Comments on: Scientific versus religious world views http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/04/09/scientific-versus-religious-worldviews/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:39:44 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: drinian http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/04/09/scientific-versus-religious-worldviews/comment-page-1/#comment-21466 drinian Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:48:57 +0000 http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/?p=738#comment-21466 Religious world-views used to be considered epistemologically universal; that is to say, not only was there only one valid religion, but it pervaded the structure of the entire world ("as above, so below"). One of my favorite bits of Dante's <em>Inferno</em> is when he crosses through the center of the Earth, where an eternally frozen Satan sits suspended, and must climb down to the center of gravity and then back up to continue out the other side of the Earth, on his way to Purgatory. His solar system might not have been heliocentric, but the Earth sure was round; to him, the best religious and scientific evidence available (centuries before Columbus, mind you) indicated that this was the case. There's much more cognitive dissonance these days, of course. Religious world-views used to be considered epistemologically universal; that is to say, not only was there only one valid religion, but it pervaded the structure of the entire world (“as above, so below”). One of my favorite bits of Dante’s Inferno is when he crosses through the center of the Earth, where an eternally frozen Satan sits suspended, and must climb down to the center of gravity and then back up to continue out the other side of the Earth, on his way to Purgatory. His solar system might not have been heliocentric, but the Earth sure was round; to him, the best religious and scientific evidence available (centuries before Columbus, mind you) indicated that this was the case.

There’s much more cognitive dissonance these days, of course.

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