Stephen T-B

I think if your child were dying of small pox, being cured of a “spiritual ailment” would be very low on your list of priorities.

Theology didn't teach anybody how to preserve an autumnal abundance so that it could keep people fed in the late-summer dearth nine months later.

A slave on a sugar plantation, being whipped by the driver's lash and forced to work a cane crushing machine which regularly kills its operators, wouldn't, perhaps, have worried very deeply about being freed from sin.

I don''t know of a single war stopped by a theologian.
And if the churches did anything about Segregation in the Deep South and Apartheid in South Africa, it is news to me. On the contrary, I do know that Apartheid was supported by the Dutch Reformed Church, and that churches in the Deep South were as segregated as every other institution there.

ComestibleVenom

Whispers,

It is no accident, no fluke, that each and every puddle fits it's hole. But it has nothing to do with anybody wanting it to be that way. It's a consequence of the structures involved, the natural product of totally mindless forces operating in a universe that is overwhelmingly inhospitable to intelligence and life.

Don't be too eager to project your own properties of the universe, it's simply misleading.

DMB

It might be seen in that way. But religion spends a lot of time and human resources on things like building churches, mosques, temples, etc. and on paying for priests. Religion is certainly not the only way of getting people to work for a common goal. To me religion is mainly a waste of time and resources.

When they weren't deciding who to persecute next, perhaps. The centuries of the rise of science at least coincided with the Enlightenment, which led to a huge interest in bettering the conditions of all kinds of human being. I say "coincided", but I don't think it was that much of a coincidence. The kinds of thinking that produced modern science also produced the Enlightenment. It is that kind of thinking that led to the concept of human rights. Various theistic religions tend at the very least to subordinate human rights to the overlordship of a god or gods.

To be fair to religion, I would say that on the issue of slavery, although many xians saw nothing wrong with slavery, some did and were committed campaigners against it.

Mageth

No. Why, and why do you find your question amusing?

Whispers

I was just asking in good humour and no offense intended....Just making light of this conversation ya know?

emotional

Don't hold your breath, Whispers. Science has a consistent track record of pleasing atheists, materialists, naturalists only. There has never been a single discovery in science supporting theism or supernaturalism. I've long despaired of science having any consoling message for mankind. My beliefs (in God and in the afterlife) are in spite of science, not because of it.

Jobar

Science isn't about consolation, emotional. It's about *inspiration*.

Next to our deeper fears
We stand surrounded by
Million years
-Yes

emotional

That's why I have faith in addition to science. Science brings out the bad news, faith the good news.

scumble

science doesn't *have* any message at all. That's why we have Philosophy.
It's a shame you think of it as bad news, as science enables this forum to exist, makes cars safer, helps people stay healthy. It's indirect influence, but without it, our lives would not be immensely comfortable. A comparison with Afghanistan should make you think twice about considering science "bad news".

emotional

Tell that to Richard Dawkins.

Sure, it makes life more comfortable. But it also changes the picture of what life is all about. Mankind thought he was at the centre of the universe. Science brings bad news: he is just on a planet orbiting one star which is among many in one galaxy among many. Mankind thought he was a special, central creation of God. Science brings bad news: he is just another animal, nothing special. And if the bad news of neuroscience is to be believed, then we are all walking on a conveyor belt towards total oblivion. Great. The pinnacle of our advancement has been to find out that there is no purpose at all. Just great.

I still believe in God, purpose and afterlife. In spite of science. I accept heliocentrism and evolution, but I can't give up those three tenets, never mind what science says. I'm not feeling too happy about living in this age of uncertainty and doubt, where one has to work hard in order to maintain belief in God, purpose and afterlife; I'd be much happier in the Middle Ages, where faith and science did not clash.

Faith For Today