Agnostic.com

4 0

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Colbert go head to head on religion.

In this brief exchange, Ricky Gervais seems to make a good point in that, "if we took every science book and every fact and destroyed them all in a thousand years they'd all be back...". What do you think?

If we took every science book and every documented fact and destroyed them all in a thousand years they'd all be back.

  • 6 votes
  • 1 vote
  • 3 votes
SergeTafCam 5 Apr 26
Share

Enjoy being online again!

Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.

Create your free account

4 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

1

Yes because it has happened before, several times.
You can burn books, you can suppress ideas, you cannot burn or suppress facts.

1

I don't see an option to agree with only part of the statement.

I agree that every scientific fact would be rediscovered - and probably in far less than a thousand years. We all know too much now for it to be otherwise.

I disagree that every other fact would be rediscovered. What about historical facts? Those tend to get muddled when retold. What about facts of language? If we destroyed every text of a dead language, who will remember the whole thing accurately?

The pharaoh Amenhotep II (Akhenaten) was written out of history after the Armanah heresy, the priests erased his name and removed him from their history, his city Akatartan was allowed to sink in to the desert.
Today we have rediscovered him, his history, his family and even his mummy.

Likewise Richard the third was buried in disgrace in a paupers grave and given only a disgraced place in english history.
Only a few years ago he was found, disinterred and buried with full royal honours in westminster cathedral.

History is very hard to hide, especially from the curious historian.

2

Enjoyed video

1

I think that if you destroyed all the scientists at the same time it might take more than a thousand years, depending on the environment.

There are certain ideas that religions have in common that would spring back eternally.

@Allamanda All the different religious expressions would be different and might not resemble any of today’s formal religions.

But there is an undercurrent of ideas and concepts common to today’s religions, as described by Aldous Huxley in The Perennial Philosophy. It seems reasonable that those ideas would keep arising because they are rooted in primal human experience.

@Allamanda Yes, it probably wouldn’t even be called religion—maybe philosophy.

Write Comment
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:489413
Agnostic does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.