Fundamentalism and science

Actually, I believe that God supports science. It is his gift to humankind. It is the channel through which our knowledge of our world and the universe is received.
As a Christian, I believe that we know God as God reveals himself.I hear that revelation through the Bible and the church.

Yes, I am well aware that there are forms of faith out there that are alternate to mine. That doesn't bother me. If God has devised ways he hasn't told me about of getting Muslims, Buddhists, and others through the pearly gates, I will praise the Lord for his grace and goodness. But in the meantime, Christ is my life. His call upon my heart, "follow me" is my guiding principle in life.

Don

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The E wrote:

cthia wrote:Within the constraints of our own universe. There may be other universes with completely different physical laws. Which means none of our scientific truths are absolute.

A meaningless statement, as the universe we currently occupy is the only one we can make any observations on. There may be universes with gods or god-likes in them, but there is no evidence that they exist, so.....

Your stance on that is odd since the very science you "worship" theorizes that there is such a thing called a Multiverse, "parallel universes", "other universes", "alternate universes", or "many worlds". There is even much discord amongst scientists over it. One of the main arguments against it is the very same stumbling block that you so consistently point out about the existence of God... that it is untestable. Unprovable. Unable to be verified. Scientists seem to be, and create, their own stumbling blocks. Yet, the theory is as old as 1895 and supported by an eclectic mix of scientists and physicists among whom is none other than Stephen Hawking.

The E wrote:God is neither (due to not existing)

cthia wrote:I've searched and searched the internet for this Godometer you use to make that claim. Christians know for a fact that God exists. Perhaps it is the special gene which Joat says we have that senses the Almighty?

The E wrote:You don't "know for a fact", though. You strongly believe, in the absence of objective fact. Weren't you yourself engaged in a project to find objective facts? What happened to that? Have you gotten any repeatable proof yet, or is it still eluding you?

Science itself is often based on the absence of objective fact, and a little common sense. Although I agree that sense isn't always or exactly common. Remember, the world was once flat, but common sense told someone that it couldn't be, or somewhere people would be witnessing others falling off of it. LOL Perhaps it is flat after all because people seem to have fallen off of it. LOL

cthia wrote:Well, everybody believes in "gods." The small "g" is money, gold, and bronze statues. The trick is not to worship them.

But I do believe the conversation is about God. The big G. K?

The E wrote:What's the difference? Humanity has come up with several competing concepts for divinity, yours isn't special or more true than any of the others as far as I can tell.

The way you look at the data is flawed. It isn't their differences which is important, as far as this conversation is concerned, but it is their ultimate similarity which escapes you. They are all somewhere "in the ballpark." They all agree on the existence of a Deity. I am interested in other religions as well, and I am willing to accede to the possibility that there are other truths contained within other religions, and that no one religion actually gets it all right. It could have something to do with the scientific explanation of relativity and the "position" of the observer. I am part Indian. My people lived in America before it was discovered. Religions were born all over the world by people who were displaced from one another with totally different experiences. Experiences which shaped their reality. Relativity. Relative positions can greatly affect observation, but all truths are true, just not... absolute.

"Position" can indicate a variety of things.

If there is a God, then chances are the accounts in the Bible are true, and God created the Universe and all that is in it. An all powerful being may have used a lot of the tools at his disposal to make the Heavens and the Earth. Science is just one of the many tools that HE could have used. It was an interdisciplinary task which comprised all of the available sciences. And perhaps some sciences we haven't yet discovered. The arrogant man isn't old enough to even be considered an infant compared to the knowledge of a God. We haven't discovered all that we may need to know to "figure it all out." We haven't even mastered the very few disciplines that we do know. Apparently we haven't even figured out how to count, inasmuch as knowing that something (or someone) had to come first.

When answers are beyond us we relegate them to the realm of the philosophical, simply because they are bigger than us. We stumble over the order of the chicken and the egg.*

The E wrote:There is no proof for the existence of any god. No experiment I can perform to arrive at a conclusion, no check, no test, no established standard. Therefore, as a scientifically minded person, I choose to err on the side of not giving any deference to god(s), yours or anyone else's.
There is, however, strong evidence that human cognition is predisposed to seeking patterns in the environment, a faculty that helps us handle the world and slice it up into recognizable pieces, but that can sometimes lead us to making connections that aren't there. It is better, in evolutionary terms, for us to see Lions, Tigers and Bears where there are none than for us to not see them where they are, so it is inevitable that sooner or later someone would come to the conclusion that there is a connection between unconnected events (like, for example, prayer and rain after a drought).

There you go again, exhibiting two left feet. The bane of many a scientist's existence and downfall. Theories without proof are only good when it suits you.

* You will never figure out that the chicken came before the egg until you ask the real question. What came first in the Universe? From whence did it come when there was no Universe? How did it come?

I know! I know! I know! There was someone masterminding it all!

Science sure as hell didn't create itself. But alas, the arrogance of some men do seem to think that if man creeps ever and ever so closer to absolute truth - after first finding and then mastering all the tools God left on the Earth - that he will prove that the tools somehow forged themselves? Oh please! Do you believe in immaculate conception or not!

:shrug:headscratch:assscratch:shrug:

cthia wrote:Your stance on that is odd since the very science you "worship" theorizes that there is such a thing called a Multiverse, "parallel universes", "other universes", "alternate universes", or "many worlds". There is even much discord amongst scientists over it. One of the main arguments against it is the very same stumbling block that you so consistently point out about the existence of God... that it is untestable. Unprovable. Unable to be verified. Scientists seem to be, and create, their own stumbling blocks. Yet, the theory is as old as 1895 and supported by an eclectic mix of scientists and physicists among whom is none other than Stephen Hawking.

...and? My point was, and always will be, that there is no known method of proving objectively, conclusively and repeatably that god(s) exist. That there may be a facet of the multiverse with sufficiently tweaked rules to allow "god" to exist doesn't change the fact that, as far as science can tell, we're not living in one of those.

Science itself is often based on the absence of objective fact, and a little common sense. Although I agree that sense isn't always or exactly common. Remember, the world was once flat, but common sense told someone that it couldn't be, or somewhere people would be witnessing others falling off of it. LOL Perhaps it is flat after all because people seem to have fallen off of it. LOL

Science is about finding objective facts though. The process of scientific inquiry might not start with objective facts, but it always arrives there eventually.

The way you look at the data is flawed. It isn't their differences which is important, as far as this conversation is concerned, but it is their ultimate similarity which escapes you. They are all somewhere "in the ballpark." They all agree on the existence of a Deity. I am interested in other religions as well, and I am willing to accede to the possibility that there are other truths contained within other religions, and that no one religion actually gets it all right. It could have something to do with the scientific explanation of relativity and the "position" of the observer. I am part Indian. My people lived in America before it was discovered. Religions were born all over the world by people who were displaced from one another with totally different experiences. Experiences which shaped their reality. Relativity. Relative positions can greatly affect observation, but all truths are true, just not... absolute.

The core concept behind all religion is to make the world understandable. To explain it in a way that offers a measure of certainty in a world shaped by vast systems that are far too large and complex for any single human to understand. But that's not truth, it's just an abstraction of it; our ancestors didn't know how weather patterns form, but they could observe their rhythms on a local scale, which served them well up until a freak storm hit and suddenly the only explanation is that humanity was so sinful that a god decided to restart the whole thing from scratch.
There's a good chunk of people today who believe, wholeheartedly, that whether or not you succeed in life is completely down to your own personal decisions and nothing else; that being poor is ultimately a choice of the person suffering from poverty and not the result of a complex system of relationships and philosophies that require poverty to exist.
This is the same mechanism that leads people to create gods: It is too hard to understand the web of choices that led to this point, but it is possible to look at a person's life and point out all the bad choices they made, and thus the blame is primarily put on the person rather than their environment.
(Cue posts proving just how deeply held this belief is in 3... 2... 1...)

If there is a God, then chances are the accounts in the Bible are true, and God created the Universe and all that is in it.

How do you get away with using a screen name based on Diane Duane's description of the Vulcans and their philosophy of logic while being so bad at formal logic?

IF god as described in the bible exists, IF the bible is a true and accurate history of the world, THEN the bible is accurate and god exists?

How is that, in any shape or form, a valid argument in your mind?

There you go again, exhibiting two left feet. The bane of many a scientist's existence and downfall. Theories without proof are only good when it suits you.

Then design a proof for the existence of your god that is objective and repeatable. You haven't done so yet. Noone has. Until you do, your claims of superior knowledge of the world will ring hollow.

* You will never figure out that the chicken came before the egg until you ask the real question. What came first in the Universe? From whence did it come when there was no Universe? How did it come?

Science sure as hell didn't create itself.

No, it didn't. We have the historical records and the philosophical treatises that created our modern conception of science right there.

But alas, the arrogance of some men do seem to think that if man creeps ever and ever so closer to absolute truth - after first finding and then mastering all the tools God left on the Earth - that he will prove that the tools somehow forged themselves? Oh please! Do you believe in immaculate conception or not!

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....well, I certainly don't believe in non-sequiturs. I don't know how our universe was created, I am not that well-versed in astrophysics.

Ultimately, for me, religion isn't all that useful in explaining the world. In fact, as "christian" efforts to demonize normal human behaviour prove, it can be actively misleading, toxic and hurtful. It doesn't help address climate change, or poverty, or any of the large-scale illnesses that plague us these days.

What religion provides is a sense of community, a way to define what is and is not acceptable behaviour in a community. It can provide a sense of security and control in a fundamentally insecure and uncontrollable world, and those things can be useful, even healthy, but that sense is to an extent hollow.

Saying that if there is a Deity, then much of the Bible must be true is extreme hubris.
I personally don't believe that there is a God or Godess, however if there is, why does it have to be the Biblical one? There have been more religions with multiple gods than with one (or three). Maybe the Hindus or the Greeks or Romans had a better idea?

Cthia, you look like Don Quixote jousting with windmills. The rest of you always seem to me to be investing a lot of energy in defense of a position which by your own arguments doesn't seem to matter with an almost religious fervor. If you were really defending Science, I could see it. But science is not under attack on this thread, not by Cthia, and certainly not by me. So where is the skin in the game?

A random thought, influenced by sci fi, I suppose. I think it's rather arrogant of us to be assuming that we are alone in the universe. We don't know what's out there, but saying that we are the only form of intelligent life seems a stretch.

Don

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Daryl wrote:Saying that if there is a Deity, then much of the Bible must be true is extreme hubris.
I personally don't believe that there is a God or Godess, however if there is, why does it have to be the Biblical one? There have been more religions with multiple gods than with one (or three). Maybe the Hindus or the Greeks or Romans had a better idea?

I think that the best answer is that I am a Christian. That is a faith answer, of course. Strictly speaking on purely intellectual, objective basis, you could be right. We really don't know. The Bible itself recognizes that. Listen to St. Paul: We walk by faith, not by sight. We all walk by whatever we choose to put our faith in.

Don

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