It is a matter of fact that Karl Popper never proposed that modern 'science evolved from theology.'
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Freewill and Culture: The Prism for Perception.
- Thread starter John D. Brey
- Start date
It is a matter of fact that Karl Popper never proposed that modern 'science evolved from theology.'
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . Since it seems to me that semantics, perhaps semantic gymnastics, or semantic antics, are being employed for personal gain, I would like to know precisely how my interlocutor is using, or defining, the term "theology"? For me, at least in this discussion, mythology, ancient cosmology, and theology, are synonymous terms.
John
No personal gain involved here just the factual citation of Popper, and what he believed; Again . . .
It is a matter of fact that Karl Popper never proposed that modern 'science evolved from theology [mythology nor ancient cosmology].'
We are not talking about how you may define theology, but actual factual citations of Popper and how he defined and used citations.
If you wish to describe Popper's beliefs and view of science, please honestly cite Popper exactly.
It appears you have never read the writings of Popper.
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
The belief that science proceeds from observation to theory is still so widely and so firmly held that my denial of it is often met with incredulity. I have even been suspected of being insincere – of denying what nobody in his senses can doubt. . . . But in fact the belief that we can start with pure observations alone, without anything in the nature of a theory, is absurd.
Conjecture and Refutations, p. 46.
Conjecture and Refutations, p. 46.
Ok. So if we don't proceed from observation to theory then how do we proceed? In the very context quoted above, Popper claims we need a "critical attitude" to proceed:
A critical attitude needs for its raw material, as it were, theories or beliefs which are held more or less dogmatically. Thus, science must start with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices.
Ibid. p. 50.
Ibid. p. 50.
All science is cosmology . . . the early Presocratics . . . find bold and fascinating ideas, some of which are strange, even staggering anticipations of modern [scientific] results . . ..
Ibid. p. 136-137.
Ibid. p. 136-137.
Popper then notes how ancient philosophers used the dogmatic beliefs of the religions of their time as the medium through which they could either support, or criticize, the belief, as either sound (through observation, logic, and experimentation), or flawed based on the same critical criteria. It's this willingness to subject dogmatic beliefs (and religion provides the most seminal example of dogmatic beliefs), to the scalpel of the scientific-method of critical examination that creates the thought processes that are manifest in modern science.
Popper's most important contribution to science is in his pointing out the fallacy of induction (or inductive logic), which is precisely the belief that knowledge proceeds from observation to theorization. And if that's not the case (and Popper is clear that it's not), then there must be some pre-theoretical belief, intuition, or dogmatic teaching, which, precedes the critical examination arising from theorizing.
Voila! Religious teachings come packaged as dogmatic truths send down from heaven to the true believer and not the doubter who would need to theorize about whether they are true or not. Religious teaching comes from dreams, sub, or pre, conscious intuitions, and deductions, which, to really experience full manifestation, must (the dreams and intuitions must) be subjected to critical analysis, argumentation, experimentation.
We know that Popper's personal friend, the great Albert Einstein, like Newton before him, proclaimed that his greatest insights came to him in the middle of the night, in a half conscious sleep-state. And they came not as observations, or fully formed ideas, but as intuitions, and deductions, quasi-religious revelation, which on waking, he subjected to the scalpel of the scientific-method, often coming to see that some of these pre-conscious deductions, intuitions, revelations, were the closest thing to truth he ever experienced.
Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest of intelligence---whether much that is glorious---whether all that is profound---does not spring from disease of thought---from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret.
Edgar Allan Poe (1848/1975, p. 649).
Edgar Allan Poe (1848/1975, p. 649).
And more to our point:
Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives this authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for the existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly. The highest principals of our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition.
Albert Einstein, Out of my Later Years, p. 22, 23.
Albert Einstein, Out of my Later Years, p. 22, 23.
Justifying Einstein's statement Popper himself says:
The picture of science of which I have so far only hinted may be sketched as follows. There is a reality behind the world as it appears to us, possibly a many-layered reality, of which the appearances are the outermost layers. What the great scientist does is boldly to guess, daringly to conjecture, what these inner realities are like. This is akin to myth making.
Popper Selections, p. 122.
Popper Selections, p. 122.
Popper goes on to compare the scientist's bold, unanticipated conjectures, with the oldest form of science, the myth-development and criticism associated with the ancients. He notes that heliocentrism comes from the ancient religious intuition that the sun is the central manifestation of the highest god (the light-giver), who, as the highest god, must be central to all other constellations.
In pre-scientific, religious, myth, the minds of the priests intuited that the light-giver is central, and superior, such that in this pre-scientific intuition, the sun, as the light and life giver on earth, should, technically, logically, be central, and thus something like the axis upon which all other constellations revolve. As Thomas Kuhn points out, in his book, The Copernican Revolution, Copernicus' own studies came from the Bible, and the heliocentrism of the ancient religions. Just as Popper claims, Copernicus critical attitude used heliocentrism, and concepts in the Bible, as the source for his critical belief, and argumentation, concerning the central place of the sun in the constellation of planets.
Popper's fundamental argument against the belief that science starts with theories, or knowledge based on observation, and his belief that it actually arises through deductive revelations, dogmatic intuitions, pre-conscious insights, leads him to discuss the Catholic Bishop Berkeley who used the Catholic understanding of God, and direct statements from Jesus of Nazareth, to propose that the world of observations and experience is not the axis of reality, but a constellation revolving around the true axis, the observer.
Another of Popper's scientific friends, the physicist John Wheeler, asked, what does quantum physics tell us that Bishop Berkeley hadn't already surmised from his interpretation of scripture? Wheeler says that Berkeley was perfectly correct; that reality requires the observer, and that there is no world out there without observation.
Popper concurs and acknowledges that Berkeley, writing a profound religious treatise, seems to have intuited the very basics of modern quantum physics, and, worse, for the agnostic worldview, Popper says that quantum physics literally arose partly and seminally as a scientific attempt to refute argumentation from Berkeley that had stuck in the craw of agnostic thinkers ever since Berkeley's treatise came to some semblance of fame and fortuitous transmission.
In point of fact, Popper and his philosopher friend Bryan Magee paralleled Berkeley with Kant implying that Kant, like Berkeley, turned his religious intuitions and beliefs into the very philosophy that no less than Albert Einstein said were one of the important foundations of modern scientific thought, with emphasis on quantum physics.
In his book, Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics, Popper says, “We owe to Kant the first great attempt to combine a realistic interpretation of natural science with the insight that our scientific theories are not simply the result of a description of nature----of `reading the book of nature' without `prejudice'----but that they are, rather, the products of the human mind: `Our intellect does not draw its laws from nature, but it imposes its laws upon nature' (p. 3).
One thing that has always struck me forcefully about this doctrine of Kant’s is that it legitimates important components of a belief which he had held since long before he began to philosophize, namely Christian belief . . .what he did unmistakably (and un-remarked on to an extent that has never ceased to astonish me), is produce rational justifications for many aspects of the religious beliefs in which he grew up.
Let me put it this way. We know for a fact that long before Kant started to philosophize he was dedicated, simply as a Christian, to the belief that the empirical world of time and space and material objects, within which everything is evanescent and everything perishes, is something that exists only for us mortals in our present life; that "outside" this world there is another, so to say infinitely more "important', realm of existence which is timeless and spaceless, and in which the beings are not material objects.
Now it is as if he then said to himself: "How can these things be so? What can be the nature of time and space and material objects if they obtain only in the world of human beings? Could it be, given that they characterize only the world of experience and nothing else, that they are characteristics, or preconditions, of experience, and nothing else?" In other words, Kant's philosophy is a fully worked out analysis of what needs to be the case for what he believed already to be true.
Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher p.249,250.
The picture of science of which I have so far only hinted may be sketched as follows. There is a reality behind the world as it appears to us, possibly a many-layered reality, of which the appearances are the outermost layers. What the great scientist does is boldly to guess, daringly to conjecture, what these inner realities are like. This is akin to myth making.
Popper Selections, p. 122.
Let me put it this way. We know for a fact that long before Kant started to philosophize he was dedicated, simply as a Christian, to the belief that the empirical world of time and space and material objects, within which everything is evanescent and everything perishes, is something that exists only for us mortals in our present life; that "outside" this world there is another, so to say infinitely more "important', realm of existence which is timeless and spaceless, and in which the beings are not material objects.
Now it is as if he then said to himself: "How can these things be so? What can be the nature of time and space and material objects if they obtain only in the world of human beings? Could it be, given that they characterize only the world of experience and nothing else, that they are characteristics, or preconditions, of experience, and nothing else?" In other words, Kant's philosophy is a fully worked out analysis of what needs to be the case for what he believed already to be true.
Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher p.249,250.
The picture of science of which I have so far only hinted may be sketched as follows. There is a reality behind the world as it appears to us, possibly a many-layered reality, of which the appearances are the outermost layers. What the great scientist does is boldly to guess, daringly to conjecture, what these inner realities are like. This is akin to myth making.
Popper Selections, p. 122.
John
Last edited:
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . Just for the fun of it I did a math experiment based on your statement above. Not only do I have probably every book Popper wrote in my library, and many books written about Popper, but, since I keep track of most everything I write, in a comprehensive Word document, I can say that I've quoted Popper around 1200 times over the last few decades.
Which is where the math comes in. If I take one of the Popper quotations in my last message to you as typical (it has about 80 words in it), and if I multiply that times the 1200 or so times I've quoted Popper, I get 96000 words. If I divide 96000 words by 300 (the average number of words on the page of a book) I get 320 pages of Popper quotations.
Now even though Popper isn't my favorite philosopher, Wittgenstein is, I would be very surprised if there were all that many Popper biographers who have written 320 pages of Popper quotations in their lifetime. . . Though I might be wrong.
Which is perhaps all just my arm-dislocating way of patting myself on the back in order to justify the idea that I have just as much right to paraphrase Popper, and speak of the spirit of his thought, as anyone else around here does.
Oh . . . and lest that math makes you think I'm somewhat obsessed with Popper I should point out that the 96000 words associated with him in the math experiment above represent just over one percent of the words in my comprehensive Word document. . . . Isn't technology great.
John
Last edited:
You have not quoted Popper here yet. Then how about one quote, just one quote where Popper states that science 'evolved from theology,'
No math involved.
It is true that Popper studied and admired the Greek philosophers, and some of his thinking can be traced to Descartes, but nonetheless . . .
Einstein was a Naturalist and at best agnostic and never proposed science evolved from theology.
All nice and good, but not one citation where Popper states that science 'evolved from theology.'
Last edited:
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . I see that now we're to the part of argumentation that's most akin to pissin in the wind. <s> . . . And the only reason I'll stay and play is because there's also enough hot air around here that I only have to smell the urine and not wear it.
Which is all to say that I got you to include "cosmology" and "myth" in the general category of "theology" being discussed before I quoted Popper saying that all science is cosmology and requires as its starting point dogmatically held mythological ideas. Logically speaking, that makes myth and cosmology part and parcel of the genesis of modern science; part of the soil from whence it grows.
Which is all a fool's errand anyway since the argument I gave about the genesis of science in ancient myth is so self-evidently true that anyone who doesn't already know the genesis of science in myth and religion is living in little more than a fool's paradise anyway.
John
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
This quotation of Einstein is more powerful, particularly in regards to Popper's ideas concerning the genesis of modern science, than might meet the untrained eye since Einstein speaks of living traditions (myths and mythological predispositions, religious intuitions), which, importantly, he points out exist "without it [initially] being necessary to find justification for their existence." They exist in our traditions because of the origin myths of our traditions, and the priesthood of those myths who guard the tradition against observational refutations.
Why this is important in this current argumentation is the fact that there are two natural human instincts that guide myth, religion, and modern scientific endeavor. One is observational, and the other is instinctual, logical, philosophical, and theological. One is more trustworthy than the other. The myth is more trustworthy than the natural observation since it comes from a higher part of the human soul or mind.
Case in point. In an observational point of view, it appears that the sun revolves around the earth, rather than that the earth is itself revolving around the sun. But from the philosophical, or logical, point of view (myth and religion), the greater of the two bodies, one is earth and water, the other energy, light, the source of sight (light) and life (energy), should be central, the axis, so that though our observations imply the earth revolves around the sun, our logic should tell us that if the sun is the greater of the two bodies, and in too many ways to count it is, logically, the greater of the two bodies, then our logic, and love of wisdom, can, and should, override our observational point of view such that we seek out observational confirmation, Copernicus, for what logic and the love of wisdom tell us, instinctively, intuitionally, deductively, is the case: that the greater is the axis of the lesser; and thus that the earth revolves around the sun, while the moon which, like the sun appears to revolve around the earth, in fact, because the moon is the lesser of the two bodies (earth and moon), in fact does revolve around the greater of the two bodies, the earth, which is the moon's axis.
Whereas the earth and the moon reflect the light of the sun, the sun doesn't reflect anything from the earth or the moon. They are both less central than the sun.
Which shows the remarkable design of things in that though through our natural observations, both the moon and the sun appear, in almost an identical manner, to revolve around the earth, we now know, through deductive understanding of things like lesser and greater, that though the sun and moon both appear to revolve around the earth, in fact, the greater of the three, the sun, is central to the other two, even though observationally speaking the sun and the moon appear to be mere servants of the more central body, the earth.
Religions and ideologies that allow natural observations to overrule ancient traditions, myths, and religions, become corrupt and produce no meaningful scientific endeavors. Which is why the mythological foundation of Western Civilization, i.e., Judeo/Christianity (the two traditions mentioned by Einstein), have produced the greatest science, by orders of magnitude, the world has ever known.
And it's why a country thought, by atheists and agnostics, to be scientifically backwards, i.e., the USA, is, hands down, the greatest engine of scientific endeavor the world has, or ever will, know. A country that has more citizens that deny Darwinism than any other country on the planet (and precisely because Darwinism is an observational theory that attempts to undermine the oldest and wisest traditions of mankind) consequently produces more good science than any other country on earth.
John
Last edited:
Swelled culture head does not answer the question. Where does Popper propose 'science evolved from theology.'
Well now your getting rude and combative and not answer the question.
All not so nice and not so good, but not one citation where Popper states that science 'evolved from theology.'
Actually if we follow the civilizations of all cultures since the Neolithic the early evolution of science is through the engineering of structures, weapons for hunting and warfare in all the cultures.
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . This seems like the nice young girl in the forum who once scolded me for calling the KJV translation an interpretation by saying (she said) that if the KJV was good enough for Jesus it's good enough for her. I hadn't the heart to tell her that Jesus didn't speak King James English, even as I haven't the heart to tell you that Popper considered myth, and cosmology, an equivalence of theology.
John
All not so nice and not so good, but not one citation where Popper states that science 'evolved from theology.'
. . . and not remotely related to the problem of your misrepresentation of Popper.
Last edited:
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . Do you have a photographic or encyclopedic memory such that you can access everything Popper or Einstein ever said? If not, it's peculiar to make dogmatic statements about the entire corpus of two extremely expansive minds as though you can recall at will everything they've ever said?
When I find persons who are wont to make such expansive dogmatic pronouncements I usually find that they can make such expansive and dogmatic pronouncements because no matter what you show them is said in contradistinction to their dogmatic pronouncement, it will be interpreted to be consistent with their dogmatism (ergo their dogmatic belief in the veracity of their dogmatic statements). . . Which is merely to say that they can make broad, dogmatic, pronouncements, in good faith, since they know whatever proof to the contrary you might bring, from actual statements of the person in the cross-hairs, they have their god-given right to interpret the evidence in their favor.
Case in point. Einstein said:
Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exists between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspirations towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. . . I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Out of My Later Years, p. 26.
Out of My Later Years, p. 26.
Einstein goes on to explain how in the evolution of mankind's thought, concepts of god, and religion initially guided man's understanding of the nature and order of the world. The priests and the religious texts revealed the supposed order god imbued the world with by the nature of his design. Later, as skeptics and agnostics arose, a more critical attitude toward the dogmatic articles of religious faith arose. At this point the skeptics began to question the dogmatic articles of faith. They designed logical, factual, experiencial, proofs, of the alleged errors of the religious dogmatism.
It's this valuable interchange and exchange between the skeptics, and their critical analysis, versus the religious orthodoxy and their dogmatic truth, that led to modern Western science.
What's most important to this "reciprocal relationship and [co]dependencies" (between religion and science) is the truth, and any good historian of science will concede to this, that the foundation of modern Western science is not laid in its most profound and expansive insights by the skeptics, but by the true-believers who took up the challenge of the skeptics and showed them that their skepticism, without religious faith, is lame, and that the true-believer's science, when challenged by the skeptics, is triumphant. . . That's the reciprocal relationship from which good science arises. And religion is the foundation. The skepticism, the criticism and critical attitude, while completely necessary, is nevertheless secondary.
Einstein claimed that the greatest scientist who ever lived is Isaac Newton. And Newton claimed his science came straight out of the Bible. When John Maynard Keynes purchased Newton's archives he revealed to the world, that unbeknownst to him, Newton was more of a Christian mystic than he was a scientist. Keynes said that Newton had written far more pages of Biblical exegesis than he had written scientific examination. And Newton himself said that all of his scientific insights, to include gravity (which he claimed came upon him while studying the scripture describing Solomon's temple) were exhaust gas from his in-depth exegesis and examination of scripture.
Same with Kepler, Copernicus, Kant, Berkeley, and most of the father's of modern science.
John
Last edited:
No photographic memory needed. I have my books, public library and the internet. If I do not have a clear specific reference as to a source I do not cite the source!!!!!
In this case it does not represent Popper's view on theology, and second I have his books and can reference pretty much anything else he wrote on the internet and library.
There is no case in point unless you can accurately reference Popper making the statement.
Still waiting . . .
Need one citation where Popper states that science 'evolved from theology.'
There are no dogmatic pronouncements. Simply you made a claim as to what Popper state. Simply provide the reference and I will accept it. End of story.
Last edited:
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
"Theology" is, at least generally speaking, the science of god: theo-logy. It's the study of, and argumentation concerning, the existence, nature, and workings, of god. The earliest form of this argumentation and supposition concerning god came in the form of mythological tales and stories.
Myth: a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.
"ancient Celtic myths."
Google Dictionary.
"ancient Celtic myths."
Google Dictionary.
And as for Freud's epic of the Ego, the Super Ego, and the Id, no substantially stronger claim to scientific status can be made for it than for Homer's collected stories from Olympus. These theories [come from Olympus] describe some facts, but in the manner of myths. They contain most interesting psychological suggestions, but not in a testable form. At the same time I realize that such myths may be developed, and become testable; that historically speaking all----or very nearly all----scientific theories originate from myths, and that a myth may contain important anticipations of scientific theories.
Conjectures and Refutations, p. 38.
Conjectures and Refutations, p. 38.
Perhaps it would be fair to presuppose that if "myth" is the genesis of, and the earliest form of, theology (and it seems it would be merely argumentative to say it isn't) then Popper is clearly claiming that all, or very nearly all, scientific theories originate from myths; so that if myths are early theology, then all scientific theories (or very nearly all) originate from theology.
Later in Conjectures and Refutations (p. 126-127), Popper gives a more detailed account of how science evolves from ancient theology, i.e., myth:
The early Greek philosophers did indeed try to understand what happened in nature [cosmology]. But so did the more primitive mythmakers before them. How can we characterize that primitive type of explanation which was superseded by the standards of the early Greek philosophers ---the founders of our scientific tradition? To put it crudely, the pre-scientific myth-makers said, when they saw a thunderstorm approaching: “Oh yes, Zeus is angry.” And when they saw that the sea was rough, they said: “Poseidon is angry.” That was the type of explanation which was found satisfactory before the rationalist tradition introduced new standards of explanation. What was really the decisive difference? One can hardly say that the new theories introduced by the Greek philosophers were more easily understood than the old ones. It is, I think, much easier to understand the statement that Zeus is angry than to understand a scientific account of a thunderstorm. And the statement that Poseidon is angry is for me a much simpler and more easily understandable explanation of the high waves of the sea than the one in terms of friction between the air and the surface of the water.
I think that the innovation which the early Greek philosophers introduced was roughly this: they began to discuss these matters. Instead of accepting the religious tradition uncritically, and as unalterable (like children who protest if aunty alters one word of their favourite fairy-tale), instead of merely handing on a tradition, they challenged it, and sometimes even invented a new myth in place of the old one. We have, I think, to admit that the new stories which they put in place of the old were, fundamentally, myths---just as the old stories were; but there are two things about them to be noticed.
First, they were not just repetitions or re-arrangements of the old stories, but contained new elements. Not that this in itself is a very great virtue. But the second and main thing is this: the Greek philosophers invented a new tradition----the tradition of adopting a critical attitude towards the myths, the tradition of discussing them; the tradition of not only telling a myth, but also of being challenged by the man to whom it is told. Telling their myths they were ready in their turn to listen to what the their listener thought about it ---admitting thereby the possibility that he might perhaps have a better explanation than they. This was a thing that had not happened before. A new way if asking questions arose. Together with the explanation---the myth--- the question would arise: “Can you give me a better account?”: and another philosopher might answer: “Yes, I can.” Or he might say: “I do not know whether I can give you a better, but I can give you a very different account which does just as well. These two accounts cannot both be true, so there must be something wrong here. We cannot simply accept these two accounts. Nor have we any reason to accept just one of them. We really want to know more about the matter. We have to discuss it further. We have to see whether our explanations really do account for the things about which we already know, and perhaps even for something we have so far overlooked.”
My thesis is that what we call “science” is differentiated from the older myths not by being something distinct from myth, but by being accompanied by a second-order tradition---that of critically discussing the myth. . . In critical discussions which now arose there also arose, for the first time, something like systematic observation. . . Thus it is the myth or the theory which leads to, and guides, our systematic observations----observations undertaken with the intention of probing into the truth of the theory or myth. From this point of view the growth of the theories of science should not be considered as the result of the collection, or accumulation, of observations; on the contrary, the observations and their accumulation should be considered as the result of the growth of the scientific theories.
In a nutshell, I interpret Popper to be saying first comes the tradition of theo-logic myth-making: Poseidon is angry. Next come the evolution of a new tradition that far from evolving without, or against, theo-logic myth-making, in fact is a true branch of the old tradition. Popper appears clear, here, and throughout these discussions (see his essay: Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition), that the new tradition, (systematic observations, i.e., the scientific-method-tradition) requires the old tradition (theo-logical myth-making) as the very ground from whence it evolves and grows. Which is, as best I can surmise, merely a longer explication and account of how modern science evolved from theo-logical myth-making: science evolved from theology.
Since I typed the longer Popper quotation directly from Conjecture and Refutations, I now have 321 pages of Popper quotations in my comprehensive Word file. <s>
John
Last edited:
OK, but no citation from Popper that 'science evolved from theology.'
To deal with htis in a more objective manner I like Joseph Campbell.
Last edited:
PAUL MARKHAM
Well-Known Member
Without Free Will we become automatons. Something that follows even if the evidence indicates otherwise or seekers wanting to find out WHY?
Without free will, we might as well go back to living in the trees. Because free will was responsible for Man knocking two pieces of rock together to make a tool. It was responsible for someone to wonder how a circular object would enhance his life and he invented the wheel.
Some theists want to do away with free will because it leads people to question their religion.
Without free will, we might as well go back to living in the trees. Because free will was responsible for Man knocking two pieces of rock together to make a tool. It was responsible for someone to wonder how a circular object would enhance his life and he invented the wheel.
Some theists want to do away with free will because it leads people to question their religion.
To make this meaningful you will have to define Free Will and the degree of Free Will that meets your criteria.
There is not evidence of complete mechanical 'No Free Will,' and the evidence determines Libertarian Free Will is not true.