And I have a point in that early scientists believed a large number of other ridiculous things that never seem to come up. We owe a lot of modern chemistry to alchemy and phlogiston "science," for instance, but only the coincidental religious interests of the scientists in question is credited in these discussions with advancing the state of the art.

Today, our concern should be with ways of thinking that move us forward, not with faith-based approaches that might or might not have been helpful to certain scientists in the past who lived and worked under wildly different circumstances.

As I said in another reply just now, I'm done with this thread, and with HN in general if the admins intend to post WSJ-style flamebait stories and attack people who bite.

> And I have a point in that early scientists believed a large number of other ridiculous things that never seem to come up.

Yes, certainly. The process of discovery is not always direct. Science has taken many false turns along the way and I won't be that surprised if there are more in the future. But I would note that you seem to have added quite a few arguments to my post that I never made. Or perhaps those were directed at someone else. I just don't like the common practice of retelling history to fit people's idea of how it should have been and you can find many people doing that for all different reasons. As you said, many believed wonky things, though I would also note that most of those amounted to nothing. Phlogiston (and ether, for that matter) were discredited, while the idea that the world obeys rules that can be understood by humans has proven correct, though I wonder just how much we know about the 'why' of that.

Finally, I would note that it's quite possible to disagree without being hostile, especially personally so. I'm pretty sure that's all dang is asking of us.