The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #121446 Message #2662093
Posted By: Little Hawk
22-Jun-09 - 10:34 AM
Thread Name: BS: Science and Religion
Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
In ancient times the science people and the spiritual philosophers WERE the same people. This was true in ancient Greece and in China, to give two great examples. They were the best educated people of their time, the most enlightened people of their time, and they made many great discoveries in the realm of practical science as well as being at the forefront of spiritual thought.
The main reason that religion later acquired such a bad name for being "unscientific" and irrational was the general decline in western civilization that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. The Dark Ages were dominated by a Christian church that became mired in ignorance, authoritarianism, and gross superstition and that hurled itself into a lengthy war with an equally fanatical Muslim society.
There was eventually a reaction against all that in what is termed the Reformation, and the emerging science community in Europe saw themselves as in opposition to organized religion from that point forward.
And that is why we have the present disputes between people who imagine that science and spirituality are mutually exclusive...not because spiritual thought and science are naturally opposed to one another, but because we are still emerging from a particularly stupid and ignorant and bitter historical phase of 3 specific organized religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
They took it way too far one way with their ignorant authoritarianism. People attempting to exorcise the demons of our collective past are now taking it way too far the other way with their gross materialism and are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as the saying goes. Man does NOT live by bread alone, and a civilization with no sense of spirituality is one that prepares its own demise, in my opinion.
People like Mao, Pol Pot, and Stalin are typical of the monsters that arise out of such a civilization. They are just as bad...or worse...than any religious fanatic that ever existed, because they have a religion all their own: gross materialism. Gross materialism leads eventually to a complete collapse in morality, because it is utterly devoid of compassion or mercy. It seeks only victory...at any cost.