Pretty sure. My understanding is that it was not socially acceptable to be atheist until quite recently. I'm not sure I meant physical danger, though. Ostracism is dangerous enough, there are plenty of ways to hurt people and influence their choices in life other than beating them up with a stick.
> There were still social conventions in 19th century England demanding lip service to religion...
Why isn't this an outrageous infringement on somebody else's freedom? And why should we discount its effect on who rose to the top and who didn't?
We know generally there can be many detrimental psychological effects on people coming from their social circumstances. These effects were presumably the same a few centuries ago, just much less well documented.
> ... people could usually tell who the true believers were as opposed to who was merely following the what-you-can't-say rules
I wouldn't be so sure. First, I'm not sure I can tell myself who's paying lip service these days, I'm just assuming no one is because I would consider it unnecessary. Second, when people read about historical figures, the accounts are really quite filtered: if someone was paying lip service back then and you read what was said about them or what they said in public themselves, how can you be sure these days what was lip service back then and what wasn't?
The author of the article is absolutely certain it wasn't lip service for these two scientists. I'm saying this kind of evidence isn't even remotely enough.
> There were still social conventions in 19th century England demanding lip service to religion...
Why isn't this an outrageous infringement on somebody else's freedom? And why should we discount its effect on who rose to the top and who didn't?
We know generally there can be many detrimental psychological effects on people coming from their social circumstances. These effects were presumably the same a few centuries ago, just much less well documented.
> ... people could usually tell who the true believers were as opposed to who was merely following the what-you-can't-say rules
I wouldn't be so sure. First, I'm not sure I can tell myself who's paying lip service these days, I'm just assuming no one is because I would consider it unnecessary. Second, when people read about historical figures, the accounts are really quite filtered: if someone was paying lip service back then and you read what was said about them or what they said in public themselves, how can you be sure these days what was lip service back then and what wasn't?
The author of the article is absolutely certain it wasn't lip service for these two scientists. I'm saying this kind of evidence isn't even remotely enough.