Revking wrote:
Keep in mind that many of the early scientists, including Copernicus, were also clergy. Galileo remained faithful to his spiritual beliefs, despite being persecuted by obscurants and bigots around him. Blame the bigots, not the church. Sir Isaac Newton was very devout in matters of religion. J.B. Priestly, the co-discoverer of oxygen was a minister. Gregroire Mendel, the founder of genetics, was a monk. And there are many others.
Granted, History remembers those who were able to overcome the adversity of the Church. But, for every Copernicus, how many Hypatia's did we lose? We can never know.
If we are to survive as a species, we need a major change on attitude. Religion, at least Western Religion, teaches that "all will be forgiven", the intimation being that you'll be alright, personally, just Pay The Lady. The facts, our burgeoning population, the massive loss of plant and animal species, and the current ruin of the biosphere, suggest otherwise. We must change our priorities.
I live in a very beautiful part of the World, the South Pacific. We get a lot of Cruise Ships coming here. In 2005, passengers around the World invested 14 Billion dollars on Sea Cruises. Last year, worldwide, 400 billion was spent on cigarettes and 80 billion on Beer. Since 1985 the World Wildlife Fund has donanted 1 billion dollars toward various projects.
Crisis? What Crisis?
Yes, Priorities! Depressing Numbers.
Everyone HAD to be religious back in those days (even if they thought they might have a choice). I s'pose I'm overstating that a little, but not much.
Interestingly, about Newton, if he hadn't been so religious and thus so obsessed with keeping his mind off of sex, he wouldn't have occupied his mind so completely with math and physics.
Is that a good effect or a bad effect of religion?
Certainly there are innumerable examples of religion's good and bad impact on individuals, communities, and societies throughout history.
So what about now, and the future, where we have more choice; what language do we use to change priorities?
I ran across this on PNAS, kind of as an example of "scientific understanding of religion," and it relates to language/communication issues.
We report a series of experiments carried out with Palestinian and Israeli participants showing that violent opposition to compromise over issues considered sacred is (i) increased by offering material incentives to compromise but (ii) decreased when the adversary makes symbolic compromises over their own sacred values. These results demonstrate some of the unique properties of reasoning and decision-making over sacred values. We show that the use of material incentives to promote the peaceful resolution of political and cultural conflicts may backfire when adversaries treat contested issues as sacred values.
PNAS | May 1, 2007 | vol. 104 | no. 18 | 7357-7360So what about now, and the future, where we have more choice; what language do we use to change priorities?
~SA
