Is Christianity standing in the way of progress?

{FOT:RPG}Radman2307 said:
Personally......

I see all religeons as something that gets in the way of progression.........

I am Athiest (obviously) but i respect everyone and everything.......and im sorry but you cant call a bunch of cells a 'independant'........its not.......it doesnt have anything.......

Hell if you feel so strongly about that dont go to hospital for modern drugs as ALL modern drugs are tested on animals........ I personally would think people can say this and destroy the scientific community yet they are also the ones who complain when the NHS waiting lists are too high.....or when a loved one dies in a complicated procedure which could have been solved through some medical advancment which they helpped to stop.......

INFACT........if you feel that strongly.......go live in a cave and eat berries........ Becuase buying food in a supermarket would be unfair to the third-world children who are starving..........

Yes we can all rant about how great this 'God' is.........but the morals are all over the place......
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First of Radman- Welcome to the board.

Secondly- no stream of conscious writing shall be allowed or you shall be burned at the stake! Periods! Grammar! English!

It gives me a heahache.
 
Usually my Grammer is pretty good, must have been tired when i wrote that. Anyhow, thanks for the welcome.....

oh yeah

in england they are called full-stops

not periods. You could confuse a guy that way.
 
and so yes.

What is interesting is that this debate, between religion and science, is moving away from the academics and is becoming more mainstream and political.

In this capacity I think, at least in the US, the religious side has the edge. Religion has a stronger grassroots connection to society than the academy.
 
welsh said:
Secondly- no stream of conscious writing shall be allowed or you shall be burned at the stake! Periods! Grammar! English!

It gives me a heahache.
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Yeah, we recently had a bad experience with that.

{FOT:RPG}Radman2307 said:
Usually my Grammer is pretty good, must have been tired when i wrote that.
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Sorry, but this sentance makes me laugh.
in england they are called full-stops
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Yeah, it does sound funny when they call them "Periods".
Welcome, 's nice to have another Englishman on the forum.

Anyway, back on topic.
I tend to think religion can get in the way of progress, but it's generally only the "extreme" religious views that cause major problems.

Whilst I agree that Chistian morality helped form western morality, that's being rather shortsighted.
If you look at the good parts of our society, you could trace many of them back to Christian teachings. But the same is true of some of the less pleasant parts of society.
You also have to remember the fact that Christianity didn't invent morality. Many of Christianity's teachings are borrowed from earlier religions/teachings/morals/culture.
 
Good points Big T.

What worries me more though, is that religion has become very politicized, and that it feels threatened by many ideas in science-

Cloning, Genetic research, Stem-cell research, Theories of evolution are all scientific issues that have strong religious opposition and that opposition takes a political face.

In a world of finite resources, religion and science are natural competitors for money. Personally I would rather fun science dedicated to exploring sub-atomic elements that giving money to a religious organization so some preacher can build a "religious faith-based community" out of new Florida condos.
 
I am Athiest (obviously) but i respect everyone and everything.......and im sorry but you cant call a bunch of cells a 'independant'........its not.......it doesnt have anything.......
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The point is that you CAN call them independent, simply because you believe in something intangible like a soul. May I remind you that there is no scientific evidence suggesting that such a soul does not exist? For those who are religious, this soul is already existing in that hump of cells. For them, it is alive, and for them, it is thusly murder.
Hell if you feel so strongly about that dont go to hospital for modern drugs as ALL modern drugs are tested on animals........
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And many religious people do not consider animals equal to humans. So that point is moot.
I personally would think people can say this and destroy the scientific community yet they are also the ones who complain when the NHS waiting lists are too high
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To them, it is not stopping a scientific community, it is stopping a great evil from taking place. To them, it could be the same kind of thing as stopping a murderer.

INFACT........if you feel that strongly.......go live in a cave and eat berries........ Becuase buying food in a supermarket would be unfair to the third-world children who are starving..........
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NOw THIS makes no sense at all. What the hell kind of good would living in a cave to eat berries do to the world? Buying food in a supermarket cannot be unfair to those third-world children, because those third-world children do not have access to that food you may be buying. Donating money would be far more productive, but besides that, this is a point that has nothing at all to do with this.
 
The fact that there is no scientific evidence that shows that there is no soul doesn't mean there is one.
I am all for stem cell research as it could be used for a lot of medical applications. Cloning I do have a problem with as I can't control where I leave "pieces of me" (hair, skin fragments, blood, etc), that someone could breed a clone with (I should be enlightened as to what kind of tissue would they need to clone me though).
Seen nothing good from religion so far, aside from building up the egos of unworthy meatbags.
 
The fact that there is no scientific evidence that shows that there is no soul doesn't mean there is one.
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*sigh*
I wasn't saying that. I WAS saying that you can therefore not dismiss the possible moral legality of the Christian viewpoint.
 
Sure you can.


As an agnostic i feel no compulsion to feel anything either way as to the christian viewpoint and "morality".

As for cloneing, I'm all for it... I'm going to need an healthy new set of lungs in about 20 years or so, and dont get me started on my liver...

The sooner i can get a replacement body started, the better.
 
As for cloneing, I'm all for it... I'm going to need an healthy new set of lungs in about 20 years or so, and dont get me started on my liver...
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Im all for cloneing......but i think you also have to accept death.......once your time is up, its up...... Move aside, and let someone else live their life......

I dont care if theirs nothing after i death...... I dont care if it IS the ultimate end..........

As long as you made the most of life and gave it a good shot, thats all there is in my view.
 
Views do change, and perhaps that's the problem. Views are often built over cultural and educational systems that exist in a society. Those systems of power often determine the very norms, values and ideas we incorporate into our daily lives, leaving other values and ideas (no matter how valid) out.

Consider the power of the church to determine what was appropriate for scientific and humanistic research for hundreds of years from the middle ages into the enlightenment. To a large extent, the church's limit on our ability to pursue scientific progress was determined by the church's own political and ideological interests.

Church groups, as the Catholic Church proved adn the Christian Coalition is now proving, are ideological institutions. All institutions are systems of mobilized bias. Too little power to those groups and, perhaps, you may weaken societies moral compass, but I doubt it. Even if the church gets credit for western values, I don't think the church is necessary for those values today. That said if the church becomes too powerful than it frustrates the progress of science for it's own political interests.
 
Sure you can.
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Not from a scientific viewpoint, you can't. You can disagree with them, but you can't plainly dismiss it because of science.

Your view will change.
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:roll:


On cloning: Cloning poses a lot of problems, firstly, the cloned person will probably resemble the clone in very few ways, since the clone can never be brought up in the same way or live under the same circumstances; genes can only do so much.
Secondly, cloning someone does not in any way give you the means to reach a higher age. You can't just transfer someone's brains from one person to the other (well, not yet anyway), and the only benefit cloning could give would be the benefit of a new vessel. But that new vessel has a mind of its own, and a life of its own.
Consider taking over that body as killing someone so that you can live on. It is morally unjustifiable.
Furthermore, cloning seems to be giving us the problem that the clone starts with the age of the cloned person when the cloned person. This further complicates matters.
 
Cloning eh? Hmm...I can already see the prejudice and clone rights movement. You know...people felt that they needed slaves as well. And didn't care for morales. But I guess if it's for the better of a selfish individual, we should go ahead and let him/her destroy a life, even if it is his/her own clone.
 
Here's one problem with regulating cloning. Just because cloning is regulated in some countries doesn't mean that you will see cloning regulated in others. The genie is out of the bottle and will go where the cash is.

Think nuclear weapons- once it possible you can decide not to make them, but you can't stop the other guy from making them.

Likewise clones. The effect of which will be that those countries that are willing to invest in cloning (for some reason I think of Singapore and Switzerland, but I am not sure if that's right) will be ahead in the technology that spins off from that endeavor.

So in this case yo umakea moral decision- we won't clone- but pay the costs- and we won't reap the scientific rewards.

Frankly I think this whole cloning issue is a bit too paranoid to be taken seriously.
 
Cloning eh? Hmm...I can already see the prejudice and clone rights movement. You know...people felt that they needed slaves as well. And didn't care for morales. But I guess if it's for the better of a selfish individual, we should go ahead and let him/her destroy a life, even if it is his/her own clone.
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*smacks PS*
Come on, give arguments. This is a statement, not an argument.
And, in case you hadn't noticved, cloning is not the same as destroying that life.

Likewise clones. The effect of which will be that those countries that are willing to invest in cloning (for some reason I think of Singapore and Switzerland, but I am not sure if that's right) will be ahead in the technology that spins off from that endeavor.
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Frankly, I still don't see the problem with cloning itself. Cloning does not allow you to manufacture weapons, not does it allow you to do gruesome evil things. What it does allow you to do is copy people, and possibly use those clones to get new organs. But almost every single scientist involved will tell you that that is immoral and should not be attempted. ANd I'm pretty sure that almost everyone in the world will agree.
And because of that, there have been experiments with letting organs grow seperately. (ie. without a body)
 
Gruug said:
Clones eh? Hmm, interesting... So does that mean presidential assassination will be void?
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No.
The clone would not be a "Copy" of the person they are cloned from, they'd just have the same DNA.
The way they are brought up has alot to do with the way they think/act. (and also their physical development, diet, lifestyle etc. changes this a hell of a lot)
 
But it might mean that your parents have the right to trade you in for a better model before you reach the age of 18.
 
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