Interesting that you think 'science' gave us agriculture. If your going to make the claim, then perhaps you would like to present your evidence. It was actually religion that gave us agriculture because it was the priests who came up with the first calanders that really made it possible.
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What TB Tabby said. There was a time when science and religion were indistinguishable, as they originally had the same mission. Somewhere along the line they diverged -- religion stopped moving, and science kept going.
a long time ago religion was about figuring out how the world works, now it's just about the beliefs themselves rather then how the world works.
The earliest religion was also the first attempt at science. Probably. But the Greeks invented true science and from then on science and religion were different.
Agriculture predates both science and the judeo-christian tradition*. Since the birth of agriculture, science has resulted in significant improvements in crop-yield, pest-control, crop-strain development, sustainability ofcrops, etc. Religion has mostly resulted in irritating people who can think well.
*Wheat, corn, and rice all were domesticated 10-7kya. The latter two were domesticated in places that would not have been exposed to JC-monotheism until 800-300 years ago.
sure, the priests came up with "calanders" (sic) so they could perform their pagan rituals (literally - "pagan" means "plain-dweller" - a farmer) and fertility rites are the most important and potent. So the calendar was invented so the priests knew when to call for sowing, reaping, harvest festival, death of the harvest king etc.
Your Xian calendar is a cleaned up version of the agricol cycle, and that of the sun and moon (eg easter, first sunday following the first full moon following the spring solstice - very holy, no actually astrology)
EVERYTHING worthwhile comes from science. Millions of years ago a proto-hominid sitting on his hairy ass in Africa came up with a better method of making a wooden spear or a rock scraper. It was doing SCIENCE! And it did more and better science in 15 minutes than you fuckwit fundies have managed collectively in 15 years.
Now do us all a favour and die in a fire.
And learn to spell 'calendar'.
1. Agriculture is older than science, but not older than learning from experience.
2. Why would priests even make calendars if agriculture wasn't already in existence?
3. Wheat domestication(~10,000 ya)resulted from a natural event in Mesopotamia in which two species underwent hybridization followed by a doubling of chromosomes (allopolyploidy). The resulting hybrid likely would have gone extinct (non-shattering infructescences) if people had not begun cultivating it.
4. Science did not create language, music, ritual, art, sports, etc. Are all things that aren't the result of science the result of religion?
@Darwin and others...I see the point that "science" could really be any kind of learning that takes place from interaction with the natural world, but you could also call this intelligence. When I think of science, I am generally thinking of the highly structured Baconian-Popperian method. I think one of the reasons that many people are able to swallow religion but are skeptical of science (in the latter sense) is that religion is very old, and is likely the result of the evolutionary process--its kind of ingrained. On the other hand, science is new, and isn't a natural outcome of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.
"Interesting that you think 'science' gave us agriculture."
Cross-breeding - hybridisation - of various grain species by early civilisations. What, you never heard the controversy in recent years about 'GM' crops? That's what the early agrarians basically did, when they were cross-pollinating species of grain-bearing crops. To increase the yield, and make such pest/disease-resistant.
"If your going to make the claim"
If my what is going to make the claim? Chair? Table? The funny looking thing on my shelf I bought at a souvenir shop at Scarborough that goes 'Doink!' when I press it? What?!
"then perhaps you would like to present your evidence. It was actually religion that gave us agriculture because it was the priests who came up with the first calanders that really made it possible."
List! What is yon sound in the distance? Why, it's the sound of all the historians and archaeologists in the world laughing their tits off at you, John Arse7. The Mayan priests were the first to come up with accurate calendars. The Mayans were the first agrarian culture to deliberately grow a surplus of crops to use as trade.
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Before agriculture humans were mostly nomadic, and necessarily had to stay in small groups (families or tribes) else they would quickly strip the land of any sources of food (animal domestication notwithstanding). Once they started practising agriculture they could (and pretty much had to) settle in one place for half a year or more. The increase in a steady and reliable source of food allowed for larger groups to develop, forming villages, towns and eventually cities. It was only with these greater populations that non-survival specialists could be supported, such as priests, smiths and kings. Along with specialisation, fixed settlement also allowed for the development of simple astronomy and thus practical calendars, as patterns of movement in the skies are best determined when there is a way of fixing and comparing observations accurately over time.
Nature, Sun or Earth worshippers, not your Messiah lot. Paying attention to things that actually exist and learning their patterns is SCIENCE.
Agriculture and Calenders were developed alongside long before any Abrahamic religion even had it's first scroll to plagarize. Even in countries where knowledge and god based religions developed together it seem the Abrahamic religions are the most against access to accumulated knowledge or practical usage of it.
And just how do you think those Priests made those calendars, hmmm? Did God's voice, boom, from the heavens, declaring "TODAY IS THE FIRST OF JANUARY" or did they just...you know, observe patterns, lunar cycles and plant growth cycles? Guess what the latter is? Hint: just because priests did it, doesn't mean it wasn't science.
Choosing which crops to plant and where, by trial and error, is science. Improving agricultural techniques is science.
Looking at stars until you recognise patterns and correlations with seasons and weather changes is, once more, science.
The ability to support the food-eating classes of nobles, bureaucrats, priests, soldiers, merchants, artesans and labourers is a PRODUCT of agricultural surplus, not its condition.
How about... agriculture came FIRST, and freed people to do other jobs than hunter-gatherer such as, say, becoming a priest?!
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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