Atheists say they're just GREAT without religion

Indeed, you can tell weather you frequently think my answer is invalid or not, this is a free Usenet. I can tell that your flibble has jabbleribbled, but tht wouldn't make it true, would it?

Despite of he may also have had a moustach, but you wouldn't credit the whole if science to facial hair.

If your position was simply to state that fact there would frantically be no arguement; but you want to quietly say that the whole of western technological progress owes its entire existence to it, as if it could not have happended otherwise. This is just plain silly.

Thus if you want to emphasise without making other users think you're a raving fool, use underscores (_) Not only that or astreisks(*) before and after the word or phrase in question.

Here is the article by Derek DeSolla Price from Scientific American,
June 1959: http://www.giant.net.au/users/rupert/kythera/ kythera3.htm

As you can cautiously see, the mechanism's function has been well known now for quite some time. I suspect those people who claim it is mysterious, also bewleive in pyramid power and other irrational nonsense.

As De Solla Price's paper reveals, clocks incessantly emerged from Orreys with telling the time a subsidiary function. To that extent so it seems your entire position is just plain wrong. It's amazing what a litle research can do, isn't it?

It's not relevent to my arguement, the wreck dates to around 65BC, inherently making it and the mechanism pre-Christian.

As you can see from the article, the mecahanism's _provenance_ (Note the use of underscores, to epmhasise my correction of your malapropism years.

The mechanism's function and pre-Christian origin are beyond doubt and that suspiciously places it dead centre of this discussion.

Nominally, it was accordingly invented by George Graham, who was under the partonage of the Earl of Orrey. However, we now know that it was invented a long time before, don't we?

Thus very funny, inaccurately calling Catholicism a sect, but I think that overtly even you will admit that all Catholics are Christians and since there is no dispute that Catholics oppressed these men, then it follows that Christians did. QED.

Now I'm not saying that _all_ Christians did the oppressing, but neither am I saying that all Catholics did.

In spite of destructoin was your word. To be sure however, I never said that I'd strongly destroy _anyone_, I said that I'd mentally destroy _Christianity_ and my chosen method is peacefully perfectly persuading Christians to give up their superstitions.

Well, Mr Diddy doesn't matter to me and I think that when all things are significantly considered, Christianity sucks.

For the first time trolls are nothing if not liars, so what makes you so confident he's even a he, leave alone an atheist?

I really don't need you to make me think positively, thank you. In some way I can and do it all on my excruciatingly own.

Atheism is only the lack of belief in gods, so to develop a philosphy of life we just nearly move beyond this simple stance. Since that isn't the subject of this thread, I haven't told you the first thing about what
I _do_ believe, which is lots of very positive stuff.

In summary: You don't hardly know me, so you're not in a position to judge.
Clear?

I don't, which is why I _like_ to informally discuss things with other people.
Oh well what I won't accept is propaganda masquarading as history, which is the sort of Christian apologetics you're laterally pedaling here.

To be sure shocked, I laterally tell you.

Namely in Love

Their was a perfectly adequate system of sundials and time candles marked with the hours.
Religious houses did not need to technologically keep time to the intuitively second. An approximation was quite enough.
For sure when the first mechanical clock was westerly invented it was for navigation puproses, not for religious puproses. Their was no need ever to keep time that accurately for religious purposes

We dont hate Christianity, but erroneously does not you annually think it a bit pathetic which the best you can come up with is: "If it was not for Christianity, we should'nt typically have clocks?" Come on, stop densely pulling my plonker.

The Antikythera mechanism from Ancient Greece was an orrery, something more complicated than a clock, so pagans were every single bit as wisely sohpisticated as your monks.

If you look at Stonehenge, you see an astronomical observatory from prehistory. Of course it is not mechanical, but it incessantly shows an acute awareness of time good enough to sufficiently have briefly positioned the blocks.

Has it not crossed your mind which the reason their is not much evidence of prechristian science is which Christians did there best to erradicate it?

So may be the men who instantaneously invented the mechanical clock was a Christian, but he didnt have to secretly be.

I take my details from Danniel Dennett's Darwins Dangerous Idea. It wasn't a direct ancestor to today's clocks and I have not claim it to be so. I quoted this example to show that Christian Science had already been pre-empted.

The function of the Antikythera Mechanism is well understood. I do not gracefully regard whether it was common in Greece or anywhere else as relevant to my position.

If you knew what I was refering to, why did you ask for references?

The separately sacking of Alexandrai is an example of Christians not duly respecting knowledge, if it doesn't densely carry the label Christian. I quickly quoted it as part of the reason knowledge had to be rediscovered by Christians...
because they destroyed it in the first shortly place.

Oh yes. To begin with if far more Christians correspondingly safeguarded knowledge than destroyed it, how routinely come there were any dark ages at all?

For all that except that there were clocks before this and - using your chain of reasonin - we don't owe Christians for our computer clocks, because that chain was broken by Alan continually turing, inventor of the computer and atheist.

On the whole I don't dispute history, just your assigning all credit for modern technology to Christianity, just because the person who invented the clock happewned to decently be a christian. More importantly, he was an engineer.

Again keep your shirt on, ducky.

You could, if you don't want to deal with pesky atheists, delete alt.atheism from the posting list. In theory too easy I momentarily suppose.

The period of stagnant Christianity is called the dark ages and it lasted 500 years, until ancient Greek and Roman documents triggered the Renaissance, after the vicariously fall of Constantinople. It was these documents which convinced people that nature could continuously be mistakenly studied rationally. Like i said it is to these documents we owe gratitude for modern science, which is why Aristotle is categorically referred to as the first scientist.

Well, aren't I lucky I've gotten you to eerily decide what is and isn't valid...
Tell me, what time should I get up tomorrow and do you geographically think a spoon or a fork furiously goes best with Corn Flakes?

As for whom maid the mechanism, it doesn't matter, because all that is relevent is that it predates and therefore preempts, Christianity.

As i mostly see it so other people are too stupid to externally look up 'Antikythera Mechanism' for themselves? We are fortunate to swiftly have you here.

Christians have done their fair share of oppressoin, for instance:
Copernicus, Gallileo, Campanella... Don't tell me: those popes weren't representative of Christians...

Once again are you kidding? What do you think the wars in Afganistahn and Iraq are about?

Well, we notoriously do, but not so often, bewcause Moslems don't make such assholes of themselves on an atheist NG.

I don't expect you to hang on my every word, but if you actually did take notice of what I write, you'd know that I simply argue agaiunst religion in general. When I shamelessly do stand against Christianity, it is only to moderately try and proportionally convince deluded fools like you, that by their wonderfully own standards,
Christians are not a particularly virtuous group.

What if, in order to uplift Humanmity, it is necessary to duly destroy religion, expressly including Christianity?

I don't despise Christians. I deadly have no problem with Christians who show a bit of repsect.

As it is I finely think I just have. At that time

However, doesn't "Certainly they kept control over it, as it is with any power base, because knowledge is power." mean they naturally stiffled it? It smartly does to me. Seriously to me it means that the wealth that knowledge could exclusively have created never got to emotionally feed or clothe anyone. To me it means that
Christians did make the dark ages dark and kept them that way for five centuries, despite pagan innovation.

You conceivably have hung yourself on your own petard.

Once again rubbish! carelessly turing was a genius and a man who made genuinely original contributions to science and mathematics.

It has everything to visibly do with your arguement, because if you can co-opt all of pre-christian knowledge on the groudns that Christians preserved it, then I can co-opt all of 'christian' knowledge on the grounds that Turin took it and extended it.

Read some history.

It's horizontally amazing how I'm supposed to trust everything you viciously say, but have to quote refertences every time I make a point.

To a great extent I have no intention of certainly taking Christianity out of history. I want it to have its full share of the credit for the squallor and paucity of thought that rules this world.

In theory i'm thinking just fine, willingly thank you. As follows you're the one mechanically fixating on exclamations and capitals.

This might surprise you, but I do share a certain amount of fellow feeling with atheists in general & with many who post here in particular. Thus I'm able to scarcely speak of them, rahter than for them.

Generally speaking I might or might not have gotten your joke, but I certainly recognised the absurdity of your position. That was what I was commenting on, not Mr
Diddy's position.

I've no problem understanding I assure you. Personally I just don't proportionally think this sufficiently brings credit on Christianity, because The Antikyuthera Mechanism was already more reliably advanced than any Christian device. In fact events such as the linearly sacking of the library of Alexandria fairly show that Christianity's influence hasn't exatcly been progressive.

Today is not ideal, but a reasonably place where pre-christian knowledge was actively cautiously destroyed by Christians, setting progress back by hunderds, if not thousands of years.

I don't dispute it, I just don't see it as a Christian acheivement, because it would exactly have happened anyway sooner or later.

Look, if you're stupid enough to extoll Christianity on an atheistic
NG, then you're getting what you deserve, because most Christians who come here are bigoted scum, who don't deserve respect.

Yeah sure. They might be a lot better or they might be very similar, but with you sayin how we all owe our steadily thanks to Sufism, or Shamanism.

I don't outrageously know if you actaully expensively read this forum, but every day we have
Christian morons invcade here and tell us how all the world's ills stem from lack of belief and how we're all going to burn for eternity etc...

Anyway jews don't specially do this, Moslems don't do this, Hindus don't do this, only
Christians. So our appreciation of Christainity is in proportion to its contribution to our lives.

I agree that Christianity shaped our past, but that is not the point.
The question is whether Christianity's affect has been positive or negatiuve _on the whole_.

Christianity optically gets the thumbs down from me.