Too much religion makes people dumb

[Argus]

10 hours ago, betsy said:

 

Uhhhh.....based from what I stated above regarding "enlightenment,"  maybe Argus need to change the title of his thread. 

You're still not getting it. The thread isn't that religious people are bad or dumb. It's about how religion, taken to extremes, destroys science and progress. That's what happened to the Muslims. They decided that nothing mattered but God, and worshipping Him, and reading His words and stories. They eschewed science, math, and all other knowledge, really, leaving them far, far behind as the members of other religious groups progressed. The same thing is happening with the Haradi. They exhaust their poor kids with 10-12 hours a day of education, but almost all of it is about God and the Torah. Haradi men are little more advanced, knowledge wise, than their thousand years ago ancestors.

Now I don't know the Haradi very well, but one of the problems with Islam is the theme that everything is by the will of God, which means you really don't have to do anything yourself. By contrast, Christians are not told to simply rely on God to provide all, but to use their own initiative. The Muslims and Haradi have abandoned any thought of that in favour of endless prayer and study of God.

[betsy]

2 hours ago, Argus said:

You're still not getting it. The thread isn't that religious people are bad or dumb. It's about how religion, taken to extremes, destroys science and progress. That's what happened to the Muslims. They decided that nothing mattered but God, and worshipping Him, and reading His words and stories. They eschewed science, math, and all other knowledge, really, leaving them far, far behind as the members of other religious groups progressed. The same thing is happening with the Haradi. They exhaust their poor kids with 10-12 hours a day of education, but almost all of it is about God and the Torah. Haradi men are little more advanced, knowledge wise, than their thousand years ago ancestors.

Now I don't know the Haradi very well, but one of the problems with Islam is the theme that everything is by the will of God, which means you really don't have to do anything yourself. By contrast, Christians are not told to simply rely on God to provide all, but to use their own initiative. The Muslims and Haradi have abandoned any thought of that in favour of endless prayer and study of God.

 

I'm talking about the title itself, Argus.  Read my response to Moonlight Graham. 

I'm not criticizing your OP, btw......I just couldn't help but be amused about the irony.

Edited April 12, 2017 by betsy

[Argus]

There are single zip codes in New York and Massachusetts which have produced more of enduring value, scientifically, artistically, ethically, politically, than the entire Muslim world has produced in a thousand years. And if you think that claim is inaccurate, or it contains a shred of bigotry, you are lying to yourself. The country of Spain translates more books into Spanish every year than the entire Arab world has translated into Arabic since the Ninth century. Arabs are 5% of the world's population, but they produce only 1% of the world's books, and a higher percentage of those are religious than anywhere else. Now that's just the Arab world, but do you really think adding Iran and Indonesia and Malaysia to the list is going to make a big difference?  - Sam Harris

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQbZNSEbYFk

 

[blackbird]

On 2017-04-11 at 0:08 PM, Goddess said:

I think cognitive dissonance comes into play a lot, too.

How else do you explain why seemingly intelligent people can completely reject evolution, a science supported by modern medicine, anatomy, genetics, chemistry, paleontology, geology, and much more, and truly believe it makes less sense than a millennia old fairytale about a talking snake, a dirt man, and a rib woman.

I had a religious devotee argue at length that "the fact" that men have one less rib than women is proof of creation.

The theory of evolution has been rejected by a number of scientists.  I watched a four or five evening slide presentation by Professor Philip Stott on creation versus evolution.  Dr. Stott is a noteworthy scientist who once believed in evolution but dismissed it 45 years ago after a lot of scientific consideration.  He demonstrated on slides how the mathematical laws of probability make evolution an impossibility.  The theory of evolution is based on the claim of random chance processes.  It claims that over a period of time, the right atoms and molecules will come together to form the building blocks of life which will then eventually advance to higher life forms.  But the problem with this is Prof. Stott said is there is not enough time (in terms of billions of years or more) for the right combinations to come together to form life.  He likened it to giving a monkey a typewriter and letting him type randomly until he finally types the complete works of Shakespeare.  How long would it take.  Well the Professor made some calculations and found that it is essentially an impossibility because there is not enough time available to complete the project by chance.  The same with the forming of life.  It couldn't happen that way because the chance of it randomly happening would take an unreasonable amount of time.  For all intents and purposes, it's just not a possibility that it could happen that way.

Another thing professor Stott pointed out is the problem with the big bang theory.   The universe is a very orderly mass of stars, galaxies, black holes, etc.   According to the big bang theory, there was at the beginning an initial explosion and the universe came out of that.  The problem is an explosion produces disorder or chaos, not order.  So that means it could not have been an explosion at the beginning.  The universe is very orderly. 

Also, the big bang theory still does not answer the question of where everything came from.  Scientists have theories of course, but they cannot answer the question of where the matter or universe came from.

Edited April 14, 2017 by blackbird

[Guest]

38 minutes ago, blackbird said:

The theory of evolution has been rejected by a number of scientists.  I watched a four or five evening slide presentation by Professor Philip Stott on creation versus evolution.  Dr. Stott is a noteworthy scientist who once believed in evolution but dismissed it 45 years ago after a lot of scientific consideration.  He demonstrated on slides how the mathematical laws of probability make evolution an impossibility.  The theory of evolution is based on the claim of random chance processes.  It claims that over a period of time, the right atoms and molecules will come together to form the building blocks of life which will then eventually advance to higher life forms.  But the problem with this is Prof. Stott said is there is not enough time (in terms of billions of years or more) for the right combinations to come together to form life.  He likened it to giving a monkey a typewriter and letting him type randomly until he finally types the complete works of Shakespeare.  How long would it take.  Well the Professor made some calculations and found that it is essentially an impossibility because there is not enough time available to complete the project by chance.  The same with the forming of life.  It couldn't happen that way because the chance of it randomly happening would take an unreasonable amount of time.  For all intents and purposes, it's just not a possibility that it could happen that way.

Another thing professor Stott pointed out is the problem with the big bang theory.   The universe is a very orderly mass of stars, galaxies, black holes, etc.   According to the big bang theory, there was at the beginning an initial explosion and the universe came out of that.  The problem is an explosion produces disorder or chaos, not order.  So that means it could not have been an explosion at the beginning.  The universe is very orderly.

Chance wise, it's fairly remote, I have to admit, but compared to the chances of there existing a supreme being who created the whole thing by sheer force of will it's about as remote as the chances of a monkey, typing randomly, hitting a vowel every now and then. 

[Wilber]

Quote

Another thing professor Stott pointed out is the problem with the big bang theory.   The universe is a very orderly mass of stars, galaxies, black holes, etc.   According to the big bang theory, there was at the beginning an initial explosion and the universe came out of that.  The problem is an explosion produces disorder or chaos, not order.  So that means it could not have been an explosion at the beginning.  The universe is very orderly. 

Explosions create disorder, gravity puts it back together again.

[Bonam]

13 hours ago, blackbird said:

The theory of evolution has been rejected by a number of scientists.  I watched a four or five evening slide presentation by Professor Philip Stott on creation versus evolution.  Dr. Stott is a noteworthy scientist who once believed in evolution but dismissed it 45 years ago after a lot of scientific consideration.  He demonstrated on slides how the mathematical laws of probability make evolution an impossibility.  The theory of evolution is based on the claim of random chance processes.  It claims that over a period of time, the right atoms and molecules will come together to form the building blocks of life which will then eventually advance to higher life forms.  But the problem with this is Prof. Stott said is there is not enough time (in terms of billions of years or more) for the right combinations to come together to form life.  He likened it to giving a monkey a typewriter and letting him type randomly until he finally types the complete works of Shakespeare.  How long would it take.  Well the Professor made some calculations and found that it is essentially an impossibility because there is not enough time available to complete the project by chance.  The same with the forming of life.  It couldn't happen that way because the chance of it randomly happening would take an unreasonable amount of time.  For all intents and purposes, it's just not a possibility that it could happen that way.

Another thing professor Stott pointed out is the problem with the big bang theory.   The universe is a very orderly mass of stars, galaxies, black holes, etc.   According to the big bang theory, there was at the beginning an initial explosion and the universe came out of that.  The problem is an explosion produces disorder or chaos, not order.  So that means it could not have been an explosion at the beginning.  The universe is very orderly. 

Also, the big bang theory still does not answer the question of where everything came from.  Scientists have theories of course, but they cannot answer the question of where the matter or universe came from.

Hogwash. 

An explosion is spherically symmetric and very "orderly"*. It is only to the extent that there were slight imperfections in the mass distribution that mass in certain areas would later coalesce into gas clouds which would later form stars and galaxies. Black holes came about through entirely different processes, much much later (they are the result of the deaths of massive stars). Regardless, the universe as seen today is not at all "orderly" in any meaningful sense, it is full of very random, very violent, very energetic processes.

As for the supposed calculations about evolution, have you looked over the assumptions in the calculations? Chances are there are values and timescales assumed that are either wrong or simply don't have any scientific evidence to support them. 

*Look at this footage of a big explosion. Can't get much more orderly than that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_jFQw78uzo&list=PLvGO_dWo8VfcmG166wKRy5z-GlJ_OQND5&index=14

 

Edited April 14, 2017 by Bonam

[-TSS-]

Over here in Finland there is some Orthodox Easter-service going on on TV. I quite like the Orthodox-sermons but one thing really disturbs me about that occasion; the Finnish language of the sermon. Finnish is simply not the language of the Orthodox-church and any sermon held in Finnish smells fake miles away.