Wednesday, April 2, 2014

RELIGION AND SCIENCE

Among the many quotations that Shaw left for posterity on the disputes between science and religion, one of the most striking ones is in the Preface on Days of Judgment to The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles

Religion is the mother of scepticism: Science is the mother of credulity. 

I suggest you take a look at the context so you can judge the validity of the claim for yourselves. However, as Shaw put it a few lines before the above quotation: 

"I have pointed out on a former occasion that there is just as much evidence for a law of the Conservation of Credulity as of the Conservation of Energy.  When we refuse to believe in the miracles of religion for no better reason fundamentally than that we are no longer in the humor for them we refill our minds with the miracles of science, most of which the authors of the Bible would have refused to believe.  The humans who have lost their simple childish faith in a flat earth and in Joshua's feat of stopping the sun until he had finished his battle with the Amalekites, find no difficulty in swallowing an expanding boomerang universe."

JoshuaSun Martin

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