Puberty blockers - no parental consent.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Nor yours.

The fact is that the Scientific Method isn't old, and neither is Evolutionism, despite your desire that they should be, perhaps.

Hasn't been around for long'?

Yep. Since Francis Bacon in the 17th Century, for the Scientific Method, and since the middle of the 19th Century, for Darwin.

Don't you read history?

So you couldn't mean them. Whom did you mean had "painstakingly learned over millenia? "Millenia" are multiple thousands of years...far before there was any such thing as either scientific methodology or Darwin.

Gnaw gnaw chomp chomp. Amazing that you have internet access in that cave

[Vitruvius]

...there are other religions, and other books that are just as significant to very large numbers of people.

None of them even comes close in sales, range and scholarship to what has been done based on the Bible. It's just how the statistics line up: there's no more influential book in history, and second place isn't even close.

Whooooo....team Bible!

It would seem to me, your claim the Bible is the greatest depends largely on its influence, as the central coordinating mechanism of Western civilisation.

So Adam and Eve is literally true! And anyone who doesn't believe Adam and Eve literally true is not a Christian. Is that what you're saying?

Of course. And the reason is very simple: if there was no Adam and Eve, then there was no Fall. If there was no Fall, then there's no cure for the Fall...things are just wretched, and are doomed to stay that way. So everything about salvation is gone as well. And that means there's no Christ, because the purpose of the Christ is to bring redemption from sin...that wouldn't exist, because there would be none. That would leave us both in a rather undesirable position: me, because it would undermine my beliefs, but you, because it would mean that the wretched things in the world...war, pain, death, genocide, racism, rape, suicide, addiction, family disintegration, and so on...would be permanently incurable. For neither of us would there be any hope of anything better.

If your religion and/or God is a cure for all these things - what are they waiting for? btw what is this reeeeeal Christianity you speak of? Because, one could reasonably argue that Christianity has been the source of great suffering - but that's not reeeeeal Christianity, is it? So what is?

[Vitruvius]

...

[Vitruvius]

...there are other religions, and other books that are just as significant to very large numbers of people.

None of them even comes close in sales, range and scholarship to what has been done based on the Bible. It's just how the statistics line up: there's no more influential book in history, and second place isn't even close.

Wooooo....team Bible!

It would seem to me, your claim the Bible is the greatest depends largely on its influence, as the central coordinating mechanism of Western civilisation.

So Adam and Eve is literally true! And anyone who doesn't believe Adam and Eve literally true is not a Christian. Is that what you're saying?

Of course. And the reason is very simple: if there was no Adam and Eve, then there was no Fall. If there was no Fall, then there's no cure for the Fall...things are just wretched, and are doomed to stay that way. So everything about salvation is gone as well. And that means there's no Christ, because the purpose of the Christ is to bring redemption from sin...that wouldn't exist, because there would be none. That would leave us both in a rather undesirable position: me, because it would undermine my beliefs, but you, because it would mean that the wretched things in the world...war, pain, death, genocide, racism, rape, suicide, addiction, family disintegration, and so on...would be permanently incurable. For neither of us would there be any hope of anything better.

If your religion and/or God is a cure for all these things - what are they waiting for? btw what is this reeeeeal Christianity you speak of? Because, one could reasonably argue that Christianity has been the source of great suffering - but that's not reeeeeal Christianity, is it? So what is?

Homo sapiens developed from the gradual evolution of earlier forms that were able to interbreed.

Stop for a second. Think that claim through. What would it mean actually happened? Perhaps we should ask, before I continue, is your version of Evolution gradualistic, or do you believe in the Punctuated Equilibrium kind of explanation some Evolutionists favour in its place? Which is your version?

Somewhere between the two I think, because it all depends on what you mean by punctuated. 1 year, 10 years, 1000 years - it all looks the same from a million years in the future. If you mean punctuated in the sense an ape gave birth to a human, I suppose I'm a gradualist - but that said, I think the pace of evolution slows and quickens in relation to the variable weight of selection pressures over time.

human being wanted to join together, and religion was the means by which they did it. A useful device to overcome tribal hierarchies.

So many problems with that theory. One is that "religion" does not, in fact "overcome tribal hierarchies" at all. The two most often coexist. I've lived in Africa: I can assure you that many of the people there are fiercely tribal, fiercely hierarchical, and totally "religious" as well...and have been for all of recorded history.

That's bad reasoning in about every way I can fathom. First is that people wanted to join together and used religion to do so. African people may not want to. Second, Africa is big - unlike, say the Euphrates valley in modern day Iraq, where tribes would have been forced into close contact for a long time for access to water. Third is migration patterns in Africa that promote a nomadic way of life. Fourth, the Christian civilising mission is the source of African Christianity. It's not a native belief. And so on and on.

you're telling me evolution is a weak theory?

I was speaking of your "religion is a solution to tribal hierarchy" theory. It's just not even empirically tenable.

Yes, it is. Societies have a religious central coordinating mechanism - from Egypt, Greece, Rome, unto the Catholic Church and European civilisation.

But yes: Evolutionism is a very troubled theory, actually; and completely devoid of good evidence in the case of homo sapiens. (Not that Evolutionists have always been shy about faking such evidence, of course; seek the monkey-to-man theory. They got caught on that one, for sure.)

No it's not.

Oh. So you're not saying it's not Evolution that's "intending" tribes to join together?

Hurrah! At last you get what I'm saying

Then you're saying something that's obviously untrue. I was giving you credit for not saying anything obviously untrue, and self-contradictory as well.

Ad hom ad hom ad hom.

According to Darwin, a thing can only be "selected for" by evolution if it already presents an immediate survival advantage. If it does not, then not only can it not be "selected for," but the organism has a liability or "injury" to its function, and so is the first to die. So let's grant you your idea that religion helped out in this regard, and turned out to be "adaptive" for survival: what "selected for" the impulse that allowed people to become religious, when religion itself did not even exist yet? Get it?

People can do things, and they're either advantageous or not. If not they die.

"...is it surprising that geographically isolated humans came up with the idea of God as an authority for law, as way to overcome tribal hierarchy?"

I have no doubt that having a common belief system is unifying. I don't even doubt that in some cases at least, an ideology of that kind could be created deliberately and manipulatively. But again, there are serious problems with this answer. One is that religions actually vary extremely widely. Some have gods, some have God, and some have nothing of the sort. Almost all ancient religions, save Judaism, were polytheistic. And even of those that have a "god" and who have a singular "god", they often believe in very different profiles of that "god." So we might say that the religions impulse has shown some utility in unifying people: but if we imagine its been the same kind of religion or the same kind of assumptions worldwide, then we really need to brush up on our history of religion. It's just not how it has worked.

Why is it a problem that religions vary? I would have thought that was a problem for you - who claims that your particular dogma is the dogma of dogmas from a million dogmas that have come and gone throughout the ages. But it's not a problem for me, because they are all a means to justify laws common to that society. It doesn't matter whether they have different gods, or different laws - religion still serves the same purpose.

..an antithetical relationship to science...

You know who would say you're wrong? Francis Bacon. He's the inventor of the Scientific Method itself. He was also a theologian. Or you could ask the many, many scientists who have been Theists. But Bacon would be a good place to start, because he shows you're not even right at the beginning.

Well now you opened a can o' worms. In 1533 England split from the Church of Rome, and established the Church of England. Francis Bacon was English - contemporary of Shakespeare, and some people believe he wrote some of the plays attributed to Shakespeare. England swung back and forth between Catholicism and Protestantism under various kings and queens, but Protestants were in general a bit more business minded, whereas Catholicism emphasised the spiritual over the mundane. So it's quite a muddy picture. Galileo was a Mathematics Professor at the university of Pisa, and was commissioned by the Church to examine the Copernican theory, relative the Ptolemaic Theory that supports various Biblical passages that claim the earth is fixed in Heavens and cannot be moved. He proved it moves - and that's when the shit the fan for science. So, it's irrelevant that Francis Bacon thought of it first, because the Church continued to have enormous influence, and adopted an antithetical relation to science, and Galileo's hypothetico-deductive methodology - when they arrested him and tried him for heresy.

Faith is not valid reason.

You said you believe that "faith" and "reason" and "faith" and "science" are antithetical. Were those not your claims? Well, I'm saying you were wrong, if that's what you thought. And the most charitable reading of that is not that you don't know what reason and science are, but that you are perhaps misinformed on faith. Can I be more charitable than that, short of lying to you? Or would you rather I had assumed you didn't understand science and reason?

Believing something without evidence is not valid reason. It's faith. I think it's Spinoza who argues that faith is necessarily unreasonable. Science is based on reason. It's not faith.

Reeeeeal Christianity! You've just been waxing lyrical about what a great book the Bible is. It was compiled under Constantine's rule.

That's incorrect. There are 66 books in the Bible, and most of them were Torah, which was compiled between by Jewish folks, in the Second Temple Period. By the time Nicea came around, there were no changes at all to Torah: and that is taken verbatim into the Christian Bible. As for the rest of the manuscripts, they all existed and were being discussed long before Constantine. Nicea debated only those NT books that remained under dispute...which was very little of the Biblical text as a whole. There's no way Constantine did it. He wasn't even alive when most of the Bible was composed, obviously...not unless he was some sort of immortal, and could be alive in both 500 BC and 340 AD. Sorry: that theory's just obviously wrong.

There wasn't a Bible before Constantine.

I agree humankind is a special animal; that intellectual awareness is qualitatively distinct, and unique and precious.

Then I think you'd have chosen your words more carefully. You implied an objective value claim there. There is no ground for any such under Evolutionism.

Really? Is there any under Christianism?

Evolution isn't accidental

Really, now? So you think it's a guided process? Are you a Deist now?

I don't know!

It's based on random genetic mutation

That's "accident." Randomness is what happens when something is devoid of purpose or direction.

Genetic mutation is random. Whether the mutation proves an advantage is not random. Random mutation occurs in relation to a physical reality with definite characteristics, physics, chemistry - and somewhat more chaotically, biology. But even in biology, faster and more aware are generally advantageous. Those kind of mutations tend to prosper.

This is a high level argument you probably won't understand

I don't find it particularly taxing.

Then why did you delete it?

You don't seem to understand how science works. Science works by rejecting bad ideas, and adopting better ones. That's why it's true.

Wait, wait, wait... We HAVE to pause and look at what you just wrote. You wrote, "Science...rejects BAD ideas, etc.." Then you wrote, "That's why IT"S TRUE." Those are completely opposite claims. If science is already "true," then there CAN BE no "bad" ideas in science, and science can't "reject" anything it ever says without thereby admitting it has been "untrue".

Because, I'm talking to you - and the time for false modesty is past. Methodologically, all scientific conclusions are held to be provisional - but you think the man in the sky had a kid a virgin, and the kid could walk on water. So, comparatively, science is true. Secondly, science is no longer blundering about in candlelight. Strict methodological provisionalism is not honest to the state of modern scientific knowledge.

Which is it? Is science self-correcting, as your first sentence says, or not in need at all of any correction, as you second sentence assumes?

Both.

It cannot be. If science is simply "true," then it cannot "reject" any beliefs. If it can "reject" it's own "bad" beliefs, then it is not already true...it's trying to get more true, perhaps, but by self-correcting the errors it already has. Which is it?

Is the first map untrue?

Yes. That's why it has to be corrected.

Then there is no truth. The only truth is the universe itself and everything else is some derivative, incomplete, misrepresentation. There is no truth but the whole truth. The first map is untrue, so the second map is also untrue, and there's no truth. Everything is wrong, including you! Is that useful?

You said that science has nothing to do with faith. Setting aside, for a moment, that misdefinition of faith, do you mean scientists never believe in theories that later need to be corrected or rejected? What do you do with the flat-earth theory, or the four humours of the body, or the monkey-to-man theories? Are you now going to declare them all "true" simply because, at one time, some sort of "science" said they were true?

Truth is itself a problematic idea. There are theories that explain a certain amount of evidence, and theories that explain a greater amount of evidence. The latter is more true. For example, even in the Ptolemaic system, there are planets in relative motion. We can say it's not true because the earth is not at the center of the solar system, but is Galileo's system true? Not really, because Newton. So Newton's true? Not really because Einstein. So Einstein's true - well, erm, not really no because Vera Rubin and the galactic rotation problem. However, you can launch a rocket into orbit using Newtonian mechanics. Isn't the problem with the concept of truth? As said previously, methodologically, all scientific conclusion are held to be provisional - but again, I'm talking to you about religion. Religion thinks earth is fixed in the heavens, and man descended from Adam and Eve. Science is true!

My rightness will be contingent on it conforming to the truth of God.

Good luck with that! I'm sure you picked the right one, and it wasn't Sol Invictus, or Odin, or Bhal, or Kon tiki. Kon Tiki is interesting - very much like Jesus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viracocha

And science is wrong because it created a pop culture depiction of evolution.

Evolutionism is only one department of the larger category of Historical Biology. It's a problematic one, and one with many, many obvious flaws. Pointing that out says nothing negative about, say, Physics, or Chemistry, or even Psychology or History, if we can call them all "sciences." It certainly says nothing bad about science itself. It's merely to say that Evolutionism is not good "science."

What's clear about Evolutionism is that it has failed many, many times. Ayala, for example, who is an Evolutionist, actually says that compared to today's Evolutionism, Darwin got things "99% wrong." (His chosen number, not mine.) But he adds that he thinks that the 1% Darwin got right was really important. Be that as it may, he certainly doesn't share your view that Darwinian Evolutionism is largely right, and is good science. He can salvage only the 1% today...Again, that's HIS claim, not mine.

Thomas Nagel has gone farther. He's argued, working from a purely Atheistic perspective, that Darwinian orthodoxy has begun to choke off the progress of science itself, and has so lost its utility that it ought to be abandoned. He has pointed out that Darwinian Progressive Evolutionism has actually become an orthodoxy as stifling as the worst dictates of the Medieval Catholic Church, and that making any real progress in many areas will be dependent on us finding a new (he thinks entirely secular) paradigm to replace it.

But you have to read these guys to know all that. For you, I am pretty sure, all that will be news. And I doubt you'll be happy to hear it. But ask yourself this: why would you be unhappy?

After all, if science is once again correcting its old errors, "rejecting" its "bad" beliefs, as you put it, is that not a good thing? Is that not exactly what science should always do? On the other hand, if you love the old Darwinian paradigm, and can't let yourself think of it as anything other than "truth," what does that perhaps reveal to you about how you've been holding your beliefs?

And, if that's how it's been, is that scientific of you?

Nagel? Please bear in mind that my argument is that there's a 400 year old religious conspiracy against science, and you think Nagel is a good rational clear minded advocate for what science is and is not? He's a Bible thumping scientific heretic. Ayla is a former Dominican priest. It's asking the wolves to guard the sheep. Read Daniel Dennett if you want to know about evolution. 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea' is a great book, very readable for the scientific novice. I'd recommend him over Nagel everyday of the week and twice on Sunday!

[Immanuel Can]

Hasn't been around for long'?

Yep. Since Francis Bacon in the 17th Century, for the Scientific Method, and since the middle of the 19th Century, for Darwin.

Don't you read history?

So you couldn't mean them. Whom did you mean had "painstakingly learned over millenia? "Millenia" are multiple thousands of years...far before there was any such thing as either scientific methodology or Darwin.

Gnaw gnaw chomp chomp. Amazing that you have internet access in that cave

"When logic fails, we must resort to cream pies."

[Immanuel Can]

If your religion and/or God is a cure for all these things - what are they waiting for?

Your choice.

that's not reeeeeal Christianity, is it? So what is?

What the name says, literally: that which Jesus Christ taught and did.

Homo sapiens developed from the gradual evolution of earlier forms that were able to interbreed.

I suppose I'm a gradualist

I figured. Punctuated Equilibrium has other problems, but is the only version that might let you get away with denying that there was an original mating pair of homo sapiens.

So now we agree again. Maybe you want to call the original pair "Og" and "Eek," and I call them "Adam" and "Eve." But either way, we're totally agreed there had to be an original pair, because that's what gradualism insists has to be the case. Species don't just burst out in a kind of universal effloration at a given point in time: they're products of gradual, slow, incremental genetic modification -- or at least, so Evolutionism says. That means there had to be a first pair of true homo sapiens, at a time when all the rest of the world was pre-sapiens or Neanderthals of some kind. And it was because the progeny of that initial mating pair had a genetic survival advantage that homo sapiens are with us today, and Neanderthals are not.

Now, of course, there's problems with that narrative, too: like, how did the progeny of Og and Eek manage to sustain the genetic advantage when all they had to mate with were Neanderthals? How did they beat out the genetic reversion effect, that would then threaten to remove their survival advantage within one generation? But since the whole gradualist narrative is a fiction anyway, such questions needn't trouble us for the moment. The main point is simply this: both the gradualist version of Evolutionism and the Creation narrative posit the one-time existence of an original mating pair.

human being wanted to join together, and religion was the means by which they did it. A useful device to overcome tribal hierarchies.

So many problems with that theory. One is that "religion" does not, in fact "overcome tribal hierarchies" at all. The two most often coexist. I've lived in Africa: I can assure you that many of the people there are fiercely tribal, fiercely hierarchical, and totally "religious" as well...and have been for all of recorded history.

That's bad reasoning in about every way I can fathom. First is that people wanted to join together and used religion to do so. African people may not want to.

Right. But it's your faulty theory, not mine. I can't defend it for you: I think it's untrue.

you're telling me evolution is a weak theory?

I was speaking of your "religion is a solution to tribal hierarchy" theory. It's just not even empirically tenable.

Yes, it is. Societies have a religious central coordinating mechanism - from Egypt, Greece, Rome, unto the Catholic Church and European civilisation.

That's a basic error in logic. Even if we concede that all societies have only one "religoius central coordinating mechanism," which clearly isn't true anyway, the functioning of that narrative as "coordinating" tells us nothing about its origin and nothing about its truth value at all. Very clearly, people have "coordinated" around false narratives -- indeed, they have done so many times -- but they can also "coordinate" around true ones. The utility of the belief does not tell us that it originated by way of that utility at all.

But yes: Evolutionism is a very troubled theory, actually; and completely devoid of good evidence in the case of homo sapiens. (Not that Evolutionists have always been shy about faking such evidence, of course; seek the monkey-to-man theory. They got caught on that one, for sure.)

No it's not.

Yeah, it is. And if you knew and understood the various theories of Evolution that have been offered yourself, you'd know that.

I have no doubt that having a common belief system is unifying. I don't even doubt that in some cases at least, an ideology of that kind could be created deliberately and manipulatively. But again, there are serious problems with this answer. One is that religions actually vary extremely widely. Some have gods, some have God, and some have nothing of the sort. Almost all ancient religions, save Judaism, were polytheistic. And even of those that have a "god" and who have a singular "god", they often believe in very different profiles of that "god." So we might say that the religions impulse has shown some utility in unifying people: but if we imagine its been the same kind of religion or the same kind of assumptions worldwide, then we really need to brush up on our history of religion. It's just not how it has worked.

Why is it a problem that religions vary?

As Aristotle so cogently put it, genuinely contradictory beliefs cannot be simultaneously true. The world's religions are genuinely contradictory. Therefore, it is not possible that they are all true. Logically speaking, they could all be false -- unless they already represent all possible alternatives. In fact, it means that whatever else we think, the vast majority of them must be false. No more than one can be true, so long as they genuinely contradict.

That's logic. It's no opinion or ideology. It's just how the mathematics of reason inform us on the subject.

So, for example, let's take three options:

1. Atheism -- there is no God (or gods)
2. Theism -- there is one God
3. Polytheism -- there is a plurality of gods

Together, these might sum up all the possible alternatives regarding the possible existence of God. There can be one, none or multiples. That covers everything possible.

What we can know from pure logic, from Aristotle, if you like, is that two of the three are most certainly false, and one is true. You and I may disagree about which is most likely to be true and false; but what we should not be arguing about, and what, in fact, it is not logical or reasonable for us to argue about, is the fact that one of the three is true, and two are most certainly false.

Believing something without evidence is not valid reason. It's faith. I think it's Spinoza who argues that faith is necessarily unreasonable.

Spinoza was wrong. It's that simple. He got himself cast out of his own Jewish community for speaking nonsense on that, and he's never been Biblical in his comments on that.

Maybe he was talking about his own "faith." He certainly was never talking about the Biblical understanding of faith.

Science is based on reason. It's not faith.

You don't know what Science is, then. It's inductive: and inductive knowledge is, at most, probabilistic, not absolute. So actually, every person has to have faith in science in order to believe in its declarations. You won't call that "faith," probably; but that is what it is. And it's quite legit, of course.

There wasn't a Bible before Constantine.

The Jews will be so disappointed to hear you say so.

No, no...that's just factually, verifiably wrong. Sorry. There was no final version of the canon of the New and Old Testaments, perhaps: but there were most certainly all the books of the Torah and Tanahk, as well as all the gospels and epistles of the New Testament. All that was settled at Nicea was the elimination of the apocyphal books created in the meanwhile.

I agree humankind is a special animal; that intellectual awareness is qualitatively distinct, and unique and precious.

Then I think you'd have chosen your words more carefully. You implied an objective value claim there. There is no ground for any such under Evolutionism.

Really? Is there any under Christianism?

Of course. Man is a unique creation, a reflection of the image of God Himself. That's pretty special status.

Evolution isn't accidental

Really, now? So you think it's a guided process? Are you a Deist now?

I don't know!

Okay, fair enough. Anybody can "not know" things, without being challenged. But don't you want to know?

This is a high level argument you probably won't understand

I don't find it particularly taxing.

Then why did you delete it?

Honestly? Because it was so completely routine, so ordinary and shallow, that I'd heard it many times before. I felt it didn't really merit a reply. I could get the same kind of summary from any public school textbook.

Methodologically, all scientific conclusions are held to be provisional

That's right. But that means they're no longer what you claimed for them -- products of pure "reason," "true," "unrequiring of faith," etc. They're just theories, and revisable ones. And people's trust in them also changes -- and should change -- as they get replaced with better theories.

Then there is no truth.

Sure there is. Don't mistake ontology for epistemology. "X is true" is a different statement from "Nobody knows whether or not X is true."

For example: is there another inhabitable planet in the universe? Nobody knows, at least at present. But does that mean there then can be no truth about whether or not one exists? No. It just means we don't presently happen to know that truth.

Human knowledge is always partial and incomplete. But the truth is the truth. It's the thing we're trying to know more about. And the more we know about the truth, the better we are.

That's the expectation of science, anyway.

Religion thinks earth is fixed in the heavens

Which "religion" thinks that? None I know of.

Nagel?

Thomas Nagel.

Please bear in mind that my argument is that there's a 400 year old religious conspiracy against science,

Yeah. That's nonsense.

...you think Nagel is a good rational clear minded advocate for what science is and is not? He's a Bible thumping scientific heretic.

Oh, that's SOOOO funny !

Nagel would be aghast to hear you say so. No, if you actually bothered to read "Mind and Cosmos," you'd know that's not even close to true. He was and remains, an Atheist.

Read Daniel Dennett if you want to know about evolution.

Dennett? I know Dennett. He's been debunked to death by others, of course, so I shall not bother; I'll just say, quite frankly, that I find his arguments...unchallenging. That's the kindest I can be, I think.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Yep. Since Francis Bacon in the 17th Century, for the Scientific Method, and since the middle of the 19th Century, for Darwin.

Don't you read history?

So you couldn't mean them. Whom did you mean had "painstakingly learned over millenia? "Millenia" are multiple thousands of years...far before there was any such thing as either scientific methodology or Darwin.

Gnaw gnaw chomp chomp. Amazing that you have internet access in that cave

"When logic fails, we must resort to cream pies."

Keep gnawing on those bones caveman.

[Vitruvius]

That's the kindest I can be, I think.

You're not kind. Religion is not kind. It deceives people; corkscrews its way into their mind at their most vulnerable moments, making them emotionally dependent; demanding they twist their psychology to believe impossible and contradictory things. Saying religion is kind is like saying Big Brother is kind. You're telling me 2+2=5, and it's double plus good. I'm sure you believe that!

If your religion and/or God is a cure for all these things - what are they waiting for?

Your choice.

There you are; but it's bait and switch. Believe in me and the way will be opened unto you, and then it's God helps them who helps themselves and your suffering is a test of faith! Believe harder - and make larger donations! Explain the kindness of thousands of children nonced by Catholic priests. Point out God's plan there. Point out the kindness of terrorists blowing themselves up in an arena packed with kids. Is that the kindest you can be? Now tell me why that isn't reeeeeal religion!

[uwot]

The fact is that the Scientific Method isn't old...

Hasn't been around for long'?

Yep. Since Francis Bacon in the 17th Century...

Don't you read history?

Now now Mr Can; would Jesus be so condescending? It is also misplaced, since your reading of the history of science is clearly limited. You could start with this:

The Scientific Method was invented by Francis Bacon.

That's a massive overstatement, Mr Can. The method in the New Organon is described as the Baconian method, and while Bacon was very influential, it is a stretch to say he invented even that. A key feature of Bacon's method is systematic observation, which he details at some length; followed by inductive reasoning to arrive at generalised principles. Those principles should not reach beyond what the evidence can support. In short: observational and experimental rigour, logical inference and Ockham's razor. Or Aristotelian parsimony. Either way, Bacon didn't invent it.

Galileo never read Novum Organum, and his discoveries were all made before that book was even written.

...there's no real answer.

You gave one. It rules out Galileo.

You would have to now see him as a sort of pre-scientific investigator, in the order of an Aristotle; or a Copernicus, or a Kepler, perhaps. But since he had no access to the actual Scientific Method, your own definition makes him that.

Well, Bacon arrived at the Baconian method by the Baconian method. He carefully observed what 'scientists' were already doing and arrived at the generalised principles of his method by induction. He didn't invent the scientific method so much as describe (some of) what made people like Galileo scientists in the first place.

It fits Mr Can's narrative to claim that Bacon invented the scientific method. Bacon was a christian, although not the 'real' christian of Mr Can's world, but that fact is ignored because Bacon was christian in name, and in Mr Can's head, that is enough for the entire body of science (except huge chunks of 'real' science. sic) to support Mr Can's real christianity. Ideas such that the Egyptians built the pyramids without science, or that Archimedes wasn't a scientist, or Galileo only became one when Bacon published the New Organon are obviously bollocks. Except to Mr Can.

[Immanuel Can]

If your religion and/or God is a cure for all these things - what are they waiting for?

Your choice.

There you are; but it's bait and switch. Believe in me and the way will be opened unto you,

I think you mean Matthew 7: 7-8, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened."

God helps them who helps themselves

That's pop culture. It's not in the Bible, nor is the idea found anywhere therein.

Explain the kindness of thousands of children nonced by Catholic priests.

Why? I'm not Catholic.

Point out the kindness of terrorists blowing themselves up in an arena packed with kids.

Why? I'm not Muslim.

Do you feel obligated to explain the behaviour of other secularists and Atheists? Do you feel you owe Theists an explanation for Stalin and Mao?

Of course not. Why would you?

Here's the bottom line, V. I'm not picking on you. But I do have to point out that the version of events you've laid out -- including such things as faith being opposed to both reason and science, or there being some giant conspiracy of religion against science -- are really just the tired canards of the last century, recycled. They're straw-man arguments. And I understand how you picked them up, because they reflect the indoctrinatory talking points Atheists and skeptics of other kinds have cherished for around a hundred years or more.

But unfortunately for them, they're just wrong. They always were. The white-hat-black-hat nature of that narrative should tip us off immediately that it's probably unsubtle, crude, shallow and maybe just downright untrue. Or at least, we ought to begin to suspect that.

However, I know that it gives to tenacious skeptics a great deal of comfort to think that they've salted the whole controversy away with a reference to the cartoon version of the Galileo story, maybe a tip of the hat to Evolutionism, or with some more current reference to greedy televangelists or pedophile priests. And we Theists are supposed to cringe in fear whenever we hear this sort of Doctor-Seuss-level harangue?

I think not.

And do we really want our thinking to begin and end on so low a level?

I don't see that you're likely to be the kind of person who would.

[Vitruvius]

Here's the bottom line, V. I'm not picking on you. But I do have to point out that the version of events you've laid out -- including such things as faith being opposed to both reason and science, or there being some giant conspiracy of religion against science -- are really just the tired canards of the last century, recycled. They're straw-man arguments. And I understand how you picked them up, because they reflect the indoctrinatory talking points Atheists and skeptics of other kinds have cherished for around a hundred years or more.

Here's the bottom line - you're not picking on me. Because I see through you. You deny any responsibility for any thing Catholicism has done, but you leap to its defence - attacking science in defence of religion; you demand science is responsible for Piltdown man - but Islamic terrorism, the troubles in Ireland, the same Israel/Palestine, and on ad nauseum, that's nothing to do with you. You speak with a forked tongue!

It's irrefutable the Church arrested and tried Galileo - and Descartes leapt to the Church defence by writing Meditations on First Philosophy; and the rest of western philosophy piled on, with subjectivist arguments in denial of objectivity - in defence of spirituality. (see Nagel) It's irrefutable the Church was burning heretics alive right through to 1792 - 60 years into the Industrial Revolution. It's irrefutable that we've used science as a tool with no regard to science as understanding of reality: that's why we have nuclear weapons and climate change, and we don't have magma energy. Because religion divorced science as a tool, from science as an understanding of reality, to defend it's various, many headed dogmas. But not your dogma! Same book, same story, same symbols, same anti-science propaganda, same everything, but different tax dodger!

[Immanuel Can]

You deny any responsibility for any thing Catholicism has done, but you leap to its defence

I'll say again: I'm not a Catholic. Let them answer for themselves. I do not defend or attack them.

you demand science is responsible for Piltdown man

"Demand"? I have not done so, nor can I. The Piltdown Man Scandal happened, that is all. You can read about it yourself. And the only reason it happened is that credulous and unscrupulous Evolutionists got ahead of themselves and embarrased themselves. They have still never owned their responsibility, of course; because that's not how Scientistic ideologues do business.

But neither they nor it had anything to do with actual science.

It's irrefutable the Church arrested and tried Galileo

Well, the Catholics did, sure; but to be fair to them, it's very refutable that he wasn't asking for it, too. He was a pretty cantankerous fellow, and he did pick a fight. And after his arrest, to be fair to them again, they did treat him pretty gently...much better than they treated my ancestors, actually.

You see, a person who's telling the truth gives credit fearlessly, wherever credit is due, and calls a foul where a foul exists. That's good history. And I think that really need to go and read the history; this cartoon version of Galileo's story does nobody any good. And clearly, you got it from the old canards, not from the historical facts.

And by the way, I've found that when people say "it's irrefutable," they usually really mean, "Please don't test me on this, because I don't know what I'm actually talking about, and don't want you to point that out."

Just saying.

[Vitruvius]

You deny any responsibility for any thing Catholicism has done, but you leap to its defence

I'll say again: I'm not a Catholic. Let them answer for themselves. I do not defend or attack them.

you demand science is responsible for Piltdown man

"Demand"? I have not done so, nor can I. The Piltdown Man Scandal happened, that is all. You can read about it yourself. And the only reason it happened is that credulous and unscrupulous Evolutionists got ahead of themselves and embarrased themselves. They have still never owned their responsibility, of course; because that's not how Scientistic ideologues do business.

But neither they nor it had anything to do with actual science.

It's irrefutable the Church arrested and tried Galileo

Well, the Catholics did, sure; but to be fair to them, it's very refutable that he wasn't asking for it, too. He was a pretty cantankerous fellow, and he did pick a fight. And after his arrest, to be fair to them again, they did treat him pretty gently...much better than they treated my ancestors, actually.

You see, a person who's telling the truth gives credit fearlessly, wherever credit is due, and calls a foul where a foul exists. That's good history. And I think that really need to go and read the history; this cartoon version of Galileo's story does nobody any good. And clearly, you got it from the old canards, not from the historical facts.

And by the way, I've found that when people say "it's irrefutable," they usually really mean, "Please don't test me on this, because I don't know what I'm actually talking about, and don't want you to point that out."

Just saying.

Ad hominem rebuttals don't deserve a response, but this is important - because science matters. Not just as tool, but as an understanding of reality; an understanding of reality that religion and philosophy has denied and displaced over 400 years, to maintain the religious, political and economic ideological architecture.

Scientists have issued several 'dire warnings to humanity' over climate change, until recently ignored - because science has no recognition as an understanding of reality. Lately, governments have found it in themselves to admit the bare fact of climate change - but then act ideologically in regard to that bare fact. Problem with that is, a lot of the poorer nations are not able to afford to address climate change. And if they don't - our efforts are for naught.

In terms of a scientific understanding of reality, climate change is a global problem, and magma energy is a global solution. Windmills and nuclear power are national solutions, poorer nations cannot afford. So there's no path to sustainable development for over 3 billion people; who are nonetheless, not content to remain poor. And why should they?

A NASA commissioned study conducted over 40 years ago, shows there's limitless clean energy available from crustal magma bodies. But presumably, that fact doesn't serve some ideological interest - because it's been ignored, while governments tell us to pay more, have less, tax this and stop that. An approach that - in my estimation, won't work.

It will cripple us, and make us less able to meet the challenges ahead. Magma energy would be a massive boost; windmills will keep us forever dependent on fossil fuels, because they are not reliable and only produce enough energy to take the edge off emissions, when the wind is blowing. However much 'green jobs' kind of sense they make, they are a scientific white elephant.

That's why I'm fighting you on this; because science matters.

[Immanuel Can]

Ad hominem rebuttals don't deserve a response,

I agree. But I made no ad hom comments. I spoke entirely about facts of the narrative itself. Nothing was a personal attack, so I can't really imagine how that applies.

Scientists have issued several 'dire warnings to humanity' over climate change,

Has this got some relevance? I can't see that it does.

magma energy is a global solution

Well, we've got a ton of problems to work out with any solution, and none is really global. My personal fave would be hydrogen, but it's just not workable right now. Maybe science will do something about that: but so far, we're behind the eight ball on that solution.

A NASA commissioned study conducted over 40 years ago, shows there's limitless clean energy available from crustal magma bodies. But presumably, that fact doesn't serve some ideological interest...

I expect it's an economic issue. All the companies that make defective technologies like windmills and solar panels get their huge wads of funding from the government. They won't give that up easily. And as for the oil and gas industries, they're the incumbents on that, so they'll keep going.

But the real problem is actually consumerism. The oil and gas industries will end when they have no market for their products; but right now, that means we all will have to learn to live without things like plastics and computers...not an easy thing to do. So for now, I think the oil and gas people are likely to stay busy.

This magma idea...I haven't heard of it. I'll have to look it up. Still, this has nothing to do with anything we were talking about, I think. We were discussing whether science and religion were inevitably at odds, I think. I know of no opposition to any energy source offered on any "religious" basis.

That's why I'm fighting you on this; because science matters.

Funny: I think science matters too. I think it matters so much that we ought to use its methodology, and insist on proper experiments, data and testing of theories, and not give the name "science" to any hokey stuff. And I would say that a theory that keeps proving wrong, and never seems to get any better, has no claim to being "science".

The claim that homo sapiens are evolved is like that: clearly, science and it are not part of the same entity at all. It is not actually a testable hypothesis, but a historical narrative; and every piece of evidence that appears seems to force its proponents to revise -- though they never seem to admit they were wrong, even so.

So I don't think we're arguing about that point at all. Science is just great. But the Ascent of Man is a just-so story, not anything to do with science.

[Vitruvius]

Ad hominem rebuttals don't deserve a response,

I agree. But I made no ad hom comments. I spoke entirely about facts of the narrative itself. Nothing was a personal attack, so I can't really imagine how that applies.

So long as you're agreeable!

And by the way, I've found that when people say "it's irrefutable," they usually really mean, "Please don't test me on this, because I don't know what I'm actually talking about, and don't want you to point that out."