Yep, the collapse of Roman Culture and the filling of the power gap by illiterate migrating tribes certainly had nothing to do with it.

Just think, if it wasn't for Christian monasteries and the Orthodox Church preserving work left over from the Classical era, we'd still be centuries behind trying to recover from the loss.

Science should thank God for Christianity.

Actually, we should be thanking Islam. Without them we'd have no recollection of Aristoteles or Avicenna...

I was using "after the fact" as an expression in the sense that religious faith is faith based on nothing and prior to example whereas scientific "faith" is based off of reason and comes after example.

The "We can't ever be sure of anything" argument is just impractical.

This post was edited by Handcuffs on May 20 2010 09:41am

LOOL

Actually, that one's pretty true. The church saved a whole shitload of information from antiquity that would have been lost without them.

That was a knee jerk reaction.

strange isn't it, I spend my time saying I am open to every idea, opinion, etc., but the one thing that keeps me mostly from believing we came from mush in a swamp... Is the fact that our ancestors were not originally human.
Quite ignorant on my part since it's only cause I don't want to believe it. oh well. What makes me not believe in creationism? Well I can't quite say I don't believe in it, I only can say I find it hard to believe a book written by men, put together by men, changed by men, and even thoughts of changing and adding books come from current men. Jesus was a man introduced to us by other men. I just can't understand how "God" can play such a huge role in every ones life (according to the men who wrote to the books), but is nowhere to be seen today. An all knowing being should understand that men are not meant to blindly follow something without proof. This is not faith, this is ignorance and an easy way to pretend your not depressed anymore cause you found something so great.
I wish I could be a hero and change the world for the better, but lets face it.. I'm a plumber that is going to start trucking soon. I am not important. I can hope all I want, but I will make no major effect to this globe. I will experience it getting worse and worse until I die. The thought that I am so minute in this world, that I have no real purpose other than to survive is sometimes unbearable. Of course it would be easy for any one to have a near death experience or huge guilt trip and disappointment in ones self, to say fuck it I believe in "God". Now there is nothing to worry about cause "God" will provide. Minus the fact your sitting in prison, living on welfare, can't walk/speak/hear/see/etc. For people not raised and instructed from early age there is a god, it is the realization that we are useless in this life except to survive and make sure our off-spring can survive.(Also the only reason we NEED our off-spring to survive is so we don't feel guilt not wearing a rubber and spawning more people into this fucked up existence.) Evidence is lacking on both sides to prove anything 100% to what I have been reading so far (thank you to some from this post who pointed me around a little, I'm still reading up on everything). It's kind of funny though that so many of us won't take ourselves out of these hardships many of us are over-burdened with, is because the bible tells us we will perish eternity for leaving this world on our own terms (not many will understand fully what I mean by that). I wonder why we look to the past to predict our future. Men have always been known to make things better, then fill their mind with greed and power and make things worse until we start over. Maybe I am doing this wrong thinking as I type. Perhaps I should say fuck you idealists. All I want in life is to be happy. Simply happy.

TLDR

you come in this thread to read the last post?
I'd say you failed at troll except I responded, you win idc.