in reply to Re: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
in thread Who is your favorite scientist and why?

Question: What do the following scientists have in common?

Michael Faraday, Charles Babbage, James Clerk Maxwell, Heinrich Hertz, Gregor Mendel, Lord Kelvin, Wilhelm Röntgen, and Arthur Eddington.

Answer:

  1. They died after the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859
  2. They made major contributions to science or technology
  3. They were professing Christians (of various denominations)

To these we should add the still-living Francis Collins, Donald Knuth, and our own Larry Wall.

Oh, and BTW, Theodosius Dobzhansky was reportedly one of the “famous evolutionists [who] were firm believers in a personal God.”

Here are some interesting statistics from Wikipedia:

According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes a review of Nobel prizes award between 1901 and 2000 reveals that (65.4%) of Nobel Prizes Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference. Overall, Christians have won a total of 72.5% of all the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, 65.3% in Physics, 62% in Medicine, 54% in Economics.

Go figure. ;-)

Cheers,

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: Who is your favorite scientist and why?
by Anonymous Monk on Aug 02, 2017 at 10:49 UTC
[reply]

      I don’t know that a person with a high IQ is any more (or less) likely to suffer the mental disorders listed above than a person of average or low IQ (and, BTW, rumination syndrome is a physical disorder, not a mental one). But that’s beside the point. Classifying “the god delusion” as “[an]other mental disorder” is a classic example of petitio principii (begging the question). So, as regards the first paragraph above: kudos for the rhetoric, but no prizes for the logic (since there isn’t any).

      The second paragraph is more interesting, because the quote from Dawkins reveals a characteristic flaw in his argumentation: the failure to distinguish religious faith from fideism. The consequence of this failure is that the “unquestioning faith” he attacks is largely a straw man of his own imagining (at least as far as mainstream Christianity is concerned).

      On the role faith plays in Christianity, a good place to start would be the essay “On Obstinacy in Belief” by C. S. Lewis.

      Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

[reply]
      Not all "sensible" religions teach that unquestioning faith is a virtue.
[reply]
        What would be some examples of such religions?
[reply]

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