21 APR 2014 by ideonexus

 Science was Inconvenient for Religion

Science’s contributions to the spread of disbelief is the least controversial segment of the virtuous cycle for which I am arguing in seventeenth-century Europe. For science’s methods are clearly troublesome for religion. The devout, to begin with, are not wont to view their precepts merely as propositions to be controverted or confirmed. The orthodox, as a rule, are used to arguments being settled by authority, not experiment. The hope belief offers does not always stand up well to obser...
Folksonomies: science religion
Folksonomies: science religion
  1  notes

As scientific knowledge grew it revealed knowledge that conflicted with scripture.

26 APR 2012 by ideonexus

 Science Cannot have Creeds

Religious creeds are a great obstacle to any full sympathy between the outlook of the scientist and the outlook which religion is so often supposed to require ... The spirit of seeking which animates us refuses to regard any kind of creed as its goal. It would be a shock to come across a university where it was the practice of the students to recite adherence to Newton's laws of motion, to Maxwell's equations and to the electromagnetic theory of light. We should not deplore it the less if our...
Folksonomies: science religion
Folksonomies: science religion
 1  1  notes

We should not force students to blindly recite laws and theorems because that would reduce it to religion.

03 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 The Internet Fosters Collectivism

The way the internet has gone sour since then is truly perverse. The central faith of the web’s early design has been superseded by a different faith in the centrality of imaginary entities epitomized by the idea that the internet as a whole is coming alive and turning into a superhuman creature. [...] he way we got here is that one subculture of technologists has recently become more influential than the others. The winning subculture doesn’t have a formal name, but I’ve sometimes ca...
Folksonomies: culture internet
Folksonomies: culture internet
  1  notes

The internet was supposed to empower individuals, but instead we see it as a collective, central point of all culture.