Heathen Dawn

Thanks for the link, Albion. That's very interesting. It's amazing how religious beliefs can have such an influence of how a person thinks about scientific matters.

Man, this is pathetic! A person deals with cutting-edge science in his life, and at the same time clings to a slew of millennia-old myths. I really can't understand theistic scientists.

demoninho

Just imagine where humanity could be today if we never had these abrahamic religions, probably 500 further (but then again we wouldn't exist either)

wdog

yeah heathen i read that. that's why i said i can't believe how such a bright fellow could be that way. Prof. tour is doing some fine cutting edge research, I am somewhat familiar with his carbon nanotube work. BUT I guess there will always be a few, just look at the list of physics nobel laureates

http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/index.html

now most of those people are probably like us (feynman, weinburg, einstein ect.), and i have also read from sci. american that something like 95% of the academy of sciences are atheist, as you find when you get to the very elites among sceintists. but notable here among the laureates is Abdus Salam:

http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/index.html

so even among elites there will always be the errant one. What i can't figure is simply how someone like salam can explain how virtually none of his smart friends can see allah in their work. How also the do christians like james tour explain how salam is inspired by the wrong religion?

and here's just an interesting tidbit I found doing google research

http://tcfreenet.org/people/hoel/statman.html

premjan

without the Abrahamic religions?

Well, definitely much further back. Without a strong Christian sentiment, the USA would never have been created or probably functioned as well as it did.

Calzaer

Funny, I don't see anything at all Christian about the creation of the United States. We went ~50 years without a Christian president, for crying out loud.

Also note that the Treaty of Tripoli, signed under John Adams' administration, states directly that the United States is in no way founded on the Christian religion. Is this an example of lying for Jesus?

Jabu Khan

WEEZ cant use all them perty liddle resources over their yet Wilber as we hadnt not yet found no Gawd.

Gregg

That's an interesting claim. Care to substantiate?

Seems to me that the success of the U.S. was due to factors far more complex than this.

After over 1,000 years in power in Europe, Christians and the Christian monarchs who governed them hadn't exactly made vast strides toward representative democracy.

It wasn't until:

1) The Enlightenment reintroduced Greek and Roman concepts of representative democracy to society

2) The printing press made it easier to share ideas and educate the masses

3) Increasing commerce led to the development of an educated and powerful middle class that demanded more rights

4) The Reformation and King Henry VIII's break with Rome broke the absolute power of the Vatican

5) Increasing scientific knowledge coupled with increasing material wealth accelerated the secularization of Western culture

That the seed of democratic government was planted.

The first Christian communities established in the New World were not in any sense democratic.

The men who promoted democracy most passionately were primarily Deists, Unitarians, and liberal Christians. (It IS is incorrect to say that most of the founding fathers were not Christians--quite a few were Baptists, and I believe there were also a few each of Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians who signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.)

A number of the founders had harsh words for established churches and Christian orthodoxies, feeling they existed only to suppress men's minds and secure power for the clergy.

Christian denominations (the Baptists in particular!) ended up supporting separation of church and state mainly because they realized the population of the U.S. was so diverse that trying to make any single Christian denomination the state religion would result in sectarian warfare and much bloodshed...the very thing they and their ancestors had left Europe to escape. Fortunately, there was a strong desire among everyone not to repeat past mistakes of history.

Let's also not forget that among the colonists, especially the frontiersmen, there was a strong independent and individualistic (even selfish) streak that had little to do with religion. There was a vast land to conquer and people wanted their own piece of it. Nobody wanted to be beholden to a landowner or a monarch.

In the Civil War, Christian churches and clergy in the South fiercely supported and defended the institution of slavery, calling it Biblically justified (which it is). It was in the highly religious South that people began putting subtle pressure on Robert E. Lee to take the reigns of power from Jefferson Davis and become a military dictator.

To be fair, many more Christians in the North obviously supported the abolition of slavery, but the Civil War, while not exactly a religious war, clearly demonstrated the threat overzealous religious belief--Christian or otherwise--poses to individual liberty and democracy.

After the war southern Christians founded the Ku Klux Klan, established Jim Crow laws, and regularly beat and lynched blacks.

In the 1950's it was mainly God-fearing, "patriotic" Christians who bought into Joseph McCarthy's "Red Scare" against the "Godless Commies" and pushed to have "under God" added to the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" added to the money, in clear violation of the separation clause.

Now it's true that, since the U.S. is overwhelmingly Christian, Christians must by and large have been supportive of democratic principles, or the U.S. would not still be a democracy. Still, I am not sure that there is anything inherent in Christian belief or Christian character that makes Christians (or believers in Abrahamic religions in general) more likely to be supportive of democracy than believers in other faiths, or than atheists and agnostics. More likely, Christians in the U.S. have supported democracy because it's part of the culture they've been raised in.

Remember that Germany was overwhelmingly Protestant Christian and was probably more like the U.S. than any other European country (most Americans are of German descent), yet the Weimar Republic failed there and the German public overwhelmingly supported Hitler and his establishment of a military dictatorship.

Military dictatorships were the predominant form of government in South and Central America for decades, despite the pious Catholicism that prevails there.

Also, successful democratic governments have been established in Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines, none of which are Christian. The only successful democracy in the Muslim world is Turkey, I believe.

So no, I really don't think there is anything inherent in Christianity or in the Abrahamic religions that led to the success of democracy in the New World and then in Western Europe. It was more a series of historical coincidences that helped prepare Western culture for the adoption of this form of government.

Gregg

wdog

and oh yes, how those other 2 abrahamic religions have led to nothing but peace, prosperity, and freedom wherever they are at

Coragyps

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SEATTLE, Sept. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Forty scientists from across Texas have joined a group of over 250 other scientists from around the world in declaring their skepticism of a central tenet of Darwin's theory of evolution and urging that "careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." The list of signers of this declaration was released today by Discovery Institute and is available upon request.

The full statement signed by the scientists reads: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

"The Darwin-only lobby tries to claim there is no scientific debate over the strengths and weaknesses of neo-Darwinism, and this proves that's just bogus," said John West, associate director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture. "There are growing numbers of scientists, not just in Texas but around the world, who are skeptical that natural selection and random mutations alone can explain the development of life."

Included in the national list of scientists is Nobel Prize nominee Fritz Schaeffer. Another recent signer to the statement is evolutionary biologist Dr. Stanley Salthe, who had this to say: "Darwinian evolutionary theory was my field of specialization in biology. Among other things, I wrote a textbook on the subject thirty years ago. Meanwhile, however I have become an apostate from Darwinian theory and have described it as part of modernism's origination myth. Consequently, I certainly agree that biology students at least should have the opportunity to learn about the flaws and limits of Darwin's theory while they are learning about the theory's strongest claims."

"The number of scientists who dissent from Darwin's theory is growing despite their coming under unprecedented personal attacks," said Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman. "These scientists should be commended for having the courage to stand up to Darwin-only activists who are trying to censor them and silence this legitimate scientific debate."

About Discovery Institute

Discovery Institute promotes ideas in the common sense tradition of representative government, the free market and individual liberty. Current projects include work in technology, science and culture, the economy, transportation, and the bi-national region of "Cascadia." Visit Discovery online: www.discovery.org.
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Signatories include some of the "usual suspects," and also Forrest Mims - he's apparently a genius electronics guy and rather exceptional crank.

The journalist who sent this to me said:
Damn! I think I'll nominate myself for next year!

charlie d

It's actually even worse: since one of the the Nobel Committee's rules is that its members cannot under any circumstance release the names of nominees, anyone who claims to be one is either lying, or they nominated themselves, or they were nominated by some sycophant who then told them they did so.