Quote:
Originally Posted by OzzyRules
These kinds of arguments are invalid because they are attacking the extreme fringe beliefs of opposing religions. Let's see some of today's atheists following Einstein and Spinoza and talking about the true nature of the divine element which is at the heart of all religions. It's like none of them want to go there, so they try to turn to conversation away from it. They are not fooling anyone.
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Spinoza was a man of his time, and that was before the sea -change of Darwin which first explained evolution (which I may say was known and accepted even by religious scientists, and thought to be God's method of creation) without the need for a god.
Up to then those who would have been atheists, like Spinoza, Jefferson and Voltaire were at best Deists, as no other explanation of Creation was on the table.
If Einstein talked about the 'true nature of the divine element' it was not in terms of religious claims, for which he had no time at all, but it was the unknown mysteries about which we only know that we know nothing. It was nothing to do with assigning an intelligence that created or directed it all, apart from his one great error - in insisting that the universe was "ordered" and not random (so to speak); the only assumption he could be said to have had Faith in, and it misled him. He refused to accept Quantum mechanics. "God does not play dice" he told Bohr, who retorted "stop telling God what to do". Well, Einstein was wrong and spent the rest of his time after Relativity trying to make an Ordered universe work.
And now Quantum is used by religious apologists to try to upset science in hopes to make a gap for God. This is what religion has always done ever since the renaissance when it was no longer the church that was the only body preserving knowledge and encouraging science, which it saw as explaining the method of God. This was why Newton was firmly Theist. In Physics, there was no conflict withe religion is explaining God's works. It was in astronomy in the preceding century that the science was "wrong" for the last time, really, and the earth was replaced at the centre of the universe by the sun, which was against Church doctrine, and from then on they ceased to support science and fought against each discovery that unseated this postulated Intelligence that religion claimed had created and ran the universe, and natural physical forces became the explanation.
Even the last attempt to credit religion with science: Lemaitre, in church orders, who discovered the expanding universe. He did this by science, not by religion and Theism has had a sort of ambivalent view of this "Big Bang" ever since, some refusing to accept the evidence for it, as it means that God did not create the universe, and others who use it as evidence that he did.
This religion debate is not the concern of science (at least until science -denying creationism came along) and if science and religion can live together, it requires religion to keep its' nose out of science and confine itself at best to raising some morality questions about what science might propose doing. Though up to now, its' record had not been very good, with Transplants once being opposed by some believers as vehemently as others now oppose cloning and stem cells.
P.s I might add for clarification that the whole atheist -religion or secularist science vs. Theism is on three levels ofvehemence and urgency.
(1) Non -religious Theism. Atheists disagree, but rather academically, and there really is a ase for that belief and science to co -exist as it does not (or should not) try to tell science what to do.
(2) organised religion. Atheism does have an agenda to push religion out of society, as it is a bad influence and that far outweighs the good that it does. Until quite recently, it had undue and unfortunate influence on politics, society and law. It has actually lost these battles against porn and blasphemy, but there is more yet to do.
(3) Creationism, or fundamentalist religion or Bible -literalism. This is urgent and very dangerous It is like no 2 but a more virulent form of it. Where No 2 was a moral crusade against secularism and immorality and only rarely protested against this or that scientific discovery, Creationism is implacably anti -science and will control it if it can. It threatens education, law and politics.
I won't go into the constant campaign to hi -jack education, Law and politics to push its' own fundamentalist agenda, in trying to break down the barrier between state and church, education and church and science and church (stopped at Dover). But, while some major battles have been won, the war goes on, and this is a war that has to be won in America, and it will then cease spreading its' fundamentalist poison over anywhere in the world it can persuade to swallow it.
And the saddest thing about this is that, while there is a battle going on to have a society where you can be an "Agnostic" without being forced to go to church and have your kids taught Genesis in the science -class and a court case going against you because the other side went regularly to church and you didn't, you..yes, I'm talking to you, Ozzie...take the other side and are opposing us here because At least the other side are god -believers.
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