The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Originally Posted by k3lt01 But they are being taught as the truth against all opposing points of view... Lol, I haven't said, or even sugegsted any such thing. I think the pope is a tool but that is just my opinion and I'm not going to call a catholic names because they don't agree with me.

Did you really not understand that to be an example? Insert any religious belief into the equation and then tell me, is that your argument?

Look, is there such a thing as truth? Are there facts about the universe independent of people? If so, is it possible to discover them? And if so, do people have an obligation to speak accurately about facts?

So how are we supposed to take this? Is this not you saying religion is causing this person to be evil, even if it is just by speaking? Or do you have degrees of evil and speaking evil (i.e. inciting hatred) isn't as bad as punching someone deliberately to hurt them.

No, it's me saying that people can say or do evil things because of particular twisted irrational beliefs. Those can be secular or religious. Some religions have more evil or violent beliefs than others. You probably wouldn't see Jainists engaging in an Inquisition or suicide bombings, for example. It is not religion per se, but the belief content of specific religions. The Abrahamic religions happen to have a lot of bad ideas for people to pull from. Why so many people cherry pick the bad ideas and ignore the few good ones, I don't know.

Why don't you just state your issue with the gay and lesbian debate?

Because it's not particularly relevant to anything we're discussing and this thread has, despite a few hiccups, managed to stay pretty civil. I do not believe that would continue if we started getting into the homophobia and bigotry of the religious folks, because there is no debating this. Opposition to LGBT rights and viewing homosexuality as a sin is despicable, end of story, moving on.

The same can be said about changing the mind of an atheist/scientist/motorbike rider. Everyone has their pet beliefs, you cannot honestly say to me your militancy isn't because you have an extremely firm pov and nothing will change it when it comes to religion.

Evidence will change my mind. Again, if things like intercessory prayer were shown to work, if revealed truths revealed specific, detailed verifiable knowledge that the person could not otherwise have known, if, you know, the Rapture happened when Harold Camping said it was going to, etc. etc.

Ok. Let me ask you a question. What theories have you seen taught in schools in the last decade? Have you seen anything opposing evolution from Ardi etc etc etc to homo and all the huge steps inbetween taught in state schools? I'm not talking about the occasional scripture lesson, I'm talking about a full on syllabus that teaches as a part of the curriculum many different points of view. If you have what are they? Please don't give me links I want to know what you have personally seen.

Schools have an obligation to teach facts. That means science. By the way, of all the religions that have ever been, why teach Christianity as the "opposing viewpoint"? Why not teach Nordic paganism or something? I keep asking this and no one wants to answer, how do you choose? Why focus on evolution? Let's fill science classrooms with opposing viewpoints. Maybe we should teach an alternative viewpoint to the Theory of Gravity that everything is pulled towards the ground by invisible fluffy bunnies. Teach the medieval idea of the four humours an alternative to Germ Theory?

By the way, don't give me the facts vs. theories BS. It's straight out of the creationist playbook and it only shows that creationists have no idea how scientists use those words.

Here we go again, lol. This thread has been devoid of morality in recent pages, the last 10 or so that I can see. When you have people picking at, name calling etc etc etc other people because they have an opposing pov to science I really doubt it's a good idea for the science side of the discussion to start talking morality. When you, the science side, demand things that you yourself cannot provide yet you claim your ideology is better and you are abusive in doing so you loose any shred of credibility when it comes to the morality argument. Science obviously hasn't helped its own side so lets just stop picking at religion with regards to morality.

I think it's silly for secularists to stay away from morality. It only enforces the view that morality is somehow the special province of religion. I encourage secularists to frame their arguments in moral terms (while being factual, of course).

What specifically are we demanding of the religious that we are obligated to provide and cannot? As far as I can tell, we're demanding that religious ideas not be granted special exemption from evidence and reason, two things science has in spades.

Originally Posted by reed9 See Euthyphro's Dilemma.

Good one. But still, it deals only with one specific definition of god. It would be nice to see something that addresses "indifferent god" or "malevolent god" scenario. Or "deity with non-human intelligence"

Originally Posted by k3lt01 Replicate human evolution as it is described within evolutionary theory then. Seriously you will be the first ever scientist to do so and you will put an end to this debate once and for all. Sorry moxieman your argument is weak simply because you stick to the measured, tested and replicated idea. A theory remains a theory because it has not or cannot be measured, tested, or replicated. Your belief in such theories is, to put a very fine point on it, simply blind faith. You believe something that has not or cannot be proven by your pet methods of measured, tested and replicated, yet are so adamant that others are wrong because they believe in a god.

No, I never said that others are wrong because they believe in God. I said that belief in God is not scientific, and therefore is not to be preferred over science. You will be honest enough to note that in my prior posts I stated that I have a great deal of respect for faith, but no respect for religion. Square that fact with your conclusion as to what I allegedly believe (I will thank you to know your place and not ascribe to me what I did not say).

As for evolution: Take chimpanzees, a changing/ed environment, and a few million years, and you'll wind up with homo sapiens or something very much like homo sapiens. Simply because you and I won't be around to see the end result is irrelevant. The world does not revolve around you, or me, or us. The point is, replication and observation of evolution IS possible. Creationism, though, is not replicable or observable.

Originally Posted by reed9 Maybe we should teach an alternative viewpoint to the Theory of Gravity that everything is pulled towards the ground by invisible fluffy bunnies.

Actually, the "bunny gravity" theory DOES seem to explain why dust BUNNIES (see the connection?)seem to spontaneously generate everywhere, so we can't dismiss it out of hand. LOL.

Elmer Fudd, Ph.D.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-k5J4RxQdE

NSFW link

Originally Posted by k3lt01 Replicate human evolution as it is described within evolutionary theory then. Seriously you will be the first ever scientist to do so and you will put an end to this debate once and for all. Sorry moxieman your argument is weak simply because you stick to the measured, tested and replicated idea. A theory remains a theory because it has not or cannot be measured, tested, or replicated. Your belief in such theories is, to put a very fine point on it, simply blind faith. You believe something that has not or cannot be proven by your pet methods of measured, tested and replicated, yet are so adamant that others are wrong because they believe in a god.

I really don't think you grasp what the word "theory" means in the scientific sense. It's not some kind of hacked together idea. Neither is it a progression in between a hypothesis and a law. A theory doesn't turn into a law with further evidence. A theory is reproducible and replicable, that's why the word "theory" is attached to it and not hypothesis.

There is so many ways that evolution has been proved but probably the greatest example I can think of at the top of my head is the Lenski experiment with E-Coli. Not only did a certain gene pool gain the ability to grow on citric acid, it was seen that the process occurred through mechanisms that you and I are taught: First there is a copy error where a gene is accidentally duplicated, then due to other copy errors, mutated. This was all possible due to the speed of reproduction of the E-Coli. Last year they reached their 50,000th generation.

What's even better is they can replicate the evolution by taking "snapshots" (every 500 generations a batch were frozen for later examination, by freezing them they're in stasis) and funnily enough, it only occurred in the one tribe after the 20,000th generation (where it was first mutation occurred ) anything before than didn't evolve the ability and neither did the other tribes evolve the ability.

Of course, there is the more practical evolution we see, or at least one of the mechanisms pushing it: Natural Selection. We've seen cases of lizards being split apart from each other due to geographical events and after only 20 years shown to adapt to their new surroundings and looking different to each other. Of course, there's the different breeds of animals that we humans use that is artificial evolution that allows us to speed up the process and breed qualities that we want.

Then there is the fossil record which shows change as we expect it, and funnily enough it has not been shown to be false at all in all this time. All it would take is one Mammoth in the Cretaceous era and the theory is rubbish, but yet, we have not seen that at all, not even once. I really could go on, evolution isn't something that can even begin to be remotely compared to religious belief. You cannot compare the belief in evolution which has endless evidence with a belief in a deity based on copies of copies of copies (and so on) of religious texts that were apparent "eye witness" reports of the events occurred.

Oh okay, so this Jesus guy walked on water?
Yeah, totally man.
Okay..so you saw this?
Oh no, it happened 2000 years ago!
So we have like original documents?
Haha, nah, they're copies of copies.
Well, are they perfect copies?
Oh my, heavens no. There are more differences between manuscripts than there are words in the Bible!
Okay..
Oh, and not to mention that various verses have been changed, added or removed according to the theological whims of the day.
I see..

So, of course with all that in mine I trust it wholeheartedly.

Oh, I'm not picking on Christianity here either, what I said is pretty much applicable to every religious text. The Quran is even worse, all the copies were gathered many centuries ago and if they conflicted with the decided version, they were burnt. So, we have less idea of what it really said than we do in Christianity.

Originally Posted by k3lt01 Replicate human evolution as it is described within evolutionary theory then. Seriously you will be the first ever scientist to do so and you will put an end to this debate once and for all.

What a retarded proposal.
By your logic, no murder investigations could ever be solved because we can't "replicate" said murder.
But forensic scientists gather evidence to construct a theory about what transpired.

Without actually having a time machine to return and actually witness the crime, by your logic we should just dismiss all the work that investigators put into solving it.

Originally Posted by moxieman99 As for evolution: Take chimpanzees, a changing/ed environment, and a few million years, and you'll wind up with homo sapiens or something very much like homo sapiens.

The probabilities are very small though

Originally Posted by k3lt01 No, whether they are satisfactory to the person as an individual is another matter. You don;t, nor does a religious fanatic, have the right to tell people what is satisfactory for them. People have been talking about morals, where does science give anyone the moral right to tell others what to believe. It is the exact same thing with religious belief. There is a section in the bible that actually says "if they wont listen wipe the dust of your feet and leave".

I don't remember claiming that science gives any moral rights to anyone. It's not what science's purpose is.

Originally Posted by k3lt01 So what? Seriously we have worked out people can do and have done some shocking things using ideologies. If someone wants to believe god caused these things then what is the problem? If someone else wants to think science was used to cause these things then what is the problem? I'll tell you what the problem is, fanatiscism on both sides.

Seriously, I'm not trying to be argumentative or anything, but can't you really see the difference between claiming that god created something (based on what...? old myths?) and claiming that something was created by means of physical/chemical processes, most of which can be replicated and verified by scientists all across the world at any time. However incomplete scientific answers can be, they're still much more credible than an old book of disputable origin containing some claims that can't really be verified. Even if only 10% of all current scientific theories were accurate, verifiable by anyone at any time, this would still be 10% more than religious claims.

Originally Posted by k3lt01 Why is the use of science, I gave an example where the Australian government in the 1930s and 1940s used science to justify the "breeding out" (read genocide) of indigenous Australians the same ideologies were used in other places, different to the use of religion?. How can you tell me science, and the scientists behind the ideology of white supremacy (or in the case of Nazi Germany-the supremacy of the Aryan race above all others including other caucasians), different to religion in cases such as this? Sorry but your argument is flawed. In instances such as this both beliefs are equally guilty and I find it rather presumptuous of you to suggest religion is the only thing used to cause such atrocities. Science, not religion, provided the means for the Nazi's to conduct experiments on people who they tortured, enslaved, gassed, raped, children kidnapped from Eastern Europe (slavic populations) and tested for "aryan" traits and left to starve to death if they did not meet the scientific criteria. This is why I am saying you have blinkers on. You are not looking at the history of humanities use of science, instead you are totally ignoring it.

You say science provided the means for the Nazis to conduct experiments. I think I explained the difference between using something as a tool to do evil things (technology, the bible (a physical book), a baseball bat) and being motivated by it to do evil things. Enough said.
Your example about breeding out is, IMO, flawed as well because science does NOT tell you what to do. It just describes or explains things/processes as accurately as it can at a particular point of time. The explanations are going to be revised in time as we gain more knowledge and so on and so forth. If someone uses science to do evil, it's not because science provided moral guidance to do it. Science doesn't deal with this kind of stuff. Science will describe eg. laws of gravity, but it will not tell you whether it's good/bad/moral/immoral to jump off a building. Therefore claiming that some evil person was scientifically motivated in their actions is not a valid claim.

Religion tells you what to do, passes moral judgement on certain actions. Science does not and by definition cannot tell you what you should do.

Science will describe eg. laws of gravity, but it will not tell you whether it's good/bad/moral/immoral to jump off a building. Therefore claiming that some evil person was scientifically motivated in their actions is not a valid claim.

What if it were scientifically concluded that the only way to save the planet from environmental collapse would be to rid ourselves from it?* Would that still not be considered "evil" just because "science says so"? I'll agree that science is supposed to be morally neutral, but in that neutrality, it isn't exempt from making disturbing conclusions about the world.

(* - I'm not saying this is the case, nor that it ever will be the case. I'm just giving a hypothetical example.)

Originally Posted by MrCode What if it were scientifically concluded that the only way to save the planet from environmental collapse would be to rid ourselves from it?* Would that still not be considered "evil" just because "science says so"? I'll agree that science is supposed to be morally neutral, but in that neutrality, it isn't exempt from making disturbing conclusions about the world. (* - I'm not saying this is the case, nor that it ever will be the case. I'm just giving a hypothetical example.)

Science just gives you (provisionally) true conclusions. How can that be "evil"? Assuming your example, the question then becomes which is the moral thing to do? Allow complete environmental collapse or somehow rid the planet of people? Also, things are never so black and white. How quickly is this collapse coming? Is there a "safe" population level we can maintain? The moral solution might be to promote access to family planning services, reducing the population through natural attrition to within the safe population level. There's nothing about that knowledge that says we have to mass murder people to save the planet.

Or to use k3lt01's example of Australia's genocide against the native peoples. Even if the science had been sound, that those populations were on their way out or genetically inferior, there's nothing in that to justify genocide. I mean, why wasn't the conclusion that you should try to help them stabilize their population rather than ushering it out? There's nothing of science in that. Science informs morality, in that making moral decisions often require having true knowledge about the world, but no matter how disturbing a scientific truth may be, it doesn't force us to behave badly and it doesn't prescribe specific actions. We are facing many real threats and challenges in this world. We cannot face those challenges without real, good information, even if that information is disturbing or contradicts our world view.

We are facing many real threats and challenges in this world. We cannot face those challenges without real, good information, even if that information is disturbing or contradicts our world view.

I think this here is where the problem lies for a lot of people (myself included). There seems to be a point where you start "knowing too much", as it were, to be able to "enjoy" life in the same way you did before. For some, this also means they can't derive any enjoyment out of their "new" worldview. As an example, take the free will problem: pardon my Français, but when I started thinking about that problem and came to the conclusion that free will is an illusion, it was like a fucking Matrix moment. You start realizing that (most) everything you thought you knew about yourself and others was but a sick delusion designed through evolution to "help you survive", whatever the fuck that means.

…and the worst part? I can't find any "pleasure" in this "new" worldview. It leads to nothing but depression.

Originally Posted by MrCode You start realizing that everything you thought you knew about yourself and others was but a sick delusion designed through evolution to "help you survive", whatever the fuck that means. …and the worst part? I can't find any "pleasure" in this "new" worldview. It leads to nothing but depression.

You know I'm sympathetic, but it's not an inevitable consequence of a scientific world view. I think it's exhilarating to find that everything I thought I knew about myself and others was mistaken. What adventure!

I think it's exhilarating to find that everything I thought I knew about myself and others was mistaken. What adventure!

Note the context, though: "sick delusion" as opposed to merely being "mistaken". There's a lot more to it than simply being wrong in that case. It's been discussed before here, I know, but for all we know, belief in "free will" might end up being an objectively "bad" thing for human society (i.e. it could end up being detrimental to our survival). What then? Do we go around forcing people to give up their sense of freedom/agency? How the fsck is that supposed to work?

Originally Posted by MrCode Note the context, though: "sick delusion" as opposed to merely being "mistaken". There's a lot more to it than simply being wrong in that case.

But that's a value judgement. I see it as being merely mistaken.

It's been discussed before here, I know, but for all we know, belief in "free will" might end up being an objectively "bad" thing for human society (i.e. it could end up being detrimental to our survival). What then? Do we go around forcing people to give up their sense of freedom/agency? How the fsck is that supposed to work?

Whatever the solution might be, I believe it will require more and better knowledge, not pretending the problem doesn't exist. History does show us, however, that attempting to run roughshod over human nature doesn't work. Our sense of self and agency is hardwired into us and I don't foresee any way to change that. Attempts to do so are bound to fail and cause immeasurable suffering in the process.