mark kennedy said:
Here is a little etymology for you:
"The word religion is derived from Latin "religio" (what attaches or retains, moral bond, anxiety of self-consciousness, scruple) used by the Romans, before Jesus Christ, to indicate the worship of the demons.
The origin of "religio" is debated since antiquity. Cicero said it comes from "relegere" (to read again, to re-examine carefully, to gather) in the meaning "to carefully consider the things related to the worship of gods".
Later, Lucretius, Lactancius and Tertullianus see its origin in "religare" (to connect) to refer "the bond of piety that binds to God".
Initially used for Christianity, the use of the word religion gradually extended to all the forms of social demonstration in connection with sacred."
Definition of religion from atheism
Thank you for the etymology. But it doesn't change the fact that the current definition of that word requires a faith-based belief in the supernatural.
Religious duty was one of the driving forces that created the intellectual environment that made the Scientific Revolution possible.
The emergence of secularism from under the shackels of the former church was the intellectual environment of the scientific revolution, and I have already proven that when we had this conversation before.
I said truth is better winnowed by doubt and scrutiny than by blind gullability and faith, which means about the same thing.
Right which is why evolution as an explanation for our origins requires blind faith.
And yet you yourself have already many times admitted that you accept evolution and natural selection. How you do flip flop.
Whatever is opposite of the truth, that is generally what you spout in these teret outbursts of yours. But of course evolution has an overwhelmiing preponderance of demonstrable evidence where creationism has nothing but professional liars to support it. The fact that we've actually seen it happen a few times both in the lab and in the field certainly helps. Has anyone ever seen anything miraculously created? Then there's the fact that we've actually put it to work in a series of billion-dollar industries in agriculture, live stock, virology, and bioengineering. Are there any wealthy evengelists out there conjuring anything? Is there any practical application that can be garnered out of creationism? I guess not since you yourself have repeated a few times that there is no reason whatsoever to believe in it. But with evolution we still have loads more evidence to think about like the evident relationships revealed through taxonomy, and how they're consistently confirmed by genomic sequencing, the wealth of transitional species in the fossil record, the mutations (such as I have already shown you) which were beneficial, and passed down through the descent lines, and of course the genetic homologies that can only be explained by descent from common ancestry. I could go on and on of course, but you probably wouldn't understand what I was going on about, and will only reject whatever I say however you can, even if you know yourself that you're wrong.
We first faught against a nation who's religion was so important to them that their prejudice sought to punish everyone who believed differently. Then once "safe" in our own country, the puritans oppressed and tortured the Quakers in the same way the English had oppressed them both before. Religious judiciaries burned anyone said to be a witch on mere testimony alone because they knew not what science even was.
That is wrong on so many levels that I have to wonder if you are actually aware of religion and it's profoundly important influence on the forming of our government. The Quakers suffered early for their faith and especially the fact that they were pacifists and the most inclusive of the early colonists. It is no accident that Philidelphia was the cradle of our democracy and that was due in large part to the longsuffering toleration of the early Quakers, ever hear of William Penn?
Yes I have. But what does that have to do with the fact that the puritans really did torture and oppress the Quakers due to religious prejudice?
Now I don't know where you get you're information about the Witch Hunts of Salemtown in the summer of 1692 but 20 people were hung and none of them were burned.
You're right. I confused that with the witch burnings in Europe. Of course that doesn't at all detract from the point I was making, does it.
Most of the burning of witches was done in France where secularism florishes to this day.
Too bad it didn't flourish then, or there wouldn't have been any witch burnings at all.
And how does Torquemada fit in with you weird and baseless allegations against secularism? He wasn't French, wasn't secular, and was much worse with his victims than the French or the Puritans were.
Cotton Mathers used what he considered a scientific evidence called spectral analysis. In his book More Wonders he describes the dream interpretation without quoting the Scriptures and when he alluded to them and none of this had anything to do with religion. Now when the jurists repented of their atrocities they quoted and cited Scripture in everyone of their collective confessions.
See? Just like I said, they didn't know what science even was.
Japan fought for an emporer who was hailed as the god of the Shinto. We beat them only because we placed science ahead of religion, which allowed us to conceive the bomb. Then in a moment of national humiliation, we forced the Japanese emporer to publicly denounce his own divinity. We were the godless atheist horde in that case.
Zen Buddism is essentially atheistic and the secular philosophy most like Buddism is the transendental philosophy of David Hume.
True, but that doesn't have anything to do with what I just about the Shinto and our being the atheist horde calously destroying their religion.
Rome fell due to it's reckless pursuit of conquest with purely secular motives for it. In the 3rd century Rome was falling apart and it was only due to the moral concensus of the Christian faith that it rose like a Phoenix from the ashes and endured for just over 1,000 years.
Christianity along with its persecution of all the ancestral religions and its formation of the Inquisition was as a significant factor in the destruction of the Roman Empire. It did not "rise like a phoenix". Within a few generations of Constantine's conversion, the last glimmers of that great empire died, and were replaced only by the "Holy" Roman church of the dark ages.
The Reformation reclaimed this essential cornerstone of Western Civilization and at the heart of the movement was the call of Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone). John Locke was a Puritan Whig and his work was effectivly plagurized in the Declaration of Independance where the legal authority cited was Divine Providence. This was the founding charter of the United States and in each of the State Constitutions that led up to the Federal Constitution religion was protected as the first order of buisness. You need to learn you're history.
And you need to learn yours as well, since the freedom from religion was as much an issue as the freedom of religion, and you know it too.
Japan is almost exclusivly secular and China has shunned religion politically. The Chinease government have been opposed to religion is all of its form and dispite the systematic persecuation of religious leaders China is rich in religious culture.
But we're talking about Korea and Vietnam where local religions were still quite prevalent during our involvement in those conflicts.
Before WWII Europe had become exclusivly secular and Russia in particular persecuted Christians ruthlessly. Is this the model of secularized atheism that you would have America follow?
No. I would never endorse such an inaccurate model as this. Stalin's Russia did persecute Christians and Jews and just about everybody else. But Europe was not, and indeed still is not, "exclusively secular", and the nazis certainly weren't. They were a collection of Catholics, Odinists, Hellenists, and Hindus, among others, most of which were obsessed with the occult, and not at all secular. More importantly, you've said nothing at all here to counter the main point, which was that we have never gone to battle with any "tyrants who placed science above God's word".
The model I would endorse is one where reason and rationality are valued higher than superstitious hallucinations. In my world, we wouldn't have had quite so many Texas women murdering their children because they though God wanted them to.
Muslims has had brilliant astronomers, mathmatitions and philosophers. It is the secularization of their religion that is poisoning the minds of many Muslims.
You're half right. Muslims
had brilliant astronomers, mathmatitions and philosophers. But the theocratic mindset of uber-religious Islam have since stifled and retarded their capacity. Very sad.
The many errors in this post alone have been addressed and soundly refuted.
Not yet. But I don't have time finish. You post so many at once, that I can't possibly correct them all in the time that I have.
Religion is not the terrible evil that you would have us believe and it was the moral concensus that religion produces that made our Republic and science possible in the first place.
You are ever the hypocrite. In this one post, you've tried to blame the witch burnings, ignorance of science, lack of morality, all the Southeast Asian conflicts, and the Third Reich all on secularism. But secularism is not the terrible evil that you would have us believe. Religion isn't always evil, but it is often insane. It does not produce morality, and has only ever sought to hinder science, just as you are trying to do now.
That's you're history for today but thanks for the witty satire, it was very entertaining. If you are ever interested in a formal debate on the role of religion in forming the United States and natural science as we know it just let me know.
Since you have no accountability whatsoever, and refuse to be reasoned with, then I cannot debate you without moderators to impose some accountability on you. All you have ever done is to make minor meaningless insults in incindiary remarks without relevance with no honest intent to speak of. And so you are beneath my time.
I have two more tests to study for, and don't have much more time this week for this board. When Oncedeceived posts her reply, I will begin to address that, but still will not be able to post it for some time. But I will not waste any more of my time on you, or anyone else who shows as little intellectual honesty as you do.
