joel
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 70
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Post by joel on Sept 1, 2009 18:40:32 GMT
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Post by James Hannam on Sept 1, 2009 21:31:06 GMT
Hi Joel,
There's a project in hand to deal with all of Loftus's Debunking Christianity including Carrier's chapter. I'll be keeping my powder dry until then.
Best wishes
James
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Post by humphreyclarke on Sept 2, 2009 8:47:10 GMT
I found the talks to be somewhat superficial. All they amounted to was a listing of Roman and Greek natural philosophers (he insists on calling them scientists). This was set out in reply to Stark who seems to have argued that nothing happened in ancient natural philosophy after Aristotle. Where it went wrong was in blowing some of the achievements out of all proportion. For example, its fine to talk about early heliocentrists such as Aristarchus of Samos but you have to follow that up with why their ideas were not accepted (no stellar parallax, the large speeds required by a rotating earth). Hero's aeolipile is a sort of primitive steam turbine, but it's a temple 'wonder' and not designed for any practical purpose. Then there was a sort of revised conflict thesis he was presenting in which vaguely defined 'scientific values' triumphed over religious values. One only has to look at the emergence of modern science in the medieval and early modern period to see this is a load of baloney. When Galileo says that as 'the obedient executrix of God's commands' nature is 'inexorable and immutable' and never transgresses 'the laws imposed upon her' for any 'eternal and necessary property, purely mathematical demonstrations can be produced', are we looking at the triumph of science over dogma?, or are we looking at a revision of Platonism, in which belief in the reality of God guarantees that nature displays the same mathematical language in which it was written.
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