Like I said it's not a belief that a christian or holder of any other belief has to be split, on the one hand there are religious beliefs as opposed to clear analytical thought without the handicap of superstitious clutter.
And here's the third of the opinion-Trinity who is determined that his opinion, despite having provided no supporting evidence, is fact.
Reasoned logic is just that; what other way is there to reason other than using reason and logic?
There are many who have used the reason and logic and come to the conclusion that the atheist position is untenable - some such people starting out as atheists, some not. How do you explain that?
... why is there any need for that lot where science is concerned?
OK, ippy, where did science come from? For instance, did natural laws and the laws of physics on which science is dependent just appear out of nothing?
Just put in Win/Gallup Atheism poll, it soon comes up then you can look at the figures for yourself without anything from my direction, please feel free to make up your own mind about the figures they are presenting.
OK, ippy, how do you square the indication that China - possibly the least educated country in the world when its thousands of rural communities with limited educational facilities are taken into account, but also has sizeable Christian and other religious communities, many of them amongst the more educated ranks of the nation - has the highest figure of convinced atheists, with your claim that it is with education that religious belief dies out. Remember too that most of the Chinese of our age would have had any religious belief that they might have had drummed out of them by the agents of Mao, thus skewing the figues in regard to atheism - the 'state religion' as it were.
Psychology used to be a B A degree or something like that it now comes as a BSC a science degree that being so where is there any need for religion in any of the science based reasonings if we did need religion there surly there must be a place for Tarot and other things like Astrology too.
Not quite sure of your point(s) here. There are a whole host of subjects that used to be regarded as Humanity disciplines, but are now regarded as Science disciplines. Maths and Physics are two good historical examples!!
The way I see it is that there is no wedge as you call it between science and religion, science can do all of the reasoning they can manage to do without a need for superstitions of any kind, call them what you like religions superstitions, unexplained magic tricks etc, in fact science is more likely to prove or disprove these things more than anything else is likely to.
ippy
I would agree whole-heartedly with you, ippy. Science doesn't need superstition, but sometimes requires what you call 'unexplained magic tricks' (such as so-called 'spontaneous healings' which have absolutely no medical or scientific explanations, yet are widely documented in medical records). But then, nor does religious belief.
You (and others) like to call it 'superstition' and 'magic' because that allows you to dismiss it as fantasy rather than confronting it for what it is; something beyond the physical and physically evidence-able.
It's like the preference to use euphemisms rather than the real word; passing on, passing over, gone to glory, left this life, pushing up daisies, resting in peace, six feet under, ... I could go on, but there are probably about 100 (
http://www.listology.com/rosiecotton/list/euphemisms-deathdeadto-die) and listing them would take for ever.
