(November 25, 2018 at 1:44 am)blue grey brain Wrote:(November 24, 2018 at 5:55 pm)unfogged Wrote: I think you may be conflating atheistic with secular. Many of the greatest scientists were deeply religious but their achievements meant being able to set aside magical thinking to investigate the actual evidence. I'd be surprised if many weren't inspired by their god beliefs and concluded that what they found was evidence of their god's subtlety and wisdom.
If you read any of the references I left, you'd probably find out that the scientific revolution/age of enlightenment was both secular and atheistic in nature.Side-note: Being inspired to do science, doesn't generate any science. As you'll probably find out on Wikipedia/atheism, modern science came about by secular or atheistic means.
- I think the issue here, is that most people feel atheism stops at rejecting or lacking belief in God. A somewhat thorough read-through of Wikipedia/atheism will underline how incomplete that picture of atheism is.
Side-note: It is also not surprising that most humans were theists, including scientists back then, especially because mankind did not always have modern science (so religion or archaic science/protoscience preceded it) or some of the modern tools which can be used to properly disregard religion. Also note persecution of the non-religious, as you'll see on Wikipedia/religious persecution.
Most historians of science today reject the conflict thesis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis