I hate environmentalists

"Jürgen Exner" wrote in message


[...]

Actually, looking back in history it's rather that people like Kepler,
Galileo, and many, many others had to denounce their inventions and
discoveries or be burned as heretics. And this doesn't apply just to
Christianity but equally to Islam. That doesn't strike me as
particularly innovative, either.
Quite the opposite, actually. Progress and innovation happened in the
Rennaisance because the dominance of the church was broken.

The only "scientist" to ever be burned for heresy was Giordano Bruno, and
most scholars agree his heresy was his pantheism. Galileo's claim to have
proven heliocentricity was false (most astronomers agree it was not proven
until the invention of stellar parallax measurement some one hundred and
fifty years later). The Vatican archives have a letter from Cardinal
Bellarmine, one of Galileo's most prominent supporters (Galileo's research
was supported by the church), in which he states broadly that should the
Copernican hypothesis (ie heliocentrism) ever be proven the church would
have a lot a serious rethinking to do. What got Galileo into trouble was
that he claimed to haven proven it when he had not and that he had
formulated a system of philosophy that rendered all others redundant
(prefiguring the Enlightenment claim that the universe was fundamentally
rational), thereby challenging the authority of the church when it was
already under serious threat from the Reformation. It was the latter claim
that caused the greatest outrage at the time, even if it has been forgotten
in the quest to turn Galileo into a poster boy for science and secular
humanism (notwithstanding that Galileo was a pious Catholic).

Contrary to popular myth, most scientific progress from the High Middle Ages
to the Rennaisance occurred within the church and with its active support
and blessing. While not wanting to underplay the tensions between doctrine
and science then and now, the idea that the church always has been, is and
always will be opposed to science is an Enlightenment myth and is utterly
ahistorical.

Jürgen Exner wrote:
Ron Hunter wrote:

How, then, do you explain that the countries of the world that are the
most advanced in science and technology are the most religious?

Hmmm, let's see
- Afganistan under the Taliban
- Iran, Saudi-Arabia, Indonesia (to cover the most islamic countries)
- Vatican
- Spain, Poland, Italy, Phillipines...
- Tibet, Nepal (to cover the most bhuddistic countries)
- India (to cover the main hinduistic country)

None of those with maybe the exception of very recent India strikes me
as particularly advanced in science or technology.
For Israel (to cover the last major religion) you need to differentiate.
The technological and scientific advances don't come from the orthodox
jews but from the progressive or liberal people, who don't care, if they
touch an elevator button on Sabbath.

Actually, looking back in history it's rather that people like Kepler,
Galileo, and many, many others had to denounce their inventions and
discoveries or be burned as heretics. And this doesn't apply just to
Christianity but equally to Islam. That doesn't strike me as
particularly innovative, either.
Quite the opposite, actually. Progress and innovation happened in the
Rennaisance because the dominance of the church was broken.

jue
I did not say that religion never stands in the way of science, but it
is NOT the religion, but the LEADERS of the religion, who have a vested
interest in the status quo, who oppose scientific progress. The fact
remains, the most technologically advanced countries also are the ones
most religious, and listing those with religious majorities that aren't
technologically advanced, and putting India in the list is a
demonstration of your ignorance of the country. One must learn to
distinguish between religion, and the leaders of a religion.

HEMI-Powered wrote:
John A. added these comments in the current discussion du jour ...

About the only part of the so-called Intelligent Design movement
that I agree with is that is MUST be true that all that we know
of in the universe could NOT have possibly happened by accident,
it MUST have been the work of some intelligent entity or being.
Where the ID people quickly turn into Loons, though, is the
nonsense that Adam and Eve lived just 6,000 years ago.
More anthropomorphism. Just because we haven't pinned down the
ultimate origin doesn't some guy did it. That's just our bias as
a social tool-using/making species with brains evolved to
recognize and imitate the handiwork of others. We also see
bunnies in clouds and faces on Mars.

No one will ever "pin down" the Garden of Eden, but there IS more
than ample proof through carbon dating that human beings, i.e.,
homo sapiens, existed in excess of 150,000 years ago, so, ID is
total horse****.


Non-sequitur. Just because one idea espoused by SOME believers in ID is
patently false, doesn't invalidate the idea.

There have been countless examples given as being "impossible"
to have come about without a divine hand. The eye is one, but it
has been shown how one can progress through simple steps from
simple photosensitivity to a focusing modern eyeball, through
localization, concavity progressing to invagination, protective
cell layers, etc., each of which is conveyed by simple
developmental variation and gives an immediate advantage along
the way.

I'm not going to try to reason with fools about the general subject
of miracles, but if you really want to engage me in a meaningful
factual discussion, please START with your views on the FACTS I
have already cited.


A miracle, by definition, is a happening that you don't understand, and
can't explain in terms of current scientific knowledge. These happen
every day.

A quick couple of examples I like to think about to support some
sort of divine intervention in the universe is the facts that
ALL life is carbon based, for mannels, the basic anatomy of
males and females and their reproductive processes are the same,
and as best we can tell, the basic laws of physics exist across
as many lightyears of the universe as can be studied.
Or perhaps the conditions on any particular planet will tend to
lend themselves to one form of biochemistry. Or maybe life on a
particular planet tends to become homogenous in time as one
chemistry becomes dominant. (A less common chemistry will likely
have less edible food organisms available and would thus be at a
severe disadvantage.)

You're like my daughter who likes to play "what if". Why don't you
try answering my points with specific facts - if you can, but I
already know you cannot as there is more than sufficient scientific
proof on these issues.


Sufficient for you, whose mind is already closed to additional facts.


It's hard to say which is the case (though they are not mutually
exclusive) since we have only looked at one example planet thus
far. Scientists have, however, postulated other possible
biochemistries based on different base elements and solvents.

To put it simply: carbon and water aren't the only
possibilities. They're just what we happen to be the workable
combination we have here.

And so we have another example of evolution - this time social
evolution. As long as there is a social benefit in both
religion and science we will have both, and the total
suppression of either will be disadvantageous and ultimately
short-lived. I think though that while science is on the
stable bedrock of material reality (and, by its nature,
continually strives for a stronger hold on it,) religion is
much more malleable and could very well evolve into, or be
gradually displaced by, something very different while
retaining its social advantages. It does have its own
mechanisms, though, to reduce or suppress changes in itself,
of course, but as can be seen by the multitude of
denominations and variations in just the Abrahamic religions,
religion is as subject to schisms as populations are to
speciation, if not more so. So who knows where things will go,
but we do know that science is here now and the knowledge and
material benefits it conveys cannot help but be a factor.

Some excellent thoughts, John, thanks for sharing them.

If there is ONE huge danger in the United States today, it is
the euphemism of "secular progressives" who want to rob us of
our religious heritage and right to worship. Although we as a
nation highly value religious and cultural diversity far beyond
Christianity, it is still instructive to remember that this
great country was founded along Judeo-Christian principles and a
large amount of our ideas expressed in the Declaration of
Independence and later the Constitution and Bill of Rights come
from the strong faith and religious feelings of the founders as
well as many basic teachings from the Bible.
A common myth.

Of course, our law is also founded on British common law,
although we corrected many of the deficiencies yet until perhaps
the modern secular progressive movement took hold a few decades
ago, no one really questioned one's right to "freedom of
religion", yet today, Christmas and Easter are under fire and
these Loons demand to rename such benign holidays as St.
Patrick's Day as Potato Day. Puleeze!
Puleeze, indeed. See my "cookie" post.

I think I misjudged you. You're nothing more than one other brand
of Loon. Maybe a Far Left Loon, maybe a Far Right Loon, maybe an
Intelligent Design, or maybe just an ignorant Loon who likes to
argue. No matter which, I quit. As I said, I do not try to reason
with fools.


The fact that you resort to attacking the person, rather than his ideas
indicates that you have lost this argument, and know it. You really
aren't able to discuss a subject in a rational, and civil manner, so
please don't reply to this message as I won't be monitoring this thread
further, but do think about the implications of having retired from the
discussion in defeat.

Get lost wrote:
Ban, ban, regulate, restrict. Another socialist Canadian.

Sounds more like a rethuglican American.

--
Ray Fischer

In rec.photo.digital.slr-systems Jer wrote:
Twibil wrote:
On Apr 10, 2:58 pm, Alan Browne
I don't know what the highest altitude
that people dwell at, but I don't believe it to be over about 10,000 ft
or thereabouts.

Potosi, Bolivia: world's highest city at 13,451'.

Interestingly, the inhabitants -whose forbears have presumably lived
in the area for eons- not only have more red blood cells than do those
of us who hail from closer to sea-level, but each individual corpuscle
can transport about half-again more oxygen as well.

That nasty "evilution" stuff at work again.

~Pete

Is it really evolution? I wonder what physiological changes may occur
if one of those folks came down off the mountain. Would their
corpuscles be any different after acclimation? I'd be interested in
knowing, but I'm not finding much with google.

Tibetans have similar blood, and it's not all an adaptation reversible
by acclimatisation in adults. It gives Tibetans an increased liability
to strokes if they move down to low altitudes.

Sickle cell anemia is the most famous example of an evolutionary blood
adaptation. It confers protection against malaria at the cost of the
doubled gene inheritance causing sickle cell anemia, so the frequency
of the gene's presence in a population is an evolutionary trade off
between risk of dying of malaria and risk of dying of sickle cell
anemia.

--
Chris Malcolm

In rec.photo.digital.slr-systems Ron Hunter wrote:
John A. wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:34:21 -0400, Alan Browne

I think the thing that scares them is that ultimately, if not
artificially suppressed, scientific inquiry leads to the conclusion
that all gods are anthropomorphisms of the universe and parts thereof.
Religions that don't suppress that don't survive. Societies that
suppress science wholesale are at a disadvantage. So we have the
continual competition of ideas as religious society tries, consciously
or unconsciously, to integrate science to its benefit without allowing
it to dismantle religion altogether.

And so we have another example of evolution - this time social
evolution. As long as there is a social benefit in both religion and
science we will have both, and the total suppression of either will be
disadvantageous and ultimately short-lived. I think though that while
science is on the stable bedrock of material reality (and, by its
nature, continually strives for a stronger hold on it,) religion is
much more malleable and could very well evolve into, or be gradually
displaced by, something very different while retaining its social
advantages. It does have its own mechanisms, though, to reduce or
suppress changes in itself, of course, but as can be seen by the
multitude of denominations and variations in just the Abrahamic
religions, religion is as subject to schisms as populations are to
speciation, if not more so. So who knows where things will go, but we
do know that science is here now and the knowledge and material
benefits it conveys cannot help but be a factor.

Okay - enough rambling.

How, then, do you explain that the countries of the world that are the
most advanced in science and technology are the most religious? Strange
contradiction, isn't it?

It certainly is. Where did you get your list of scientifically and
technologically advanced religious nations from? The only one I can
think of is the US, which is generally regarded as strangely anomalous
in that respect.

--
Chris Malcolm

In rec.photo.digital.slr-systems DRS wrote:
"J?rgen Exner" wrote in message


Actually, looking back in history it's rather that people like Kepler,
Galileo, and many, many others had to denounce their inventions and
discoveries or be burned as heretics. And this doesn't apply just to
Christianity but equally to Islam. That doesn't strike me as
particularly innovative, either.
Quite the opposite, actually. Progress and innovation happened in the
Rennaisance because the dominance of the church was broken.

The only "scientist" to ever be burned for heresy was Giordano Bruno, and
most scholars agree his heresy was his pantheism.

It was the foolish or foolhardy ones who drew the attention of the
Church to their heretical beliefs. Most kept quiet, or published using
secret codes, or emigrated to more tolerant places.

Galileo's claim to have
proven heliocentricity was false (most astronomers agree it was not proven
until the invention of stellar parallax measurement some one hundred and
fifty years later). The Vatican archives have a letter from Cardinal
Bellarmine, one of Galileo's most prominent supporters (Galileo's research
was supported by the church), in which he states broadly that should the
Copernican hypothesis (ie heliocentrism) ever be proven the church would
have a lot a serious rethinking to do. What got Galileo into trouble was
that he claimed to haven proven it when he had not and that he had
formulated a system of philosophy that rendered all others redundant
(prefiguring the Enlightenment claim that the universe was fundamentally
rational), thereby challenging the authority of the church when it was
already under serious threat from the Reformation. It was the latter claim
that caused the greatest outrage at the time, even if it has been forgotten
in the quest to turn Galileo into a poster boy for science and secular
humanism (notwithstanding that Galileo was a pious Catholic).

Contrary to popular myth, most scientific progress from the High Middle Ages
to the Rennaisance occurred within the church and with its active support
and blessing.

Which is generally regarded by historians of science as the reason why
progress was so slow then, and why progress speeded up so dramatically
once the grip of the Church was loosened.

Even today on purely religious questions the Church seems to prefer
secrecy obfuscation and foot dragging where discoveries which might
call into question ancient doctrine are concerned, as shown by its
behaviour over the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It's nice to note that in 2000 AD the Pope at last apologised to
Galileo and permitted all his works to be read by Catholics without
danger to their immortal souls. Taking hunfreds of years to come to
that decision can hardly be called rapid :-)

--
Chris Malcolm

"Chris Malcolm" wrote in message

In rec.photo.digital.slr-systems DRS
wrote:
"J?rgen Exner" wrote in message


Actually, looking back in history it's rather that people like
Kepler, Galileo, and many, many others had to denounce their
inventions and discoveries or be burned as heretics. And this
doesn't apply just to Christianity but equally to Islam. That
doesn't strike me as particularly innovative, either.
Quite the opposite, actually. Progress and innovation happened in
the Rennaisance because the dominance of the church was broken.

The only "scientist" to ever be burned for heresy was Giordano
Bruno, and most scholars agree his heresy was his pantheism.

It was the foolish or foolhardy ones who drew the attention of the
Church to their heretical beliefs. Most kept quiet, or published using
secret codes, or emigrated to more tolerant places.

Who were these mythical people and where were these mythical places?

Galileo's claim to have
proven heliocentricity was false (most astronomers agree it was not
proven until the invention of stellar parallax measurement some one
hundred and fifty years later). The Vatican archives have a letter
from Cardinal Bellarmine, one of Galileo's most prominent supporters
(Galileo's research was supported by the church), in which he states
broadly that should the Copernican hypothesis (ie heliocentrism)
ever be proven the church would have a lot a serious rethinking to
do. What got Galileo into trouble was that he claimed to haven
proven it when he had not and that he had formulated a system of
philosophy that rendered all others redundant (prefiguring the
Enlightenment claim that the universe was fundamentally rational),
thereby challenging the authority of the church when it was already
under serious threat from the Reformation. It was the latter claim
that caused the greatest outrage at the time, even if it has been
forgotten in the quest to turn Galileo into a poster boy for science
and secular humanism (notwithstanding that Galileo was a pious
Catholic).

Contrary to popular myth, most scientific progress from the High
Middle Ages to the Rennaisance occurred within the church and with
its active support and blessing.

Which is generally regarded by historians of science as the reason why
progress was so slow then, and why progress speeded up so dramatically
once the grip of the Church was loosened.

I doubt most historians of science would put such a blatantly partisan spin
on it. Before the Archbishop of Toledo in 1085 put together the translation
team of the best scholars in Christendom and began disseminating the
treasures of the Moorish library there the learning of the ancients had been
almost completely lost in Europe. In short, medieval natural philosophers
were essentially starting from scratch. The writings of Aristotle, Avicenna
and Averroes hit the fledgling universities - created by the church but
highly independent - like intellectual lightening bolts. Certainly there
were tensions, particularly over Aristotle's doctrine of the eternity of the
world, but they proved ultimately productive, since the unique character of
the church in European society meant that whoever won the intellectual
battles of the time would frame the intellectual climate for years to come.
In Europe at that time the philosophers were the theologians (to be a master
of any discipline required taking at least minor orders). The arguments
about the eternity or otherwise of the world were part of larger
intellectual battles that were ultimately about different ways of knowing,
and therefore were as much epistemological as ontological or theological.
The general problem of reconciling revealed knowledge with knowledge aquired
by reason culminated in the Thomist's effective divorce of faith and reason
("Summa contra Gentiles", 1264), which in turn opened the way for the
development of science as we know it over the next six hundred years. This
was a largely unrecognised intellectual revolution.

By the early Renaissance the extreme conservatism of the scholastics, the
last great defenders of Aristotle, was symptomatic of the church's wider
problems of corruption, scandal and moral lassitude. The same factors which
had earlier allowed the rapid spread of radical ideas now combined to foster
intellectual stagnation. The Renaissance must be seen in this context.
Pretending that progress in the sciences could only have occurred or could
only occur more rapidly outside the church's auspices is an ahistorical
assumption that confuses the historical contingency of the rise of humanism
with a general principle.

Even today on purely religious questions the Church seems to prefer
secrecy obfuscation and foot dragging where discoveries which might
call into question ancient doctrine are concerned, as shown by its
behaviour over the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Scholars have had great access to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Not every scholar
has gotten all the access they wanted so they've whinged and the media did a
beat-up. Various conspiracy theories appeared to blame the Vatican (always
an easy target these days) but the truth is more prosaic. Academic politics
and careerism had more to do with the restricted access, since the various
scholars (not all Catholic) who had authority over particular sections of
the scrolls wanted first publication rights.

It's nice to note that in 2000 AD the Pope at last apologised to
Galileo and permitted all his works to be read by Catholics without
danger to their immortal souls. Taking hunfreds of years to come to
that decision can hardly be called rapid :-)

Why should the church have rushed? In essence, it was being pressured to
apologise for condemning Galileo when Galileo in fact was in the wrong. He
had made a claim - that he had proven Copernicus right - that he could not
sustain. His claim was false and the church of the time rightly rejected
it.

Ron Hunter wrote:
Jürgen Exner wrote:
Ron Hunter wrote:

How, then, do you explain that the countries of the world that are the
most advanced in science and technology are the most religious?

Hmmm, let's see
[my list snipped]

I did not say that religion never stands in the way of science, but it
is NOT the religion, but the LEADERS of the religion, who have a vested
interest in the status quo, who oppose scientific progress. The fact
remains, the most technologically advanced countries also are the ones
most religious, and listing those with religious majorities that aren't
technologically advanced, and putting India in the list is a
demonstration of your ignorance of the country. One must learn to
distinguish between religion, and the leaders of a religion.

Ok, you didn't like my list, fair enough. Then what about you create a
list of what _you_ think are the 10 most religious countries in the
world and a list of what _you_ think of as the 10 most technologically
advanced countries.

And then let's see how those two lists correlate.

jue

Chris Malcolm wrote:
In rec.photo.digital.slr-systems Jer wrote:
Twibil wrote:
On Apr 10, 2:58 pm, Alan Browne
I don't know what the highest altitude
that people dwell at, but I don't believe it to be over about 10,000 ft
or thereabouts.
Potosi, Bolivia: world's highest city at 13,451'.

Interestingly, the inhabitants -whose forbears have presumably lived
in the area for eons- not only have more red blood cells than do those
of us who hail from closer to sea-level, but each individual corpuscle
can transport about half-again more oxygen as well.

That nasty "evilution" stuff at work again.

~Pete

Is it really evolution? I wonder what physiological changes may occur
if one of those folks came down off the mountain. Would their
corpuscles be any different after acclimation? I'd be interested in
knowing, but I'm not finding much with google.

Tibetans have similar blood, and it's not all an adaptation reversible
by acclimatisation in adults. It gives Tibetans an increased liability
to strokes if they move down to low altitudes.

Sickle cell anemia is the most famous example of an evolutionary blood
adaptation. It confers protection against malaria at the cost of the
doubled gene inheritance causing sickle cell anemia, so the frequency
of the gene's presence in a population is an evolutionary trade off
between risk of dying of malaria and risk of dying of sickle cell
anemia.


Thanks Chris, I found an article that explains this well.

http://sickle.bwh.harvard.edu/malaria_sickle.html

--
jer
email reply - I am not a 'ten'