Religon V Technology

[placebo]

Haha, someone complaining about technology from his computer. Fairly ironic.

 

[Zarrix]

Haha, someone complaining about technology from his computer. Fairly ironic.

Hah, tell him to go and write a handwritten tome about the subject

 

[Sloth]

without religion - you would be in the dark ages too.

lol :d

 

[bit_pattern]

Hah, tell him to go and write a handwritten tome about the subject

Pen and paper = technology

Writing is basically a technological artefact. Maybe he should express his argument through interpretive dance or something?

 

[AndSmithMustScore]

I hope the OP was joking but in the event that he was serious, just ask yourself...would you rather be living in the Dark Ages or now?

And there would be no Global Warming but for technology.

 

[AndSmithMustScore]

And how is that a negative?

Over population of the planet.

 

[linga_is_no1]

You keep saying that but it's not really true.
Greece brought us western philosophy. Christian philosophers don't exist without the Greek legacy.

Christians restricted a lot of advancement in learning - eg: Galileo.

Agreed, but Christians have given us 2000 years of philosophy, modern day thought would not exist without the contributions of Christian philosophers. The fact they came after someone doesn't make their achievement any less great.

And I disagree with 'christians restricted a lot of learning -for example Galileo'. You pull out one example, and then claim that provides blanket proof that Christianity restricted learning. The case of Galileo was more of a case of 'personality problems' as opposed to scientific restriction. The Church was largely accepting of Galileo's theory, the problem was Galilieo insulted the pope by calling him stupid, in his time that was not a clever thing to do. I suggest you look in to this before making claims that you don't understand. Furthermore Galileo was a devout Catholic, the father of modern day science was a Christian.

I really can't be bothered going deeply in to these arguments, but where do you think universities came from? The Catholic Church.

We would not be here now if it wasn't for the contributions that Christians and largely the Church made to science. That is a fact,

That's two, not exactly the world. And I thought philosophy was only for wanky toffs?

You couldn't write an essay on the last 2000 years without mentioning both of these people- there are also many others which I am sure you are aware of-Jerome, More, Bonaventure.

I like philosophy,as a Catholic you have to, we have inherited the largest intellectual tradition known to man. My bitch before was about threads being hijacked when they didn't need to be.

 

[Richo83]

Western philosophy is just a footnote to Plato, Christian philosophy especially. Christian philosophy is just one part, connected to others.

You couldn't write an essay on the last 2000 years without mentioning both of these people- there are also many others which I am sure you are aware of-Jerome, More, Bonaventure.

What about the last 2000 years? That's like saying one can't write an essay on the last 2000 years without including Spinoza or Leibniz, maybe in some topics but overall? Meh.

 

[TheBloods]

We would be here now. We would be different. Possibly better.

As for claims I don't understand, I have a history degree with a number of subjects covering aspects of Christian history, so I have looked into these things, often in great depth. I'm currently doing a shorter thesis on the papacy and politics in the crusades. Some of your statements make a mockery of your claims to understand these things.

The Catholic Church could be quite restrictive on what was allowed to be taught. Abelard established one of the first universities at Paris because of Church censorship.

Galileo was just one of many examples. And of course he was a Christian - everyone was. He was found guilty of heresy because heliocentrism constradicted the scriptures.
Another example was the Church's opposition to the development of Egyptology as it disproved Bible dates.

I haven't stated that the Church stopped all development and was the fount of all evil, which is not correct, but your extreme opposite view is just as wrong.

 

[evo]

As for claims I don't understand, I have a history degree with a number of subjects covering aspects of Christian history, so I have looked into these things, often in great depth. I'm currently doing a shorter thesis on the papacy and politics in the crusades.

As a bit of an aside, Bloods, have you noticed in your studies many of the more recently written historical textbooks have been totally infested with post-modernist group-think and general irrelevant waffle to the detriment of an investigation into the subject at hand.

Bloody hell, I reckon if i have to read one more extract that is incapable of writing a sentence without a reference to friggen 'narrative','situated' and 'engendering' I'll spew up!

It's 22nd century BC Egypt we are investigating here for crying out loud, not 21st century Melbourne.

 

[TheBloods]

I've seen quite a few academic papers like that, and as I said in another thread I think Melb Uni is quite guilty of that, but most of the information I have collected has little of it fortunately.

 

[Rosstickle]

Over population of the planet.

So you'd be happy for everyone to sacrifice half their lives to save the planet, something that doesn't even experience life?

 

[Cap]

I wonder why people only consider Catholicism as the only religion that may or may not have influenced technology, philosophy and science.

 

[Generalissimo]

Possibly because the Scientific Revolution was primarily European, and Catholicism was the dominant religion there.

 

[bit_pattern]

Possibly because the Scientific Revolution was primarily European, and Catholicism was the dominant religion there.

Except that most of the prior to the European scientific revolution most of the useful developments, like the numerical system that allowed western economic dominance and the most innovative technological developments, were coming out of the Caliphate. The western scientific revolution rested on the shoulders of the muslim world

 

[linga_is_no1]

Except that most of the prior to the European scientific revolution most of the useful developments, like the numerical system that allowed western economic dominance and the most innovative technological developments, were coming out of the Caliphate. The western scientific revolution rested on the shoulders of the muslim world

I would agree with your point about the arabic numerical system, but the Church gave us and subsided almost all the universities of that time, they are and to a large extent remain the cradle of global learning

 

[bit_pattern]

I would agree with your point about the arabic numerical system, but the Church gave us and subsided almost all the universities of that time, they are and to a large extent remain the cradle of global learning

They were learning though from the East.

 

[TheBloods]

Except that most of the prior to the European scientific revolution most of the useful developments, like the numerical system that allowed western economic dominance and the most innovative technological developments, were coming out of the Caliphate. The western scientific revolution rested on the shoulders of the muslim world

A lot of which, in turn, derived from the Greek world.

 

[bit_pattern]

A lot of which, in turn, derived from the Greek world.

Well, maybe, but the numerical system was unequivocally an eastern innovation, as was many of the technological innovations like paper, gunpowder and the compass. No doubt Greece was an equal contributor but the main point here i that they weren't Christian developments.

 

[Richo83]

Except that most of the prior to the European scientific revolution most of the useful developments, like the numerical system that allowed western economic dominance and the most innovative technological developments, were coming out of the Caliphate. The western scientific revolution rested on the shoulders of the muslim world

In many ways you're right bp.

When you use western, it is a term often confused and poorly defined, in your case, I would like to hear what you think western means, but in many senses, the Greeks were western in the sense that they were centered in western society of Europe with quite western ideas (philosophy predating Plato, would've thought) and bloods is right, if western (i.e. post-Greek European philosophy) is a footnote to Plato, then so is Islamic philosophy in many ways a footnote to Aristotle. For instance an underlying reality of substance is quite Aristotelian and western scientific for instance which is why I tend to seek the source not the roots. Before Islam even existed or the Islamic revolution existed, Aristotle's ideas had existed for centuries, so had Socrates' method. So did these people develop the scientific method, or did their followers? I'd say the former even though the latter as you point out is very important.

 

[Richo83]

Well, maybe, but the numerical system was unequivocally an eastern innovation, as was many of the technological innovations like paper, gunpowder and the compass. No doubt Greece was an equal contributor but the main point here i that they weren't Christian developments.

Exactly, I mean Plato and his gang predated Jesus which makes any Christian link impossible. Any link with the Christians to the Chinese and Muslims is always fraught with danger. Numeracy is important but numeracy of what, and effectively the Greeks and the Romans were good at giving us stuff to measure basically, mathematics and science two good subjects in which the Muslims applied their numerical structure to.

I just doubt the Christians were the cradle of learning, it wasn't until the 200s and 300s that Christianity really developed into a social movement, and it's main proponents of Aquinas and Augustine for instance weren't that interested in say answering scientific problems or developing such structures.

 

[bit_pattern]

I guess I was using 'east' in its classical sense, ie. east of the Bosphorus. But even if Islamic ideas were influenced by the west (certainly wouldn't void my previous agument) that doesn't change the technologicqal influence coming from Asia. Why, even the numerical system is best described as the hindu system rather than the arabic system.

 

[Richo83]

I guess I was using 'east' in its classical sense, ie. east of the Bosphorus. But even if Islamic ideas were influenced by the west (certainly wouldn't void my previous agument) that doesn't change the technologicqal influence coming from Asia. Why, even the numerical system is best described as the hindu system rather than the arabic system.

I was actually asking how you define west.

 

[bit_pattern]

As I said, in the classical sense

 

[Chief]

Anyway, back to this nonsense about technology being evil.

Science allows the Earth to feed about a hundred times more humans, and under conditions much less grim, than it could a few thousand years ago.

We can pray over the cholera victim, or we can give her 500 milligrams of tetracycline every 12 hours. - Carl Sagan

'Religion' doesn't feed the masses or cure the sick. Science does.

End of debate I think.