How is the beam manipulated? doesn't it cause an explosion if it touches normal particles? can it be used as a weapon? as fuel? how is the beam created?
"If that was an all atheist society, how did it work out? (not trying to make a point here, just thinking and wondering)."
Primitive people worshiped the Sun, the Sky, etc.
"So you think the world would benefit from "artificially" getting rid of religions? That is, you think it'd be a good thing to, say, exterminate all those who are religious and refuse to give it up?"
There hasn't been an all atheist society ever, so we don't know if your hypothesis is correct.
As an atheist, I believe that the world would benefit from getting rid of religions, because people would no longer accept dogmas (of any kind), and thus be more involved in society's affairs.
It was an OLE memory leak...which creates a great problem with a new O/S, potentially costing thousands of dollars or even millions if exploited by hackers.
The OLE mechanism is written in C/C++, isn't it? well, many thanks, again, for these wonderful languages that have made our life an adventure.
(when humanity will get to grips, we will perhaps use a more sane programming language for our O/Ses and services).
"Finding inspiration, hope and meaning is a very personal matter. Not everyone finds it in faith or philosophy. I don't think someone such as you would find it in religion."
Ok, people find hope, but in a fantasy world. It's not better than finding hope in a video game. And such an act is harmful on society: people living in fantasies are easy to manipulate.
"I've heard of men who held reason, rationalism and logic so dear and denying "the power and the glory" only to make deathbed conversions before kicking the proverbial bucket."
Death will always be greater than us. But that does not mean religions have any truth in them.
"...time for me to ask YOU a loaded question now. Who do you think invented zyklon-B? Was it more likely a clergyman?...or a scientist?"
A German scientist. So? scientists can be as sinister as any other person. But that has nothing to do with science.
"Do you think Pythagoras was ignorant because of what he believed?...or Maimonides?...or Mahatma Gandhi?...or Dr. King?"
"Do you think any of them took things as they were?"
That they tried to make social changes does not invalidate my argument. We should all have been Dr Kings and Mahatma Gandhis.
"Funding for sciences and the humanities tends to dry up when society breaks down."
I can not disagree with that, and the middle ages is a testament to that.
"I left out music, including a rather large portion of classical works."
Music, again, in the context of religion.
"Of course, there's still a lot of debate as to whether Jesus really said and did the things that the scriptures claim that he said and did, or whether he was the son of God or not."
Jesus was a philosopher. In his teachings, he talks about the human state. Of course, in this day and age, we can not be sure of the origin of the content of his speeches.
"Historically, among the earliest European settlers in Africa, Asia and the Americas were Christian missionaries."
Yeah, after 1500 years the Greeks have settled in all the Mediterranean. You missed something there.
But that's not the point. The missionaries went there in order to put the locals under the boot of religion. And the explorers went there to loot.
Or have we forgotten the massacre of native Americans by Spain?
"The Church never did appreciate having its assumptions questioned....so it appears that you might actually have something in common with the Church."
You are wrong on both counts. Science is open in questioning itself. Does gravity exist? let's do an experiment please. Ok, it exists. No matter what experiment we do, the outcome is the same. Can we have some mathematics to explain the phenomenon? we do.
A good example of how science always questions itself is the problem of aether. Some scientists in the 19th century believed that the universe has a layer of common substance that permeates it. Some did not. Experiments were done, and the latter view won.
On the other hand, the Church does not question itself.
It's pretty obvious which is the better of the two.
"...and the church helped fund that development, and put a lot of those scholars through school....from the Renaissance onwards anyway. Now they run some really good schools, and a lot of students wouldn't be able to afford school without church funded scholarships."
And education in communist countries was free.
And Bill Gates has donated billions of dollars.
Such goodness comes out of the goodness of people, not from religion.
We can be good and moral without religion.
"...minor correction - Landowners, such as royals, aristocrats and later on merchants along with the church held (past-tense) most of the wealth in Europe during the times you were referring to. Usually, they held rather more wealth than the church."
Well, maybe, but is the difference between gifted and non-gifted so great that we can label them as such? gifted and non-gifted sounds ridiculous. A child clever in math may be stupid in philosophy, for example.
I think there are no non-gifted people, except those that are mentally retarded (and even those can have exceptional abilities sometimes). I think it's social reasons that lead to the separation of gifted vs non-gifted people.
"Apparently you haven't been subjected to enough PowerPoint presentations to believe just how pointless presentations are. "
Whatever documentary I have seen on TV, it stays in mind. I've learned quite a few theorems in this way from a BBC educational program. It was far easier than reading.
"The home work a student does aren't usually for general consumption"
Don't they say that you haven't really comprehend something until you are required to teach it? I fully agree with that. Forcing the students to present their knowledge in a form which requires coherence would make them understand the material they deal with.
"as a visual analogy for a concept is presented rather than presenting the concept in straight language"
There is no difference from reading. Reading, at its worst, is an audio analogy, and at its best, is as visual as a presentation, if you care to exercise imagination.
"And compared to reading speeds visual presentation can be very slow.Wikipedia would not be improved if it were converted to a narrated visual media."
I think it would. For every concept I have searched Wikipedia for, a visual representation would convey the information much faster. For example, by the time I have to read the concept of particle duality in quantum physics, I nice animation would have presented that and the double slit experiment as well.
"Of course actually doing it tends to be better. And static presentations on paper may be a better bridge to the 'power tools' of physics: formula and mathematical manipulation. The ability to deal with the abstract rather than the specific and translate back and forth is the hallmark of many scientific disciplines. Visual presentation probably wouldn't help as much as one would hope."
Why not play with the mathematical formulas on the screen and also watch an experiment derived from the formula? for example, I could learn relativity much easier if I can play with a formula (say, gravity) and also watch the effects of it on a planet, object, star etc. Only an electronic medium offers such a possibility.
"Unfortunately working how to use them right is not straightforward. I don't mean to be dismissive, but I suspect many quite bright people have been working on this one and given the observed results, it probably isn't an easy problem."
I think it is very easy. The wrong thing people usually do is transfer the narrative property of a book to the screen. That's wrong. What is right is to show a few things on the screen, and let the child experiment with it.
For example, in a history book, don't show a list of chapters to a child, but a timeline where he/she can choose to see the main events on it. He can then click on an event and see another timeline, more detailed, concerning the specific period, and select any major event to play with. After clicking an event (say, a historical battle, for example, Waterloo), he can then inspect the landscape, the tactical play of the two armies etc, and then even proceed to play with it by changing the parameters and watch a different outcome.
Graphics are still not as realistic as they should be to suspend disbelief. There are minor differences between DX9 and DX10 games, as shown by the screenshots in the article, differences not big enough to make me worry that I should run DX10 any time soon.
"If I left no student behind and pitched to the slower students, then I would have completely alienated the average and gifted ones. If I pitched to the gifted ones, then 80% of the class would have felt left out. If I drove down the middle of the fairway, then both ends of the curve would be, well, bored."
Is it really true that there are gifted and non-gifted people when it comes to school? from my personal experience at school, and from watching my sister's kids and their interactions, I can't say that children that do not do well in school are not gifted. They are simply not approached in a way that allows them to shift their interest to the subjects at school.
I find it extremely interesting that I have a really hard time to feel at home with "lower class" people. I am educated, I have an MSc in software engineering, my interests beyond computers are astronomy, physics, sci-fi, soccer and basketball, and I find it extremely easy to communicate with people in the same status as me or in higher status. But I find it extremely hard to participate in discussions carried out by people with lower education than me, like workers, plumbers, etc. But it is not that their discussion is stupid, actually it is extremely intelligent, with subtle cues for almost everything, which I have a hard time understanding in time so as that I can participate as an equal in their discussion.
So, who is really cleverer? I don't consider myself cleverer than them. I am not more gifted, although I was amongst the top-rated students at school and they were average or below average.
The only difference is that I paid attention, and they did not.
It's not in the best interest of the political authorities (of any kind) to make a very good education system, because then the masses will understand how much of a fraud politicians are.
How about making the blackboard more interactive by making it a touch screen? and have the students prepare their exercises at their home as presentations, instead of having to write them on paper? and then really exercise the imagination of students by letting them see a visual representation of the topic at hand, since we leave in an age where video dominates?
Watching a 10 minute documentary about a historical event is a much more interesting way to teach than have people read a white paper with black letters, for example.
How about watching animated physics presentations on the big screen instead of static presentations on paper?
How about interactive physics and chemistry demos where the children can touch the objects on the screen and experiment with them?
The possibilities with computers are endless, provided that they are used right.
"One purpose of science is to provide an explanation for what we perceive as reality. At its best, religion should offer meaning, inspiration, and hope. Of course, it doesn't always work out that way"
Which religion today offers meaning, inspiration, and hope? perhaps Islam that says "all you sinners must convert or die"? Christianity which says "don't do any sex as your god-given body dictates or you will burn eternally in hell"?
"...if you only look at what went wrong and if you only call attention to how religion was mis-used to exploit ignorance."
Religion was not misused to exploit ignorance. Religion *is* ignorance. Even if religious leaders don't exploit believers, these people tend to take things as they are because 'God made it so'.
"Of course there's more to it. Organized religion stimulated the arts, language, philosophy and exploration. Also the involvement of religious organizations in schools and hospitals is not new."
Arts and language were encouraged by the Christian churches only within the context of religion. Philosophy and exploration? you called me dishonest, but what are you? need I remind you about Galileo? and countless others which where oppressed by the Church?
The biggest development in sciences and civilization came in ancient Greece from 800 BC to 200 AD and in the modern world after the renaissance, and in both cases the loosening up of religion was the key to the development.
"...which suggests that religion helped to advance science. Before corporate and government grants, scientists had to find other patrons. There is one rather pressing scientific problem in the history of science that has yet to be solved. Research aint easy....or cheap."
Indeed. Churches hold almost all wealth, while peasants starved to death.
"..because religious solutions didn't offer much in terms of scientific advancement? Do you think they should have? Specifically which 1500 years are you thinking of?"
The middle ages?
"...good point. But until you've conclusively proven that those theories really are the solutions, doesn't that rather blur the line between logic and faith?"
They are conclusively proven.
"Yeah, not all reasoning is all that scientific....next."
Applying reason to a problem can lead to many logical fallacies that may go undetected. Only scientific reasoning can detect those fallacies.
"If that's the case, then I don't think I wanna know how many bulls those "full believers" sacrificed!...or what the occasion was."
It was social reasons that made ancient Greeks kept those customs. But they knew about their false Gods. They made fun of the Gods in their theatrical plays. They knew.
"No they are not. There are differences and there are similarities. They are both endeavors of humanity to make sense out of life, the world, and everything in it."
The difference is not in the purpose (both want to provide an explanation for what we perceive as reality) but in the approach: science is based on logic and rational thinking and religion is based on instincts.
"..and they can both be mis-used to abuse and hurt people. All in all, I think both have done more good than harm."
Like any other tool. But, overall, religion has done more harm than good. The 1500 years of no progress is a tiny evidence for that.
"The revelations of science are subject to change. Discovery is one of the really cool things about science."
Not those theories that are proven. It may be revealed that the current theories are subsets or specific solutions of greater theories, like Newton's theory of gravity which was a specific solution of general relativity.
"I don't think I said that he was. I think I claimed that he was a man of faith and reason."
But not scientific reasoning. There is a difference between "reason" and "scientific reasoning".
"He's no saint, but I think you'd like him."
A, yes, Martin Luther King. So?
"Apparently, it also involved animal sacrifice, because Pythagoras sacrificed a bull to the gods after he proved the existence of irrational numbers."
Indeed, and the ancient Greeks kept their customs. That does not mean they were full believers.
"The Middle East can get really incredibly hot. If you baked your brain in the sun for too long, you might start inventing "better gods" too."
Read Plato.
"I cited a few names for purpose of example only. But they are fairly strong examples, aren't they?"
Only one of them was a scientist.
"I don't think I tried to do that. I suggested that there is more than one path to truth."
What truth? truth is what is proven via experiments. Show me (please, for nth time) an experiment which proves a religion (any religion) as truth.
"I would also add that it's not very logical or reasonable to apply scientific solutions to religious problems or vice-versa. A chainsaw can be used as a nail-clipper, but not well."
But if God gave me logic, why should I not use it?
Parallel programming has many facets. Libraries like OpenMP can not be compared to Windows threads, for example: the former is a mechanism for doing task/data parallelism at language level, the latter offers the primitives for making threads. PThreads is a thread API similar to win32 threads. I don't see how there is an overload of choices, really.
Yes, religion and science are diametric opposites. I agree with you that we should not demean others, but in the same time we can not close our eyes to the revelations of science that are in direct opposition with religion.
Gandhi was not a scientist. I don't know who is dr King, but at the time of Pythagoras, religion was not a taken as seriously as today. The Dodekatheon religion was more of a theatrical play between people, a philosophical movement and not a totalitarian proposition. Ancient Greeks knew that, and in many ancient texts you will find the reference to the 'one true god', especially by Socrates (as referred to by Plato)...because they realized that their Gods were anthropomorphic, they invented a better god without the weaknesses of the previous gods. Much like Israelites did.
Naturally, there were and are great scientists that believe in a god, but that does not mean that since they are top in their science, they are top in everything. A great scientific mind that has not yet applied the scientific thought process to the problem of God can not be held up as an example of religion and science being compatible.
Given that steam engines, electricity and the concept of the atom where discovered at later Hellenistic periods (around 200 years around the birth of Jesus Christ), we could be at Star Trek level of technology and civilization right now. But instead of that, we got 1500 years of no progress, thanks to religion.
Much like modern Christianity was really founded at 325 ad, at the ecumenical council of Nicea perhaps?
All religions are manufactured by people that want to impose a control mechanism to their own kind. I wish this thing with religions ends sometimes in the future and we get to see ourselves as what we really are.
Slashdot Mirror
How is the beam manipulated? doesn't it cause an explosion if it touches normal particles? can it be used as a weapon? as fuel? how is the beam created?
"If that was an all atheist society, how did it work out? (not trying to make a point here, just thinking and wondering)."
Primitive people worshiped the Sun, the Sky, etc.
"So you think the world would benefit from "artificially" getting rid of religions? That is, you think it'd be a good thing to, say, exterminate all those who are religious and refuse to give it up?"
Not artificially, but through education.
...here is the proposal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek
"I am afraid society is still in the dark ages"
It is.
We humans still judge someone by the way he/she looks, the clothes he/she wears, the posture, etc.
Lots of people on Earth still live by religion.
Materialism dominates. We think we will be happier with a bigger house, a bigger car, etc.
Most people look up their horoscope at daily basis...
...as a ninja.
I'd like to see him with a ninja outfit.
"why did these two robots continue to work so well"
:-)
Easy. They sent a technician to repair them on site, somewhere in Australia where the whole thing is filmed.
"how do we go about repeating their success?"
Buy a ticket to Australia?
"Yeah, I tried a Mac a few years ago, it was all overhyped so don't believe them"
Yeap, exactly where I stand. I tried Vista, a big no for me. I tried Mac OS 10.4...good, but not different enough than XP for me to switch.
There hasn't been an all atheist society ever, so we don't know if your hypothesis is correct.
As an atheist, I believe that the world would benefit from getting rid of religions, because people would no longer accept dogmas (of any kind), and thus be more involved in society's affairs.
It was an OLE memory leak...which creates a great problem with a new O/S, potentially costing thousands of dollars or even millions if exploited by hackers.
The OLE mechanism is written in C/C++, isn't it? well, many thanks, again, for these wonderful languages that have made our life an adventure.
(when humanity will get to grips, we will perhaps use a more sane programming language for our O/Ses and services).
Too bad for Microsoft to have to hide a fine O/S (NT) under a shitty API (Win32).
"Finding inspiration, hope and meaning is a very personal matter. Not everyone finds it in faith or philosophy. I don't think someone such as you would find it in religion."
...or a scientist?"
...or Maimonides? ...or Mahatma Gandhi? ...or Dr. King?"
...so it appears that you might actually have something in common with the Church."
...from the Renaissance onwards anyway. Now they run some really good schools, and a lot of students wouldn't be able to afford school without church funded scholarships."
Ok, people find hope, but in a fantasy world. It's not better than finding hope in a video game. And such an act is harmful on society: people living in fantasies are easy to manipulate.
"I've heard of men who held reason, rationalism and logic so dear and denying "the power and the glory" only to make deathbed conversions before kicking the proverbial bucket."
Death will always be greater than us. But that does not mean religions have any truth in them.
"...time for me to ask YOU a loaded question now. Who do you think invented zyklon-B? Was it more likely a clergyman?
A German scientist. So? scientists can be as sinister as any other person. But that has nothing to do with science.
"Do you think Pythagoras was ignorant because of what he believed?
"Do you think any of them took things as they were?"
That they tried to make social changes does not invalidate my argument. We should all have been Dr Kings and Mahatma Gandhis.
"Funding for sciences and the humanities tends to dry up when society breaks down."
I can not disagree with that, and the middle ages is a testament to that.
"I left out music, including a rather large portion of classical works."
Music, again, in the context of religion.
"Of course, there's still a lot of debate as to whether Jesus really said and did the things that the scriptures claim that he said and did, or whether he was the son of God or not."
Jesus was a philosopher. In his teachings, he talks about the human state. Of course, in this day and age, we can not be sure of the origin of the content of his speeches.
"Historically, among the earliest European settlers in Africa, Asia and the Americas were Christian missionaries."
Yeah, after 1500 years the Greeks have settled in all the Mediterranean. You missed something there.
But that's not the point. The missionaries went there in order to put the locals under the boot of religion. And the explorers went there to loot.
Or have we forgotten the massacre of native Americans by Spain?
"The Church never did appreciate having its assumptions questioned.
You are wrong on both counts. Science is open in questioning itself. Does gravity exist? let's do an experiment please. Ok, it exists. No matter what experiment we do, the outcome is the same. Can we have some mathematics to explain the phenomenon? we do.
A good example of how science always questions itself is the problem of aether. Some scientists in the 19th century believed that the universe has a layer of common substance that permeates it. Some did not. Experiments were done, and the latter view won.
On the other hand, the Church does not question itself.
It's pretty obvious which is the better of the two.
"...and the church helped fund that development, and put a lot of those scholars through school.
And education in communist countries was free.
And Bill Gates has donated billions of dollars.
Such goodness comes out of the goodness of people, not from religion.
We can be good and moral without religion.
"...minor correction - Landowners, such as royals, aristocrats and later on merchants along with the church held (past-tense) most of the wealth in Europe during the times you were referring to. Usually, they held rather more wealth than the church."
Yeah, and land owners, aristocrat
Well, maybe, but is the difference between gifted and non-gifted so great that we can label them as such? gifted and non-gifted sounds ridiculous. A child clever in math may be stupid in philosophy, for example.
I think there are no non-gifted people, except those that are mentally retarded (and even those can have exceptional abilities sometimes). I think it's social reasons that lead to the separation of gifted vs non-gifted people.
"Apparently you haven't been subjected to enough PowerPoint presentations to believe just how pointless presentations are. "
Whatever documentary I have seen on TV, it stays in mind. I've learned quite a few theorems in this way from a BBC educational program. It was far easier than reading.
"The home work a student does aren't usually for general consumption"
Don't they say that you haven't really comprehend something until you are required to teach it? I fully agree with that. Forcing the students to present their knowledge in a form which requires coherence would make them understand the material they deal with.
"as a visual analogy for a concept is presented rather than presenting the concept in straight language"
There is no difference from reading. Reading, at its worst, is an audio analogy, and at its best, is as visual as a presentation, if you care to exercise imagination.
"And compared to reading speeds visual presentation can be very slow.Wikipedia would not be improved if it were converted to a narrated visual media."
I think it would. For every concept I have searched Wikipedia for, a visual representation would convey the information much faster. For example, by the time I have to read the concept of particle duality in quantum physics, I nice animation would have presented that and the double slit experiment as well.
"Of course actually doing it tends to be better. And static presentations on paper may be a better bridge to the 'power tools' of physics: formula and mathematical manipulation. The ability to deal with the abstract rather than the specific and translate back and forth is the hallmark of many scientific disciplines. Visual presentation probably wouldn't help as much as one would hope."
Why not play with the mathematical formulas on the screen and also watch an experiment derived from the formula? for example, I could learn relativity much easier if I can play with a formula (say, gravity) and also watch the effects of it on a planet, object, star etc. Only an electronic medium offers such a possibility.
"Unfortunately working how to use them right is not straightforward. I don't mean to be dismissive, but I suspect many quite bright people have been working on this one and given the observed results, it probably isn't an easy problem."
I think it is very easy. The wrong thing people usually do is transfer the narrative property of a book to the screen. That's wrong. What is right is to show a few things on the screen, and let the child experiment with it.
For example, in a history book, don't show a list of chapters to a child, but a timeline where he/she can choose to see the main events on it. He can then click on an event and see another timeline, more detailed, concerning the specific period, and select any major event to play with. After clicking an event (say, a historical battle, for example, Waterloo), he can then inspect the landscape, the tactical play of the two armies etc, and then even proceed to play with it by changing the parameters and watch a different outcome.
There is big bucks in the health care system.
Graphics are still not as realistic as they should be to suspend disbelief. There are minor differences between DX9 and DX10 games, as shown by the screenshots in the article, differences not big enough to make me worry that I should run DX10 any time soon.
"If I left no student behind and pitched to the slower students, then I would have completely alienated the average and gifted ones. If I pitched to the gifted ones, then 80% of the class would have felt left out. If I drove down the middle of the fairway, then both ends of the curve would be, well, bored."
Is it really true that there are gifted and non-gifted people when it comes to school? from my personal experience at school, and from watching my sister's kids and their interactions, I can't say that children that do not do well in school are not gifted. They are simply not approached in a way that allows them to shift their interest to the subjects at school.
I find it extremely interesting that I have a really hard time to feel at home with "lower class" people. I am educated, I have an MSc in software engineering, my interests beyond computers are astronomy, physics, sci-fi, soccer and basketball, and I find it extremely easy to communicate with people in the same status as me or in higher status. But I find it extremely hard to participate in discussions carried out by people with lower education than me, like workers, plumbers, etc. But it is not that their discussion is stupid, actually it is extremely intelligent, with subtle cues for almost everything, which I have a hard time understanding in time so as that I can participate as an equal in their discussion.
So, who is really cleverer? I don't consider myself cleverer than them. I am not more gifted, although I was amongst the top-rated students at school and they were average or below average.
The only difference is that I paid attention, and they did not.
It's not in the best interest of the political authorities (of any kind) to make a very good education system, because then the masses will understand how much of a fraud politicians are.
How about making the blackboard more interactive by making it a touch screen? and have the students prepare their exercises at their home as presentations, instead of having to write them on paper? and then really exercise the imagination of students by letting them see a visual representation of the topic at hand, since we leave in an age where video dominates?
Watching a 10 minute documentary about a historical event is a much more interesting way to teach than have people read a white paper with black letters, for example.
How about watching animated physics presentations on the big screen instead of static presentations on paper?
How about interactive physics and chemistry demos where the children can touch the objects on the screen and experiment with them?
The possibilities with computers are endless, provided that they are used right.
"One purpose of science is to provide an explanation for what we perceive as reality. At its best, religion should offer meaning, inspiration, and hope. Of course, it doesn't always work out that way"
...or cheap."
...next."
...or what the occasion was."
Which religion today offers meaning, inspiration, and hope? perhaps Islam that says "all you sinners must convert or die"? Christianity which says "don't do any sex as your god-given body dictates or you will burn eternally in hell"?
"...if you only look at what went wrong and if you only call attention to how religion was mis-used to exploit ignorance."
Religion was not misused to exploit ignorance. Religion *is* ignorance. Even if religious leaders don't exploit believers, these people tend to take things as they are because 'God made it so'.
"Of course there's more to it. Organized religion stimulated the arts, language, philosophy and exploration. Also the involvement of religious organizations in schools and hospitals is not new."
Arts and language were encouraged by the Christian churches only within the context of religion. Philosophy and exploration? you called me dishonest, but what are you? need I remind you about Galileo? and countless others which where oppressed by the Church?
The biggest development in sciences and civilization came in ancient Greece from 800 BC to 200 AD and in the modern world after the renaissance, and in both cases the loosening up of religion was the key to the development.
"...which suggests that religion helped to advance science. Before corporate and government grants, scientists had to find other patrons. There is one rather pressing scientific problem in the history of science that has yet to be solved. Research aint easy.
Indeed. Churches hold almost all wealth, while peasants starved to death.
"..because religious solutions didn't offer much in terms of scientific advancement? Do you think they should have? Specifically which 1500 years are you thinking of?"
The middle ages?
"...good point. But until you've conclusively proven that those theories really are the solutions, doesn't that rather blur the line between logic and faith?"
They are conclusively proven.
"Yeah, not all reasoning is all that scientific.
Applying reason to a problem can lead to many logical fallacies that may go undetected. Only scientific reasoning can detect those fallacies.
"If that's the case, then I don't think I wanna know how many bulls those "full believers" sacrificed!
It was social reasons that made ancient Greeks kept those customs. But they knew about their false Gods. They made fun of the Gods in their theatrical plays. They knew.
And that's why they progressed.
"No they are not. There are differences and there are similarities. They are both endeavors of humanity to make sense out of life, the world, and everything in it."
The difference is not in the purpose (both want to provide an explanation for what we perceive as reality) but in the approach: science is based on logic and rational thinking and religion is based on instincts.
"..and they can both be mis-used to abuse and hurt people. All in all, I think both have done more good than harm."
Like any other tool. But, overall, religion has done more harm than good. The 1500 years of no progress is a tiny evidence for that.
"The revelations of science are subject to change. Discovery is one of the really cool things about science."
Not those theories that are proven. It may be revealed that the current theories are subsets or specific solutions of greater theories, like Newton's theory of gravity which was a specific solution of general relativity.
"I don't think I said that he was. I think I claimed that he was a man of faith and reason."
But not scientific reasoning. There is a difference between "reason" and "scientific reasoning".
"He's no saint, but I think you'd like him."
A, yes, Martin Luther King. So?
"Apparently, it also involved animal sacrifice, because Pythagoras sacrificed a bull to the gods after he proved the existence of irrational numbers."
Indeed, and the ancient Greeks kept their customs. That does not mean they were full believers.
"The Middle East can get really incredibly hot. If you baked your brain in the sun for too long, you might start inventing "better gods" too."
Read Plato.
"I cited a few names for purpose of example only. But they are fairly strong examples, aren't they?"
Only one of them was a scientist.
"I don't think I tried to do that. I suggested that there is more than one path to truth."
What truth? truth is what is proven via experiments. Show me (please, for nth time) an experiment which proves a religion (any religion) as truth.
"I would also add that it's not very logical or reasonable to apply scientific solutions to religious problems or vice-versa. A chainsaw can be used as a nail-clipper, but not well."
But if God gave me logic, why should I not use it?
Parallel programming has many facets. Libraries like OpenMP can not be compared to Windows threads, for example: the former is a mechanism for doing task/data parallelism at language level, the latter offers the primitives for making threads. PThreads is a thread API similar to win32 threads. I don't see how there is an overload of choices, really.
Yes, religion and science are diametric opposites. I agree with you that we should not demean others, but in the same time we can not close our eyes to the revelations of science that are in direct opposition with religion.
Gandhi was not a scientist. I don't know who is dr King, but at the time of Pythagoras, religion was not a taken as seriously as today. The Dodekatheon religion was more of a theatrical play between people, a philosophical movement and not a totalitarian proposition. Ancient Greeks knew that, and in many ancient texts you will find the reference to the 'one true god', especially by Socrates (as referred to by Plato)...because they realized that their Gods were anthropomorphic, they invented a better god without the weaknesses of the previous gods. Much like Israelites did.
Naturally, there were and are great scientists that believe in a god, but that does not mean that since they are top in their science, they are top in everything. A great scientific mind that has not yet applied the scientific thought process to the problem of God can not be held up as an example of religion and science being compatible.
Given that steam engines, electricity and the concept of the atom where discovered at later Hellenistic periods (around 200 years around the birth of Jesus Christ), we could be at Star Trek level of technology and civilization right now. But instead of that, we got 1500 years of no progress, thanks to religion.
Much like modern Christianity was really founded at 325 ad, at the ecumenical council of Nicea perhaps?
All religions are manufactured by people that want to impose a control mechanism to their own kind. I wish this thing with religions ends sometimes in the future and we get to see ourselves as what we really are.
An AK47 may do a fine job...