Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Sauron · 09-03-2003, 09:18 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bede
I really think you should all stop inserting 'never' into my statements. That way you will avoid attacking strawmen and actually address my arguments.

That's all your arguments *are*, Bede - an army of strawmen. All we have to do is go back to your original "ten atheist myths" for proof of that.

Quote:

As for the Open University, Sauron's comments are typical American arrogance and ignorance. Luckily one of the most intelligent atheists on these boards studies at the OU so they will be able to set him right.

More nonsense. My comments were taken directly from Open University's own website; in fact, I included direct quotations from their own words.

It isn't arrogance to say that their student body is has a substantial number of people with qualifications below conventional universities. That is, in fact, exactly what Open University's own website says:
http://www.open.ac.uk/about/

Quote:

The OU's undergraduate level courses do not require any entry qualifications. Over a third of people starting these courses have qualifications below conventional university entry requirements. Despite this, around 70% of OU students successfully complete their courses each year.

Nor is it arrogance to say that Open University's focus and mission is as an online / nights and evenings / correspondence course university. They were created to provide an educational outlet to a particular segment of society - part time higher education students. Again, from their own website:
http://www.open.ac.uk/about/

Quote:

Nearly all OU students are part-time and about 70% of undergraduate students remain in full-time employment throughout their studies. More than 150,000 OU students are on-line.

The fact that an atheist studies there doesn't change the character and mission of Open University: they are a provider of distance education - not a traditional university. My statement that they're roughly equivalent to DeVry University in the USA is a very accurate comparison.

Quote:

Imagine if Sauron turned up in Lindberg's class and started off on his Christianity held back dissection speil. He'd have his work cut out!

Not really, since Harvard and U Penn both seem to agree with me. As do others, which you've failed to address.

Quote:

BTW, the Lindberg quote Sauron says he is still waiting for, is in the second post of this thread which perhaps he should read.

Trapped by your own words, Bede. In your earlier ego-stroking session, you tried to upbraid me for not providing a proper reference:

When refencing book, give a quote and page number.

By your own standards, your reference to Lindberg is insufficient. Try again.

Quote:

As I won the Christian argument

In your own mind - not in anyone else's.

Quote:

and conceded the possibility of new evidence, as yet unseen, in the Islamic one, I'll bow out of this thread now.

Translation: you cannot refute two precise quotations (both *properly* referenced and highlighted in bold red font) that clearly indicate that dissection in Islam both occurred and pre-dated the practice in so-called Christian Europe. Unable to face your failure, you will now try to claim victory and exit out the back door, hoping nobody realizes that you were check-mated and had no response.

Celsus · 09-04-2003, 12:21 AM

Let's keep the discourse in this thread civil. Thanks.

Joel
BC&H Moderator

09-04-2003, 02:19 AM

Suaron, grow up. I conceded you might have a point on Islam although you couldn't prove it. You lost on Christianity. That's tough but sadly true. So why not go and track that Savage Smith article down and find a statement as clear as Huff's but which contradicts him.

As for your patronising remarks about the OU, you brought them up to try and besmirch Colin Russell's status as a scholar. That was an insult both to him and the OU but pretty much what I expect of you.

The Lindberg page number is p 342-3. As you say, I should have included this.

B

Sauron · 09-04-2003, 11:18 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bede
Suaron, grow up. I conceded you might have a point on Islam although you couldn't prove it.

I did prove the point -- with no less than two fully referenced sources:

Reference 1:
Indeed, many scholars in Islam lauded the study of anatomy, primarily as a way of demonstrating the design and wisdom of God, and there are some references in medical writings to dissection,

Reference 2:
Despite the fact that experimentation on the human body was prohibited by religion, some anatomic dissection and observation seems to have been undertaken, and the pulmonary circulation was described by Ibn Nafis.

The source journals and the page citations can be found in my opening post.

As for maturity - you're projecting again, Bede. If you were more emotionally mature, we wouldn't be watching you desperately trying to claim that my point was not proven-- days ago. Your inability to refute the sources I provided is translating into a very lame fingers-in-your-ears peformance.

Quote:

So why not go and track that Savage Smith article down and find a statement as clear as Huff's but which contradicts him.

The red, bold, underlined statements above are quite clear - no one except you is having any problem with them. Which is apparently just part of your deaf/dumb/blind act, whenever you encounter facts you can't refute. Moreover -- and as I told you before -- Savage-Smith wrote the NIH article that I referenced above, so I have already provided a quote from Savage-Smith.

Quote:

You lost on Christianity. That's tough but sadly true.

I did not lose. Both Harvard and UPenn back my position. Your source (Russell) is rife with bias, which you failed to disclose.

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As for your patronising remarks about the OU, you brought them up to try and besmirch Colin Russell's status as a scholar.

*sigh* Wrong on all counts.

1. The quotes were not patronizing; they were 100% accurate. I took them from the OU's own website, for chrissakes. Are you saying that OU is being patronizing towards itself?

2. I brought these points up in order to counter your exaggerated claims of Russell's credentials. Your frustration is understandable; but entirely your own fault. You wouldn't have fallen so hard, if you hadn't exaggerated so high.

Quote:

That was an insult both to him and the OU but pretty much what I expect of you.

Pot-kettle-black. Your style of "research" reminds me of JP Holding / Robert Turkel: ignore sources you don't like, manufacture strawmen en masse, and bluster/belittle anyone who refutes you.

Celsus · 09-05-2003, 01:12 AM

Sauron,

I suggest you drop the attacks on the Open University which you know nothing about. Having studied in the UK, I can vouch for Bede's comments that it is a highly respected university. The fact that people with low qualifications can enter and then come out with excellent qualifications only speaks volumes about the staff there, and not that it is a third rate degree mill which you seem to imply.

For the 2000/01 Academic year, it was ranked 10th, above the likes of King's College London, St. Andrew's and Loughborough, all of which are very good institutions in their own right (My university, East Anglia, came in at 26th, and includes a world class environmental science department, an excellent creative writing course which Andrew Motion (the UK Poet Laureate) and Kazuo Ishiguro attended, among others). IIRC, the OU has been improving as well, so it may well be ranked higher in recent years.

Joel

09-05-2003, 02:14 AM

Sauron,

Quote:

Reference 1:
Indeed, many scholars in Islam lauded the study of anatomy, primarily as a way of demonstrating the design and wisdom of God, and there are some references in medical writings to dissection,

Reference 2:
Despite the fact that experimentation on the human body was prohibited by religion, some anatomic dissection and observation seems to have been undertaken, and the pulmonary circulation was described by Ibn Nafis.

The point is that neither of these mention human dissection. It is probable, given what I quoted, that animal dissection was all that took place - Huff mentions monkeys in particular. This is, for instance, all that Galen was able to do in the Roman period. So we need a source that says human dissection took place in Islam. Savage Smith says, in your first quote "Systematic human anatomical dissection was no more a pursuit of medieval Islamic society than it was of medieval Christendom." which means she does NOT think human dissection was happening. She is wrong about medieval Eruope after 1300 as I have shown. As I have also said, in an effort to be fair, there may be further evidence about Islam we have not seen, but we need it to make a decision.

On Christianity, peer reviewed textbooks and journal articles trump the internet - especially when you link to an out of copyright version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Some more information of Colin Russell:

Quote:

Colin Russell is Professor Emeritus at the Open University in the Department of History of Science and Technology, which he founded in 1970. He is Affiliated Research Scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. His publications include The Earth, Humanity and God (UCL Press, 1994), Michael Faraday: physics and faith (Oxford University Press, 2000) and C.A.Russell (ed.) Chemistry, society and environment: a new history of the British chemical industry (Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, 2000). Colin Russell is past president of the British Society for the History of Science, past president of Christians in Science, and past vice-president of UCCF. He is a Chartered Chemist and FRSC (Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry).

In other words Russell is an incredibly distinguished scholar and your comments about him are totally pathetic. Given he is an affiliated scholar of where I am doing my PhD, I might even take them personally...

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Gurdur · 09-05-2003, 03:06 AM

I'ld just like to add that the OU often runs get-together tutorials etc. etc. --- it is not purely distance education.

Moreover, it is fully accredited and has a very good academic reputation.
The fact that many entry-level students do not have the normal level of entry qualifications yet manage to finish their courses well --- with final exams at the same level as elsewhere in the UK --- actually speaks well for the OU and its purpose.

Oh, and BTW, signing a letter that creationism be allowed to be taught does not necessarily make you a Creationist.

I've signed quite a few petitions that homosexual marriages be legally allowed.
To the best of my knowledge and of all my partners' knowledge, I am not at all gay.

Gurdur · 09-05-2003, 03:14 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Sauron

....
the most outstanding of his works are A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896) and Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1910).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's unlikely that Britannica would have referred to White's work as outsanding if it were as error-riddled and biased as you claim. .

Actually, that's an extremely poor and mistaken argument to authority.

The Britannica adjudges works on their coherence and coverage for the time, and for their effect at the time; describing a particular work as "outstanding" does not mean it might not be simply completely false.

Perhaps we copuld look at what the Britannica says on Oswald Spengler or William Morris' religiophilosophical outpourings ?

BTW, this thread might have some tangential connection to discussion here.

livius drusus · 09-05-2003, 04:44 AM

Pardon this lurker's interjection, but there's something from one of Sauron's UPenn quotes that's been nagging at me. From this post (emphasis mine):

Quote:

Vesalius's dissection of human bodies -- and not merely by students, as was common practice, but by himself -- was condemned by the authorities, still subservient to the authority of Galen, and brought upon him the death sentence for grave-robbing under the Inquisition, a penalty commuted only upon his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Because that little "as was common practice" clause rather glaringly supports Bede's point that, well, human dissection was common practice in Christian medieval Europe. If you believe this source is to be accurate Sauron, then Vesalius was targeted by the inquisition (and not in a particularly hardcore manner since he got the easy out of pilgrimage instead of the auto da fe) because of his high profile. Otherwise they would have targeted his students and all the other students who had made a common practice out of human dissection.

Gurdur · 09-05-2003, 10:01 AM

I'ld like to add something here.
As an atheist with scientific training, I am disgusted at the ad hominem's and poisoning-of-the-well going on.

Quote:

Originally posted by Vorkosigan
.....
What, by the way, is Toby Huff's religious stance?

Quote:

Toby Huff, born in 1942, received his Ph.D. from the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in 1971. During 1976-77 he was a Post-Doc Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, sponsored by National Endowment for the Humanities, under the direction of Robert Bellah. In 1978-79 he was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He joined the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 1971 and was promoted to Chancellor Professor in 1997. He is the author of The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West (Cambridge University Press, 1993), which has been translated into Arabic.

Questions regarding Toby Huff's religious stance seem to be well beside the point unless very firmly indeed proven otherwise ---- unless we're going to have a witch-hunt questioning every single recognized acadmic's total philosophical and (ir)religious stance before somehow magically their academic works are admittable in evidence here.

Then:

Quote:

Originally posted by Sauron

Apparently Colin Russell is a creationist as well. He was a signatory to a letter that urged Tony Blair to permit teaching creationism in British public schools

Quote:

This is the text of a letter sent to the Prime Minister, ........

The Prime Minister
The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair M.P.
.......
Dear Prime Minister,

The debate about teaching 'creationism' at Emmanuel College, Gateshead is of concern to scientists, to those involved in science education and to specialists in religious education. We are writing in the hope that the following background information may be useful in clarifying some of the issues involved. The signatories to this letter are Christian academics from all three disciplines.

Creation, creationism and the age of the earth
The religious doctrine of creation - the bringing-into-being of all things by God - is entirely independent of any particular mechanisms involved, evolutionary or otherwise, and it is not affected by scientific estimatesof the age of the universe.

Christian theology portrays the universe as both created and sustained in its entirety by God and rejects any kind of 'God-of-the-gaps' thinking which assigns divine activity to some parts and not to others. Although science is corrigible, across cosmology, astronomy, geology and physics a remarkably coherent picture of the age of the universe emerges. We are convinced that the majority of Christians who have studied the evidence have no problems with the current scientific view of auniverse which is 12 - 15 billion years old.

We recognise that, within Christendom and Islam, there are those who believe creation took place relatively recently - about 10,000 years ago - and that the formation of the Earth occupied six, consecutive, 24 hour days. But we would point out that they reach this conclusion by reinterpreting the scientific evidence on the basis of a literal interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis. The term 'creationism' is often applied to this view, sometimes to the disquiet of those of us who also believe in divine creation but do not find it necessary to reject mainstream science. In what follows we shall refer to the 'Young Earth' view as 'Young Earth Creationism'.

It might be argued that those who hold a Young Earth Creationism position are not, as they think, being extra loyal to the text of Scripture but, on the contrary, are not being careful enough in understanding the diverse literary genres of religious writing. Indeed, Origen, writing in about 225 AD asked,'What man of intelligence, I ask, will consider as a reasonable statement that the first and the second and the third day, in which there are said to be both morning and evening,existed without sun and moon and stars, while the first day was even without a heaven? I do not think anyone will doubt that these are figurative expressions'.

The resurgence of Young Earth Creationism is a relatively recent phenomenon, currently very widespread in America. In the UK it was until recent years fairly limited; but the situation is changing, stimulated by imports of US literature and by visiting speakers. The problems are exacerbated by certain popularisers of science portraying science as an irreligious activity, contrary to evidence about the religious beliefs of many of its practitioners, both past and present. Some have gone far beyond the biology and embraced evolutionism as a surrogate religion! It harks back to the discredited scientific imperialism of the logical positivists who, in the 1930s, set science up as the ultimate test for everything. Both Young Earth Creationists and those science popularisers who assert, in the name of science, the need to choose between evolution and creation, demonstrate the same muddled thinking.

Science, science education and the history of science
Science investigates only the physical processes involved in the origins of the universe and of life. Matters concerning God lie outside its sphere of competence. Science: the National Curriculum for England (1999), wisely requires pupils to be taught 'the kinds of questions science can and cannot answer' as well as 'ways in which scientific work may be affected by the contexts in which it takes place [for example, social, historical, moral and spiritual], and how these contexts may affect whether or not ideas are accepted' (pp 37,46) Events at Emmanuel College could illustrate this, taking care not to present them in an anti-religious way. A healthy trend is already evident in science education with the production and trialling of new Advanced Supplementary [AS] level specifications on understanding the nature of science.

Recent studies indicate the inadequacy of the popular 'conflict' view of science and religion. Historians of science such as professors Bowler, Cantor, Brooke and Russell have spelt this out and one comment by Cantor sums it up: 'the conflict thesis is like a great blunderbuss which obliterates the fine texture of history and sets science and religion in necessary and irrevocable opposition. Much historical research has invalidated the conflict thesis.' Although in academia, over recent decades, dialogue between religion and science has been more in evidence than earlier notions of conflict,the media only recently seem to be picking this up. Confrontation helps viewing ratings and the temptations are not always resisted.

Religious education and cross-curricular themes
A recent search of Agreed Syllabuses for religious education shows that about two thirds of them contain entries relating to issues of religion and science. Many pupils do have questions about science and religion,including the sort that have arisen over recent events at Emmanuel College and this is far from being the first time such issues have attracted public attention.

It seems clear to us that there is a need for religious education and science education teachers to be able to handle such cross-disciplinary issues; especially since science specialists now have a mandate to handle the 'spiritual' dimension of their subject, something which places an unfamiliar responsibility upon their shoulders.

We believe that this issue needs attention from the Government and look forward to hearing from you as to what you propose.

Yours sincerely,

Empahsis added by Gurdur

So Sauron is wrong in attributing this letter as a support of Creationism as it is understood in the USA, especially Young-Earth Creationism.
That is nothing more than a completely inaccurate mischaracterization.
The so-called "creationism" Sauron alludes to in this letter would seem to be theistic evolution, not creationism as it is promulgated within the States.

Quote:

Originally posted by Vorkosigan

Bede, you've been soundly spanked. .....

Vorkosigan

I'ld say it hasn't been Bede who has been "spanked" here; and given the erroneous, ignorant and mistaken attack on the Open University as well in this thread, maybe we can do without such emptily emotive and inflammatory statements.

_________

Oh, and BTW, I don't even agree much with Bede's main argument --- I just dislike the tactics being used here.
They demean SecWeb's attempts to become more of an academic discussion board.

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09-04-2003, 12:21 AM	#22
Celsus Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Singapore Posts: 2,875	Let's keep the discourse in this thread civil. Thanks. Joel BC&H Moderator

09-04-2003, 02:19 AM	#23
Bede Guest Posts: n/a	Suaron, grow up. I conceded you might have a point on Islam although you couldn't prove it. You lost on Christianity. That's tough but sadly true. So why not go and track that Savage Smith article down and find a statement as clear as Huff's but which contradicts him. As for your patronising remarks about the OU, you brought them up to try and besmirch Colin Russell's status as a scholar. That was an insult both to him and the OU but pretty much what I expect of you. The Lindberg page number is p 342-3. As you say, I should have included this. B

09-05-2003, 01:12 AM	#25
Celsus Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Singapore Posts: 2,875	Sauron, I suggest you drop the attacks on the Open University which you know nothing about. Having studied in the UK, I can vouch for Bede's comments that it is a highly respected university. The fact that people with low qualifications can enter and then come out with excellent qualifications only speaks volumes about the staff there, and not that it is a third rate degree mill which you seem to imply. For the 2000/01 Academic year, it was ranked 10th, above the likes of King's College London, St. Andrew's and Loughborough, all of which are very good institutions in their own right (My university, East Anglia, came in at 26th, and includes a world class environmental science department, an excellent creative writing course which Andrew Motion (the UK Poet Laureate) and Kazuo Ishiguro attended, among others). IIRC, the OU has been improving as well, so it may well be ranked higher in recent years. Joel

09-05-2003, 03:06 AM	#27
Gurdur Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Buggered if I know Posts: 12,410	I'ld just like to add that the OU often runs get-together tutorials etc. etc. --- it is not purely distance education. Moreover, it is fully accredited and has a very good academic reputation. The fact that many entry-level students do not have the normal level of entry qualifications yet manage to finish their courses well --- with final exams at the same level as elsewhere in the UK --- actually speaks well for the OU and its purpose. Oh, and BTW, signing a letter that creationism be allowed to be taught does not necessarily make you a Creationist. I've signed quite a few petitions that homosexual marriages be legally allowed. To the best of my knowledge and of all my partners' knowledge, I am not at all gay.

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