A simple challenge for atheists

[Esquilax]

So you're claiming that religion is "attempting" to stunt science? Whereas in actual fact, people with religious beliefs are making the vast majority of scientific breakthroughs.

I'd say religion does more than make the attempt, Bob; all that money and time the school districts waste on lawsuits and challenges to actual science by ideologues could be spent educating the youth in the sciences. Since it isn't, that's a demonstrable detriment to science, caused by religion.

And I suppose you must have missed the last couple of links I gave, which were to studies showing that the more religious you are, the less scientifically literate you tend to be. Religion. Stunts. Science.

Also, you're still trying to defend your position with the ineffective "religious people are scientists," argument, which does not address the issue at hand. Are you just not listening, or do you think that saying an incorrect thing multiple times makes it somehow correct? I'd like to add, to my previous comments on the matter, that those religious scientists achieve their success only by ignoring the teachings of their religions; the bible makes numerous claims that god is not to be tested, that questioning is a sign of little faith from the true believers, but all that science is, is testing. To do honest science, like those christian scientists do, they'd need to consider the possibility that the bible's claims could be wrong, and often, they are. Religion being an impediment that those scientists surmounted does not mean it's less of an impediment to the minds of others. You're wrong forwards and back, when you make the claim you do here.

It seems you're referring to radical minority groups that don't represent the whole. If the majority of Christian churches really were against science, and it was indoctrinated into people from childhood, then it doesn't seem possible that the majority of Nobel Prizes would have been awarded to these science hating God believers.

Sorry, your numbers don't add up.

Except now you're moving the goalposts and adding additional claims that I never said; the question under consideration was whether religion is a detriment to science, and I've shown that it is. You can't then widen the scope and expect me to claim that the majority of christians are against science, or what have you, because that was never what we were discussing. The failure is yours to stay on topic, but the fact is that all of those religious scientists were not aided in their work by their religion, were not given any special guidance or intellectual acuity that isn't available to others, so there's no positive effect of religion on science, while the negative effects are right there in my links, and dismissing them as fringe groups doesn't mean they cease to exist.

The question was whether religion has a detriment to science, and it does; if you erase religion from existence those great scientists would still be capable of doing their work to the same degree, while those creationist nuts wouldn't be around to cause trouble for science. So if you remove religion from society you lose nothing of value, but the overall picture of science is improved by the vanishing creationists; ergo, since the only effect of removing religion is the removal of obstacles to science, religion stunts science. And we're done here.

And if you're tempted to just reiterate that they're fringe groups, I'll remind you that my last two links polled religious people of all affiliations, from biblical literalists to more moderate christians, and in all demographics the presence of religion coincided with a decrease in scientific literacy from the norm. The more religious they were, the sharper that decline in scientific knowledge. The correlation is there, whether you like it or not; point to religious scientists all you want, but scientists are only a subset of the population of humans, and the fact remains, as scientifically demonstrated, that religion has an adverse effect on the scientific knowledge of the populace as a whole. If you're just going to insist we focus on religious scientists then you're dishonestly cherrypicking the data, because you can't form an accurate picture of how religion affects science among people if the only people you're willing to consider are those that are already successfully working in the scientific field. That kinda skews the results, and I hope I don't have to explain why that is.

I'm sorry Bob, but "people" is a larger group than "scientists," and if we're talking about which group bespeaks the larger effect here, human beings is, quite simply, the larger group. Your baseless dismissals fly right in the face of the scientific method, and you're sitting here telling me that religion doesn't stunt science?

Still waiting on that objective proof of god from you, since you're so into evidence, by the way.