In the previous article "How scientifically prove that one religion is true " episode I spoke of Elijah and the priests of Baal, in which the prophet of Yahweh cult to challenge the priests of the other invoke the intervention of their gods, a sort of duel between the two gods. And of course Elia wins (and the 450 priests massacred defeated).
In this article I intend to show how religion was originally a way of explaining the world, providing falsifiable explanations, and how then was forced to abandon many of its claims to provide an explanation by the advance of science and culture in general.
The ancients believed the Bible stories actually
The importance of the 'experiment' of Elijah is in his testimony of how the relationship between religious claims and the factual findings changed over time has gone. from The concerned it is clear that Elijah was possible to demonstrate that Yahweh was the true God, and how this demonstration was accepted by the people of Israel.
For so long, religion has permeated virtually every area of \u200b\u200bhuman life. For example, religion provided an explanation of nature: the formation of the universe, the motion of the planets, the weather, the birth of animals, the existence of suffering and the causes of diseases. But his influence extended well: it provided the laws, dictated the form of government of a country, was the source of morality and the source of history and myth.
The faithful of those ancient times believed that really what was contained in the sacred texts correspond to the truth, because they did not have many opportunities to verify claims history, culture and science that you read. And this had the consequence that the authors of the religious traditions they had considerable freedom of action.
For this reason, the God of the Old Testament can disperse the people gathered to build the Tower of Babel is not doing more about them the same language, but many different, so Yahweh sent the flood to cover all the lands and kills all men , but Noah is saved on the ark, which is why it is said that God himself has appeared to Moses, the Pharaoh that the country that does not free the slaves is suffering from terrible wounds and devastating, that the sea is open to the face of Moses, the Jews conquer Canaan razing, among other cities, Jericho is for this reason that God is represented in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah spectacular. And so on, are difficult to verify many stories from people that were told.
The scientific and cultural progress has reduced the increasingly religious teaching
Time passes and the world changes, Israel will start to feel and accept the influence of Greek culture (the version of the Bible they use is that of the Catholics Greek translation, the Septuagint) and then the political and legislative Roman. And the effects are seen.
The New Testament tells of 'myths' qualitatively different from those of antiquity, and contains statements of a lesser degree. God does not intervene more directly in the history of Israel, but through a human being, whose actions, however wondrous, they have the same impact on the surrounding world that had the Yahweh of the Old Testament. There are no more universal floods or destruction of the city (the Roman historians they would record what had happened), but possessed of healing and the crippled, the resurrection of some characters on the edge of the world the culture, etc., all of which events is possible to doubt that historians have remained unaware.
Time passes again, and again change the world, men started to investigate the nature, to explain the motion of planets and stars, atmospheric phenomena, the causes of diseases, the emergence of new species; reconstruct its history and that of people missing, based on the preserved remains of the past, starting to lay the foundation of existing legislation, forms of government and morals outside of religion.
In fact, today no one takes seriously the Bible as a source of scientific knowledge, historical and moral: those who say that the Sun revolves around the Earth, or that a flood actually covered the earth's surface, or stoning adulterers is a good thing - because it is written in the Bible - are seen at best people as a bit 'touched.
But this is the result of a subtraction of areas with the authority of the Bible. Originally, as mentioned, people believed that what was written in the Bible was true . To take just one example, the first Egyptologists genuinely surprised not to find any trace of the plagues of Egypt or the departure of the Jews in Egyptian documents, as they were surprised to discover that at the time of the alleged Exodus Canaan was under Egyptian control or that Jericho was destroyed centuries before the arrival of Jews
As that knowledge and the thought of humans spreading out, religion was relinquish control of the various fields of knowledge, reducing, step by step, more and more restricted to areas, so that today the people interpret the Bible in the light of modern culture and science. The Bible says that there was a flood? Science denies it, so the biblical narrative is allegorical. Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden? No trace of a scientific primordial human pair, then a narrative allegory. Is ordered to kill homosexuals? Laws are unacceptable to the modern morality, so they are all allegories or a legacy of archaic thinking.
If, therefore, it is claimed that science can not verify the religious claims, if it is stated that religion and science are two non-overlapping magisteria , it is because religion has been forced to abandon all verifiable claims. And still others will have to leave.
But this will be the subject of another article.
Article inspired by ' Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky.
In this article I intend to show how religion was originally a way of explaining the world, providing falsifiable explanations, and how then was forced to abandon many of its claims to provide an explanation by the advance of science and culture in general.
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| Frequency of English language books containing the words 'science' and 'religion' ( Google Ngram ) |
The ancients believed the Bible stories actually
The importance of the 'experiment' of Elijah is in his testimony of how the relationship between religious claims and the factual findings changed over time has gone. from The concerned it is clear that Elijah was possible to demonstrate that Yahweh was the true God, and how this demonstration was accepted by the people of Israel.
For so long, religion has permeated virtually every area of \u200b\u200bhuman life. For example, religion provided an explanation of nature: the formation of the universe, the motion of the planets, the weather, the birth of animals, the existence of suffering and the causes of diseases. But his influence extended well: it provided the laws, dictated the form of government of a country, was the source of morality and the source of history and myth.
The faithful of those ancient times believed that really what was contained in the sacred texts correspond to the truth, because they did not have many opportunities to verify claims history, culture and science that you read. And this had the consequence that the authors of the religious traditions they had considerable freedom of action.
For this reason, the God of the Old Testament can disperse the people gathered to build the Tower of Babel is not doing more about them the same language, but many different, so Yahweh sent the flood to cover all the lands and kills all men , but Noah is saved on the ark, which is why it is said that God himself has appeared to Moses, the Pharaoh that the country that does not free the slaves is suffering from terrible wounds and devastating, that the sea is open to the face of Moses, the Jews conquer Canaan razing, among other cities, Jericho is for this reason that God is represented in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah spectacular. And so on, are difficult to verify many stories from people that were told.
The scientific and cultural progress has reduced the increasingly religious teaching
Time passes and the world changes, Israel will start to feel and accept the influence of Greek culture (the version of the Bible they use is that of the Catholics Greek translation, the Septuagint) and then the political and legislative Roman. And the effects are seen.
The New Testament tells of 'myths' qualitatively different from those of antiquity, and contains statements of a lesser degree. God does not intervene more directly in the history of Israel, but through a human being, whose actions, however wondrous, they have the same impact on the surrounding world that had the Yahweh of the Old Testament. There are no more universal floods or destruction of the city (the Roman historians they would record what had happened), but possessed of healing and the crippled, the resurrection of some characters on the edge of the world the culture, etc., all of which events is possible to doubt that historians have remained unaware.
Time passes again, and again change the world, men started to investigate the nature, to explain the motion of planets and stars, atmospheric phenomena, the causes of diseases, the emergence of new species; reconstruct its history and that of people missing, based on the preserved remains of the past, starting to lay the foundation of existing legislation, forms of government and morals outside of religion.
In fact, today no one takes seriously the Bible as a source of scientific knowledge, historical and moral: those who say that the Sun revolves around the Earth, or that a flood actually covered the earth's surface, or stoning adulterers is a good thing - because it is written in the Bible - are seen at best people as a bit 'touched.
But this is the result of a subtraction of areas with the authority of the Bible. Originally, as mentioned, people believed that what was written in the Bible was true . To take just one example, the first Egyptologists genuinely surprised not to find any trace of the plagues of Egypt or the departure of the Jews in Egyptian documents, as they were surprised to discover that at the time of the alleged Exodus Canaan was under Egyptian control or that Jericho was destroyed centuries before the arrival of Jews
As that knowledge and the thought of humans spreading out, religion was relinquish control of the various fields of knowledge, reducing, step by step, more and more restricted to areas, so that today the people interpret the Bible in the light of modern culture and science. The Bible says that there was a flood? Science denies it, so the biblical narrative is allegorical. Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden? No trace of a scientific primordial human pair, then a narrative allegory. Is ordered to kill homosexuals? Laws are unacceptable to the modern morality, so they are all allegories or a legacy of archaic thinking.
If, therefore, it is claimed that science can not verify the religious claims, if it is stated that religion and science are two non-overlapping magisteria , it is because religion has been forced to abandon all verifiable claims. And still others will have to leave.
But this will be the subject of another article.
Article inspired by ' Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky.
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