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To paraphrase another genius, Prof Neil deGrasse Tyson
If all mankind forgot everything it knows in 2000 years time we would still have science and religion. The science will have been worked out and it’ll be exactly the same but religion will take many different forms.
Too many "geniuses" for my stomach. They all seem to be flawed (except Dave Line of course who is now raising horns of foaming mead in the halls of Valhalla and swapping tales of brewing).

Why would we have science all worked out again if we had to start from zero? Why shouldn't a universal religion arise if we had to start from zero? What's the basis of this claim? It's not a logical or a practical necessity!
 
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Why would we have science all worked out again if we had to start from zero? Why shouldn't a universal religion arise if we had to start from zero? What's the basis of this claim? It's not a logical or a practical necessity!

It’s a thought experiment not a claim. I can’t find the original quote which almost certainly puts it better than I tried too.
 
Too many "geniuses" for my stomach. They all seem to be flawed (except Dave Line of course who is now raising horns of foaming mead in the halls of Valhalla and swapping tales of brewing).

Why would we have science all worked out again if we had to start from zero? Why shouldn't a universal religion arise if we had to start from zero? What's the basis of this claim? It's not a logical or a practical necessity!
A universal religion would need some kind of stable state to facilitate that.
Reason why Christianity spread so quickly was the Roman empire.
Pliny the younger was writing to Emperor Trajan about Christians in his province.
This was around 100 years after Christ, relatively recent.
 
Too many "geniuses" for my stomach. They all seem to be flawed (except Dave Line of course who is now raising horns of foaming mead in the halls of Valhalla and swapping tales of brewing).

Why would we have science all worked out again if we had to start from zero? Why shouldn't a universal religion arise if we had to start from zero? What's the basis of this claim? It's not a logical or a practical necessity!

Because humanity would do what it always does.

Some people, not satisfied with some of the outlandish claims of the universal sol religion, would question why the sun god didn't quite behave in exactly the same way that the scriptures said that they should.

They would say "nay, the sun god isn't at the centre of all things, look I can prove it with a simple stick, and while I'm here the moon devil isn't just as mighty as soltar, it's actually just really close".

Our proto-scientist, and likely many coming after him, are shown the truth and baked at the stake under the full fury of the midday sun god. But the word is out now and a sizable community of stick wielding infidels are starting to ask questions about all sorts of other things.

They find that, with enough thought, and especially if they write it down, they can prove that many things are linked and that they can predict other things based upon what they have proved. They keep at this for years to come, much to the distain of the now fractured sun god religion, some of them have even started to worship stars now, only to be told "no that's actually a planet" by the scientist lot.

Many years later, a sun god cleric digs up an encyclopedia dating way back to the 1st age. He notes that, although no other link between ages has ever existed, they too had a pesky science like set of people. The claims of these ancient proofers were worryingly similar to their contemporary counterparts, yes the symbols all looked different and the units were all named after rich white men rather than black women, but the numbers (numbers and letters seem to have survived the pruge) and physical constructs were the same, some of the numbers were accurate to thousands of decimal places.

Anyway, he burns the book, tries to forget about the other 5 or 6 totally different previous sun god religion-like institutions he read about in the history section and heads off to sun church safe in the knowledge that his god lives safely in the ever narrowing gaps of the knowledge of the science lot.

* * *

Education will free us from religion, if we can just get enough of us sufficiently inoculated to reach herd immunity.


When did too many geniuses become a bad thing?
 
Education will free us from religion, if we can just get enough of us sufficiently inoculated to reach herd immunity.

Only 30% of the UK population still believe in god, i cannot see the number being that low in the other countries in this video and it changing any time soon.

Judaism




Hinduism




Buddhism




Islam

 
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Education will free us from religion, if we can just get enough of us sufficiently inoculated to reach herd immunity.
Can't think of a more educated fellow than this geezer, but he;s still waving the flag. A degree in molecular biology, too I think. Well worth a Goggling.

Alister McGrath is a Northern Irish theologian, priest, intellectual historian, scientist, and Christian apologist. He currently holds the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, and is Professor of Divinity at Gresham College
 
Rory Stewart, former Tory, is a pretty smart dude and is pretty open about his faith.

I don't think education necessarily corresponds with intelligence.
I reckon the collapse of faith in the west probably reflect the fracturing of societies, increased urbanisation and distrust of government /state bodies (in many western countries, the church tended to be an extension of the state).
 
I think the collapse of faith is more due to the fact people realise now there may not be a god,you probably won't burn in Hell, religion hides all sorts of hypocrisy,it's a money making exercise.
 
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