Leibniz, Pascal, Descartes, Berkeley, Boyle, Newton, Kepler, Spinoza, Faraday, Maxwell...do you think they were idiots, do you ever question your "beleifs"?...is it perhaps because you cannot see the whole and are stuck on the surface.
2007-05-25 07:52:39 · 20 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
joe mama...these philosophers and scientists i mentioned did it by their own understanding and choice, none were forced into it....and i did not say they followed a religion, but they were theists.
2007-05-25 07:58:45 · update #1
i am just pointing out the fact that atheists try to convince theists that their POV is correct by immediately labeling them.
2007-05-25 08:00:19 · update #2
what do you mean about back then...these were profound thinkers...most atheists i meet are just a bunch of angry pseudo-intellectuals.
2007-05-25 08:02:30 · update #3
i have read up on some of them...and their thoughts and philosophies...they were genuine free thinkers.
most of you making claims about them are just making hasty judgments which seem to be the norm around here.
2007-05-25 08:05:34 · update #4
what do you mean they lived in a time when they had no choice...most of these guys even wrote books about their understanding of God and the world....atheists on this list make lame unfounded claims and theories.
2007-05-25 08:09:28 · update #5
name one of the scientists\philosophers that i listed that was forced to beleive a certain religion.
Albert Einstein would have been against the current atheist ideologies, he was actually a theist\deist and beleived in the existance of a god similar to spinoza's god.
2007-05-25 08:23:29 · update #6
Interesting, all Europeans. Know any Indians? Chinese? People belong to churches for all kinds of reasons, many of which having nothing whatever to do with an actual belief in god.
2007-05-25 07:58:17 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
The reason so many great scientists believed in God was that they loved science. And funny as it may seem, when you examine the world closely enough, when you think about it enough and come to love it enough, you get a distinct feeling that there is something behind it. That there is a God.
God is supposed to be the creator - a perfect creator of a perfect world. Everything is exactly as it's supposed to be. And scientists see the world that way. They cannot observe how a simple virus, composed of only a few amino acids, can destroy a human being that is much bigger and more powerful, without a feeling of awe. The world is funny because the more powerful your magnifying glass becomes through which you observe it, the more perfect the world becomes. And a perfect world cannot just appear by chance. Everybody knows that.
But atheists do not see the world as perfect. They refuse to. Which is why they can never make great scientific discoveries. They cannot find pure, beautiful, mathematical representations of things in the world because they do not believe it is possible to model the world using something that is perfect.
The atheist's failing is not that they cannot see the whole. It is that they mistake the whole for the parts. If you look at a grain of salt, you can falsely assume that it's made of smaller grains than itself, with ugly jagged edges. But if you look closely at it, you will find that a grain of salt is almost miraculously regular. Only a misplaced atom here and there completely throws it off and gives it the mangled outward appearance. But as a scientist you can see the perfection. You can also understand how entropy prevents the crystal from being entirely regular. In it's way, the entropy contributes to the perfection. And when you see that, you cannot help but believe in God.
Very good question indeed :) I'm glad I had a chance to answer it.
2007-05-25 18:23:39 · answer #2 · answered by Magina 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
And many of the scientists you mentioned were persecuted by their churches for their discoveries, some even excommunicated and threatened with prison. It wasn't that they had such great faith in their religious beliefs. It was more a sign of the times they lived in that the churches and religions controlled governments, controlled the money flow, controlled the courts. What other choice did they have than to openly claim their religious faith? Without the backing of the church they would have had no money for research and would probably end up in jail. Then, like now, religions control by fear and intimidation.
2007-05-25 15:05:36 · answer #3 · answered by ndmagicman 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Many scientists and philosophers were atheists. The problem was that at the time they could have been, and several were, thrown in prison for heresy.
We can all chuck out endless lists of people from both sides, it proves nothing. In particular when your lists contain people from a time where as I said, it was inherently dangerous to admit to not believing.
2007-05-25 15:17:04 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Actually, Spinoza was an atheist. Indeed, the entire concept of "Spinoza's God," which Einstein referenced, was to recognize as divine in nature the whole of nature, not a supernatural being.
As for the rest, why should I care about their religious beliefs? I care about what the evidence says.
Truth is not subject to majority vote.
2007-05-25 14:58:09 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 1⤋
Why are you getting so competitive. This sounds like a wee child saying Na Na Na My team is smarter than yours.
Get over yourself. Theists often say outstandingly stupid things on this forum and atheists often call them on it. And a tiny percentage of trolls will call anyone stupid just for kicks.
So prove that YOU are intelligent, well and broadly-read and willing to speak carefully about these matters. You clearly haven't thought this one through.
2007-05-25 15:02:46 · answer #6 · answered by The angels have the phone box. 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
being an atheist in their days was extremely hazardous to your health. it got you killed, in very unpleasant ways.
even assuming that they were really believers, and not closet atheists, so what? i would be willing to bet that while they might have believed in god, it was a very different god than the ones offered by organized religions. they didn't let dogma blind them to the possibilities, and they questioned, and thought for themselves.
personally, i could care less what anyone believes, as long as theuir beliefs don't dictate how non-believers can live their lives, and as long as they don't let dogma blind them to the fact that they have a brain and it's there to be used for more than a storage device.
2007-05-25 15:05:08 · answer #7 · answered by gwenwifar 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Two ways. People didn't know as much about science OR other religions, OR their own religion, as we can know today. Second, people who publically rejected religion were in hot water, historically. Religion has been a great motivating force for many great minds, but that is not a reason to think it's true.
2007-05-25 14:57:23 · answer #8 · answered by dissolute_chemical 1 · 1⤊ 1⤋
You are confusing agnostics with atheists. And as far as those scientists, they had to be theists at that time or they would have been boiled in oil. It doesn't mean they actually believed the garbage being fed them, but they had to be part of the club or they would have been discounted totally.
2007-05-25 14:57:34 · answer #9 · answered by bocasbeachbum 6 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Well, first off, what's your point? Just because someone is an atheist does not mean that they worship sceince. I don't! Secondly, just because an intelligent scientist happens to be a thiest does not discredit their thinking among atheists.
2007-05-25 15:03:52 · answer #10 · answered by country_girl 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋