本帖最后由 lzhizhao 于 2015-5-10 20:25 编辑
To Lily:
I am sure you have prefect reasons to form your believe, but you did not fully consider the counter arguments. Considering both for and against reasons to make decision is call "the process of making inform decision". There are more than enough reasons to support that the earth is the centre of the universe; also, there are more than enough reasons to support that our earth is flat; if you do not consider the counter reasons.
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” –Bertrand Russell
Religion and science are two very different, incompatible fields. Religion is operating on authority; therefore,it is always seeking, picking and choosing evident to support what's in the doctrine. However, in the scientific field, whenever a new theory is invented, or hypothesize; they immediately start trying to disprove it. If that’s not enough, a scientific article has to be pair reviewed (criticize and scrutinize by other scientists in the same field) before publish in science journal or other publication. This scientific method of seeking truth is far more humble, elegant, beauty, sophisticated and in its own way very spiritual. It’s this methodology of discovering the world around us that make human society flourish.
And this methodology did not come easy; for 600 hundred years between 500 to 1100 AD, most of Europe are ruling under the feet of catholic church; any scientific discovery that post threat/discomfort to the church will be put to an end; they burn all the books they can burn, if that’s not enough, they burn all the libraries they can burn, even so still couldn’t satisfy the need to abolish knowledge, they burn the librarians (Library of Alexandria). 700 years, we lost most of ancient Romans knowledge and all ancient Greek knowledge almost disappeared completely, there is no major scientific discovery for this period, not until Renaissance of the 12th century. Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas at around 12th century, first developed the philosophical system of emphasizing logic and reason in investigation of our philosophical question and theology, instead of using revealed truth (revelation of unknown “fact”by divine power from god). Roger bacon(1210 – 1293 AD), philosopher and scientist, first called of rejection of blindly acceptant of religion doctrine. Francis Bacon (1561 -1626 AD), first lay the philosophical foundation of reasoning for scientific enquiry. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642 AD), discover the heliocentric system was right and once again contradict the religious revealed truth, science and religion finally and completely each going on its own way. From then on, science can breathe freely, can explore, investigate, enquiry without the confinement from church. We discovered cell theory and germ theory,which significantly reduce human suffering and pain. Each step of progress we made, there never short of obstruction from religious groups and individuals.
You are very smart; in intelligent quality standard, you would be far more superior to me. Though, you need a better reasoning and logic to utilise your intelligent. And reasoning and logic has not much to do with IQ but critical thinking, analytical skills and philosophy. In December 2014, on my flight back from Dunedin, I met a physic major andphilosophy minor student, and he said “If you can’t logically defend and idea,then you shouldn’t believe in it.” I quite like how he phased it.
Our opinions have impact on our action and decision making, that further have consequence in our life. We suffer social pressure but also giving out the same pressure to our friends and family. I keep thinking about the girl - Stella we met in Life church on Sunday (1/03/2015). She seems like the kind of person that does not have strong opinion, easily persuaded; very misfortunately, the first few church services she went to are all about church laying out social pressure to force people to pay tithing. Imagine her, losing 10% of her income now, until she have her family and her family continually losing part of very important source of well; imagine that 10% of her income can be used to pay for toys, swimming classes, music classes or purchase sport equipment for her children, but now, it is paid to the very wealthy church. If you think about it, every believe we have has internal and external consequence.
The internal and external consequence we talked about in the last paragraph is in a micro scale; what happen if the entire nation is become very godly and divine; is that a very good thing? Do you know that two third of the stars have arabic name (list)?That’s because around AD 800 to 1100 (while Europe is in dark age), Islamic countries are the intellectual centre of the world. Baghdad was the hub of all idea and knowledge. It’s in this period in Middle East, we have advance of engineering, biology, medicine and mathematics; they invented Arabic numeral, create whole new fields of algebra and algorithm. All of this happens in this 300 years period, however, what happen after 1100 AD? Why they stop progressing in field of science? Why Middle East and Islamic countries become what they are now? In 12th century AD, ImamHamid al-Ghazali (1058 – 1111 AD), a Islamic Muslim that successfully restore Islamic faith to most middle east countries; he had the philosophy that mathematics is the work of evil; he single handily caused the intellectual foundation of enterprise collapsed and has not recovered since. After WWII, American has the excelled of scientific discovery in particle physical, in the upper heavier elements table,most atomic elements were discover by American scientists. During 1954 to 1957, for the period of cold war between American and Soviet Union, American reintroduced God into government as part of national identity. They add “In God We Truth” into the dollar bill.That is the beginning of American becoming a heavily religious country. Today, the majority of maths, science studentsin America are not American; they are Chinese, Koreans or Indian. Research also shows young American are under performance in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving.
Always, I wonder, what if religion has not brought us into dark age, has not burn those books and libraries; what if Middle East did not have the flourish of Islam; how much better our world would be? How much more scientific advance we are now?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ghazali
http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/scientific-experiments/scientific-method.htm http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/measuring-americas-decline-in-three-charts[size=14.666666984558105px]
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发表于 2015-3-2 23:01:07
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