The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Originally Posted by ntubski You're hitting the % eating bug (left bracket is supposed to be %28, that's how it's encoded for URLs). You can avoid it by posting from the "advanced" editor.

Thanks for the tip, ntubski. I'll be sure to use the "advanced" option in the future if I'm posting links.
jdk

Originally Posted by sundialvcs "Science said it, I believe it, and that settles it."

Here again you reveal a misunderstanding of Science and the scientific method and a bias toward argument from (autocratic) authority which underlies all mysticism, however disguised. While there do exist "rock stars" in Science like Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, and Carl Sagan etc. even they do not escape peer review and the test of time in which untold numbers of thinkers try to disprove even the smallest detail of theories and information they study, analyze and communicate.

In your quote "belief" is still the central point and one that does not exist in science since falsifiabilty the opposite of belief is a central point in Science.

You are certainly correct that it is impossible for humans to know everything but this does not mean we can't know some things. So far the best way, given it's track record that includes hurling a ton to a flyby of Pluto by means of complex orbits and gravity slingshots to achieve speeds in excess of 50,000 mph and arrive within minutes of planned rendezvous after a 9 year journey traversing roughly 3,000,000,000 miles

Kindly offer any other sort of discipline that displays such accuracy and reliability and don't forget that the very same methods applies to all branches of knowledge all of which apply to and come to bear on The Standard Model and much more. The degree of accuracy required for New Horizons applies to all just as how the LHC would not declare discovery of the Higgs Boson with only a 99 likelihood. They required 99.9999 % from many millions of individual tests.

Also remember that while Einstein's theories supplant those that came before, Newton's math still works and is sill used within the limitations of his original work of roughly 300 years ago. This implies that what is so misleadingly referred to as The Big Bang is at least on the right track and will only be moderately modified from it's base truth in the future.

This is NOT myth nor conjecture and anyone who states so is sadly misinformed and ignorant of the true nature of Science. It would be similarly ridiculous to state that 1 - 1 = 4.

If that is exclusionary then it is by choice and the record stands as to which is most accurate - Faith or Reason.

If science gets a "law" wrong or only part right then we learn and not a big deal... if something is proven wrong in theology best just close eyes, cover ears and LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!!!

Originally Posted by jamison20000e If science gets a "law" wrong or only part right then we learn and not a big deal... if something is proven wrong in theology best just close eyes, cover ears and LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!!!

That's quite reasonable but the problem is that you can't prove anything wrong in theology; at least not the sort of issues being discussed here. Maybe you could prove that the dead sea scrolls were not written in Tagalog but does anybody care?
jdk

And. That hits the nail on the head...

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They tell me money is worth something but give no alternatives...

Because some were taught at a young impressionable age wrong, like guns still being "cool" and\or needed; S!

enorbet, I hope that my answer(s) here will surprise you . . .

(First of all, let me set-aside the notion that I "misunderstand" anything at all. Both of us are well-versed in one another's perspectives.)

My answer to your challenge, "Faith or Reason," would be: "Yes!"



By that I mean: "I see no need to 'choose between the two.'" Or, maybe, I mean: "I think that we err, seriously, when we try."

1. "Science" is a very-useful mode of thought ... so far as it goes. (But it has definite and understood limits, as well as awareness of (e.g. "falsifiability") of those limits.) It can also be surprised. There was a time when "science" thought that the world was flat. That is specifically why I am unwilling to stray too-far away from pure empiricism: I shrug my shoulders at quantum-physics in general; definitely when it comes to "bang."
2. There are, fortunately, many "useful modes of thought," and the next one probably would be "scientific philosophy." A casual definition would be: "thinking about thinking. ... (think(!) about that) .. about 'Science.'"
   This is a formalized strategy for contemplating things about which empirical evidence cannot be obtained. Darwin's "theories" concerning Evolution are actually scientific-philosophic chains of reasoning, and they have proved to be extraordinarily valuable. They provided "a well-considered beacon in the darkness" to point the way for possible future exploration, at a level of inquiry that "pure science" could not ... by definition ... go.
3. "Philosophy," as "thinking about 'thinking,'" is yet another (useful!) level of abstraction, because it is equally prepared to consider anything. Philosophy helps science by examining "science, itself."
4. Beyond that ... "religion." Now, we are staring at the stars. Or, at the mysteries of our own hands ... our eyes ... a flower ... the wind. For the moment, we are not "leaning to our own understanding." Maybe we are hurting. We've stopped trying to be so smart. We've stopped thinking we have the answers ...
5. (Insert "non-Western religious" viewpoints here ... wonder about long-lost ancient cultures... the thoughts of ancestors we shall never know ...)

I've just described four five (there could be more ...) p-a-r-a-l-l-e-l(!!) tracks of "human reasoning," all of which I have asserted to be both "useful," and especially, "valid."

My "point-of-view to life," so to speak, consciously embraces all four-plus of these views and does so, most-decidedly, without imposing any sort of choice between them. A roadway has many lanes.

And, "in the spirit of debate," I will just-as-quickly say that I have no fundamental disagreement with your point ... which I understand completely, and do accept. In carefully spelling-out the differences between the two viewpoints, I do not(!) judge, nor do I claim territory.

- - -
(My goodness, I am enjoying this!) I sure hope you are, too . . .

There was a time when "science" thought that the world was flat.

Could you supply your sources for this claim. What time? Who thought that? Based on what?
Thanks,
jdk

I'll have more shortly but since a question has already popped up let me add that to my knowledge Science NEVER asserted the world was flat. Even before the scientific method became formalized, intellectuals not only understood the Earth is essentially round but had calculated it's circumference circa 300 BC, roughly 23 Centuries ago or more than 250 years before the Roman Empire was founded.

Many such assertions such as the Earth being flat and there being no number zero came from religious beliefs, not from people or schools of thought that require evidence and reason..

All recorded++ history (happened or debatable) establish evolution... just wait (or look) and see. ;-)

Infinite does not allow absolutes, only our limited minds.

"Free will" is chaotic(.)

When we die so does the "soul"(can't hear Jimi no m...). Oh but thinkerB Don't die... baby cry!

The worlds++ will change with or without your or their "beliefs."

All pointless until soul is "proved" as just thought......... or, thought is held above............

Complexity comes from us not the cosmos.

As words change to mean anything and everything within this evolving time; ignorance by definition is believe, everyone is taught by everyone and\or biologically triggered to believe manythings that are cut off from fact [PARENT-THESES]didn’t use case instead of fact there to keep thin[/PARENT-THESES].
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Now this is scary!

Agnostic

I guess

words change to mean anything

fits my post.

Originally Posted by enorbet Here again you reveal a misunderstanding of Science and the scientific method and a bias toward argument from (autocratic) authority which underlies all mysticism, however disguised.{...}

And i thought you won't understand! This is exactly what i was trying to say in my past posts - science is only half true! Other half is false not because it is weak tool but because science is limited!!! Kinda like what authour of Chariots of Gods said - God(s) can be something else than we believe...

Originally Posted by Arcane Kinda like what authour of Chariots of Gods said - God(s) can be something else than we believe...

Seriously? Erich von Däniken? This guy is a known pseudo-scientific shill, nothing more. A friend of mine had the fun idea to attend one of his talks and confronted him after the talk with some of the obvious problems with his hypotheses. The man was not open at all to see his views challenged, got really angry and got my friend removed from the location.
None of his works, not a single one, can stand up to scientific review, or, as Carl Sagan has put it in the foreword of The Space Gods Revealed:

That writing as careless as von Däniken's, whose principal thesis is that our ancestors were dummies, should be so popular is a sober commentary on the credulousness and despair of our times. I also hope for the continuing popularity of books like Chariots of the Gods? in high school and college logic courses, as object lessons in sloppy thinking. I know of no recent books so riddled with logical and factual errors as the works of von Däniken.

Originally Posted by Arcane And i thought you won't understand! This is exactly what i was trying to say in my past posts - science is only half true! Other half is false not because it is weak tool but because science is limited!!! Kinda like what authour of Chariots of Gods said - God(s) can be something else than we believe...

Perhaps it is a "lost in translation" problem but there is a huge difference between "insufficient evidence to draw any conclusion" and "half true". Consider that several million positive test results and zero contradictory results was not sufficient for LHC to declare the Higgs Boson a legitimate discovery, but only "likely". It was only when it reached several billion to zero that finally they were able to issue a confirmation with perfect confidence.... and still the testing is ongoing. It is doubtful that any one person ever holds themselves to such high standards (only teams do) and to dismiss that level as "half true" and "weak tool" is irresponsible in the extreme. Insult to injury occurs when you cite such a charlatan as Daniken as "evidence".