So just what are you trying to tell us Bill. Those who choose to hold a faith are lesser and ignorant people? There are plenty of people who manage to live quite excellent lives without great knowledge of science, or any religion come to that.
Pretty sure I haven't said this, but those who assert that dinosaurs walked the earth 6000 years ago, or that Noah's ark really did hold seven of each clean animal & two of every uclean one, and the flood is all true ... well the jury's in on those, and the verdict isn't good.
Bill, the only facts that are acceptable to you are scientific facts ...
Oh. OK. Thanks for letting me know.
so when you seek to source them from the pool of religion you are bound to come away empty handed. That's the ultimate straw man argument!
Really? How have I set up a straw man here? Religions make claims about reality. Reality is subject to scrutiny. Where doctrine & observable facts fail to coincide, are you suggesting that doctrine wins?
Religion is not about scientific facts
but it makes claims about reality, so opening itself up to scientific testing.
... but if that is your understanding of it then no wonder you struggle accept other peoples less blinkered view of the world and the way it works.
Please explain how a scientific view, that amends its understandings in light of data, is blinkered, yet a religious view that seeks to make reality conform to doctrine, isn't.
If 'facts' were all that life was about then then every successful person in every field of human endeavour would be a scientist and obviously that is not the case.
Really? Good job I never claimed that all life is about, is facts, isn't it?
... Rather than pander to your rather unscientific fixation with the ancients and their goats let us look once again at the influence of later religions whose desire for symbolism led to flying buttress and vaulted domes, both of which were architectural developments which came about due to religion.
Er, no. The development of architecture owes nothing to religion, and plenty to human ingenuity. The church might have been calling the shots & paying the wages, but the problem solving wasn't based on reading entrails or conjuring up spirits. More to do with an understanding of angles than angels.
I have already mentioned the improvement of pigments which was fuelled to a great extent by money from the church but art led us in all sorts of directions such as the desire for decoration and enlightenment, so lets celebrate the good that religion has brought us rather than dismiss it's pagan origins and influence as being nonsensical and inconsequential
I'm quite capable of seeing the good things that have arisen from human effort & ingenuity, however inspired. None of that says anything about the truth of a religious viewpoint.
