(April 19, 2012 at 12:37 am)radorth Wrote: So I take it, by the deafening silence, we agree that Protestants led the Enlightenment, from Newton to Payle, to Locke, to the Founders to the abolitionists, (Quakers and Methodists mostly), with help from 2 Catholics noted on the science side.
Voltaire we should give very little credit to, since he wrote a justification of slavery at the same time Wesley condemned it. Paine said virtually nothing a Protestant had not said before him
Fair enough?
Not really. Not at all. If you are going to discredit Voltaire, I have to discredit Luther and Calvin, since they executed witches and intellectuals, and were really no better than the Church they were protesting against.
As for Paine, you'll have to show me where protestants were making these kinds of statements:
Quote:All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
Quote:Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.
Quote:Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
Quote:It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication — after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
