Comment Re:In other news (Score 1) 191
It's my view that one of the earliest reasons for the creation of religion was to try to encapsulate scientific knowledge.
If you are living one crop failure away from starvation, it's pretty important to know what time of year it's going to start raining, snowing, etc. Having a gigantic festival every spring (for instance), and thanking "the powers that be" for sending in those spring rains again, right on schedule, seems like a pretty good way to remind everyone who needed to know (the whole "society", if you will) about what turns out to be a (now) scientifically-explained phenomenon, the changing of the seasons.
This sort of basic codification of (what turn out to be) scientific principles can be seen throughout ancient (and modern) religions. This is not to discount people's belief in "a higher power", whatever name that power takes. Science hasn't explained everything there is to know about the universe, yet.
However, the fact that the church once sponsored scientific research (and the archival of the resultant research) is completely unsurprising, and even necessary, until the scientific community was itself organized enough to have its own sponsors, and until secular bodies had the clout (and the cash) to take over where the church started.
The moral? Just because it comes from the church doesn't mean it's bad. Doesn't mean it's necessarily good, either. It's up to an open mind to decide in each circumstance.
If you are living one crop failure away from starvation, it's pretty important to know what time of year it's going to start raining, snowing, etc. Having a gigantic festival every spring (for instance), and thanking "the powers that be" for sending in those spring rains again, right on schedule, seems like a pretty good way to remind everyone who needed to know (the whole "society", if you will) about what turns out to be a (now) scientifically-explained phenomenon, the changing of the seasons.
This sort of basic codification of (what turn out to be) scientific principles can be seen throughout ancient (and modern) religions. This is not to discount people's belief in "a higher power", whatever name that power takes. Science hasn't explained everything there is to know about the universe, yet.
However, the fact that the church once sponsored scientific research (and the archival of the resultant research) is completely unsurprising, and even necessary, until the scientific community was itself organized enough to have its own sponsors, and until secular bodies had the clout (and the cash) to take over where the church started.
The moral? Just because it comes from the church doesn't mean it's bad. Doesn't mean it's necessarily good, either. It's up to an open mind to decide in each circumstance.
