The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Well, it's pretty obvious to an unprejudiced person that Genesis 1 is a poem, though one that doesn't use rhyme or metre. Instead it uses pattern and repetition. There are six stanzas of the form:
"And God said 'Let there be X!'. And God made X. And God saw X, that it was good."
followed by a refrain:
"And the evening and the morning were the nth day"

Finally there is an envoi or aftersong:
"And on the seventh day, God rested. And God saw all the things that He had made and behold, it was very good."

Most of the problems around Genesis are due to it being misinterpreted by literal-minded people who haven't recognised it as poetry. Yet even St Jerome, centuries ago, said that it had been written "in the style of a popular poet".

btw the "gods" of the other six days are actually planets. If you read carefully, you will see that the planet for each day corresponds to the part of creation that is classified under that day. So for instance, light is created on the first day, the day of the Sun, but the sun considered as a calendar symbol comes under the fourth day, the day of the planet Mercury, associated with priestly wisdom, the alphabet and the calendar. This poem was written in Babylon and the Babylonians worshipped the planets as gods. The purpose of the poem is to systematically dethrone these gods and replace each one in turn with the True God.

You either believe in every conceivable god (even the sun and moon) or you're an atheist for all other religions gods,,, or, you cut through the bull (no puns just one veganistically!) Happy Years!

If gods are still being created today does that not show all gods to be false or are we all just blind in our own ways!?. (Without gods BTW! )

You're never going to get rid of religion, nor will you replace it with "the 'religion' of 'science.'"

Nor should you even try.

For things that we can observe and measure, we have Science. But there is also a philosophical bent to Science, for dealing with things that we cannot directly observe: quantum mechanics, or the fossil record of our planet. Many people suppose (or, proclaim) that Science has a definite answer to everything. It does not. It cannot.

Stretching out still farther beyond philosophy, we come naturally to the world of Religion, and Magic. Some of the most mysterious and beautiful things that make us all human are found in this realm of thought, and it has always been so. People also cling to these things in both the brightest and the darkest moments of their oh-so human lives.

These many things are not mutually exclusive. None should be denied, nor put one above the other. All of these things are ways that we humans do think, and have thought for thousands of years. So, as that bumper sticker puts it so well: "Coexist."

- - - - -

And as I like to say, especially to some Christians: "Get to know your Book ... as a Book." Regardless of what you do or don't think about its contents and/or its [divine] source (and I am not challenging these beliefs), learn about that book ... that compilation ... as a book. Learn how this volume came to contain what it does contain, and where-and-when and-how those various contents came from. Learn about the cultures that produced them. Read the fascinating stories of the people who translated it into your mother tongue.

Don't get wigged-out about the presence of inconsistencies or contradictions; learn where they came from. ("If God really did write this book, and if it contains flaws as it quite-demonstrably does, then He already knows all about them and therefore you may as well know about them, too.")

The more you get to know your book as a book, the stronger a foundation it will be for whatever faith, if any, that you have in it or through it. (And, the less likely you will be to participate in impassioned arguments, which is also a good thing.)

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs Many people suppose (or, proclaim) that Science has definite answers to everything. It does not. It cannot.

Fixed that for you.

I said what I said ... not what you said that I said.

Of course "science has definite answers" to a great many things! But it also has limitations which are intrinsic to its design and purpose. Except in gray-areas like quantum mechanics, or areas of incomplete knowledge such as geology, science is grounded in observation and experiment, from which it seeks to obtain hypotheses and theories. And, where those "bright lines" end, so does [pure] science. This is by design.

"The philosophy of science," a.k.a. "scientific philosophy," is a formal exploration beyond these barriers which, for instance, considers just how far a line of speculation might proceed without encountering a known contradiction. Charles Darwin was, in part, engaging in such an exercise in portions of his (most excellent) Origin of Species, and his colleagues -- being formally trained in the subject -- implicitly understood this. Observation tells us that a natural process of evolution exists. We learned a lot about genetics from peas. Nothing was known at that time about DNA, and we still don't know why some genetic combinations viably occur in mating and some do not. We observe that life forms generally reproduce "after their own kind," but our study of taxonomy suggests daring thoughts. Through the discipline of philosophy, Darwin "dared" to think, yet observed the strictures of that mode of philosophizing. (And, if you want to really understand what he did, and didn't, say, I encourage you to read his very-readable and interesting book for yourself. "'Tis the Season" for buying books, after all ...)

"Pure philosophy," "Religion," and "Magic" all deal with other things and do not necessarily attempt to "extend from" science at all.

So, here they all are: several modalities of human thought and, yes, belief. None are inferior nor subordinate to any other. All of them have their place, and it should be an honored and respected place.

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs You're never going to get rid of religion, nor will you replace it with "the 'religion' of 'science.' ...

No religions before man, none after... all those nukes are in gods they trust and would they brake the vases had you not acted so!


If you assume that there's a beginning to space and time then you are wrong, if you think philosophy can fix that you are wasting time and lifes...

Oh, there are plenty of absurdities in Genesis 1-2 if one chose to consider it logically: God is moving "across the face of the deep" on a planet with liquid water but no Sun. (The water would not only be frozen, but it would have disappeared completely in the apparently-necessary absolute vacuum ...) He speaks a thermonuclear furnace into existence. And, so on. (And yet, when one of His angels rebels, He finds himself quite unable to simply speak that angel out of existence ... go figure.)

Which is why I don't particularly choose to see religion as "a bastion of literal 'truth.'" I question things too much. Can't help it, and wouldn't want to if I could. Maybe science and religion get along so peacefully together for me because I don't expect either one to fill the role of the other.

Many of the famous stories in religious texts (not just this one) are similes for the cultures from which they spring, and deeply rooted in their particular traditions. There are at least twelve "names of God the god" in Genesis alone, one of these (El) identical to the name used in for the supreme god in neighboring regions, and whose son (in the religion of those regions) was the much-disabused-in-the-Old-Testament "Ba'al." (Judaism never had a "begotten son of God" at all, in mainstream practice, so far as I know.) Many scholars, considering the sheer extent of time covered (in particular) by Genesis, believe that these names referred at one time to many different gods ... and that this god was especially a war god (although not always a particularly successful one ...).

Religion in general is very fascinating part of what it means – of what it has always meant – "to be a human in human society." Although this God is said to have made man from the dust of the earth "in His own image," man inevitably makes gods in his own image, whether he builds a physical statue or model of them, or merely builds them in the tabernacle of his own thoughts.

But, even so ... religion is a fundamental part of our life that we cannot get rid of, and should never try. The same is certainly true of science and philosophy. We ought to simply stop "bashing" any one in the name of any other(s). "In this, we err."

You may not take it literal but is there to be done so (kill,) is not fundamental or fascinating but learned and wrong!

I still remember my first day as a freshman at high-school for "history class,"* the teacher introduced himself as the football coach and then a permanent substitute for history. His opining speech also included the clichéic quote of why we need history lessons, "so we don't repeat... yada yada" I raised my hand and seeing he was to call on me blurted out: Isn't there a war in Iraq?! Parents* are dictators, brains hard drives...

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs I said what I said ... not what you said that I said.

Ah, I wasn't entirely sure whether we had a disagreement, or if it was just a question of phrasing. Turns out we do have a disagreement.

Of course "science has definite answers" to a great many things!

Nope. It merely has the best we can come up with so far.

science is grounded in observation and experiment,

There are several problems with "observations". The big one is the Problem of induction, of course. Another problem is that theories affect the interpretation of observations. And of course observations themselves are made by fallible humans.

But it also has limitations which are intrinsic to its design and purpose. Except in gray-areas like quantum mechanics, or areas of incomplete knowledge such as geology, science is grounded in observation and experiment,

All areas are various shades of gray.

"The philosophy of science," a.k.a. "scientific philosophy," is a formal exploration beyond these barriers which, for instance, considers just how far a line of speculation might proceed without encountering a known contradiction.

That's not what the philosophy of science is.

You know what? I'm sick and tired of people who barely have a clue as to what science really is referring to the "religion of science". They may be after the same sorts of things but that ends any similarity. It's all about methodology. It should be obvious to any thinking person that many religion's creation myths, just for example, have utterly zero basis in any manner of evidence and are more like fever dreams. All of them are anthropomorphic.

Sometimes it is mere ignorance when somebody uses the term "religion of science" but it is also often used as some stupid, frightened, absurd attempt at leveling the playing field. News Flash! The field is not level. We know the sun is 93 million miles away not because of philosophy or scripture or fever dreams but because it is measurable. Virtually everything we all depend on for survival in modern society is a result of Science, and while the same desire to know that fueled religion did have spinoffs into science, very often Religion has been an obstacle to Science and real understanding, real truth. Most days I can just shrug it off (Oh well...) but some days it really pisses me off and I'm ashamed that Homo Sapiens is so few steps down from the damned trees.

What Enorbet says was true when I was growing up. It isn't true any more. When I open my New Scientist today and see all this stuff about multiple alternate worlds, branes colliding to create universes, supersymmetric particles (none of which has ever been observed although there seem to be hundreds of different types), blah, blah, blah... I think to myself, "Is this really the kind of thing people are prepared to believe in to avoid having to believe in a Creator?" This isn't science any more! It has

utterly zero basis in any manner of evidence and [is] more like fever dreams

.

Bad religion trumps bad science... when we die we go to the end of space and time LOL that don't exist (common scents not science )but our dust will remain for some after.

By the way g\o\e\t more and better music from sex\drugs\life\death than the "same( I dare not speak it's name for nukes trump vases)!"

Armageddon? If you believe in profitizing( *puns* eg pro\phet\...) that sh!t you're a moron not that we all aren't I buy soler...