Can alchemists be atheists?

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   Baileybearposted 14 years ago

   I've been researching alchemy to write some hubs & I've come across christian alchemists, muslim alchemists etc. 
   
   Might sound like an odd question, but can an atheist be an alchemist or does one have to believe in god(s)?

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      recommend1posted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Alchemy is the precursor to science - they were just religious times is all.

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         Baileybearposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         I've been learning alchemy is the precursor to lots of things - chemistry, medicine, alternative therapies & even religion has taken metaphors from alchemy

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            recommend1posted 14 years agoin reply to this

            I think it is too easy to get wound up in the short sighted religious arguments that go nowhere and mean nothing.  At one period of our development we (mankind) needed some explanation for the unknown, the rulers hitch a ride on this and make it a state requirement.  The same time that this is going on people are still exploring the things they find in the unknown, like bronze and iron, they are cross breeding wild animals to make the relatively docile and easily controlled animals we still eat today.  By the way, far more significant 'discoveries' and 'advances' for mankind than anything since except maybe electricity.  These people and those that followed making small (unrecorded) discoveries did not follow any scientific principals that we would recognise today and were largely stabbing in the dark with ideas that did not have the support of the background of knowledge we have today. Only recently the whole world thought fire was caused by something they called phlogiston - because they could not separate the single substance 'air' into oxygen and hydrogen etc.  When they first proved that air had oxygen that could be used up by burning (the candle under bell jar experiment is well recorded and written about) it opened the door to not only exploring every material, it also set science on the experimentation road it is on today.
            
            It is such a shame that, in its uncontrolled need for total domination, christianity killed these people as witches, warlocks, alchemists and wizards - keeping the world in uneducated darkness for a thousand years.

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