bit off-topic, no?

Let's get this locked before it goes further.

Cheese Elemental wrote:Good life? My bad life was why I chose this in the first place. Science only aggravated me. I see people killed by white phosphorous on the news, and the atomic bombs destroying Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Who invented those? Scientists. It's doing far more harm than religion nowadays.

Science has given me anti-lock brakes, airbags, smoke/CO2 detectors, microwave ovens, mega-roll toilet paper, M&M's, Beer with a label that tells you when it's cold enough and a tiny tube of flea-killing stuff so my cats no longer have to endure the hell of flea shampoo, flea powder and flea collars. Science has given me all that, and religion has only given me self-righteous jerks who come to my door and leave pamphlets stuck in my fence and bother me early in the morning with their infuriating stone-age rhetoric.

warpcrafter wrote:

Cheese Elemental wrote:Good life? My bad life was why I chose this in the first place. Science only aggravated me. I see people killed by white phosphorous on the news, and the atomic bombs destroying Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Who invented those? Scientists. It's doing far more harm than religion nowadays.

Science has given me anti-lock brakes, airbags, smoke/CO2 detectors, microwave ovens, mega-roll toilet paper, M&M's, Beer with a label that tells you when it's cold enough and a tiny tube of flea-killing stuff so my cats no longer have to endure the hell of flea shampoo, flea powder and flea collars. Science has given me all that, and religion has only given me self-righteous jerks who come to my door and leave pamphlets stuck in my fence and bother me early in the morning with their infuriating stone-age rhetoric.

Religion saves your soles.
(shoe soles, that is)

Damn right, I prayed one night and awoke to find the hole in my shoe fixed.

warpcrafter wrote:

Cheese Elemental wrote:Good life? My bad life was why I chose this in the first place. Science only aggravated me. I see people killed by white phosphorous on the news, and the atomic bombs destroying Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Who invented those? Scientists. It's doing far more harm than religion nowadays.

Science has given me anti-lock brakes, airbags, smoke/CO2 detectors, microwave ovens, mega-roll toilet paper, M&M's, Beer with a label that tells you when it's cold enough and a tiny tube of flea-killing stuff so my cats no longer have to endure the hell of flea shampoo, flea powder and flea collars. Science has given me all that, and religion has only given me self-righteous jerks who come to my door and leave pamphlets stuck in my fence and bother me early in the morning with their infuriating stone-age rhetoric.

I'm not anti science but just to bring some ying to your yang.

Science has also given us Hydrogen bombs, social darwinism, eugenics, Bio/chemical warfare, gas chambers, abortions, LSD?

I don't consider myself religious, but I do have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, but anyway heres more ying...

Religion has given us Florence Nightingale, Mother Teresa, Ghandi.

GG

generalgrog wrote:
2) The Word of God says the universe was created in 6 days not 20 billion years.

Of course not all Christians believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, so the point is moot. Its also up to the holder of a belief to prove the merit of that belief if it is to be considered scientific. To this day I have not seen any argument from design which does not assume the existence of the designer from the outset.

generalgrog wrote:
3) So you agree with me that assumptions are being made and adhered to, thanks.

Yes, I do. But I disagree with you that all assumptions are of equal merit. That would be the reason I used the word 'irrelevant' when describing your observation.

generalgrog wrote:
4) How are they disregarding fundamental laws of phsyics? If you had really watched the videos, they point out the laws of physics that Big Bang cosmology violates. Namely the conservation of energy.

Their understanding of energy conservation is flawed at best. When light waves expand they do not loose energy. The energy becomes more diffuse, but it is not lost.

Also, being near to some 'center' of the universe does not immediately prove the existence of God, or anything with respect to Biblical cosmology. As I said, there are several new theories which effectively account for the possibility (cosmic void theory, cosmic landscape theory, et al). Also, it must be pointed out that there still exists the possibility of curved space which would fully invalidate the notion that redshifted and blueshifted galaxies must be intermixed in equal measure.

Another point, because the transmission of information is limited to the speed of light the relative redshift of any given galaxy is a measure of its motion at the time of the light's emission. Since we are mechanically limited by that transmission speed it isn't surprising that the more distant galaxies would appear redshifted, while only the closest would appear at all blueshifted. Essentially, we have yet to receive information which would indicate any potential change of 'direction'.

generalgrog wrote:
5) If I remember correctly, Science and Nature were two of the journals he published in. If you read his book "creations tiny miracles" he explains which journals he was published in. Also he hasn't been refuted in any scientific journals. I am well aware of talk origins attempts to refute him, and have read(not entirely I admit) some of the refutation attempts even the ones you quote from, and I am not buying there refutation. The bottom line is, if they were truly able to refute him they would have published their refutations in scientific literature instead of on some proevolution website. It seems that you rely on talk orgins for a lot of your info, and that's ok, but keep in mind that that website is highly biased and you need to be careful. (And so do I when visiting creationist websites :-))

Two of Gentry's publications have nothing to do with his cosmological perspective, and simply document his skeptical take on present accounts surrounding the formation of radioactive halos. One is a similar document which explicitly states the dominant understanding of the Earth's geological history is wrong. And the final one simply postulated that certain heavy elements must have been present in the early days of Earth's formation in order to account for the presence of his polonium halos. The first three were published in science, he was never published in nature.

Either way, I'd never heard of talkorigins before I ran that google search. I don't take creation science, or the attempts to refute it, particularly seriously. Primarily because I feel that the impetus to 'prove' the truth of Biblical creation is entirely misplaced. Still, after reading the talkorigins piece I feel somewhat confused as to how you could consider their refutation insufficient. The first point alone, about Gentry's lack of reporting with respect to his 'primordial' samples, seems fairly damning to me.

generalgrog wrote:
7) I know that the Macro evolution theory doesn't work where one day a cow has a hoof and the next day it has a flipper. But if macroevolution is true we should see the intermediate forms between the cow and the whale. The fact is we don't. If the earth is billons of years old we should see thousands of these transitional forms, again we don't.

Do you know how hard it is for fossils to form? Unbelievably. The fact that the fossil record produces anything close to complete narrative is fairly astounding. In any case, I very much doubt that there was a reputable theory floating around connecting cows to whales (I've certainly never heard of one). I'm willing to bet you're remembering an article that pointed out the presence of whales and cows in the same Order, which has little to do with evolutionary history.

generalgrog wrote:
8) 15 years ago they thought the whale evolved from a cow, maybe they have changed their minds? I'll have to double check, it's been a while since I studied the whale/cow thing.

That would make sense considering that hippos are directly relates to Aurochs through the order Artiodactyla.

warpcrafter wrote:Science has given me anti-lock brakes, airbags, smoke/CO2 detectors, microwave ovens, mega-roll toilet paper, M&M's, Beer with a label that tells you when it's cold enough and a tiny tube of flea-killing stuff so my cats no longer have to endure the hell of flea shampoo, flea powder and flea collars. Science has given me all that, and religion has only given me self-righteous jerks who come to my door and leave pamphlets stuck in my fence and bother me early in the morning with their infuriating stone-age rhetoric.

I'm pretty sure M&Ms were a gift straight from God. And every knows aliens gave us microwave technology.


On a slightly more serious note, religion has given us a lot. The reason science was capable of developing the wonderful technologies of the last few hundred years was the key role played by religious institutions in developing and protecting the knowledge accumulated over the previous couple of thousand. There was a time when religious bodies, seeking to understand the world God has given us, were the core of science.

True that. Without religion, there would be no science. Would Charles Darwin have figured out evolution if he hadn't been Christian?

generalgrog wrote:Sebster your a scientist? You can prove that expanding universe is true and not theory? Did you even read the scientific white papers Dr. Gentry wrote about red shift and a different way to interpret red shift in cosmology.

No, I’m not a scientist. My knowledge of science is very much on the level of the interested amateur. So if I can read your summaries of Gentry’s work and immediately spot glaring errors, then there is something very wrong with Gentry’s work. Your description, that Hubble observed red shift and realised it means everything is moving away from us and therefore we must be at the centre is nonsense. It is nothing like what actually happened.

Red shift was already a known and documented phenomenon. It’s implication that the universe was expanding was already considered, and while this was not completely accepted it was stronger than any alternate views. Hubble’s achievement was in observing the shift in a number of galaxies and calculating the rate of expansion.

The most basic facts of the story are in direct contrast to your argument.

It's easy to say "nany nany boo boo, that's nonsense" without backing it up. I could sit here and say "that's nonsense, that's nonsense" all day.

I explicitly stated in my last post why I thought it was nonsense, that your basic narrative relied on Hubble discovering something he didn’t even discover. You have ignored that and are now pretending I just said ‘that’s nonsense’. Bad form.

I will admit that I'm not a scientist either, and I still have a lot to learn myself on the subject, but to just outright call someone a liar like you are doing without knowing all the facts is a bit of a knee jerk reaction don't you think?

No, I’m not a fruitgrower and I’ve never studied the DNA of apples but if someone insisted that apples were just painted oranges I would be very happy to tell them they’re wrong. If they were part of a large movement that attempted to have apples controlled or restricted, or wanted to have the right to go around telling everyone apples were painted oranges, I would be happy to tell them they’re liars, or they have fallen for the lies of others.

The idea that every belief is equally valid is an excuse for non-thought. Some ideas fit the known facts better than others, hold up to scrutiny far better than others, and demonstrate the ability to predict future events and discoveries better than others. Ideas that do not fit the known facts, do not hold up to scrutiny and demonstrate no know predictive powers need to be explicitly rejected. This is the core of learning and advancement.

We have two choices here. One is the idea that red shift is an observed phenomenon being identified as an indication of an expanding universe, which is an observation that fits with predictions made decades earlier by Einstein, which was then studied to the point where calculations over the rate of expansion could be made, which were then rechecked and improved over the decades that followed. Or you have the idea that Hubble noticed something that had already been documented, thought this must mean something horrible to atheists so he went about inventing a theory that had already been published, and this new made up theory was then happily followed by hundreds of scientific teams over the decades that followed, as they checked and recalculated his work.

One of those ideas is not the equal of the other.

The problem I have with macroevolution and the idea of accepting a 20 billion year old universe and or a 4.5 billion year old Earth, are many. A few of the main problems are
1) If you believe that the earth is 4.5 billion years old and we evolved from a primordial soup than you are really saying that the Bible is not a literal narative as explained in the genesis acount of creation. The Bible then becomes no longer the infallible unerring Word of God, but some compilation of myths and legends designed to represent truth. Once you have gone down that road you open your self up to believing all kinds of other nonbiblical teachings. So I prefer to believe the word of God, which states a literal 6 day 24 hr day creation.
2) Many athiests use Macro evolution and an old age of the earth to attack Christianity and the Bible, the Bible asks us to defend the faith.
3) Macro Evolution and age of the earth becomes a stumbling block to people interested in coming to the faith, so it's my job to learn as much as I can to be able to answer questions and remove stumbling blocks that may prevent people from coming the faith.

What you’ve done is start with a conclusion, and then only accepted the science that supports your conclusion. This is explicitly bad science, and its pretty crappy religion as well. The reasons for your conclusions are not based in science, but in a desire to believe certain things about the Bible.

Look, there are a lot of big, challenging questions out there, and many of the things we discover challenge our understanding of our place in the universe, in both a spiritual and in an existential sense. If you start with the conclusion that the Bible is literally true and only follow theories that support that, you will make any of the discoveries that lead to those challenges. And as a result you will never question your faith or your science, and never reach a greater understanding of either.

It is bad for your religion and bad for your science.

Religion confuses me to no end. Anyone else with me on this?

Cheese Elemental wrote:True that. Without religion, there would be no science. Would Charles Darwin have figured out evolution if he hadn't been Christian?

Would Darwin's theory ever have been properly developed if Mendel hadn't experimented with genetic inheritance?

Sebster,

Except that what you are calling science that has been backed up by teams, etc. Hubble himself called assumptions, and so did Stephen Hawkins by the way. Your calling Gentrys work bad science, but quite frankly so is the expanding universe theory when it is all based on assumptions. Look we are both amatuers trying to understand what's going on. I'm not willing to just believe scientists when their conclusions contradict the Bible. And when there are alternate explanations and or theories that will back up a Biblical world view then of course I am going to tend to favor that view point. The same way that you and Dogma do with your backing of the generally held secular view of things.

You have repeatedly made statements that calling out bad science that contradicts the Bible is somehow bad religion, when they have nothing to do with each other. Bad science is just that, bad science, whether it's a creationist that does it or an evolutionist. It's mutually exclusive. Your bordering on making a religious judgement on me by saying what I'm doing is "bad religion". It's offensive to me.

GG

generalgrog wrote:
Except that what you are calling science that has been backed up by teams, etc. Hubble himself called assumptions, and so did Stephen Hawkins by the way.

They are assumptions. Assumptions are part of science. Scientists make assumptions (hypotheses) and then test them in order to learn more about the world.

It should be noted that when Hawking referred to homogeneity as an assumption he was making a reference to the scale at which the homogeneity can be observed. This was in the context of discussing his own cosmological theories based on Hawking Radiation which Leonard Suskind refers to as the 'Cosmic Landscape' theory.

generalgrog wrote:
Your calling Gentrys work bad science, but quite frankly so is the expanding universe theory when it is all based on assumptions.

Gentry's work is bad science because he blatantly ignores almost all the established knowledge of physics and geology, while misunderstanding the ones he doesn't ignore, in reaching his conclusions. The fact that he begins with an assumption is irrelevant in the determination. Again, you make assumptions every day. Your entire life is based on assumptions. Some of these assumptions are good (my legs will work) some of them are bad (my legs will work after I get hit by a bus), but they are all assumptions. The fact that assumption underpins something is not what determines its scientific quality. The simplicity, and testability, of the fundamental assumption is a factor in the determination, but not the sole one.

Also, Gentry's only assumption is that our place in the universe is unique, and this in no way offers proof for Biblical creation.

generalgrog wrote:
Look we are both amatuers trying to understand what's going on. I'm not willing to just believe scientists when their conclusions contradict the Bible. And when there are alternate explanations and or theories that will back up a Biblical world view then of course I am going to tend to favor that view point. The same way that you and Dogma do with your backing of the generally held secular view of things.

This isn't a debate about religion. This is a debate about the quality of a certain body of science, and the relative parity of varying assumptions.

generalgrog wrote:
You have repeatedly made statements that calling out bad science that contradicts the Bible is somehow bad religion, when they have nothing to do with each other.

If science has nothing to do with religion why are you questioning the scientific merit of certain conclusions on religious grounds?

Cheese Elemental wrote:This has gone a bit off-topic, no?

Let's get this locked before it goes further.

Cheese, you need to stop this. It seems every time a debate is going against you you try to get it locked. In fact it seems every "controversial" thread that has been locked that i've read has had you saying something about it getting locked in its last posts. That's not fair to those of us on the other side of the issue.

What? I'm not even involved in this anymore.

generalgrog wrote:Sebster,
You're calling Gentrys work bad science, but quite frankly so is the expanding universe theory when it is all based on assumptions. Look we are both amatuers trying to understand what's going on. I'm not willing to just believe scientists when their conclusions contradict the Bible. And when there are alternate explanations and or theories that will back up a Biblical world view then of course I am going to tend to favor that view point. The same way that you and Dogma do with your backing of the generally held secular view of things.

As has been stated numerous times assumptions are a vital part of science. Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method It describes the scientific method very well. The concept is to make assumptions and then try to disprove them. If you can't your assumptions become theory (this is a simplification of course). In this context "Theory" does not mean "idea" or "guess". It means a tested hypothesis that has not been disproven, and has earned the title of theory after years or even decades of scrutiny by a multitude of credible scientists. In science the title of theory is by no means a small thing. If something you postulate makes it to being a theory that means it's accepted by the majority of the scientific community as true (or true enough to assume is correct). HOWEVER theories are not infallible. There have been numerous cases when a well accepted theory has been disproven after decades (even centuries) after being widely accepted as fact. This does not mean it was bas science, it just means they were close, but not spot on. this gives rise to better theories. Think relativity is perfect? think again. I beleieve it's been disproven as well. But every time a theory is disproven we get closer to the truth. Another important thing to remember is that nothing can be scientifically proven to be correct. we can only disprove. This does not mean scientific theories are meaningless or flawed or anything like that. It just means that scientists don't have a problem with admitting there's a chance (however slight) that a theory is wrong. If you jump in the air can you be 100% sure you will land back in the same area you started in? It's safe to assume you will but there's always that ridiculously minute chance that something insane will happen to carry you to the next county over. This dores not mean your assumption was a bad one, it just means it was wrong. And that's ok, because you would try to find out why you ended up in the next county over (shouldd you survive such a trip and were one to do this kind of thing). Turns out you just discovered wormholes! congratulations! you're a world famous scientist and the world changes as a result of your work. Thats how scientific assumptions work. And the best part is that during your research you discover that the chances of a wormhole forming under you while you jump is small enough that everyone else can still assume they will land in the same place they jump. This is why I'm so "faithful" as you might call it in science. It never, EVER professes to know the absolute truth. It never asks that i just belieive and have faith. It just asks that I look at the data and make my own assumptions. If it's good science, I should reach the same conclusions as the study did. If I see a problem I am perfectly free too ask for clarification or even challenge the theory. And doesnt so doesnt make me a heretic or a bad person, it makes me a scientific mind and if i'm right i've made a contribution to science. religion doesn't work this was as i see it. If i were to walk up to the pope and say "hey, your ideas are good but i've found proof that this bit is wrong.", they'd have me thrown out and if it was something deep enough they'd call me a heretic and an enemy of catholicism and whatnot. That's bad science. Sure, religion is not science, but since both are ways of understanding the universe, why shouldnt they be held to the same standard?

Wow I went off on a tangent there. Anyways, the problem with choosing a side like you allude to in your last couple sentances there is by definition bad science. You can't reject something on simply the grounds that it doesn't fit what you believe. At the same time you can't just accept something because it fits what you believe. We "secular" people (that word seems almost slanderous, not sure why) generally "back" up science because we don't see any problem with it. Most of us read and understand the ideas we back up, and know how science works. That's why we believe 'our side' is better. Because we don't find the bad science in our theories that we do in the bible supporting ones.

Also, Some of the things in the bible should in no way be taken literally. In Matthew (can't remember the volunme/verse numbers) Jesus "creates" bread and fish for thousands of people, clearly violating the laws of conservation of mass. Sure you *could* say that God helped it, but it makes a lot more sense to assume it's metaphorical. In fact, every single christian I know in real life is 99.99999% sure that the bible is to be taken metaphorically. To say the bible is absolute truth is to call humans omniscient. We cannot create something absolutely true. And the bible was in the end created by humans. Therefor it is subject to scrutiny. Because it doesn't produce any provable evidence of divine power, theres no reason whatsoever to believe our current understanding of the laws of the universe can be violated in ways depicted. The only explanations left are either that the bible is a complete lie (which even I don't want to believe),or that most of it is metaphorical. The latter explanation doesn't devalue the bible, only changes it's value. It's still a good guideline for leading a good, healthy life, but it's not the all-knowing perfect tome of knowledge that fundamental christians often claim.

Holy junk that was a long post. Apologies if i seemed angry/aggressive. That's not my intention. I was just trying to be as clear as possible.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Cheese Elemental wrote:What? I'm not even involved in this anymore.

I meant the calling for threads to be closed all the time. I diddnt check the timestamp of it. It's just the seemingly constant trying (and often succeeding) at getting 'controversial' threads locked is something i find very frustrating.

generalgrog wrote:Sebster,

Except that what you are calling science that has been backed up by teams, etc. Hubble himself called assumptions, and so did Stephen Hawkins by the way.

It is good practice to identify everything that isn’t explicitly known, and then discuss why those assumptions were made. It is then left to peer review to consider those assumptions and devise ways of testing them. In this case Hubble, like others before him, based his base assumption on Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Jumping up and down and saying ‘you see! You see! They’re just guesses! The bible really is literally true!’… that just isn’t science.

Your calling Gentrys work bad science, but quite frankly so is the expanding universe theory when it is all based on assumptions.

It depends on the reasons the assumptions were made. If an assumption was made because it follows the findings of heavily scrutinised, powerful model that has demonstrated incredible predictive power, then it’s probably fairly solid (though in time will need testing of its own as methods of doing so are created). If an assumption was made because that’s what is in the Bible and the scientist really wants to believe that book is literally true, then it’s probably pretty bad science.

Look we are both amatuers trying to understand what's going on. I'm not willing to just believe scientists when their conclusions contradict the Bible.

And it’s good practice not to believe someone just because they’re a scientist. But you have to remember the scientific community is sceptical, challenging and attempting to disprove scientific claims isn’t just part of what they do, it’s the whole of what they do. There are now hundreds of years worth of claims, and we’ve advanced our knowledge by challenging and throwing down bad theories and refining and improving the good ones. It’s how hypothesis grow and develop into very the sophisticated and complex schools of thought we call ‘theories’.

So yeah, when a scientist claims one thing you don’t really have to pay him that much attention. But when a scientist claims something, and after a few years of peer review and successful repetitions of his work, he needs to be given some credit.

And when there are alternate explanations and or theories that will back up a Biblical world view then of course I am going to tend to favor that view point. The same way that you and Dogma do with your backing of the generally held secular view of things.

There is a very big difference there, and it lies in your misunderstanding of mine and Dogma’s choice of what model to follow. I don’t scroll through science claims looking for stuff that supports my ‘secular’ understanding. I read science stuff and pay more attention to work that’s been positively reviewed, successfully repeated and has demonstrated predictive power. There is nothing inherently secular about this, because it has nothing to do with God or religion at all.

On the other hand, you appear to be making no attempt at all to judge the quality of the science, just looking to see if it supports . As long as you treat science like this, as a smorgasbord to pick from with no regard for the quality of the work, well you’ll always find stuff that supports your assumptions about a young Earth

You have repeatedly made statements that calling out bad science that contradicts the Bible is somehow bad religion, when they have nothing to do with each other. Bad science is just that, bad science, whether it's a creationist that does it or an evolutionist. It's mutually exclusive.

Yes. And science that forms a theory and then sets about testing that theory based on available evidence, then opens that theory and it’s finding up to peer review… that’s good science.

On the other hand, a guy who writes books taking other scientists out of context, while inventing bizarre concepts that he never tests at all, all just to shoehorn some observed phenomena into one interpretation of a religious text… that isn’t even science. It’s not really much of anything.

Your bordering on making a religious judgement on me by saying what I'm doing is "bad religion". It's offensive to me.

GG

It’s bad religion because you’re not letting the world challenge your faith. Consider, just for one second, the idea that the universe is really old. That we are on a small planet on the arm of a slightly larger than average galaxy, among millions of other galaxies that are all quickly expanding away from each other. Just consider what that means for your faith, whether the key truths of the bible are any different, and whether maybe core concept like ‘love thy neighbour’ or ‘God is love’ might still be true even if it’s now possible that the stories of Genesis, Moses, Samson and all the rest could be a collection of myths.

Opening your faith up for that kind of analysis, that’s good religion. Shutting it down, accepting nothing outside of a literal reading of one book, and then checking everything else you read for exact consistency with that one book, well I guess I have to wonder why God gave us such a complex and detailed world if he didn’t want us paying any attention to it.

Jumping up and down and saying ‘you see! You see! They’re just guesses! The bible really is literally true!’… that just isn’t science.

Yeah, because science is made of guesses. In fact, if it weren't for guessing, science would have no proof. Of course, that still makes them guesses. Not solid at all.

warpcrafter wrote:

Cheese Elemental wrote:Good life? My bad life was why I chose this in the first place. Science only aggravated me. I see people killed by white phosphorous on the news, and the atomic bombs destroying Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Who invented those? Scientists. It's doing far more harm than religion nowadays.

Science has given me anti-lock brakes, airbags, smoke/CO2 detectors, microwave ovens, mega-roll toilet paper, M&M's, Beer with a label that tells you when it's cold enough and a tiny tube of flea-killing stuff so my cats no longer have to endure the hell of flea shampoo, flea powder and flea collars. Science has given me all that, and religion has only given me self-righteous jerks who come to my door and leave pamphlets stuck in my fence and bother me early in the morning with their infuriating stone-age rhetoric.

Religion gave you beer. Science watered down and pissed in that beer, then gave you "cold activation" because it assumed that you were too slowed to know if its cold or not. Had it not been for religion, 75% the world's most influential art and music would not exist. The world would be an awfully dull place without religion.

youngblood wrote:
Religion gave you beer. Science watered down and pissed in that beer, then gave you "cold activation" because it assumed that you were too slowed to know if its cold or not. Had it not been for religion, 75% the world's most influential art and music came about from religion. The world would be an awfully dull place without religion.

Oh really ? Can you cite any sources for the "75 %" claim or are you just making false claims ? Again.

Could you also please demonstrate how religion had anything at all to do with the invention of Beer because that's brand new and hitherto unknown infomation.

Awfully dull without religion ? And your basis for saying is what exactly ?

Western Art owes itself to patrons funding religious art in the Romaneque, Gothic, and Renaissance periods.

youngblood wrote:Religion gave you beer.

The Nazi's gave us space travel, motorways, fuel injection and a dozen other inventions, let's bring them back. /godwin

Which religion gave us beer? Beer likely predates bread as an invention (bread is merely solid beer).

Some of it yes. But 75% ? Really ?

I would also argue, in purely % of the population terms that the affect of this isn't a, or the, defining drive for the rest of the world.

And, there was also art made in periods before those periods too.

And it's not like Religion has ever tried to repress or censor art either right ?

I would actually say substantially higher than 75%. Outside of portraits anything and everything you find in the books is religious based into Middle Renaissance. Frankly outside of castles, the architecture was predominantly used in religious buildings as well.

After all, the flying buttress was invented for a cathedral.

75% was a conservative estimate. I'm looking at the majority of classical (genre term, not period term) music that was composed for the church. I'm thinking about Da Vinci, Botticelli, Carpaccio, Giotto, and Raphael who were all commissioned by the church to make sculptures, design churches, paint visions of the afterlife. I'm thinking of the Pyramids which were constructed with the hope of preserving kings as gods. 75% was a BS number. The point was that some of the most influential art has been commissioned by the church.

You must not know a thing about modern beer if you didn't know that trappist monks were some of the first to implement consistent brewing methods. They developed the belgian white, black, triple, and quad styles. Sure beer existed before this time, it can be definitively traced back to about the year 1,000 in germany, but the brewing there was mainly done for families or small villages. The trappist monks were the first ones to commercialize it. If you want to go back to the earliest origins, the Sumerians were the first ones to make a fermented cereal grain drink. They used to say a prayer to their goddess Ninkasi in order to remember the recipe. Again, it would be nice if you would take even a cursory look at a subject before making rather authoritative remarks about it.

My basis for saying that the world would be dull without religion is listed above. A world without beer and great music? No thanks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:I would actually say substantially higher than 75%. Outside of portraits anything and everything you find in the books is religious based into Middle Renaissance. Frankly outside of castles, the architecture was predominantly used in religious buildings as well.

After all, the flying buttress was invented for a cathedral.

I do not believe that res8n cares much for history. Either that or he is a revisionist.

err... this would be the same flying buttress' that were used on ancient Roman and Greek buildings too yes ?

The classic as-we-think-of-it version was indeed formalised in the medieval period, but it had been around a lot longer.

Nice try though.

Outside of portraits anything and everything you find in the books is religious based into Middle Renaissance

I would dispute that, and again that's a very eurocentric view of things. There was quite a lot of human history before those periods.

So, you appear to be agreeing. The invention of beer is nothing to do with religion.

Nice of you to try and actually use some facts.

75% was a BS number

Oh. How unusual.And unsurprising.

youngblood wrote:Complete side note for discussion: The Bible is said to be one of the oldest and most historically reliable books to date.

and I'm the revisionist ? laughable.

What's the worlds oldest book again ?

True. Beer was relevant to culture because of religion then. You can't argue that because the only document that even mentions beer then was a prayer to a goddess.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

reds8n wrote:

75% was a BS number

Oh. How unusual.And unsurprising.

youngblood wrote:Complete side note for discussion: The Bible is said to be one of the oldest and most historically reliable books to date.

and I'm the revisionist ? laughable.

What's the worlds oldest book again ?

Haha, you should go into politics or law. The first quote you misquoted. Silly you. The second, look carefully at what I said. I do believe that it reads "The Bible is said to be...". Now last time I checked, the implication from that sentence would be that some people have argued that it is so. Now, if you disagree, fantastic. I would love to see source material.