Sonics2k wrote: » What the hell does Christianity have to do with the Industrial Revolution? Unless you mean the treatment of the workers, while the powerful got richer and greedier? In which case I get it. But Christianity did nothing for the industrial revolution what-so-ever! Also, nice one jumping ahead over a thousand years!
PDN wrote: » So, which parts of the Industrial Revolution are you prepared to argue would have occurred without: a) The agricultural techniques developed by monastries which provided enough food to produce the population of the UK in the 17th-19th centuries which was essential to the Industrial Revolution? b) The great universities of Europe which were founded by the Church? c) The application of the scientific method as logically applied by Bacon? d) The investment of capital made possible by developments in the monastries such as double-entry book-keeping and mortgages? Tell us how the Industrial Revolution could have happened without all that to build on.
ISAW wrote: » Well that is one point i have continually tried to make. But it isnt positive for society is my point. it is a lack of a belief. No it isnt it is a belief of a lack of a God/gods/ supernatural forces!http://commons.trincoll.edu/aris/files/2011/08/NONES_08.pdf figure 1.13 page 11http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism a : a disbelief in the existence of deity b : the doctrine that there is no deity Please understand i/we use these explicit definitions here to avoid fudginghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism Definitions of atheism also vary in the degree of consideration a person must put to the idea of gods to be considered an atheist. Atheism has sometimes been defined to include the simple absence of belief that any deities exist. This broad definition would include newborns and other people who have not been exposed to theistic ideas
Originally Posted by himnextdoor An atheist is unable to believe in God
PDN wrote: » My point was very straightforward. In response to himnextdoor's question about what the world would look like without Christianity, I pointed out that most things in the modern world deveoped, in part, because of Christianity.
marienbad wrote: » All of the above are just the continuation of and building on what went before. I think it was Einstein who replied in answer to the question which was more important Beethoven's 9th or Newton's Laws and he replied the 9th as that was the result of individual genius and if Beethoven had'nt lived we would'nt have it. Whereas if Newton had'nt lived we would still have his Laws as Science etc is the accumulation of knowledge - standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.
himnextdoor wrote: » Which made me wonder: how would Einstein and Oppenheimer have got on with the inquisition? I wonder how many Einsteins were lost to the fires of history through professional jealousy and Christianity.
tommy2bad wrote: » So is it pointless trying to convince an atheist of God? Is their no proof ever going to convince him/her? Isnt this a bit like a theist saying that no proof will ever convince them of the nonexistence of God? Which you claim makes it a faith position. So.... I'm inclined to agree with you here. Beliefs may be a mater of disposition or psychology.
A non-atheist on the other hand requires no proof; faith replaces the requirement for evidence and the lack of evidence for God serves as proof in and of itself. It makes humans easy to manipulate. Especially if you can get them at a young age.
PDN wrote: » And where has anyone here claimed anything different? The question was where we would be without Christianity. No-one is pretending that Christianity operates in a vacuum devoid from other influences.
PDN wrote: » I don't know, but I'd be prepared to wager that it was a lot less than were butchered through professional jealousy in the atheist regimes of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. Glass houses and stones etc.
marienbad wrote: » I think you claimed a bit more than that PDN - post 2663 for example.
By the way you never answered my question about all the improvements between the ancients and the renaissance.
tommy2bad wrote: » Interesting, I believe but require no evidence or rather I know when I lack the tools to do the work, then again I see evidence of belief all around me and am happy to go with the proof of the belief in action. Maybe I just don't get the need for evidence, more a suck it and see type of guy.
himnextdoor wrote: » Where do you get the notion that Christians are not involved in the wholesale slaughter of humans?
In both world wars, the majority of the killing was done by Christians.
Or doesn't bombing a hospital in Bagdhad count?
All that was required in order to progress human knowledge was time and freedom. Christianity cannot claim to have bestowed both these things on humanity; they weren't theirs to give.
philologos wrote: » muppeteer: Because it simply isn't true as far as I'm concerned and as far as all who are Christians think. If it weren't true, more than likely I wouldn't have been able to see Christianity as true.
Atheists like to think Christians are devoid of logical reasoning abilities, but I don't think that's true. I do much the same as most others in respect to the world. I look at it, and I analyse what corresponds with reality and what doesn't. I don't believe atheism corresponds with reality in the slightest, and I find that Christianity does. I'm going to go through your post later today and spend a bit of time on it.
However, the argument still falls flat on its face. Why atheism even if Christianity is false? Rubbishing Christianity does not demonstrate atheism to be true. It's like saying if I rubbish atheism and every single other faith if that were even possible, that Christianity would be true. That's nonsense though, one must present a positive argument for that position. Likewise, you do too.
Lack of evidence and hence lack of belief is sufficient for you too I suspect. Sufficient for you when it comes to unicorns yes? Sufficient for you when it comes to other gods such as Zeus? You reject other gods such as Zeus and unicorns for lack of evidence and become by the fact of not having a belief in them an aunicorist and an azeusist. Why should a lack of evidence not be sufficient when it comes to the Christian God? Are you still maintaining that if you should become unconvinced of the evidence for Christianity and theism that you would not somehow become an atheist? Atheism is what is left over when you reject all the other gods, not something you start believing in that needs a convincing basis separate from the unconvincing nature of gods.
muppeteer wrote: » This is just silly, with this logic you could believe in any old hogwash and justify it as "It must be true or else I wouldn't think it's true because I'm super at finding the truth" Have you never been mistaken? Or is your track record so good in finding the truth you find yourself able to justify belief by the simple fact that you yourself find it convincing? Most people I find try to justify their belief externally to "its true because I think it's true". I have to say I don't think of all Christians as lacking ability. I wouldn't even bother talking to you if I believed that. I would however think you are using that ability to come to spurious conclusion.
PDN wrote: » Maybe you should read again what I posted. Reading carefully, last time I looked, was of benefit to a historian. My point was not that civilisation comes exclusively from Christianity, but rather that Christianity played a pivotal role in developing the methods, technologies, and kind of society that make life bearable for most of us today. What advances occurred, in part, because of Christianity? Many developments and refinements in agricultural techniques which occurred in the monastries of Europe. The development of double entry book-keeping and insurance which made possible capitalism and the investments that led to the Industrial Revolution. Cheap and efficient printing as developed by Gutenburg and popularised to meet the demand for copies of the Bible caused by the Reformation. The heliocentric system as expounded by Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and others. The logical application of the scientific method as developed by Francis Bacon. Newtownian physics. Computers. The theory of evolution. Of course the whole counter-factual game is far from precise. You can always argue that the Aztecs might have paused long enough from cutting people's hearts out to establish an equivalent to Oxford University. But, looking at real history, we find that most things that make 21st Century life bearable for most of us developed in some way through the monastries, universities, hospitals and other institutions that were founded by Christian churches.
marienbad wrote: » Oh I have read the post 2663 ok PDN, where along with all of the above you claimed- 2663 without Christianity -there would have been no scientific method/-no Universities/- GPS technology almost certainly would'nt have come about. 2692 there would have been no Renaissance. 2697 by implication the Industrial Revolution.
And in answer to the notion who that it was Christianity, or Irish and Byzantine monks that preserved all this knowledge , it makes one wonder what were they doing with it for 1300 years !
lmaopml wrote: » Mupeteer you are entitled to believe whatever you will, even about Christians - heck you won't be the first, that said they don't 'lack ability' - thankyou - You could even argue that Christ wasn't a historical figure, many have - that doesn't mean that they were necessarily clever, if anything they were biased in the extreme to basic historic study, even educated atheists acknowledge historic study. However, it's plainly obvious that you have made your choices and don't pay a whole lot of regard to Christianity above belief in fairies etc. Santa and the Tooth Fairy - Personally I think that's your problem. If you feel an affinity with nature or have some kind of notion about setting people free from Christianity, than good luck with that. As far as Christianity is concerned you either believe Christ is God or don't - very simple really at the core, you do or don't, are open or are not, think Christ is on par with delusional humans, or are convinced he is on par with Santa, and wonder at apparently educated but defective somehow people who actually believe that Christ told the truth - how shocking!! You can swim the surface, and call Christians delusional nymph and fairy believers etc. without knowing us, but when you get to the deep end and actually debate more than strawmans perhaps it might engage your mind a little and you will understand why apparently educated people believe in Christ. Then again you could just continue being where you are - all lofty.
PDN wrote: » While there would probably be more war, it would probably involve less bombing. More a case of people chopping each other up with machetes due to a failure to develop the scientific method in any systematic manner. No universities etc. would probably have held back technology quite seriously. The modern habit of using GPS systems to guide bombs would almost certainly never have developed with out the patronage of the Church that enabled Copernicus and Galileo to do their stuff, or indeed the Christian-based worldview which led them to seek for order in the earthly and heavenly realms. Counter-factual history ('What If') can be quite fascinating, but it has a habit of rebounding on you quite nastily when you try to use it to prove an ideological point (like real history does too).
muppeteer wrote: » Apologies if I appear "lofty", it is not my intention.
As for the type of Christians that say you either believe in Christ or not, or that I must "open my heart" I don't have much time for them as we seem to operate under a different set of rules.
Those Christians who are rational and have rational reasons for believing what they do interest me and are the ones I like speaking to.
What really interests me is when two somewhat rational people look at the same world and the same evidence and come to wildly different conclusions.
And I think debating some of the people here is the deep end, working out the premises and assumptions that lead to, what I believe to be at least, incorrect conclusions. I'm sure others get a kick out of the same without any need to be converting anyone.
PDN wrote: » Right, which is why the Industrial Revolution and the development of the scientific method happened in Africa? Nice try Richie, but epic fail. Where do you think Islam came from? It developed as a Christian heresy. No Christianity - no Islam. Oh, and by the way, if you bother to read those books rather than something you saw on a documentary once then expect to discover that many of the the key figures who saved the scientific knowledge in the Islamic worls were, wait for it, Byzantine Christians!
PDN wrote: » That statement should be very easy to verify, particularly for someone who claims to operate by proof rather than by faith. All you have to do is to name all those other parts of the world where Christianity had little influence, but which for centuries sustained intellectual development and developed stuff like the logical application of the scientific method, or gave us Newtonian physics, or computers, or Universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, or the theory of evolution, or which produced Galileo or Copernicus or Kepler.
Bannasidhe wrote: » Algebra, algorithms, mathematics, computers -all possible due to Islam (Developed as a Christian heresy). Europe was still using the Roman numerical system until the Crusaders brought those nifty 1,2,3's back from the Middle East- not to mention that stroke of mathematical genius that is zero. Without there would be no binary code or for that matter double entry booking. Printing - I suppose a little thing called the Renaissance (lots of scholars funded by and receiving patronage from the Church) had nothing to do with that. All of those 'pagan' books containing the wisdom of those decidedly not Christian Greeks and Romans which European Christianity had suppressed for so long, but had been so carefully and lovingly preserved in the East -by Muslims (a heresy that developed from Christianity) - suddenly with the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 became available again and an age of re-discovery of what had been lost began. It was lost to Europe because Christianity ruthlessly suppressed any information that did not conform to its world view. It did this by having a monopoly on education and literacy.Printing (Gutenburg again) destroyed that and the knowledge of the ancient pagan world fed first the Renaissance and then The Age of Reason - it's father was Galileo (a Christian, funded by the Church and borrowing ideas from a Polish canon) who challenged the Christian orthodoxy that placed Earth at the centre of the universe. Natural Philosophers such as Newton (a Christian who studied and taught at Cambridge, a University founded by the Church), Boyle, Hooke (son of a clergyman who was educated at Westminster School which was founded by monks), Von Liebnitz (devout Christian) began to look at how the world was actually made. To explore how it worked. Based not on the Bible - but on scientific experimentation and observation. Central to the work of Newton and Von Libnitz was those ol Muslim numbers... They insisted that observable, measurable proof was more important then faith. From the Age of Reason grew the Enlightenment - which questioned everything from the concept of the divine right of kings to the existence of God. Political theorists such as Locke (Westminster school and Oxford - those pesky monks and churchmen couldn't help establishing all these schools and universities and Montesque laid down the foundation for secular societies where each citizen was equal and entitled to freedom on conscience. Those ideas were central to both the American revolution and French revolution and the creation of the western world's first secular states. The scientific advances of the Age of Reason - steam power etc - combined with the Enlightened concept of man as controller of his own destiny led to the Industrial revolution. Once again - I fail to see how Christianity can be credited with any advances and find it interesting that it was the precise moment that Christianity began to fracture in Europe and lost the total control it had enjoyed for centuries that technology, social structures, medicine, engineering, political theory, literature, art and even plumbing once again began to advance and innovate. I see how one could credit Islam with many advances - BTW they also pioneered anatomy - their anatomical studies led to surgery becoming more then chopping off limbs. Anatomical studies were punishable by death in Christian Europe. Paper we got from the very non-Christian Chinese (via Muslim traders)- as well as the idea of printing (using movable type no less) that inspired Gutenberg. They also gave us gunpowder, tomatoes and pasta. Sooo - that list you supplied - Monasteries - you are vague as to what exactly these development are - it can't be writing - the version used in Europe was developed in Mesopotamia, adopted by the Persians who passed in on to the Greeks who developed the phonetic alphabet which was adopted by the Romans who developed the alphabet and the glyphs we still use. Agriculture - what is your evidence to suggest that monasteries - which had been in existence for some time - were the impetus behind the 3 major agricultural innovations of the Middle Ages in the 9th/10th centuries - the 3-Field System, the heavy plough and the invention of the horseshoe which made it possible to use horse power? Is it co-incidence that all of these developments happened at the same time as the Franks were able to impose political stability in central Europe for the first time since the Fall of Rome and the average temperature increased in central and Northern Europe? Shall we just ignore the fact that when anarchy raged across Europe from the 6th to 9th centuries the only central authority and most powerful, unified, organisation was the Christian Church based in Rome? Stability returned, Europe rebuilt and there was even a mini-Renaissance once a secular power was able to counter-balance the church and provide patronage to scholars independently of the Church. Double entry booking right on through to computers would not have been possible without Islam (again!). Nice attempt to deflect BTW with the Aztec 'might have been' comment but I'm afraid that you are dealing with a real life historian who has studied and lectured on this stuff. I do not do 'what is'. I do 'what actually happened' and I have more then enough evidence at my disposal to back up everything I say. Would you like some links? Here is one on agriculture in the Middle Ages http://www.flowofhistory.com/units/west/10/FC63 - in summary it says things pretty much continued the same way as the (Pagan) Romans did it from 5th to 9th centuries (wasn't there monasteries then??? Of course there were, that was the great age of Christian expansionism in Europe) - then the Frankish Empire came along - Feudal system, political stability allowing trade to resume - and the weather got milder...
marienbad wrote: » Well PDN this was your initial post that kicked off this whole debate and if you are saying that i have misunderstood it ( along with Bannasidhe and others) in taking this to mean that Christianity is the reason why we are where we are today , if you are saying that interpretation is incorrect then I am happy to admit I got it wrong.
himnextdoor wrote: » There is no-one who can be considered more cruel than Christians. They are blind to suffering on the basis that it is the will of God. How is sticking a pole up your enemy's anus worse that burning a Jewish girl for being Jewish?
Benny_Cake wrote: » Sorry, is there some kind of cruelty index that I'm unaware of? With regard to suffering, it might help to familiarise yourself with what Christians actually believe. A good place to start might be the many fine Christian organisations which are working to relieve human suffering. As for your final sentence, both are bad. If you can find a single Christian here who thinks that either of those acts are ok on the basis of the Gospel, I may.concede you have a point. I'd doubt it somehow.
