You believe religion gave birth to science? Where's your evidence?
:whiste:
In a way, religion developed to accomplish what scientific exploration does: Explain things in the world.

It simply stopped too soon in the process, and never closed the feedback loop of the scientific method.
Scientific exploration is a way for humans to create a working model of the world around them, which can then be used to improve our lives in some way. If you possess a working mental model of how a lever works, you can use that mechanical advantage to accomplish things that you couldn't have done without that mental model. More complex things can be studied as well, which can lead to more models, as well as mathematical models.
A "model" by definition is a simplified representation of something, which is necessary in order to permit our limited brains to work with complex concepts.
What's one way of modeling the world?
"This world is really big and complex. I wonder how it all got here."
-"Well, humans are able to make things. Maybe a really big man made everything."
"Maybe, but the world is really
really big."
-"Ok, so it was a really
really big and really powerful man."
"But...where is he? I don't see him."
-"Hmm....maybe he's just invisible."
That's a simplified model that was developed as a way of explaining things: The big powerful man made everything.
Unfortunately, it go that far and stopped. Continued exploration of the basic premise would mean it's necessary to demonstrate extraordinary evidence of this extraordinary claim of the big invisible man that can make planets, star systems, and life. Instead, many people liked this very simple model and simply accepted it, and the basic idea has persisted for thousands of years.
In time though, other ways of explaining things were found, and those models were refined as technology improved. That includes models of how life came to exist in the first place, and of how life changes over long periods of time. It's more complex though, and it covers time periods much longer than 6 days. The complexity, and the lack of any kind of divine or privileged history for our species, makes this idea less appealing for some people. They also don't like the way science can change what is known based on new evidence. It's too complex, versus an unchanging doctrine.
Interestingly, some people dislike the aspect of science that it keeps changing because of new evidence. Religions can remain unfazed by new evidence. Some still see that as a major strength, though I can't see how that is the case.
If you believe you can walk off a height and not fall to your death because you walked off of a 6" step, or because an ancient story told of someone walking off a 6" step, it's stupid to continue to believe you're invulnerable to stepping off of various heights in spite of evidence that a 500-foot step is extremely likely to be fatal. It's also stupid to believe that you're invulnerable to a 500-foot fall simply because you've never personally seen that kind of evidence.
At some point, one must accept some of the knowledge that other people have accrued over their lives. If you have ideas that fly in the face of that common knowledge, you do have some options:
- Accept that they know what they're talking about and integrate their knowledge into your own.
- Study it yourself and discover why their knowledge is correct.
- Present evidence yourself against the common knowledge. Sometimes it turns out that common knowledge is in fact not correct, but it can take a lot of evidence to prove that.
What you
don't do in that situation is go around saying that it's a ridiculous idea that people die after falling 500 feet, which you say because you know that humans can fall 6 inches without injury, and that you've never personally seen a person fall 500 feet, and therefore the notion of dying as a result of such a fall is absolutely absurd until someone takes time out of their day to give you a personal demonstration.
You'd have to follow the guidelines above:
- Accept that they know what they're talking about.
- Study it yourself to determine why a 500-foot fall is almost certain to be fatal.
- Present solid evidence to prove it wrong, get it peer-reviewed, and maybe you'll end up being correct after all.
i was taught through-out school that man most like are descendants of the neanderthal and that the neanderthals came from the apes. and that there are dedicated anthropologist out there scraping away layers of African dirt looking for the missing link to prove it.
well it seems that science has proven we do not come cave-men and the mystery of our ancestors has become more mysterious.
basically nobody know where the hell we come from.
Basically, knowledge is constantly updated by new evidence. What is known has to be able to change, otherwise there's really no point to exploration of anything. There's not much point in trying to find new things if it's not going to enhance or update what is known. It's like going to the grocery store over and over, but buying nothing every time because you
know that your refrigerator is empty, and that cannot change under any circumstance. But that certainly does make it easy to always remember in your fridge.
...okay, now I'm bored with this same thread again. :awe: