A simple challenge for atheists

[bob96]

Saying religion stunts science is your subjective opinion. Do you have any objective evidence?

My favorite, though there are others, INQUISITION. To defy the 'science' of the church was considered heresy. This was punishable by anything from jail time, torture to death.

The church had become well and truly corrupt by 300AD, with the invention of the Pope and the Catholic church founded in Rome.

Jesus said "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him" (1 John 3:15)

The definition of a Christian is someone who believes in Jesus AND follows what Jesus taught. Believing in Jesus only is not enough to make someone a Christian. "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder." (James 2:9)

The perpetrators of the Inquisition were not Christians, and had nothing to do with the real church, despite their claims. Anyone can claim to be acting in the name of God, though it is only by their actions can you actually tell whether they are a Christian or not.

[The Grand Nudger]

The christian faith, if the myth is to be believed - started out corrupt...with the murder of a better man to smooth over all of the failures of all of his followers for the rest of time. Count me out, and disgusted.

[bob96]

Saying religion stunts science is your subjective opinion. Do you have any objective evidence?

First of all, I feel like I need to highlight the immense hypocrisy of you dismissing what I say as an opinion and asking for evidence, while earlier you were defending your case with little more than assertions with no objective evidence of your own. So which is it Bob? Do we need objective evidence for our assertions, or not? You can't ask it of others while refusing to present any of your own.

But since I do actually appreciate the need for evidence, even if you're only willing to consider it necessary when views you disagree with are aired, here: religiously motivated censorship of science standards for education, religiously motivated lawsuit stunting science education standards, religious groups smearing basic scientific concepts due to ideological disagreement, religion causes people to reject established scientific facts and to hold their belief in spite of the evidence, and scientific literacy decreases scaling with the fervency and strength of religious belief.

Now, since I've shown you mine, how about you show me yours? Where's this objective evidence detailing the existence of god outside of the universe, where he creates physical laws?

If religion does attempt to stunt science, then objectively it is failing miserably, as the stats I posted above attest to.

Once again, "religion stunts science," and "there are no religious scientists," are two different claims, of which your stats address the second, not the first, which is the claim under discussion, and which I already rebutted in the post you're responding to here. Are you even reading my posts before you respond?

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.

[IATIA]

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My favorite, though there are others, INQUISITION. To defy the 'science' of the church was considered heresy. This was punishable by anything from jail time, torture to death.

The church had become well and truly corrupt by 300AD, with the invention of the Pope and the Catholic church founded in Rome.

Jesus said "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him" (1 John 3:15)

The definition of a Christian is someone who believes in Jesus AND follows what Jesus taught. Believing in Jesus only is not enough to make someone a Christian. "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder." (James 2:9)

The perpetrators of the Inquisition were not Christians, and had nothing to do with the real church, despite their claims. Anyone can claim to be acting in the name of God, though it is only by their actions can you actually tell whether they are a Christian or not.

---

Your question was: "Do you have any objective evidence?". It does not matter whether you believe them to be 'true' christians or not. All religion is corrupt. I showed historical fact that religion stunts science. It could have been devil/demon worshippers, I do not care. I answered your query and delivered proof. Religion stunts science.

[Jenny A]

The church had become well and truly corrupt by 300AD, with the invention of the Pope and the Catholic church founded in Rome.

Jesus said "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him" (1 John 3:15)

The definition of a Christian is someone who believes in Jesus AND follows what Jesus taught. Believing in Jesus only is not enough to make someone a Christian. "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder." (James 2:9)

The perpetrators of the Inquisition were not Christians, and had nothing to do with the real church, despite their claims. Anyone can claim to be acting in the name of God, though it is only by their actions can you actually tell whether they are a Christian or not.

Somehow we've left that lonely atom in an anomaly in it's universe behind.

But should you really want to discuss what Jesus actually said, The Gospel given the label Mark, which is by far the earliest, is the best evidence. Mark says that Jesus expected the son of man to descend on a cloud before the generation of his listeners had died. He was apocryphal prophet. And like John the Baptist before him, Jesus was a failed prophet. What he said would come to pass didn't. The kingdom of god is a 2000 years too late. Paul too expected the kingdom in his lifetime. Wrong. It didn't happen.

[bob96]

But since I do actually appreciate the need for evidence, even if you're only willing to consider it necessary when views you disagree with are aired, here: religiously motivated censorship of science standards for education, religiously motivated lawsuit stunting science education standards, religious groups smearing basic scientific concepts due to ideological disagreement, religion causes people to reject established scientific facts and to hold their belief in spite of the evidence, and scientific literacy decreases scaling with the fervency and strength of religious belief.

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.

[The Grand Nudger]

Except for the nagging bit about how you've already been presented with demonstrable and quantifiable examples of precisely how it does precisely what Esqu claimed it did -in the post you quoted-. That it isn't entirely competent, in this regard, is just another example of how incompetent it is in -every- regard. People are curious, even when they're told not to be. Ask your boy adam..and your girl eve?

Your response. "But there are christian scientists!" Yeah..no shit...there are alot of you christians laying around....what else did you expect? The majority of inmates are christians as well - want to take the credit where it's due on that one?

[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.

[Cyberman]

So it's not a god you worship, it's a book.

[Creed of Heresy]

Well, there's a bunch of hypotheses. I can't remember where I read it, exactly, but one summed it up perfectly; our minds are simply just not capable of understanding the way the universe came to be. In all likelihood it has something to do with dimensional stuff. We can't really comprehend a world in five dimensions or six dimensions or what have you because we simply don't exist in such a state, just as a creature of two dimensions couldn't comprehend our third.

At least, not with present science, we can't.