Oh yeah, definitely. But I'm saying that one can fully accept Buddhist or Hindu philosophy and be an atheist. We have a Hindu atheist here on the forum, and I'm only not one myself because of semantics.
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Christians: 65.4% of Nobel Prize Laureates
- Thread starter Martellus
- Start date
Oh yeah, definitely. But I'm saying that one can fully accept Buddhist or Hindu philosophy and be an atheist. We have a Hindu atheist here on the forum, and I'm only not one myself because of semantics.
Cephus
Relentlessly Rational
Sure, just like they can accept any other kind of philosophy. Atheism means no belief in gods, full stop. Anything else is on the table. I didn't say there were no Hindu atheists, only that I hadn't personally run into them. Not much surprises me.
OK, cool. We seem to be on the same side of this debate.
Martellus
Que la croisade commence !
Err... No. Soviets also were often awarded with the Nobel Prize. Let me mention some Soviet Nobel Prize Laureates:
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, Peace, 1990
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky, Literature, 1987
Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Physics, 1978
Menachem Begin*, born in now Belarus, Peace, 1978
Ilya Prigogine*, Chemistry, 1977
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, Peace, 1975
Leonid Vitalyevich Kantorovich, Economics, 1975
Wassily Leontief, Economics, 1973
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Literature, 1970
Michail Sholokhov, Literature, 1965
Nicolay G. Basov, Physics, 1964
Aleksandr M. Prokhorov, Physics, 1964
Lev Davidovich Landau, Physics, 1962
Boris Pasternak, Literature, 1958
Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov, Physics, 1958
Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm, Physics, 1958
Ilya Mikhailovich Frank, Physics, 1958
Nikolay Nikolayevich Semyonov, Chemistry, 1956
Ivan Bunin*, Literature, 1933
If atheist states failed in social issues, then what is the point of regarding religion as an antagonistic factor to social and scientific progress? It does not make any sense to me, since the religion - directly and indirectly - has fulfilled a major role in human progress. One way or another, religions have held the position of higher prominence within the human saga. And it would not be different in the Western civilisation.
I believe that Atheism was once more popular, especially during Soviet times. In case you didn't know, Atheism is in full decline in China, Russia and even in Western Europe, where - under Pope Francis' papacy - people are not only limited to return to religion, but are even returning to attend churches, not to mention the Muslim immigration boom. I myself were an example of Atheist who vehemently condemned religion and now I have even found myself willing to attend churches sometimes. Take a look at the following statistics and form an opinion:
"Officially, the People's Republic of China is an atheist country but that is changing fast as many of its 1.3 billion citizens seek meaning and spiritual comfort that neither communism nor capitalism seem to have supplied.
Christian congregations in particular have skyrocketed since churches began reopening when Chairman Mao's death in 1976 signalled the end of the Cultural Revolution.
Less than four decades later, some believe China is now poised to become not just the world's number one economy but also its most numerous Christian nation.
"By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon," said Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule.
"It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change."
China's Protestant community, which had just one million members in 1949, has already overtaken those of countries more commonly associated with an evangelical boom. In 2010 there were more than 58 million Protestants in China compared to 40 million in Brazil and 36 million in South Africa, according to the Pew Research Centre's Forum on Religion and Public Life. (...)"
"(...) By 2030, China's total Christian population, including Catholics, would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States as the largest Christian congregation in the world, he predicted.
"Mao thought he could eliminate religion. He thought he had accomplished this," Prof Yang said. "It's ironic – they didn't. They actually failed completely." (...)"
Source: China on course to become 'world's most Christian nation' within 15 years - Telegraph
"Pope Francis is largely popular around the world, according to a study by Pew Research Center that includes information from 43 countries in all regions of the world. He is most popular in Europe, where 84 percent of people view him favorably.
Pope Francis is also extremely popular in the U.S. and Latin America, where 78 percent and 72 percent, respectively, had favorable opinions of him. Fewer people in Africa, Asia and the Middle East have favorable opinions of him.
Pope Francis is also extremely popular in the U.S. and Latin America, where 78 percent and 72 percent, respectively, had favorable opinions of him. Fewer people in Africa, Asia and the Middle East have favorable opinions of him. (...)"
Source: Pope Francis Approval Rating: Popular In Europe, Less So In Asia And Middle East
"After years of decline, cathedrals in Britain have seen a 20 per cent rise in congregations since the Argentinian pope was elected as head of the Catholic Church (...)"
"(...)The Italian opinion poll Opinioni reported this week that more than four in five Italians have a 'positive' or 'extremely positive' opinion of the Pope.
Spain, which had been experiencing a decades-long slump, has also seen attendance figures begin to climb since the pontiff's appointment.
Catholic leaders in France, the USA and Latin America have also reported growth in the numbers of churchgoing Catholics. (...)"
Source: Pope Francis inspired huge increases in church congregations since election | Daily Mail Online
Christian congregations in particular have skyrocketed since churches began reopening when Chairman Mao's death in 1976 signalled the end of the Cultural Revolution.
Less than four decades later, some believe China is now poised to become not just the world's number one economy but also its most numerous Christian nation.
"By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon," said Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule.
"It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change."
China's Protestant community, which had just one million members in 1949, has already overtaken those of countries more commonly associated with an evangelical boom. In 2010 there were more than 58 million Protestants in China compared to 40 million in Brazil and 36 million in South Africa, according to the Pew Research Centre's Forum on Religion and Public Life. (...)"
"(...) By 2030, China's total Christian population, including Catholics, would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States as the largest Christian congregation in the world, he predicted.
"Mao thought he could eliminate religion. He thought he had accomplished this," Prof Yang said. "It's ironic – they didn't. They actually failed completely." (...)"
Source: China on course to become 'world's most Christian nation' within 15 years - Telegraph
"Pope Francis is largely popular around the world, according to a study by Pew Research Center that includes information from 43 countries in all regions of the world. He is most popular in Europe, where 84 percent of people view him favorably.
Pope Francis is also extremely popular in the U.S. and Latin America, where 78 percent and 72 percent, respectively, had favorable opinions of him. Fewer people in Africa, Asia and the Middle East have favorable opinions of him.
Pope Francis is also extremely popular in the U.S. and Latin America, where 78 percent and 72 percent, respectively, had favorable opinions of him. Fewer people in Africa, Asia and the Middle East have favorable opinions of him. (...)"
Source: Pope Francis Approval Rating: Popular In Europe, Less So In Asia And Middle East
"After years of decline, cathedrals in Britain have seen a 20 per cent rise in congregations since the Argentinian pope was elected as head of the Catholic Church (...)"
"(...)The Italian opinion poll Opinioni reported this week that more than four in five Italians have a 'positive' or 'extremely positive' opinion of the Pope.
Spain, which had been experiencing a decades-long slump, has also seen attendance figures begin to climb since the pontiff's appointment.
Catholic leaders in France, the USA and Latin America have also reported growth in the numbers of churchgoing Catholics. (...)"
Source: Pope Francis inspired huge increases in church congregations since election | Daily Mail Online
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Martellus
Que la croisade commence !
Tangible evidences show that your statement is unfounded.
"(...) Many well-known historical figures who influenced Western science considered themselves Christian such as Copernicus,[5] Galileo,[6] Kepler,[7] Newton[1] and Boyle.[8] (...)"
Source: List of Christian thinkers in science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Source: List of Christian thinkers in science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Here is a pompous list of Christian Thinkers who gave huge contributions to Science:
List of Christian thinkers in science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Even the Church, which some consider an oppressor against the Science, fulfilled an important role in Science. Here is another pompous list:
List of Roman Catholic cleric-scientists - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Big Bang
"(...) Georges Lemaître (1894–1966): Roman Catholic priest who was first to propose the Big Bang theory.[171] (...)"
Source: List of Christian thinkers in science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Source: List of Christian thinkers in science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Genetics
"Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20, 1822[1] – January 6, 1884) was a German-speaking Silesian[2][3] scientist and Augustinian friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the modern science of genetics. (...)"
Source: Gregor Mendel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Source: Gregor Mendel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Accounting
"(...) Luca Pacioli (c. 1446–1517) – Franciscan friar who published several works on mathematics and is often regarded as the Father of Accounting (...)"
Source: List of Roman Catholic cleric-scientists - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Source: List of Roman Catholic cleric-scientists - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The role of the Catholic Church in Western civilization has been intricately intertwined with the history and formation of Western society. Through its long history, the church has been a major source of social services like schooling and medical care; inspiration for Western art, culture and philosophy; and influential player in politics and religion. In various ways it has sought to affect Western attitudes to vice and virtue in diverse fields. It has, over many centuries, promulgated the teachings of Jesus within the Western World and remains a source of continuity linking modern Western culture to classical Western culture.
While the West is no longer universally Catholic, the Catholic heritage remains strong in Western countries: festivals like Easter and Christmas are marked universally as public holidays; Pope Gregory XIII's Gregorian Calendar has been adopted internationally as the civil calendar; and time itself is measured by the West from the assumed date of the birth of the Church's founder, Jesus of Nazareth: the Year One AD (Anno Domini, and not year "0" which doesn't exist in this system).
The cultural influence of the Church has been vast. Church scholars preserved literacy in Western Europe following the Fall of Rome. During the Middle Ages, the Church rose to replace the Roman Empire as the unifying force in Europe. The cathedrals of that age remain among the most iconic feats of architecture produced by Western civilization. Many of Europe's universities were also founded by the church at that time. The Reformation brought an end to religious unity in the West, but the Renaissance masterpieces produced by Catholic artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael at that time remain among the most celebrated works of art ever produced. Similarly, Catholic sacred music by composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Verdi, Vivaldi and Shubert is among the most admired classical music in the Western canon. (...)"
While the West is no longer universally Catholic, the Catholic heritage remains strong in Western countries: festivals like Easter and Christmas are marked universally as public holidays; Pope Gregory XIII's Gregorian Calendar has been adopted internationally as the civil calendar; and time itself is measured by the West from the assumed date of the birth of the Church's founder, Jesus of Nazareth: the Year One AD (Anno Domini, and not year "0" which doesn't exist in this system).
The cultural influence of the Church has been vast. Church scholars preserved literacy in Western Europe following the Fall of Rome. During the Middle Ages, the Church rose to replace the Roman Empire as the unifying force in Europe. The cathedrals of that age remain among the most iconic feats of architecture produced by Western civilization. Many of Europe's universities were also founded by the church at that time. The Reformation brought an end to religious unity in the West, but the Renaissance masterpieces produced by Catholic artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael at that time remain among the most celebrated works of art ever produced. Similarly, Catholic sacred music by composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Verdi, Vivaldi and Shubert is among the most admired classical music in the Western canon. (...)"
"(...) The Bible and Catholic theology have also strongly influenced Western philosophers and political activists. The teachings of Jesus, such as the Parable of the Good Samaritan, are among the important sources for modern notions of Human Rights and the welfare measures commonly provided by governments in the West. Long held Catholic teachings on sexuality and marriage have also been both influential and (in recent times) controversial.
Catholicism played a role in ending practices such as human sacrifice, slavery,[1] infanticide and polygamy.[2] Christianity in general affected the status of women by condemning infanticide (female infants were more likely to be killed), divorce, incest, polygamy, birth control, abortion and marital infidelity.[3] (...)"
"(...) While the Church has clashed throughout history with rival Western forces such as paganism, Orthodox Christianity, Protestantism, and communism and its influence is much diminished from its zenith, the immensity of the Catholic contribution to the West's heritage is undeniable. Catholicism is still the majority religion of several major Western countries, including Brazil, Mexico, Italy, France, Spain, and Poland and it is the religious affiliation of a significant and growing minority in countries like the United States and Australia. (...)"
Source: Role of the Christian Church in civilization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Catholicism played a role in ending practices such as human sacrifice, slavery,[1] infanticide and polygamy.[2] Christianity in general affected the status of women by condemning infanticide (female infants were more likely to be killed), divorce, incest, polygamy, birth control, abortion and marital infidelity.[3] (...)"
"(...) While the Church has clashed throughout history with rival Western forces such as paganism, Orthodox Christianity, Protestantism, and communism and its influence is much diminished from its zenith, the immensity of the Catholic contribution to the West's heritage is undeniable. Catholicism is still the majority religion of several major Western countries, including Brazil, Mexico, Italy, France, Spain, and Poland and it is the religious affiliation of a significant and growing minority in countries like the United States and Australia. (...)"
Source: Role of the Christian Church in civilization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I have only mentioned the contributions of Catholicism, not to mention the contributions of Protestantism, Judaism, Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism and so on and so forth, which also gave immense contributions to science. Saying that Atheists are intellectually superior over religious people is a groundless and childish claim, given what History itself tells us about it.
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Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
And to add something more to this discussion, many Christians aren't "True Christians(tm)", if you know what I mean. They're nominal, secular, non-devout, or even agnostic, but they associate themselves with a certain belief only. So when this statistics group everyone who associates themselves with a religion as being a cohesive group, it's just flawed reasoning. I know Catholics who won't call themselves Christians, no, they consider themselves Catholics. Christian is equated to Protestants to them. And then take Russian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox, very different kind to Southern Baptists. (How many Southern Baptists have received the Nobel prize?)
On top of that, the Nobel committee is a small group of people, with both religious, political, and ideological views. And also, there are today so many inventions and discoveries that go unnoticed or unvalidated, simply because there are so many.
In summary, there are so many factors playing into the Nobel prizes that statistics like this shouldn't be noticed or bothered about. It's like winning Chopped or Master Chef. It's a recognition and validation, but it's not an indicator of who's smarter or better.
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Kangaroo Feathers
Yea, it is written in the Book of Cyril...
Who was making the decision on who to award Nobels too for most of that time? Which countries were culturally, scientifically and diplomatically dominant for most of that time? What were the dominant religions in those countries for most of that time? I think your sense of causality is somewhat skewed.
Islands tend to produce better sailors than landlocked places, that doesn't mean landlocked people are less capable of becoming great sailors.
Islands tend to produce better sailors than landlocked places, that doesn't mean landlocked people are less capable of becoming great sailors.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
So tell me. Religious affiliation aside, what awarded Nobel prizes themselves are religious in nature?
ajay0
Well-Known Member
Modern science and technology took off in europe from the sixteenth century onwards, when Indian mathematics and the numeral system which came through the arabs to europe was finally accepted as significantly superior to the roman numeral system for advanced measurement and calculation. This enabled quantum leaps in physics, chemistry, engineering for the better.
Even though Hindu-Arabic mathematics and numeral system came up in europe as early as the tenth century a.d. and endorsed by pope sylvester himself, the christian fundamentalists however disparaged it, especially zero, as the devil's numbers and refused to accept it. Many Italian merchants however used Hindu-arabic numerals for accounting purposes clandestinely. It took over six centuries for europe to finally accept the superiority of Hindu-Arab numeral system and mathematics and use it to their advantage. The invention of the printing press also greatly helped in the transmission of Hindu-arab mathematics all over europe which enabled european scholars to realise its advantages over the roman numeral system and advanced mathematics.
The Indian numeral system and zero has its origin in the philosophical conceptions of the Sankhya philosophy and Buddhist Shunyata (emptiness) philosophy respectively.
The Sankhya philosophy, though religious, makes no reference to God and is considered by many scholars as atheistic or nontheistic. The buddhist philosophy similarly is silent on the existence of God, and is considered agnostic.
"We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made." - Albert Einstein
"It is India that gave us the ingenuous method of expressing all numbers by the means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position, as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit, but its very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions, and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest minds produced by antiquity."
-- French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace (1749–1827)
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 16 May 2007. Quote: "A full-fledged decimal, positional system certainly existed in India by the 9th century (CE), yet many of its central ideas had been transmitted well before that time to China and the Islamic world. Indian arithmetic, moreover, developed consistent and correct rules for operating with positive and negative numbers and for treating zero like any other number, even in problematic contexts such as division. Several hundred years passed before European mathematicians fully integrated such ideas into the developing discipline of algebra."
"The logic of the Greeks prevents them having the idea at all and it is to the Indian cultures that we must look to find thinkers who are comfortable with the idea that Nothing might be something."
John D. Barrow, The Book of Nothing (2009) chapter nought, "Nothingology—Flying to Nowhere"
“…the world owes most to India in the realm of mathematics, which was developed in the Gupta period to a stage more advanced than that reached by any other nation of antiquity. The success of
Indian mathematics was mainly due to the fact that Indians had a clear conception of the abstract number as distinct from the numerical quantity of objects or spatial extension.”
“Thus Indians could take their mathematical concepts to an abstract plane and with the aid of a simple numerical notation devise a rudimentary algebra as against Greeks or the ancient Egyptians who due to their concern with the immediate measurement of physical objects remained confined to mensuration and geometry. “
Australian Indologist Dr. A.L. Basham ( author of 'The wonder that was India')
"In the Surya Siddhanta is contained a system of trigonometry which not only goes beyond anything known to the Greeks, but involves theorem which were not discovered in Europe till two centuries ago.“
"There is no question of the superiority of the Hindus over their rivals in the perfection to which they brought the science. Not only is Aryabhatta superior to Diaphantus (as is shown by his knowledge of the resolution of equations involving several unknown quantities, and in general method of resolving all indeterminate problems of at least the first degree), but he and his successors press hard upon the discoveries of algebraists who lived almost in our own time!"
- Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779 - 1859) - ( author of History of India)
"India is the source from which not only the rest of Asia but the whole Western World derived their knowledge and their religion."
-- Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren (1760-1842)
(source: Historical researches into the politics, intercourse, and trade of the Carthaginians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians - By A. H. Heeren Vol. II p. 201).
Even though Hindu-Arabic mathematics and numeral system came up in europe as early as the tenth century a.d. and endorsed by pope sylvester himself, the christian fundamentalists however disparaged it, especially zero, as the devil's numbers and refused to accept it. Many Italian merchants however used Hindu-arabic numerals for accounting purposes clandestinely. It took over six centuries for europe to finally accept the superiority of Hindu-Arab numeral system and mathematics and use it to their advantage. The invention of the printing press also greatly helped in the transmission of Hindu-arab mathematics all over europe which enabled european scholars to realise its advantages over the roman numeral system and advanced mathematics.
The Indian numeral system and zero has its origin in the philosophical conceptions of the Sankhya philosophy and Buddhist Shunyata (emptiness) philosophy respectively.
The Sankhya philosophy, though religious, makes no reference to God and is considered by many scholars as atheistic or nontheistic. The buddhist philosophy similarly is silent on the existence of God, and is considered agnostic.
"We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made." - Albert Einstein
"It is India that gave us the ingenuous method of expressing all numbers by the means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position, as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit, but its very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions, and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest minds produced by antiquity."
-- French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace (1749–1827)
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 16 May 2007. Quote: "A full-fledged decimal, positional system certainly existed in India by the 9th century (CE), yet many of its central ideas had been transmitted well before that time to China and the Islamic world. Indian arithmetic, moreover, developed consistent and correct rules for operating with positive and negative numbers and for treating zero like any other number, even in problematic contexts such as division. Several hundred years passed before European mathematicians fully integrated such ideas into the developing discipline of algebra."
"The logic of the Greeks prevents them having the idea at all and it is to the Indian cultures that we must look to find thinkers who are comfortable with the idea that Nothing might be something."
John D. Barrow, The Book of Nothing (2009) chapter nought, "Nothingology—Flying to Nowhere"
“…the world owes most to India in the realm of mathematics, which was developed in the Gupta period to a stage more advanced than that reached by any other nation of antiquity. The success of
Indian mathematics was mainly due to the fact that Indians had a clear conception of the abstract number as distinct from the numerical quantity of objects or spatial extension.”
“Thus Indians could take their mathematical concepts to an abstract plane and with the aid of a simple numerical notation devise a rudimentary algebra as against Greeks or the ancient Egyptians who due to their concern with the immediate measurement of physical objects remained confined to mensuration and geometry. “
Australian Indologist Dr. A.L. Basham ( author of 'The wonder that was India')
"In the Surya Siddhanta is contained a system of trigonometry which not only goes beyond anything known to the Greeks, but involves theorem which were not discovered in Europe till two centuries ago.“
"There is no question of the superiority of the Hindus over their rivals in the perfection to which they brought the science. Not only is Aryabhatta superior to Diaphantus (as is shown by his knowledge of the resolution of equations involving several unknown quantities, and in general method of resolving all indeterminate problems of at least the first degree), but he and his successors press hard upon the discoveries of algebraists who lived almost in our own time!"
- Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779 - 1859) - ( author of History of India)
"India is the source from which not only the rest of Asia but the whole Western World derived their knowledge and their religion."
-- Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren (1760-1842)
(source: Historical researches into the politics, intercourse, and trade of the Carthaginians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians - By A. H. Heeren Vol. II p. 201).
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