Has Christianity kept us from exploring the galaxy?

[Ron_Tomkins]

Did he happen to mention how the Chinese or the Aboriginal Austrailians managed to develop the steam engine and wireless communications while the rest of the world was so burdened by Christianity?

I did't think so. I have a question for all of you astronomers if you believe the above chart is correct. The Mayan Calendar ends on Dec 21, 2012. That is alost exactly 4 Baktuns from the point where the previous acceleration of Astronomical Study ends. Is there any significance to that? Is it exactly 4 Baktuns between crossings of the Dark Rift?

Umm..... calm down?

 

[alfalfafour]

Umm..... calm down?

Ok, I am calm. I don't take bigoted comments about Christianity personally. I am not a Christian. Do you want to approach the topic at hand, or do we all get to hear more about those bad, bad Christians and their bad, bad God?

Can we talk about the Galaxy? I have asked three times now. Is three magic? Do you believe in magic?

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Ok, I am calm. I don't take bigoted comments about Christianity personally. I am not a Christian. Do you want to approach the topic at hand, or do we all get to hear more about those bad, bad Christians and their bad, bad God?

Look, all I did was comment that Carl Sagan comments in "Cosmos" about the slow evolution of Science and I believe he mentions how Religious and Superstitious societies get in the way of that. I don't remember the details but it's there in the book. I recommend reading it anyway. It's very mind stimulating.

Can we talk about the Galaxy?

Yes but not right now. I'm tired

Is three magic?

Not any more than four or five

(Seriously though, that sounds like a topic for a new thread)

Do you believe in magic?

That depends on what you mean by "Magic"

And once again, that's a topic for a different thread

 

[NorfolkAtheist]

Gunpowder made its appearance in the 14th-15th centuries

I don't know much about military history, but I though gun powder was older than this.

 

[godless dave]

Too many variables.

 

[alfalfafour]

Look, all I did was comment that Carl Sagan comments in "Cosmos" about the slow evolution of Science and I believe he mentions how Religious and Superstitious societies get in the way of that. I don't remember the details but it's there in the book. I recommend reading it anyway. It's very mind stimulating.

All I did was make comments about Bigotry and putting all the members of one group into the same box. I am not Black either. If somebody wants to make bigoted comments about them to see if I wll step up, go ahead.

I am not saying that the Sagan comment was bigoted, but they tend to allude to it, and lead away from issues like Galactic exploration.

how about we focus on Chritianity as it relates to Galactic Study, or maybe just focus on how bigoted comments have managed to lead us away from actual discussion of the Galactic Exporation. Gee, that sounds really close to the topic. Imagine that?

 

[NorfolkAtheist]

That is alost exactly 4 Baktuns from the point where the previous acceleration of Astronomical Study ends.

Huh?

 

[alfalfafour]

That is alost exactly 4 Baktuns from the point where the previous acceleration of Astronomical Study ends.

Huh?

A Baktun is a Mayan Astronomical calendar division of 144,000 days.

Jesus (the myth) was allegedly cucified almost exactly 5 Baktuns prior to the date Dec 12, 2012. The Aztec's believed in an "indwelling spirit" but chose an animal, not a deity as responsible for the indewlling. They also adopted the Mayan Calendar, and the Mayan Dynasty fell approximately 4 Baktuns ago.

 

[arthwollipot]

I don't know much about military history, but I though gun powder was older than this.

That is quite correct. I was falling into that dreadful Eurocentric habit again. Gunpowder was certainly used in Asia long before then, but it didn't make a significant appearance on the battlefields of Europe until the Middle Ages.

 

[NorfolkAtheist]

A Baktun is a Mayan Astromical calendar division of 144,000 days.

Oh, I know what a baktun is (I don't believe it is a proper noun). It's the rest of that sentence that doesn't make any sense to me. Could you say it in different terms maybe?

 

[Miss_Kitt]

Nope, no magic belief here. Hard to find on a skeptic's board.

On the subject of the lapse in development in Europe, let's not forget the catastrophic demise of a staggering percentage--somewhere between a fifth and a third, depending on whose numbers you accept--of the population due to the Plague (which we now think came from Asia) in the 14th century. Not only was the widespread death--and famine caused by the lack of labor to farm and transport food--a direct cause of society slumping to barely more than survival; it also caused people to be hysterically afraid of anything new or different, lest it bring pestilence with it. The Plague was not a single wave, but a series of epidemics, such that it must have seemed that life would always be a brief term of health between widespread and horrible death.

Without that problem, the fall of Rome might well have led to some smaller, more cohesive statelets that would have been able to push knowledge forward. But learning anything beyond the most practical of skills is a pastime of the wealthy, who can afford leisure. With the constant threat of disease and starvation, who could or would spend time or effort on something as impractical as trying to preserve or understand the knowledge of the ancients?

Oh, yeah: Some orders of the Church, actually. Latin language, and in many areas literacy per se was maintained by the needs and influence of the Church. While popular imagination thinks of the medieval Church as burning books, that kind of silliness was much more prevalent in the later, more wealthy and leisured Renaissance period (Savonarella, for instance).

I'm with Arthwollipot: The poster referenced in the OP is a very cheap joke. The failings and limitations of Christianity are many, but blaming it for the interregnum between Rome and the Renaissance is neither fair nor reasonable.

Just my thoughts, MK

ETA: We aren't exploring Space because it's a prohibitively expensive task, both in terms of money and of energy. Sending out some unmanned probes is probably all we will be able to do until and unless some remarkable (and now unforeseen) source of power is discovered. Even with fusion engines and substantial fraction of C -speed travel, a small ship with few people or resources onboard will take years to get to even the nearest star. Space is BIG. The challenges of trying to plan for /guesstimate everything that can go wrong on a years-long journey when hitting something the size of a pebble can destroy the mission* are considerable. That's why we aren't exploring the galaxy.


* Remember, kinetic energy increases by the SQUARE of velocity. The faster the ship is travelling, the more a dust-speck can destroy.

 

[NorfolkAtheist]

That is quite correct. I was falling into that dreadful Eurocentric habit again. Gunpowder was certainly used in Asia long before then, but it didn't make a significant appearance on the battlefields of Europe until the Middle Ages.

I see.

 

[alfalfafour]

Oh, I know what a baktun is (I don't believe it is a proper noun). It's the rest of that sentence that doesn't make any sense to me. Could you say it in different terms maybe?

So I shouldn't capitalize it? Are the spelling police here? I better lieve.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

I did't think so. I have a question for all of you astronomers if you believe the above chart is correct. The Mayan Calendar ends on Dec 21, 2012. That is alost exactly 4 Baktuns from the point where the previous acceleration of Astronomical Study ends. Is there any significance to that? Is it exactly 4 Baktuns between crossings of the Dark Rift?

OK. Let's ignore the fact that the Mayans had several calendars, includuing a 280 day calendar, a 365 day solar calendar, a 584 day Venus calendar (tres important for making war) and a 819 day calendar.

I think what's got you so excited is that on inscriptions, the generally only digits since that let them speficicy a date within a span of over 5000 years. You're getting excited over clerical shorthand. If they only used four digits to sae the stone carvers time, would you panic every 125 years, or what have you?

Second, let's ignore that they sometimes used more or less rigorous notation depnding on the context. This is just as you might write today at "March 4th," "3/4," "3/4/09," or "3/4/2009," or "March 4th, 2009 C.E." depending on contex without anyone screaming "ZOMG, END OF THE WORLD!" Are you seriously suggesting that the Mayans somehow knew the world was going to end? How? How would they have known? Can you think of any reason to take the prediciton you think they made any more seriously than the pernially millenially wrong Jehovah's Witnesses?

 

[arthwollipot]

Um, what has the Mayan calendar got to do with the OP?

 

[alfalfafour]

Um, what has the Mayan calendar got to do with the OP?

Um, It's an ASTRONOMY calendar shaped like a DARK DISK of a GALAXY.

Is the topic in any way directed towards Galactic understanding, or am I mistaken, and it is just another thread to bash Christianity?

That seems a bit redundant. Maybe they should remove the thread and change this from a skeptics forum to a Christian bashing forum?

Does the chart above represent the acceleration of Christian Bashing?

 

[ImaginalDisc]

Um, It's an ASTRONOMY calendar shaped like a DARK DISK of a GALAXY.

Is the topic in any way directed towards Galactic understanding, or am I mistaken, and it is just another thread to bash Christainity?

That seems a bit redundant. Maybe they should remove the thread and change this from a skeptics forum to a Christian bashing forum?

A) Galaxies are quite luminous.

B) Relatively few galaxies are discs.

C) There's only a few ways to represent a cyclical calendar in two dimensions.

D) You're focusing on the clerical shorthand used for notation in one of the many different Mayan calendars.

E) You're proposed no means by which the world will end.

F) You're proposed no means by which the Mayans would have been aware of it.

 

[alfalfafour]

A) Galaxies are quite luminous..

And?

B) Relatively few galaxies are discs.
..

The Mayans were pragmatic. They used ours as a model. Ours is a spiral Galaxy with a central gravity disk. It was my pleasure to teach you this lesson of pragamatism and Galactic Science.

There's only a few ways to represent a cyclical calendar in two dimensions.
..

I suppose there are. I think the Mayans were way ahead of their time.

You're focusing on the clerical shorthand used for notation in one of the many different Mayan calendars.

No i'm not. I did mention baktuns. What else? I have a general knowledge of the subject. Perhaps you were focusing?

You're proposed no means by which the world will end...

I am a skeptic of many. How do you know I haven't proposed one elsewhere?

You're proposed no means by which the Mayans would have been aware of it.

I didn't say I did. Were you focusing on the possibility that I might?

 

[Seren_]

I maybe have rosy tainted glasses but I always had the impression that on the contrary during the Dark Age, the monasteries were the only centre of knowledge in Europe.

Without the monks copying writings from Plato to Aristotle I am not sure that we would have as much materials now. The first Universities were also originaly created as faculty of theology.

After the fall of the Empire, without the continuity of the Church, I am not sure we would be where we are nowadays. It is not by chance that Copernicus was a monk. There were'nt lots of educated people with free time running around.

 

[arthwollipot]

Is the topic in any way directed towards Galactic understanding, or am I mistaken, and it is just another thread to bash Christianity?

As far as I recall this thread was created to discuss a particular poster that suggested that we might be more technologically advanced if the dark ages had not happened.

I don't know where you got the impression that the thread was in any way directed toward "Galactic understanding" (whatever that phrase means to you).

So yes, I believe that you are mistaken.