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Steve Witham's avatar

By "this norm" do you mean don't argue at dinner? Can you give more details about that not holding during the US revolution? My doubt comes from admittedly scant evidence: The reformation included wars between Protestant sects. People from multiple sects colonized America before the revolution. The territories of the original settlements grew closer together. I don't *remember* history of religious wars within America. The colonies managed to form a federation before the war. The first amendment was adopted pretty soon after the war. Is this mostly true but privately people valued or displayed tolerance less? I'm genuinely curious whether there's an general understanding of how the religious cease-fire of the West managed to happen.

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Andrew Luscombe's avatar

Einstein produced ideas to try to explain other people's experimental results, and those ideas were then tested with further experiments. Until there was experimental results supporting Einsteins ideas they were just hypotheses - not conclusions. Until an idea's predictions are observed the idea is not scientifically validated, and science has not come to a conclusion about it. It's just the definition of what science is.

Agnosticism is the only scientific position about gods in general. You can think we are in simulation if you like, and then the creators of the sim are effectively the gods. That might sound more sciency and modern to you, but it's in the same family of ideas as most major religions since 1700 or so.

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