>>>>> A world without religion would be a world without the science and
>>>>> mathematics and civilisation created by these theist geniuses:
>>>> So in a world without religion, people with the brainpower of
>>>> Descarte, Pasteur, Newton, Planck, etc., would just sit there,
>>>> unable or unwilling to think well about science or mathematics?

>>>> That's... pretty stupid.

>>> Actually.  It's pretty correct.  All those people you mention were
>>> deeply religious...not sure about Max Plank.
>>>  But the main reason we have our material civilisation is because of  
>>> at first being ALL religious

>> Just as all the members of the Central Committees in the atheist States
>> which killed over 70,000,000 of their OWN CITIZENS were atheists!

>> You simply cannot ignore such facts of history.

>>> Latin speaking monks were the only learned men in Europe a thousand
>>> years ago.  

>> Which means 100% of the learned men were religious!

>> Atheism for most of human history, has been irrelevant, and after the
>> brief nadir of human civilisation in which the totalitarian atheist
>> tyrannies reigned, it is once again IRRELEVANT!     B^]

>>  > They translated Arabic texts captured during wars and had them copied
>>> in the monasteries...found to contain Greek and Roman knowledge,

>> And the magnificent contribution of Islamic science, mathematics,
>> music, poetry, architecture, medicine, philosophy..

>> Al Gibra    Algebra

>> Al Khorisme  Algorithm

>> The Hospital, surgical instruments still in use,

>> The Lute (el Oud) and the troubadour tradition,
>> foundations of Western Music..

>> We would not have a global economy if trade was still conducted in
>> Roman Numerals!   B^D

>>> then translated.

>> 'Harvey's'(sis) Bloodstream, for example was translated from the
>> original Arabic.

>>> This is how universities were formed in Europe and the knowledge of
>>> one university could be carried to another throughout Europe...BECAUSE OF
>> ISLAM

>> There is a continuity in the worlds revealed religions.  8^o

>> Astonishing!

>>>  Roger Bacon and Peter Grosseteste were probably the first English
>>> Scientists because they went to Paris and read texts they had never
>>> seen before.  It broadened their minds.  And it didn't matter where
>>> they went in Europe, they could converse among each other in Latin.

>> Just as the Muslims had shared their knowledge Trans-Nationally via Arabic.

>> They lit the torch which lighted Europes way out of the Dark Ages.

>> Atheists were nowhere to be seen!  B^]

>>>  That is how the knowledge of Science spread...

>> The Torch passed from Judaism and Hinduism to Christianity
>> and Islam ...   sparking what is now a global civilisation
>> in which the majority of participants are religious.

>>  > because of the Christian
>>> religion having this universal language.

>> Good point, we need a universal language, an Idea proposed 150
>> years ago by the latest in the series of revealed world religions, the
>> Bahai.

>>> England had Roger Bacon and his influence spread down to Newton...at
>>> another religious college in Cambridge.

>>> Without this religious fervour...yes it is fervour...or mania...

>> Einstein refers to Religion as Awe and Wonder, inspiring inquiry.

>> It is the belief that the religious held, that the universe
>> was created with meaning, and that they were created with
>> rational minds which could unravel and reveal that meaning.. which
>> inspired to to relentlessly INQUIRE.

>> Something you never see atheists in alt.athesim do, locked in their
>> intolerant DOGMA, their crude stereotyping and their fear and hatred
>> of what they simply do not understand.

>>> you need someone...just one will do, who is an enquirer,

>> Religion has produced TENS OF THOUSANDS.. creating great
>> and enduring civilisations..   atheism has never produced
>> a great adn enduring civilisation..  just a handful of
>> massive cluster fucks.. totalitarian atheist tyrannies.

>> A sceptic just doubts, a rational believer or agnostic questions
>> with the expectation that he can gain an understanding of the hidden
>> meanings in the material world....

>>> just enough to wonder if things could be different to what they seem,
>>> speculate, then write a book as Newton did.    So,  Christianity plus
>> Islam both with a common Lingua Franca, Arabic and
>>> Latin,  led to Science in the Western World.

> Matt Hughes wrote:

>> On 11 Oct, 17:31, nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote:

>> > Back in the Golden Age of Usenet, I remember some guy telling the story
>> > of how when he was in college in and the sixties, he and his friends
>> > started
>> > an organization of "Druids" that was strictly an excuse to get drunk,
>> > take drugs, and fuck, nothing more.  They even wrote up some sort of
>> > holy book to go with it.  Many years later, he returned to campus as
>> > an alumnus, and discovered to his horror that the chapter of "Druids"
>> > still existed, but the stupid kids *actually believed in it*.  It was
>> > definately a successor organization, because he recognized their holy
>> > writ as the one he wrote, but they had someone managed to make it no
>> > fun anymore.

>> In a similar vein, in 1968 at then fairly radicalized Simon Fraser
>> University I was part of a little street theater group that
>> masqueraded as an unabashedly fascist party.  We wore sunglasses and
>> armbands with the three-triangle radiation symbol, saluted each other
>> flamboyantly, and ran for office in the student elections so that we
>> could give bombastic speeches about the need for order and faith in
>> the authorities.  Just before the election, we staged a public
>> assassination of our leader (blank pistols).  One day, I was in the
>> cafeteria frequented by the science and economic students, giving out
>> some scurrilous broadsheet that was cribbed from Mussolini speeches.
>> Several of the short-hairs asked how they could join.

>> We disbanded.

> Shades of the children's novel "The Wave"!