Quote Originally Posted by leo9 View Post
A perfect example of the difference between religion (the orthodox kind, anyway) and science. The contradictions in the Bible (which are as many as you would expect in a book written by at least - IIRC - ten authors at widely separated places and times, four of whom thought they were making a complete break with the previous ones) are a constant embarrassment to theologians, who devote books to explaining them away.

Contrariwise, Shroedinger was delighted to have found an apparent contradiction (to be strictly accurate, an apparent absurd corollary) in quantum theory, and physicists have been enjoying it ever since. Every living scientific theory is being constantly questioned and revised, that's what makes it science. And religious fundamentalists see this as weakness, and cannot understand why anyone wants to follow such impermanent creeds when they could have one that hasn't changed in thousands of years.
I refute the charge that the religious are unthinking, obstinate old fogies who haven't had an original thought in generations and who are afraid to question their most basic tenets. If they were, there'd have been no Jesus and no Mohammed ... and no Aquinus, no Luther or Calvin, and so it can be said, without fear of contradiction, that every living religion's dogmas and beliefs are also constantly being questioned and revised or perfected.

I guess you can compare the religious fundamentalists you deride with the scientists who denied Copernicus's theories, for example, because they preferred the idea that Earth was the centre of the Universe, which they had held, not for a few thousand years, but since time out of mind, or with the bigots who claimed "God does not play dice" when rejecting the idea of quantum mechanics.