Beldaran the only appropriate response to your bandwagon is to ignore it because your beliefs themselves are somewhat irrational and the evidence you use is, ignoring tact, stupid.
You wave the Galileo flag at every opportunity but are we to believe that religion has not changed in the past two centuries? Dare you commit the fallacy of division and infer that since the Catholic church took a stance that it is indicative of the beliefs of every follower of every religion? Furthermore, your facts do not check out and since you cite no sources I can't cross-check to see if perhaps mine are wrong. After hearing you bring this up several times you motivated me to do some cursory research and I was pretty satisfied with what I found. Allow me to provide enlightenment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo#Church_controversy wrote:Galileo was reburied on sacred ground at Santa Croce in 1737. He was formally rehabilitated in 1741, when Pope Benedict XIV authorized the publication of Galileo's complete scientific works (a censored edition had been published in 1718), and in 1758 the general prohibition against heliocentrism was removed from the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. On 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, as the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture.
Oops you got your dates wrong by a century but a clever rebuttal would incidate that the mistake doesn't weaken your point because the church's decision still came a century after Galileo's death. But wait!
Modern science considers Galileo's views on heliocentricity to be no fundamental advance; most of his discoveries were only further advances of Copernicus' views. The heliocentric model that Galileo presented was no better at predicting planetary positions than the Tychonic system model, the main competing theory at the time. Stellar parallax, the first evidence from outside the solar system that the Earth does indeed move, would not be observed until 1838 (Consolmagno 150�152).
So, at the time, there was no compelling scientific evidence to show that Galileo was more right than any of the current accepted models. In fact, the first proof that Galileo was correct came nearly a century
after the Catholic church accepted Galileo's teachings.
Unless you can cite a more scholarly source than Wikipedia (which honestly doesn't take much) that disagrees with these statements, I do believe you just lost your favorite example.
In short, the Galileo example you use is wrong on two counts:
- The dates and facts you use do not agree with the facts I have found.
- The actions of the Catholic church centuries ago do not provide reasonable insight into the actions of religious people as a whole today.
I hope that in the future when you are seeking evidence to indicate the total backwards behavior of religion you are careful to make sure you are correct and not just seeing what you want to see. I understand you think blind faith in religion is irrational but realize you are exhibiting characteristics of blind faith yourself: you read a fact in a book somewhere and took it as truth without seeking evidence yourself. I am reminded of something Carl Sagan said once:
You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe.
The wrong kind of belief in science's ability to explain the unknown can be just as dangerous as the wrong kind of belief in religion.
I cannot understand why you have never acknowledged the crucial argument I make. The basis of my conclusion is this:
- Belief in science can become a religion itself.
- Science provides no answers for some questions.
- The best scientific thought is sometimes wrong and this is only discovered much later.
My first conclusion is that blind faith in science is foolish. This conclusion leads me to the ultimate conclusion: unquestioning faith in anything is the most dangerous form of fanaticism.
I strongly believe you believe in atheism a little bit too much to be as rational as you believe you are.
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Pineconn I believe if you thought a bit about the word "reverent" the Scout Laws would make a bit more sense to you.
[quote=http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=reverent&x=0&y=0]feeling, exhibiting, or characterized by reverence; deeply respectful[/quote]That particular portion of the Scout Law does not necessarily indicate respect towards a diety but that at all times a Scout should be respectful to all beings.
The Boy Scouts in general are actually a very fine example of a religion-neutral organization in my opinion. I did a little bit of research to cover myself and I find that the BSA is disturbingly against how I have always interpreted the spirit of scouting. The requirements for a scout are actually trivial for an athiest or agnostic to accomplish; in most cases you can replace "God" with "your ethical beliefs" and it fits perfectly well. I have a particular problem with the First Class requirement "lead your patrol in saying grace at the meals" but honestly I had never heard of it. In my troop we ignored that requirement even though the bulk of the members were devout Mormons.
The "duty to God" part of the Scout Law is also being misinterpreted in the cases of those who oppose them. The portion as I remember (Tenderfoot requirement, right?) goes (with emphasis added):
On my honor,
I will do my best
To do my duty
To my god and my country
...
For the athiest/agnostic, god may simply be a code of ethics, but there is no one that truly believes in nothing.