Tell me your sweet, sweet lies.

johnson1010 · Sat Jun 18, 2011 10:01 am

Here’s an article I found tackling the impact of Christianity on science.

http://www.pearceyreport.com/archives/2 ... post_4.php

The basic gist being that religion and Christianity in particular is not, and never was a hindrance to empirical science. But in fact, if it weren’t for Christianity, there would BE no science.


	Quote: Christianity Is a Science-Starter, Not a Science-Stopper By Nancy Pearcey The default position for many Americans in the Blue States seems to be that Christianity is a "science stopper"--that religion implies a world of perpetual miracle, closing off the search for natural causes.[3] This is often coupled with the familiar cliché that over the centuries the Christian church has intimidated, silenced, and persecuted scientists. A few months ago, a journalist repeated the shop-worn stereotype, writing that "proponents of Copernicus' theory were denounced as heretics and burned at the stake."[4] A columnist recently wrote that Copernicus "scandalized the world--and more important, the Catholic Church--with his theory of heliocentric cosmology." The same pattern continues today, the columnist goes on: "The conflict of religion and science sounds all too familiar. Darwin still has trouble getting past creationist gatekeepers in some school districts."[5]

Christian proponents LOVE to re-write history whenever it suits their agenda.

the-problems-in-texas-school-standards-starts-and-stops-with-these-folks-t7634.html?hilit= texas school board

And that has always been the case. From the invention of Jesus, to now claiming science is really just a subset of Christianity.

The fact is that the church has a well documented history of repressing science whenever it comes in conflict with dogma. Christianity has never had any problem with science when it had no implications on the veracity of their favored fairy tales, but Copernicus, Gallileo, and Darwin would all be examples of the religious tendancy to try to smother rationality when it has the impertinence to point out the imbedded falsehoods of religious thought.

And the list goes on…


	Quote: In one sense, this should come as no surprise. After all, modern science arose in one place and one time only: It arose out of medieval Europe, during a period when its intellectual life was thoroughly permeated with a Christian worldview. Other great cultures, such as the Chinese and the Indian, often developed a higher level of technology and engineering. But their expertise tended to consist of practical know-how and rules of thumb. They did not develop what we know as experimental science--testable theories organized into coherent systems. Science in this sense has appeared only once in history. As historian Edward Grant writes, "It is indisputable that modern science emerged in the seventeenth century in Western Europe and nowhere else."[7] This fact is certainly suggestive, and it has prompted scholars to ask why it is that modern science emerged only out of medieval Europe. Sociologist of religion Rodney Stark identified the 52 figures who made the most significant contributions to the scientific revolution, then researched biographical sources to discover their religious views. He found that among the top contributors to science, surprisingly only two were skeptics (Paracelsus and Edmund Halley).

This is just silly. The exact practices of modern science would only have one origination, just as the English language has only one origin, but empirical observation and the scientific method are as old as thought.

Observe. Make a prediction. See if it worked.

If it worked, continue down that path, if not, try something else.

This is no magical bullet created by Europeans. Especially the repressed masses of the middle ages.

Empirical answers to previously magical issues has a long history, well documented and easily found, if the author of this article had bothered to look it up.

The Greeks were using empiricism to decode the world as early as 700BC, when Anaximander proposed natural phenomena were responsible for the order of the world, up to and including the origins of man. As opposed to mystic creation. He even put forward a naturally occurring (but wrong) early version of evolution. He was an early pioneer of empiricism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaximander


	Quote: Anaximander was one of the earliest Greek thinkers at the start of the Axial Age, the period from approximately 700 BC to 200 BC, during which similarly revolutionary thinking appeared in China, India, Iran, the Near East, and Ancient Greece. He was an early proponent of science and tried to observe and explain different aspects of the universe, with a particular interest in its origins, claiming that nature is ruled by laws, just like human societies, and anything that disturbs the balance of nature does not last long.[3]

Aristarchus of Samos figured out that the earth travels around the sun over a thousand years before Copernicus. Who made reference to Aristachus’ works when coming up with his own heliocentric model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchu ... _Distances
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_Middle_Ages

. In Fact, the resurgeance of scientific study was largely facilitated by the re-discovery of the buried works of the ancient greeks who had centuries earlier mapped out the path to science in their early phylosophical studies of the natural world.


	Quote: High Middle Ages (AD 1000–1300) The translation of Greek and Arabic works allowed the full development of Christian philosophy and the method of scholasticism See also: Renaissance of the 12th century, Latin translations of the 12th century, and Medieval technology Beginning around the year 1050, European scholars built upon their existing knowledge by seeking out ancient learning in Greek and Arabic texts which they translated into Latin. They encountered a wide range of classical Greek texts, some of which had earlier been translated into Arabic, accompanied by commentaries and independent works by Islamic thinkers. Renaissance From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia As a cultural movement, it encompassed a flowering of literature, science, art, religion, and politics, and a resurgence of learning based on classical sources, the development of linear perspective in painting, and gradual but widespread educational reform. Traditionally, this intellectual transformation has resulted in the Renaissance being viewed as a bridge between the Middle Ages and the Modern era. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man".[2][3] Latin and Greek Phases of Renaissance humanism Further information: Greek scholars in the Renaissance In stark contrast to the High Middle Ages, when Latin scholars focused almost entirely on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural science, philosophy and mathematics,[21] Renaissance scholars were most interested in recovering and studying Latin and Greek literary, historical, and oratorical texts. Broadly speaking, this began in the 14th century with a Latin phase, when Renaissance scholars such as Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), Niccolò de' Niccoli (1364–1437) and Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459 AD) scoured the libraries of Europe in search of works by such Latin authors as Cicero, Livy and Seneca.[22] By the early 15th century, the bulk of such Latin literature had been recovered; the Greek phase of Renaissance humanism was now under way, as Western European scholars turned to recovering ancient Greek literary, historical, oratorical and theological texts.[23]

And this method of early empiricism was only ever lost to begin with because…. Can you guess it?

Religiosity.

Plato had much to contribute to our knowledge, but what few people hear about is the repression of empiricism spear headed by those who followed Platonic thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato


	Quote: Metaphysics Main article: Platonic realism "Platonism" is a term coined by scholars to refer to the intellectual consequences of denying, as Socrates often does, the reality of the material world. In several dialogues, most notably the Republic, Socrates inverts the common man's intuition about what is knowable and what is real. While most people take the objects of their senses to be real if anything is, Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real. In the Theaetetus, he says such people are "eu a-mousoi", an expression that means literally, "happily without the muses" (Theaetetus 156a). In other words, such people live without the divine inspiration that gives him, and people like him, access to higher insights about reality.

Plato used to chastise early astronomers for trying to study the stars directly. It was much more fruitful, he argued, to just think about them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid
The Platonic solids feature prominently in the philosophy of Plato for whom they are named. Plato wrote about them in the dialogue Timaeus c.360 B.C. in which he associated each of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, and fire) with a regular solid. Earth was associated with the cube, air with the octahedron, water with the icosahedron, and fire with the tetrahedron. There was intuitive justification for these associations: the heat of fire feels sharp and stabbing (like little tetrahedra). Air is made of the octahedron; its minuscule components are so smooth that one can barely feel it. Water, the icosahedron, flows out of one's hand when picked up, as if it is made of tiny little balls. By contrast, a highly un-spherical solid, the hexahedron (cube) represents earth. These clumsy little solids cause dirt to crumble and break when picked up, in stark difference to the smooth flow of water. Moreover, the solidity of the Earth was believed to be due to the fact that the cube is the only regular solid that tesselates Euclidean space. The fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarks, "...the god used for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven". Aristotle added a fifth element, aithêr (aether in Latin, "ether" in English) and postulated that the heavens were made of this element, but he had no interest in matching it with Plato's fifth solid.[/quote]

Great strides in mathematics and geometry were made at the time, but these discoveries were treated as mystic relics. To be held as closely guarded secrets from the regular populace. Involving such things as hiding irrational numbers from anyone outside their group. This quasi-science mystic stance is what came to push empiricism under the rug of ancient Greece, and with the fall of the library of Alexandria, Europe would have to wait a thousand years, struggling through poverty, disease, inequity, famine, and filth until the resurgence of rationality, and subsequent reduction of religious monopoly on thought.

more to come on this...

DWill · Sat Jun 18, 2011 11:51 am


	johnson1010 wrote: This is just silly. The exact practices of modern science would only have one origination, just as the English language has only one origin, but empirical observation and the scientific method are as old as thought.

The English language, of course, has more than one origin, its development owing to many sources and historical events. I know this was just an aside in your post, but I cite it as an example of the tremendous complexity that history has in store, which makes giving simple answers to the topic you addressed very problematic. We need encyclopedic knowledge of history to even begin, and even then there isn't a way to definitively answer the question of whether Christianity was a help or hindrance regarding the advancement of learning, which would include science. Because of the openness of interpretation, opinions can go both ways, and I don't think that deciding "for" Christianity would necessarily be due to religious bias. A number of legit historians see the matter that way.

I remain personally agnostic about ever finding an answer to the question. We've never been able to conduct an experiment to discover how things would have turned out had Christianity not happened.

johnson1010 · Sat Jun 18, 2011 4:51 pm

I am thinking of the origin of the english language cladistically. There is a lot of outside influence that tugs and pulls a path of developement from one side to the other, but you can trace that all down to just one germ of origin.

As in, even though humans have interbred with neanderthals and introduced greater complexity to our origins, you can still trace it all back to a common ancestor.

Point taken, though, Dwill.

These things are murky.

And as i said, christian proponents rarely seem to have any problem with sciecne which doesn't step on their toes. Irrigation, vehicles, flight, telecomunications are all given a free pass. They see the benefits in these avenues just as anyone else does.

The problem which always comes to bear is when their myths are challenged. Such is the case with evolution.

I also want to distinguish that i am not making the case that christians in general are against education, or not open to new ideas. After all, most atheists in this country do come from a christian background. I am talking about the proponents of christianity. the ones that have decided to lie for their faith. to reject disproving evidence on the sole basis that it DISPROVES what they really want to believe and for no other reason.

There is significant resistance to science in all realms which confront dogma today. Genetics, stem cells, evolution, even astronomy for the YEC's out there. and i point out that that has been the case in the past, and it is documented.

This lady who wrote the article is trying to lie for god. I have to call her out on that the same way i call out people who want to white-wash american history so that it seems like everything we do is for the good of everybody.

i understand the urge, but it is wrong. We have to retain some shame for the atrocities of the past, or we might start looking at them as viable options for the future.

johnson1010 · Sat Jul 02, 2011 4:14 pm

The garbage they want you to buy:
http://www.theedgechip.com/

It's a little metal disk, though even that may be suspect. Probably a foil-like treatment to a plastic disk, which by it's very presence near a painin' body improves quality of life.

How? Why, through magic! Or, through the placebo effect, possibly.

The lies:


	Quote: Traditional pain medicine works by chemically shutting down the body's signal that tells the brain your Back, Knee, Shoulder or Neck hurts or your hurts. Unfortunately that same chemical can numb other body parts that cause you to become drowsy or slow to react. The Racers Edge Pain Chip works by using frequencies that only affect the pain signal. No chemicals enter your body. Therefore you get pain relief in your Back, Knee, Neck, Shoulder and other parts of your body without the slowed reactions or drowsiness caused by traditional medications. Modern day quantum physics has defined the presence of an energy field within the human body. This is not the same energy known to classical physics. Effectively what physicists have described is the energy field known to Chinese medicine for over 5,000 years. The Edge technology taps into this Traditional Chinese Medicine. Energy within the body flows along well-defined meridians. The proprietary method of programming within the multi-layered chips positively influences these meridians. Resulting in pain relief for Back, Neck, Knees, Shoulder and other painful body parts or an increase in energy.

HAHA! Wow!

AMAZING!

Sounds great. If only ANY of that were true!

You may very well be concerned that everything you see on this site looks like a big pack of lies. others raised similar concerns and you can see those addressed here:

http://www.theedgechip.com/product-info ... -questions


	Quote: What is in THE EDGE Chips? The Chips contain a special blend of intrinsic energies that are formulated to affect certain conditions of the human body.

*1 See the disclaimer*


	Quote: What should I feel and how long should I wear THE EDGE Chips? You will probably feel nothing.

...Really? Hahah.

And now a *brief* disclosure that we are aware all the garbage we presented on this website amounts to a horse fart to the face. Just hot, fragrant, slightly moist air.


	Quote: THE EDGE Pain Management Chips are sold for learning, self-improvement and simple relaxation. (1) No statement contained in this writing, and no information provided by any THE EDGE Pain Management Chips, especially employees, should be construed as a claim or representation that these products are intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease or any other medical condition. The information contained in this writing is deemed to be based on reliable and authoritative report. However, certain persons considered experts may disagree with one or more of the statements contained here. THE EDGE Pain Management Chips assumes no liability or risk involved in the use of the products described here. We make no warranty, expressed or implied, other than that the material conforms to applicable standard specifications. The publisher does not accept any responsibility for the accuracy of the information or the consequences arising from the application, use, or misuse of any of the information contained herein, including any injury and/or damage to any person or property as a matter of product liability, negligence, or otherwise. ...

Forum rules

Tell me your sweet, sweet lies. Tweet This Topic

Who is online

Chat Room Always Open!