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What Ancient Tech Do You Do?
neonfrog asks: "Before silicon, before electricity even, what the heck did those of us with geek brains do? Our brains have not evolved appreciably in half an eon (at least mine hasn't, but I may be descended from turtles). What would today's programmers have been doing centuries before the invention of the keyboard? What would an electrical engineer be doing a millennia or three before the concept of resistors and capacitors? What piqued their curiosity? Were their skills esoteric or exotic? They can't all have been Leonardo Da Vincis or court 'magicians', right? Summer's starting and, for some, it's hobby time. I bet the Slashdot community harbors quite a few Journeyman, or even Masters. I know a lot of geeks are beer-makers (and I do so appreciate you folk ... urp!) so there's no danger of that knowledge getting lost. What other ancient tech do you indulge in and keep alive? What are some good resources?"
hunt, homebrew beer/wine, tan animal hides.... you know.... the red-blooded american things.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
probably just typing on a rock
I can't say for sure, but it would probably only require one hand.
Because art is nifty, and because it's a massive leap to go from tweaking stuff with keyboard and mouse to actually scratching stuff onto a copper surface with an etching needle. Because it's fun squishing stuff under the thousands of pounds of pressure in the printing press. Because there is a bit of a puzzle figuring out how to get proper textures with aquatint, mezzoting, engraving, or drypoint, or stippling.... Nifty stuff, really.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I roast my own coffee beans. Coffee has been around since the Dark ages and known in the West since the Renaissance so it's not really ancient. Besides, everyone roasted coffee until the late 19th century. It didn't come in cans until then. Still, it predates electronics and such. (As far as we know ...)
Jim
A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
I was fortunate enough to work at an 18th century living history museum many summers, weekends, and holidays as a blacksmith. Nearly twenty years later, I am still impressed at how much can be done with steel and fire. The technology of tempering is ancient, and the same metalurgical chemistry is used everywhere today in instrument sharpening, oxidization resistiveness, and high strength/weight component design such as in an F1 racecar (when they choose to drive them).
You can set up your own blacksmith shop now for not much more than some fireclay, an old hairdryer blower, some coal fuel, an short piece of railroad track turned upside down for an anvil (always used a forged metal, never cast) and a hammer. Although if I did it these days, I would be more disciplined about wearing hearing protection.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Well that's easy. I would have been a pirate.
Many geeks would have probably been monks; it's a structured environment where personality quirks wouldn't be a problem.
Many would perhaps be smiths; blacksmiths, armorsmiths, glassworkers, etc. All types of smithing requires an advanced knowledge of the craft, with nuances more intricate than any xfree86 config file. What makes geeks tick is not sci-fi itself, or computers themselves, it's systems. Geeks love systems. Systems of numbers, systems of logic, computer systems, pen and paper games rules systems, computer language systems. Even non-geeks like systems. Physical Sports are systems; they are self consistent rule-based constructions. Geeks are merely overly obsessed with certain systems, such as the stars, or physics, or computer languages, much like an autistic person could be obsessed with anything, but he chooses a certain something. So perhaps any intricate systematic smithing craft would appeal to the ancient geek.
Probably a failed Leonardo. I've always loved taking things apart, figuring out how they work, then trying to put them back together... and then imagining how to improve them despite my failure to reassemble the original design.
I'd have been the peasant who starved because he was so busy trying to figure out how to get his ox to plow more field when all he had to do to survive was plant a small garden with his hands.
Good thing I'm alive today and didn't live in centuries past.
Amen to this.
I wanted to make my own cider, and despite my love for Cider, my new first love is Mead, and its near cousins, melomels, cysers....mmmmm
My first 1 gallon batch of mead recently hit its stride finally. Dear GAWD is that stuff good.
I swear, if you ever get a good mead, you'll never drink beer again. I'm not kidding, I'm dead serious. I have 5 gallons of strawberry melomel going right now, and another 5 gallons of some dark cider that has been going since mid-october. Both are far superior to their off-the-shelf alternatives, and these are just my first tries!
Resources?
The BrewBoard
and if you wish to take my advice on the mead specifically:
The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm
That second link *is* an Amazon link, but not a referral link, so I'm not whoring.
Oh, and yes, I did spell "compleat" correctly. Took me forever to find the book the first time. Oops.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
I always thought that blacksmithing was kind of interesting, and it has some similarities with computer work.
1) swinging a hammer all day can give you a repetetive motion injury like using a keyboard.
2) When making complex things you have to pay attention to details and have an idea of what your working towards.
3) You can undo mistakes fairly easily, just heat it up and pound out the error.
4) There are lots of technical things to remember like metal compostions, metalworking techniques, and different ways to heat treat metals to give them different properties.
5) It's rather a skilled job compared to being a farmer, and I suppose the pay might not have been too bad.
Plus you can make your own swords and armor for D&D.
what sig?
I try to get out sailing after work everyday in the summer. Yes there is a navigation computer on board, but basics haven't change since humans took to the sea.
Chris Southern
Yes. Gardening.
Its geeky, in its own way.
Not only do you have layout, planting times, and organic methods, but there are loads of experimentation available.
Do you want to use the French-Intensive method of gardening? How about the traditional method? Blocks or rows?
This year, I'm experimenting with rooting suckers from tomato plants and seeing if the new plants are worthwhile producers. I'm also trying to plant late corn in between flowering beans. (I like to maximize my yeild from a small space.) Next year, I'm going to try interplanting lettuce and tomatoes, hoping that the tomatoes will keep the lettuce cool enough to extend the growing season. I'll also try more mulch next year, I think.
Before silicon, before electricity even, what the heck did those of us with geek brains do? Oh, the geeks have only recently been truly free:
Archimedes, the father of calculus, has his ancient texts bleached and written over with religious mumbo jumbo. Over 1800 years passed before Newton 're-discovered' calculus.
Galileo proclaimed that the earth wasn't the center of it all. Then the Catholic church made him recant (this was the time of the Inquisition which killed a friend of his just a few years before). (it was only in 1992 that the Catholic Church said Galileo wasn't such a bad guy, and that was after 12 years of arguing)
More recently Louis Pasteur, a lifelong rationalist, had his crazy ideas of bacteria and disease poo-poo'd by various religious leaders.
Seeing a trend? Ancient geeks were free to test and invent only so long as the results agreed with the religious diatribe of the day.
... would you like fries with that?
--------
+1 sarcastic
.. probably most geeks would be dead, with our bad eyesight, and all, only a few really smart ones would be saved ..
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
I'm building my 30x50' garage- except for the slab, I'm framing, roofing, wiring the whole thing myself. I'm what I guess "they" call an experienced DIY'er. My money making background is in remote data collection, so all this stuff I just sort of forge ahead and go for it. I rely heavily on the advice of friends and an amazing brother in law, but in the end, I'm the one that has to redo my mistakes and live with what I build.
I think tinkering with wood would be a great alternative to coding.
For resources, other than people, I get alot of stuff off websites experienced tradespeople put up. I have heavy guilt from never contributing the paypal 5 bucks, though. I know when I eventually get my website up about building plank wooden Dory's, I'll never get a dime as Karmic retribution.
sig wig dig jig rig big mig fig gig higg rig pig tig zig
I've just begun doing some printmaking at home. Doing linocuts and printing them by hand on paper. Just looking up information, I found Escher did this as well. Certainly an artistic figure many geek-types have taken to.
It's not difficult or expensive to do (all you need is the linoleum, some blades, a brayer and ink), but I find that many traits good coders have apply well to it (like everything, right? Also think design/typography). I find it a satisfying after a day of programming.
-- Why keep us waiting? We are not made of time.
It's not tech, but I bet a lot of geek minds that are attracted to programming languages are also attracted to the languages of music.
Also designing and building musical instruments would be pretty geeky even in the 16th century.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
It is not so different,
Boxes with cards, become supers with frames.
It is in some ways the an early nano-tech with thousands of simple machines carrying out tasks that create something much larger than any of them will understand.
There are even bugs like Varroa Destructor that can make your hive crash.
There is even over clocking, some people build hives with two queens (colonies of bees) in the same box, or would that be multi-processing.
It is a bit like the free software community there is more to be gained by sharing idea with other bee keepers than can ever be gained by keeping ideas to your self.
Well it is fun and you get sweet stuff to share with people.
Lots of room there for tinkering if you want. Adjust/add/remove/replace pulleys, change how tight the outhaul and other ropes are, sand or otherwise modify your centerboard or daggerboard ... all sortsa fun stuff!
...I've been learning the use (though not the spelling) of abacus and slide rule - true archaotech. Slide rules are likely to go the way of the dodo Real Soon Now (TM). As a math nerd, I'm also learning the theory - I can build one better than I can use one. A computerized emulator (ironic, no?) is available at: http://www.techweb.rfa.org/index.php?option=conten t&task=view&id=86&Itemid=114&limit=1&limitstart=3
I've done duty occasionally as an accountant/treasurer for various organizations, as well as property manager/stockist for several businesses. Bean counters have always been in demand.
I've done a fair trade on e-bay selling painted tabletop miniatures (toy soldiers). I'm pretty sure working full time I could have gotten on as an artisan - pottery decoration? illuminator?
Last but not least, I can carry a tune on about four or five woodwinds (sax, flute, recorder, tin whistle, little bit of clarinet). I'm not sure if I could've made it as an itinerant musician (maybe associated with a theater troupe), but it almost certainly would've appealed more than scratch farming.
All taken together, I'd bet on bean counter, though maybe travelling merchant..
I'm pretty sure many would get into clocks, clockworks, automats and mechanical toys.
There's been a long geek tradition with making automats and mechanical toys, and funny enough the Japanese in the Edo period (1600 onwards) were really good at that stuff, because "inventions" were not allowed in that era. The feudal lords were afraid "inventions" could be used against them, so only fun automats ("karakuri ningyo" etc.) were considered harmless enough, that people were allowed to "invent" if it was for mechanical toys and automats. This started a real boom of the production of ever more amazing geek gadgets.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
There is no end to the invention you can pour into growing plants and taking care of animals.
Being not very far descended from farmers, I have to say that agriculture of any kind is a great target for creativity. And a couple of centuries ago, a heck of a lot of the world's population was subsistence farming.
You have to plan for the seasons, account for risks (weather, sickness), do more with less effort, take care of your tools and your land, preserve foods, try to maintain nutrition through a long winter. Some of it you can figure out on your own, and some of it you really need to learn from those who have gone before you ...
... But I digress. Farming rewards intelligence and hard work. And it punishes stupidity and sloth with just about the stiffest penalties I can think of -- starvation of not just yourself, but your family as well. Darwin's hand at work, shaping the geeks of today over millenia past.
A lot of "geeks" I know are all members of the SCA. SCA arts and sciences encompass a wide range of reasonably geeky activities, including but not limited to brewing beer, smithing armour and weapons, leatherworking, costuming, fighting in armour, archery and so on.
A large amount of effort and detail is put into the crafting of authentic armour and weaponry, and the enthusiasm and energy dedicated to these tasks often exclude the demands of a more normal, healthy lifestyle, thus making these a small part of larger geekdom.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
There is no reason to think that the sorts of folks that became engineers or mathematicians 5000 years ago were, tempermentally, any differnt from the sorts of folks that become engineers or mathematicians today.
There were, no doubt, other highly skilled and technical professions that would have attracted ancient geeks: other's have mentioned smithing, scribing is another possability (just being literate enough to read and write was analogous to the general level of education of most geeks today), as is accountancy (conducting simple arithmetic without the benefit of decimal numbers must have required great patience and dedication). In the far east, at least since about 200 B.C., there was a good chance that anyone with reasonable education would have become a government functionary under the Confucian civil service system. I also suspect that, in other times, when people's conception of the world was very different from ours, many geeks may have gone into fields that would seem highly esoteric by modern standards: ancient geeks may have become musicians, artists, poets or monks as a means of persuing the life of the mind.
Finally, we should recognize the uncomfortable fact that most ancient geeks probably never got the opportunity to persue any career whatsoever. Throughout most of history, most people, no matter what their personal interests or inate abilities, were destined to be peasant farmers, servants, slaves or other bondsmen, like their fathers and grandfathers and so on. The idea that people, no matter what their station by birth, should be able (or even required) to choose their path in life, is a thoroughly modern concept.
Between my first job and my second job, I spent a summer in a railroad museum in Vermont, where I touched to many rail trades, from painting old cars to firing a steam engine. If ever I was sent 100 years in the past, I'll go working on the railroad...
Recently read "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follet. Fantastic story, not to mention a wealth of detail on the architecture and building of cathedrals in 12th century England.
If you think you life is tough now, this book will open your eyes on how hard life used to be the past few thousand years.
A hundred or a thousand years ago, large portions of the population didn't have time to sit at their desks and play around with "hobbies". If your entire waking life is spent trying to scrape a living out of semi-fertile ground on one leg because you lost the other one to infection after dropping a rock on your toe, your options for being a geek are limited. SCA fantasies notwithstanding, if you lived in the middle ages it didn't matter how smart or creative you were if you were born to the wrong parents. If you had a brain for math and logic, you would be free to think about such things while digging up weeds, but applying them to any sort of nerdy pursuit was way beyond the means of your average (read: non-noble) person.
It's only in the last hundred or so years that our technology and standard of living has allowed non-wealthy people to fulfil their potential regarding intellectual pursuits. Asking what "nerds" did before there were computers and high technology is like asking what fighter pilots did before there were planes... they worked at normal jobs trying to survive, just like everybody else.
Ok, this is from a thousand-year old Roman engineering textbook I perused many years ago.
One of the first things a Roman engineer would do on any building site is locate a spring to supply him with water. In order to do this, the engineer would get up before sunrise and lie down on the top of a hill, facing downhill. As the sun rose, tendrils of mist would appear in certain places on the ground. The engineer would note their location, and he would dig in those spots to produce a water supply.
The reason this works? The mist appears where the water table is closer to the surface. By digging, you go below the water table, and the hole will naturally fill up with water over time. This water can be filtered and used.
Isn't that neat?
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
A galon of a good-quality milk + few spoons of good powdered or condenzed milk is heated close to boil (without actualy boiling it), the mix is cooled to amibient temperature, a favorite joghurt (few spoons) is stirred in and the mix is left under lose lid in a warm quiet place without disturbance for several days until ready.
Basicaly it's as simple as making your own kids but less fun.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
Traditional boat building (in several forms), traditional boat sailing while using non-electronically aided navigation techniques, blacksmithing, leatherwork, sewing and furniture making. These are skills I probably could have made a living with in an earlier age. Probably would have been relatively happy doing it too.
my old sig is obsolete, and I haven't come up with a stupid enough new one yet
What were engineers doing over 2k years ago? How about building the Antikythera Mechanism (web copy of a June 1959 Scientific American article, p60-7)
An amazingly complex, intricate, and accurate mechanical astronomical calculation device from 80 BC. Found in a shipwreck in 1900, and not fully reverse engineered until 1973, there are no other examples of this level technology in the ancient world.
"It is hard to exaggerate the singularity of this device, or its importance in forcing a complete re-evaluation of what had been believed about technology in the ancient world. For this box contained some 32 [brass] gears, assembled into a mechanism that accurately reproduced the motion of the sun and the moon against the background of fixed stars, with a differential [gear] giving their relative position and hence the phases of the moon."
You can see a reconstructed version of the Antikythera Mechanism here. Another article detailing the probable creation date of the device based on the construction of the gears can be found here"
Another article makes the conjecture that ancient navigators could have used the Antikythera Mechanism to determine longitude via the position of the moon (1800 years before longitude calculation was perfected in England)
Ben in DCBen in DC
"It's the mark of an educated mind to be moved by statistics" Oscar Wilde
These people, in Renessance times, were typically sponsored by rich patrons, who took care of the mundane needs whilst they got on with inventing or whatever. It made for a society that evolved culturally and technologically faster than anything that had preceeded it.
Geeks would likely also have been explorers - it is very likely that St. Brenden "The Navigator" (who sailed from Ireland to Newfoundland in about 600 AD in a leather dinghy) was a geek at heart. There was a lot to discover, and required a mind agile at problem-solving along with fantastic patience, as they would be doing a great deal of nothing much.
You find hints of geekdom in gnostic and hellenistic thought and religion, suggesting early geeks may have been heavy into religion. Again, no great surprise - geeks love answering things, and for a long time, those were the best answers anyone could devise.
Cave painters may well have been geeks, too. One set of cave paintings in England would have been a few hundred feet under an ice sheet at the time they were painted. Someone shimmied down an ice crevice for the sole purpose of dawbing animals that couldn't possibly have existed there on the walls. That guy was NOT normal.
Brewers, throughout history, have experimented with different sources of sugars, flavours, etc. Since wild yeast can take many forms, and since many ingredients would have been expensive, they would undoubtably have researched methods of sustaining the active ingredient in much the same way that modern kids brew their own "ginger beer plants" by splitting bottles and topping up with fresh ingredients to keep the yeast alive.
The vertical loom and tablet weaving, both parts of Norse tradition, involved some highly complex thought and engineering on the part of their inventers and practicioners. Even the Viking longships - which would slide up beaches and could then be used to carry cargo from raids by reversing the oars - show considerable evidence of highly creative thought.
I think it safe to say that geeks throughout history have been much as they are today, excpet maybe more influential, as many of the trades I've mentioned have had considerable status and power in their times.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Choosing the right wood, shaping it, fletching the arrows. This is "ancient tech" which can be learned today, and is its own reward. Why, there are even courses in this available!
It's amazing how effective a recurve bow with 40lbs strain is in the right hands....
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
I'm melting Aluminum @ 1400 degrees F (ish) in a steel bucket lined with concrete to make sailing hardware. Oh, and I build my own wooden boats (another exercise in mathematics and logic). Both have been practiced for thousands of years, although I think they cast iron more often than aluminum "back in the day".
moox. for a new generation.
He claims the reason that the Islamic scholars didn't add that much to what they later transferred back to Europe, was that their religion stopped research.
So this is another case that supports the grandparent's point.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Don't all good engineers start out in Tech support??
tech: Hello sir, how may I help you?
caveman: fire, BAD!!!
tech: I understand your frustration, you'll need to restart your fire by hitting two stones together.
caveman: FIRE, BAD!!!!!
tech: Sir, you're going to have to work with me here.
caveman: fire.........good?
tech: Yes sir. Is there anything else I can do for you?
caveman: UNF!
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
I'm working on building a replica of a medieval diptych... not the booklet style painting, but the medieval version of the PDA. Folded in half, these were often apparently the size of a palmtop. Using a string as a "gnomon" they make a pretty fair sundial too. With wax on the inside, suddenly they make a handy place to write important notes, etc. Given the properties of sundials, it's possible to approximate the date if you hold the thing level... and there are any number of games you can play with a pen and paper, stylus and wax work for them too. So, in short, a diptych (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diptych) is definitely the sort of thing a medieval geek would have to have... I can see the articles now: "Tic-tac-toe, the next killer app?"
Any generalization is a stupid one.
In fact, if you are an orthodox greenie or you are convinced that petroleum resources will dry up in the next decade, you SHOULD be DOING some low-tech nerdwork right now.
Some things I do:
- design passive solar heated housing: no electronics but some mechanical or hydraulic feed back to regulate temp from solar sources and earth/water heat sinks.
- composting: i have been experimenting with staging anerobic and aerobic phases to speed up the breakdown [it still takes me 3 years to turn unsorted yard and kitchen wastes into a good garden product.]
- design pedal powered mowing, earthmoving and transportation stuff...the bicycle, evolved as it is, is just a starting point.
- study how to produce solar concentrators of high precision without recourse to computers, CNC machines etc. We all know how to make an elipse with 2 pins and a loop of string but I know how to make a parablola with pulleys, string and an xacto knife.
- trying to figure out a sustainable tree and crop rotation pattern on marginal acreage that would support a family without motorized tilling and harvesting, using wood stoves for heat, in perpetuity on the minimum amount of land.
- self regulating greenhouses to extend growing season in colder climates and without pesticides or pumped water.
- low tech biological pest control. E.G. gypsy moths all but destroyed my oak trees 20 years ago but I found a few of the caterpillers were dying of some disease. I collected all the limp, sick ones I could find, waited until the fungus or bacteria that attacks them had turned them into little bags of pus, put them in a blender [the wife LOVED that!], filtered the product and sprayed it all over my property. To this day, even when the moths have denuded the trees in other parts of town, my trees fare well and the caterpillers are dying left and right. I need to study more so I can preserve the germs for use elsewhere.
Being a geek would be so satisfying if i didn't have to make enough money to pay all that tuition!You call that a troll? I have a whole beltway full of trolls better than that!
It seems -- and this may be somewhat cynical of me -- that an ancient geek would have had a life approximately like thus ( where the timeline is from pre-history up to, say, the 17th or 18th century:
1) Born into violence, filth, and disease.
2) Eek out a life of scavenging or farming, paying taxes to your lord, having some children, most of whom will die before a couple years old, until:
3) war, or some other tribal/religious/cultural dispute.
4) death at 20.
This hypothetical geek from BCE 5000 or AD 1600 might have been the next Einstein, or Stephen Hawking, or anything we can imagine. But he'd never have had the time, opportunity or resources to do anything with it.
We're NOT smarter than previous humans, we just have an *unprecendented* level of peace and prosperity. We have developed a culture where people have the opportunity *not* to toil and die at an early age.
Finally, this success isn't evenly distributed, yet. A fair amount of humanity still lives the way our ancestors did centuries ago.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
You really don't know much about much about farming do you?
Try blacksmithing when you don't control the fire or the availability of the quench water.
How well do you handle different ores? Can you actually make a decent alloy from the dirt on the ground?
Oh well, I'm still educating city kids.
I did spend this last weekend with an axe and some trees. It's great whole body physical exercise, and beats meditation to smithereens as far as the ease of mental focus and achievement of Zen is concerned.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
They where blacksmiths, wheelwrights, coopers, or maybe weavers. I have read about people in the old west making sail wagons to try to ride across the plains. Put a sail on an old wagon? What a cool hack. Barbed wire or a mechanical reaper? Also way cool hacks. Even the Wright Brothers first plane was in effect a way cool hack.
Back in the day you had to do cool hacks to survive. Hackers are not the descendants of court wizards. We are descendants of farmers that when one of his tools broke he would fix it with what he had on hand or make a different tool out of it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You need to study more history. In most ancient cultures smiths were mystical figures, who gave up much for their mastery.
For example, an ancient goidelic bronze-smith's life was generally short and often ended in madness due to the lack of forced ventilation technology. The arsenic and heavy metals naturally occuring in ores acculumated in the body and induced illness and psychosis. Consequently the smiths were often unable to have normal children; so of course fathers did not want their daughters to marry smiths. A smith who wished to marry might have to steal or buy a bride.
The inherited, rigidly defined social and occupational classes you're talking about are a feature of medieval and post-medieval (c.g. Renaissance and Modern) culture, and are very rare in truly ancient times. In ancient times fostering and apprenticeships were more the norm, and typically a smith chose his apprentices or fosterlings based on aptitude and ability.
Markland, the Tuchux, the Norse Film and Pageantry Society, Acre, The Sealed Knot, Dagohir, Milites Normanorum, all do some kind of sword'n'axe type live combat recreation.
Several of those listed above do "live steel" combat, with varying levels of realism and danger. SCA does stickfighting and fencing. Dagohir & its offshoots do padded sticks, Markland does live steel, padded sticks, and fencing.
All require equipment which is easier (and more fun) to make than to purchase... lots of geeks are into it more for the craftsmanship than for the adrenaline rush.
You said:Fundamental Christians deny the vast level of supporting evidence for an ancient naturalistically formed Universe where life developed under the control of natural selection
/.
I would certainly be described as one of those "Fundamental" Christians, and I must respectfully take issue with your point.
People who believe as I do do not deny the evidence. We collect evidence and draw inferences from it to see how that fits into our view of how the universe works. To be fair, this is precisely what naturalists do. We all share the same evidence. We differ in the meaning of the evidence and the explanations that accompany the evidence. Only a fool would reject solid evidence.
You also said:Christianity seem to win the contest as 'religion most likely to stifle scientific advancement'
I'll take issue with that as well. While it is true that many who claimed the name and power of the Christian church have abused that power and have done despicable things, that is not consistent with Christian beliefs. The list of Christians who have offered up significant scientific advances includes:
Johann Kepler, Francis Bacon, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Charles Babbage, Samuel F. B. Morse, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, Henri Fabre, Lord William Thompson Kelvin, Joseph Lister, George Washington Carver, Wernher von Braun, and many others.
To suggest that scientific advancement is inherently incompatible with Christianity is simply not inclusive of the facts.
Look at the lobby groups now most opposed to stem cell research...
Embryonic stem cell research is definitely opposed on moral grounds.
Adult stem cell research - the area that shows therapeutic benefit TODAY is not morally out of bounds and is helping people to live a more healthy life. This is GOOD science, and should be promoted.
Embryonic stem cell research is different. We believe that all human life is sacred and that no human should be killed to make life easier or healthier for someone else. The science shows that these zygotes are inherently human - that all that is required for a person to grow from a fertilized egg is food and shelter.
Science's technological reach has exceeded its moral grasp in this area. Science has long existed in a realm where there were moral guidelines on appropriate research. e.g. People must know that they are part of an experiment, and what the risks are, etc. I feel strongly that one day, the conventional scientific wisdom will look on this and say 'oops' we messed that one up.
FWIW - While I've not seen it written this way elsewhere, I rather like the idea of a "Fundamental Christian" over the moniker "fundamentalist" As a Fundamental Christian, I hold fast to the tenets of the historic Christian faith, which is somewhat different from the connotation of a fundie as described on
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Here's the site to check out:Caveman Chemistry
Projects from making charcoal, mead, and ceramics to casting metals and glass, and making plastic (making and drawing polyester fiber).
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Back in the medieval period, the educated people were the clerics, some ordained, some not.
Problem was, there weren't enough good jobs for the educated class. There were many underemployed people with time on their hands and limited prospects.
So they did what came naturally. Like we hack technology, they hacked theology.
Much 'black magic' was based on the standard Catholic rite of exorcism. In the rite, the priest commands demons or the devil to leave, in the name of the father, son, and holy ghost, perhaps with other holy names thrown in for good measure.
Some clerk must have seen that, and thought "What a waste! If you can command them, why not tell them to do something useful?"
Thus, the idea that a sorceror could follow a similar ritual, and use the influence of the holy powers to command the spirits to bring wealth, or sex, or knowledge.
Sort of like hacking a CueCat.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA