I can’t say that I’ve really read shawn’s other stuff; my response was based upon what he has said in this thread. I don’t know whether or not he’s an atheist but I do know in his OP he said:
“What is the only system of thought that has been developed that is effective in distinguishing fact from fallacy, truth from myth, and reality from delusion?
Science.
All the truths we know, as opposed to beliefs which some choose blindly to adopt (as if the strength of their convictions could affect facts) have been revealed by the rational processes of applied scientific method.
Science alone yields a basis for the formulation of beliefs whose validity can be proved because they predict results that can be tested.
And yet,
for thousands of years,
the races of earth have clung persistently to their cults, their superstitions, their irrational dogmas and their impotent idols.
They refused to accept what their eyes alone should have told them:
That the magical and mystical forces in which they trusted and which they aspired to command......WERE FICTIONS, barren in their yield of results, powerless in prediction and devoid of any useful application.
In a word, they were worthless”
These seem to me to be the words expressing an overtly atheist viewpoint. It’s hardly surprising if that’s what people took him to be having read these words.
I simply wondered how shawn could derive a morality from science.
s.
) for our benightedness and our collective detriment, and it can be quite effective in that purpose, if we apply it "correctly". The Third Reich made remarkable progress in both the applied social sciences and in medical science. After all, if you are going to control millions to billions of people, you had better understand how they tick.
