first book: early plot question(s)

I agree with other posters; this is an author that to me is quite intensely religious - and in whose books many, if not all, of the leading characters have a deep-founded belief in a God. But as the OP says, David W is strongly opposed to those who abuse religion for personal power and is much more focused on individuals finding their own path to faith.

There is truth to what is being said here about people refusing physical evidence in favor of faith.

But what theologians call the "god of the gaps" (using God to fill in the blanks for what we do not know about the world) has been dying a rather slow agonizing death. Even most of the people who pay lip service to "creationism" live as though what they are saying is not true. It has taken several generations to reach this point on earth and I suspect it will be the same for Safehold.

Don

First, what is Creationism? To me and IMO many Christians it is the Belief that God is behind the Creation of the Universe and of Man. The physical evidence is a record of how God created the universe and Man.

Second, too many people when they talk about Creationism are talking about the Young Earth Idiots which is actually a small number of "Creationists".

Third, IIRC the poll you're talking about has basically only two positions.

A) God create Man and the Universe.

B) God had nothing to do with the creation of Man and the Universe.

This may not be exactly how the positions are worded but this is how the people taking the poll would read the positions.

So a person who believe science can only describe how God created Man and the Universe would not answer B but would answer A.

It doesn't mean, as you are assuming, that we don't accept the physical evidence that science has found.

Oh, this has absolutely nothing to do with the God Of The Gaps idea.

We believe that Science is not able to know if God was involved.

How would you attempt to prove that God wasn't involved?

Hey! Where did this soap box come from?

gcomeau wrote:Rather many, yes, but you may be underestimating the size of any likely lunatic fringe.

I refer you to modern day Creationism, which has been as absolutely refuted by mountains of hard physical evidence as any idea in history. Last time I checked half the population of the US still believes it anyway, based on their interpretation of a single holy text.

Now imagine what such people could manage to rationalize away by referring to the libraries full of testimony from all the Adams and Eves and refusing to believe the explanation for why they believed what they did about how they got here. Technology? Shan-wei's demonic influence obviously. The entire Terran federation history? A vile fiction designed to mislead the faithful from God's chosen path for them!

(I have personal experience with this, having on multiple occasions encountered people who told me, in all seriousness, that every scientist in the world who supported evolutionary theory was, literally, part of a Satanic plot... which also planted of faked all of the evidence supporting said theory)


No amount of dis-confirming data is sufficient once a person has got it into their head that any data that contradicts their beliefs is nothing but a test of their faith, since the act of rejecting that data then becomes a proof of their faithfulness. The harder the data seems to be, the greater is the faith required to reject it, so rejecting it is made into even more virtuous an act!

Has anyone read a short story by James Hogan called Making Light? Interesting take on the creation story.

DrakBibliophile wrote:First, what is Creationism? To me and IMO many Christians it is the Belief that God is behind the Creation of the Universe and of Man. The physical evidence is a record of how God created the universe and Man.

Second, too many people when they talk about Creationism are talking about the Young Earth Idiots which is actually a small number of "Creationists".

Third, IIRC the poll you're talking about has basically only two positions.

A) God create Man and the Universe.

B) God had nothing to do with the creation of Man and the Universe.

This may not be exactly how the positions are worded but this is how the people taking the poll would read the positions.

Woo! My second post on the forum and I'm inciting a religion and science debate. Yay!

To clarify, in my case my references to Creationists was indeed to essentially young earth creationists. Although in this particular case it includes people that are ok with the Earth being old as long as humans have only actually been living on it a few thousand years.

And as for the polling on that: http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolut ... esign.aspx

As you can see, it is not presented as a binary question. If you accept the physical evidence that humans evolved over the course of millions of years but think God was involved, you easily slot in that group with 31% of the rest of the respondents who accept evolution but say God was involved in the process. If you accept the physical evidence and think God had nothing to do with it you're in that disturbingly small 19% group of respondents.

And if you think God created humans *in their present form within the last 10,000 years*, rejecting evolution and all available physical evidence on the matter completely, then you're in that 42% group.

Forty. Two. Percent. The most popular response. Through the entire history of Gallup's polling on that question. The idea that humans were simply created in their present form within recent geological history is so thoroughly refuted by the available evidence I struggle to describe the magnitude of the denial of reality this represents. And 42% of the population of the United States, one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth, embraces this belief out of basically purely religious motivations.

So I repeat, don't underestimate the potential size of a "lunatic fringe" for whom the hard data is simply irrelevant...

As for the rest of the post, I'll just make one quick observation.

"How would you attempt to prove that God wasn't involved?"

I wouldn't, that would be silly. The idea that an all powerful supernatural entity did anything whatsoever is, by the nature of the claim being made, unfalsifiable. The action of a supernatural being would be supernatural, not subject to natural physical laws... rendering it impervious to testing by processes which inherently rely on those laws functioning to be valid.

Science does not attempt to disprove unfalsifiable hypotheses, it rejects them on the basis that they are unfalsifiable, and thus of no utility... since the inherent consequences of a claim being unfalsifiable are that it can make no meaningful testable predictions and can offer no meaningful practical explanations of any observation. It can only claim to explain, without actually doing the explaining part. It is simply a waste of time to consider such hypotheses at all, beyond the degree of consideration required to determine that they are in fact not subject to falsification in the first place of course.

(I am well aware that a large number of religious scientists and accommodationists conveniently overlook this detail of the scientific method when any discussion of how science relates to their deity occurs, and rationalize it away by making various empty excuses like declaring science and religion to be "non overlapping magisteria" or whatever other name they decide to give to what is properly called Special Pleading, and thus that rule doesn't apply in the case of this one specific belief of theirs because... well, because.)

When I refered to the God of the Gaps, I was talking about using God as a crutch to fill in the blanks about what is not understood about the physical universe. As science advances, the realm of the God of the Gaps gets smaller and smaller. If this is how you perceive things and you are devout, science becomes something that is menacing, something to resist.

However, the idea is theologically false. God remains the creator and Lord of all creation no matter how much is explained and how much remains unknown. As the story in Genesis reads, God made humankind the stewards of the garden, granting him the charge to care for it, draw his sustenance from it, explore it, seek to understand how it works. We do this ever mindful that our stewardship is from God to whom creation really belongs and we are accountable for how that stewardship is carried out.

Seeing the matter this way removes the threat element from science, since science becomes the tool for exploring and understanding the workings of the garden and glorifying God for the wonder of his work for most surely we will never understand all there is to know about God's created order any more than we will ever understand God himself. We all stand on the edge of mystery which calls us to worship.

Don

gcomeau wrote:Woo! My second post on the forum and I'm inciting a religion and science debate. Yay!

To clarify, in my case my references to Creationists was indeed to essentially young earth creationists. Although in this particular case it includes people that are ok with the Earth being old as long as humans have only actually been living on it a few thousand years.

And as for the polling on that: http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolut ... esign.aspx

As you can see, it is not presented as a binary question. If you accept the physical evidence that humans evolved over the course of millions of years but think God was involved, you easily slot in that group with 31% of the rest of the respondents who accept evolution but say God was involved in the process. If you accept the physical evidence and think God had nothing to do with it you're in that disturbingly small 19% group of respondents.

And if you think God created humans *in their present form within the last 10,000 years*, rejecting evolution and all available physical evidence on the matter completely, then you're in that 42% group.

Forty. Two. Percent. The most popular response. Through the entire history of Gallup's polling on that question. The idea that humans were simply created in their present form within recent geological history is so thoroughly refuted by the available evidence I struggle to describe the magnitude of the denial of reality this represents. And 42% of the population of the United States, one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth, embraces this belief out of basically purely religious motivations.

So I repeat, don't underestimate the potential size of a "lunatic fringe" for whom the hard data is simply irrelevant...

As for the rest of the post, I'll just make one quick observation.

"How would you attempt to prove that God wasn't involved?"

I wouldn't, that would be silly. The idea that an all powerful supernatural entity did anything whatsoever is, by the nature of the claim being made, unfalsifiable. The action of a supernatural being would be supernatural, not subject to natural physical laws... rendering it impervious to testing by processes which inherently rely on those laws functioning to be valid.

Science does not attempt to disprove unfalsifiable hypotheses, it rejects them on the basis that they are unfalsifiable, and thus of no utility... since the inherent consequences of a claim being unfalsifiable are that it can make no meaningful testable predictions and can offer no meaningful practical explanations of any observation. It can only claim to explain, without actually doing the explaining part. It is simply a waste of time to consider such hypotheses at all, beyond the degree of consideration required to determine that they are in fact not subject to falsification in the first place of course.

(I am well aware that a large number of religious scientists and accommodationists conveniently overlook this detail of the scientific method when any discussion of how science relates to their deity occurs, and rationalize it away by making various empty excuses like declaring science and religion to be "non overlapping magisteria" or whatever other name they decide to give to what is properly called Special Pleading, and thus that rule doesn't apply in the case of this one specific belief of theirs because... well, because.)

One thing I noticed about that survey was that it did not reference whether or not the person actually believed in a god (or gods), but that the way the questions were phrased implied a belief in a supernatural being, or that they were intended only for believers.

Keith_w wrote:One thing I noticed about that survey was that it did not reference whether or not the person actually believed in a god (or gods), but that the way the questions were phrased implied a belief in a supernatural being, or that they were intended only for believers.

Really? I didn't really pick up on that. Reading it as an atheist I thought the 'god had nothing to do with it' option fit me fine.


I suppose it could be interpreted that way though, as even that option meaning god is hanging around somewhere but just couldn't be bothered monitoring that evolution thing...

I hope this doesn't offend anyone. The problem with both sides here is that both believe unknowable things. God does. god doesn't. Discussions like this are really pointless because both sides are correct and wrong, maybe
I describe my self as an agnostic cuz I don't know

gcomeau wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:First, what is Creationism? To me and IMO many Christians it is the Belief that God is behind the Creation of the Universe and of Man. The physical evidence is a record of how God created the universe and Man.

Second, too many people when they talk about Creationism are talking about the Young Earth Idiots which is actually a small number of "Creationists".

Third, IIRC the poll you're talking about has basically only two positions.

A) God create Man and the Universe.

B) God had nothing to do with the creation of Man and the Universe.

This may not be exactly how the positions are worded but this is how the people taking the poll would read the positions.

Woo! My second post on the forum and I'm inciting a religion and science debate. Yay!

To clarify, in my case my references to Creationists was indeed to essentially young earth creationists. Although in this particular case it includes people that are ok with the Earth being old as long as humans have only actually been living on it a few thousand years.

And as for the polling on that: http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolut ... esign.aspx

As you can see, it is not presented as a binary question. If you accept the physical evidence that humans evolved over the course of millions of years but think God was involved, you easily slot in that group with 31% of the rest of the respondents who accept evolution but say God was involved in the process. If you accept the physical evidence and think God had nothing to do with it you're in that disturbingly small 19% group of respondents.

And if you think God created humans *in their present form within the last 10,000 years*, rejecting evolution and all available physical evidence on the matter completely, then you're in that 42% group.

Forty. Two. Percent. The most popular response. Through the entire history of Gallup's polling on that question. The idea that humans were simply created in their present form within recent geological history is so thoroughly refuted by the available evidence I struggle to describe the magnitude of the denial of reality this represents. And 42% of the population of the United States, one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth, embraces this belief out of basically purely religious motivations.

So I repeat, don't underestimate the potential size of a "lunatic fringe" for whom the hard data is simply irrelevant...

As for the rest of the post, I'll just make one quick observation.

"How would you attempt to prove that God wasn't involved?"

I wouldn't, that would be silly. The idea that an all powerful supernatural entity did anything whatsoever is, by the nature of the claim being made, unfalsifiable. The action of a supernatural being would be supernatural, not subject to natural physical laws... rendering it impervious to testing by processes which inherently rely on those laws functioning to be valid.

Science does not attempt to disprove unfalsifiable hypotheses, it rejects them on the basis that they are unfalsifiable, and thus of no utility... since the inherent consequences of a claim being unfalsifiable are that it can make no meaningful testable predictions and can offer no meaningful practical explanations of any observation. It can only claim to explain, without actually doing the explaining part. It is simply a waste of time to consider such hypotheses at all, beyond the degree of consideration required to determine that they are in fact not subject to falsification in the first place of course.

(I am well aware that a large number of religious scientists and accommodationists conveniently overlook this detail of the scientific method when any discussion of how science relates to their deity occurs, and rationalize it away by making various empty excuses like declaring science and religion to be "non overlapping magisteria" or whatever other name they decide to give to what is properly called Special Pleading, and thus that rule doesn't apply in the case of this one specific belief of theirs because... well, because.)

Or we go with the old Celtic tale of Selkies who were not allowed to regurn back to the sea, and began the human race.