The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs (There are scientists who regularly attend church or synagogue.)

As there are those who don't believe what most are taught in public schools to be evolution as if it were fact-based:
https://www.discovery.org/m/2020/04/...t-04072020.pdf

DNA is all one should need to understand to disbelieve public schools' evolution. The odds against one molecule of DNA arising as anything other than intelligent design are much greater than the number of atoms in the universe.

There are actually 5-6 types of evolution, depending on how the lines are drawn between them. Only one is provable, and better named natural selection. Everything we are exposed to in this physical existence is in entropy, which makes all the other types impossible.

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs I once again repeat that my meaning of – let's use a different phrase, "the philosophy of science"

Please continue to use "scientific philosophy" because "philosophy of science" is already a standard term meaning "philosophizing about science" (of which Thomas Kuhn's work is an example).

Originally Posted by ntubski Please continue to use "scientific philosophy" because "philosophy of science" is already a standard term meaning "philosophizing about science" (of which Thomas Kuhn's work is an example).

I was not aware of that distinction, and I use it colloquially here.

-----

I think that everyone who is taught "a scientific 'fact'" ought to at the same time be taught exactly how science does – and does not – discern what is a "fact." Importantly, what the terms "theory" and "hypothesis" mean. The role of philosophy and conjecture in all of science. In short: "how to think."

"Creation Science," for instance, is a conflation of two unrelated ideas. It cherry-picks the things that support its preconceived notion, ignores the rest, and calls the whole thing "science." That's not science: that's simply belief.

It's perfectly fine to choose to believe something, and then to identify things that support your belief and ignore or discredit all the rest. That much is entirely up to you. But, that's not "science." (Just as most of the things that Anthony Fauci is constantly saying are not "medical science," because he latches onto the things that make him lots of royalty money and ignores and discounts and vilifies all the rest. No matter what the man says, that's not "science." That's just "greed.")

On a lesser level of conflation than so-called "creation science", the term "medical science" is still not very accurate and requires some qualification. Medicine is a practice, a practice which relies heavily on scientific research (which is why we haven't thought headaches were demons in our heads for a few hundred years) but a practice nonetheless.

Even just the biological complexity that makes human individuals react differently to different stimuli makes for an extremely complex baseline making the language of Science, Mathematics, far less useful and effective in that practice. By contrast, Rocket Science, for example, is all about mechanical known and consistent qualities and quantities.

I'll try to put this gently but, mrmazda, what you and that bible-thumping, "Intelligent Design" ridden excuse for a scientific "study" are doing is not even logical, let alone scientific. Entropy, like Evolution, relies on populations, not individuals. Entropy can increase on average spread over the entire Universe even if LOCALLY it decreases, which it does all the time, regularly and measurably. Characterizing DNA evolution as relying on change of a single thing is disingenuous if not totally ignorant.

Here... this is a quote from Forbes, not exactly a bastion of liberalism woo-woo. It's also not a Science organization but they do depend heavily on facts since many millions of dollars are at stake, literally millions of peoples' livelihoods, not speculation or fantasy lives.

Originally Posted by Forbes(Jan 10, 2017) How many combinations of DNA can a human embody? The number is essentially infinite. Using an estimate of mutation frequency of around 2 x 10^-8 per base pair per replication event, we get 60 novel mutations in every living human being. There are 7 billion humans, so we know that some 420 billion different variants are possible. And that is just the number of new changes that arise in a single generation. The number passed down and recombined from previous generations is much larger. A more interesting (if harder-to-define) question might be how many different traits can be embodied in human DNA. After all, most human DNA has little or no function, so mutations in these low-information sequences are inconsequential. The universe of genes that are actually expressed in humans—called the exome—is comprised of about 30 million bases of DNA. Sequence changes in this DNA are more likely to lead to an actual change in the functioning of genes and their expressed products.

Now factor in that humans are just one species among millions and only been around for around 1,000,000 years while Evolution has been throwing the dice for just shy of 4,000,000,000 years. Calculate THOSE permutation possibilities! It's probably unlikely that if enough monkeys pound on typewriters long enough collectively they will recreate Shakespeare, but under a range of conditions like on Earth, hydrogen will combine with oxygen and make water, water will dissolve minerals, and all the process we identify as Chemistry will be at work.... well unless you also believe the Earth is flat and is roughly 6000 years old.

To be clear you have a perfect right to believe such dogma, but trying to pass that off as Science is a con job, intellectually and morally reprehensible. I truly don't understand why religious folks focus so heavily on and stand against Darwin. Darwin doesn't deny or preclude Creation. His theory, like hundreds of others that have withstood the test of time simply denies that the Christian Bible is the literal word of God. It doesn't even require that God didn't reveal any bible, just that men didn't understand the world, let alone God, or even allegory.

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs My use of the term was not to denote, "philosophizing about science." I use the term to refer to a rigorous intellectual process for "scientifically" exploring things which cannot be directly observed nor measured.

Fascinating: could "scientific philosophy," in this context, perhaps be called scientific noumenology? What is this rigorous intellectual process for such exploration?

Philosphy of Science, imho, is mere epistemology: mostly futile attempts to provide criteria for why scientific knowledge should be considered knowledge.
These attempts are mostly futile because of the classic infinite regression in needing a criteria for the criteria, and a criteria for the criteria's criteria, and so on.

I'm thankful for this infinite regression, because a criteria for knowledge presumes a static creation that is complete and could eventually be figured out in its entirity--and that would be too boring for curiosity to cope with, and it shuns all responsibility as a participant in creation.

In my personal epistemology, which may or may not borderline what @sundialsvcs refers to by "scientific philosophy," I counter the classic infinite regression problem of criteria by creating an infinite criteria! It does have a intellectual method, though it is not rigorous:

I consider every potential dreamscape that my mind can fathom or create, from the most terrifying and hellish nightmares, to the most beautiful serendipidous loving heavenly dreamscapes I can dream up--and I allow that there surely could be some both worse and better than anything I could imagine, and I include those as unknowns to infinity on all extremes (a humbling confession of infinite ignorance).

With this infinite dreamscape for criteria, I brainstorm for a constant actvity that I would wish to do in every and any shade or instance of that dreamscape--something that I would do in heaven or hell, wouldn't matter which--still would do it. These become my heart felt convicitions of who I am--my path to ground. It gives artistic creative freedom to shape the universe, or at least myself, like a god, but I don't capital g it, because I'm not the only shaper, and because I don't have the infinite pov needed for that capital g.

I use this infinite criteria of heart to project the most hopeful interpretation of all my experience, and I try to have enough faith in these interpretive projections, to live (or die) by them in deed.

This takes responsibility for any manifestative ripples my consicousness creates. But in these regards, its more faith than confidence. The infinite criteria, dynamic in nature, indeed, requires faith to follow through in deed. Instead of trying to figure out the way it is, and live by that: I create they way I hope it could be, and die by that... so far I've been unsuccessful at dieing by my convictions, but that's probably because of living remotely and avoiding society.

This outlook is the opposite juxtoposition from blind obedience. I could not blindly obey a chain of command -- I am a poor soldier. If the rules that be conflict with the convictions from the infinite criteria: I disobey them: how criminal.

For example, I participate with a gleaner group, and had to sign some papers that said I agree to this and that fine print--basically that we wouldn't sell gleaner food, but only distribute it within our gleaner group. During quarantine, all the restaurants shut down, but the shitake farm's shitake logs didn't... over many truckloads to the mushroom farm, our gleaner group got saturated with approximately 30,000 pounds of free shitakes!!! After the first 10,0000 everybody's pantries' were full. According to "the rules", I should have left the second 20,000 pounds of fresh shitakes rot. But instead, I happily delivered free shitakes to destitute rural communities. In my heart, letting that much cancer-fighting food rot would be much more criminal that obeying to the tee the fine print of each law. I figured the quarantine to be exceptional circumstances unforseen by the authors of the fine print I had signed, and demanded a judgment in the field rather than fine tuned obedience.

I sure hope everybody knows when to do that, because some of our laws are stupid and its widespread breaking of them that makes their stupidy evident.

Yes, encouraging criminal activity belongs in the Faith and Religion mega thread, because, afterall, Jesus was arrested, tried, and excecuted as a criminal. So was The Bab. And so have been countless unnamed martyrs.

Originally Posted by slac-in-the-box Yes, encouraging criminal activity belongs in the Faith and Religion mega thread

I suppose I should better qualify this statement in today's world, before it gets blown out of context. I'm referring to civil disobedience: that should tone it down a bit.

I frankly admit, that a problem with the infinite criteria descibed earlier, is that it can lead to fanaticism, and there is no guarantee that someone else, using the same method, might brainstorm a way they would want to be in any and every reality, that would greatly clash with the ways I thought of for myself. It's dangerous. I would give it up, but for one thing: I fine tune my inifinite projections through feedback from infinite happenstance.

Infinite happenstance recognizes infite criteria projections and interacts with them each in their own way, giving faith a foothold in confidence, and vice-versa. It returns feedback. The infinite universe can thumbs up you or thumbs down you, send you hearts and stars, etc... and you'll know it, because it's patiently trying to get your attention, and eventually does. Feedback from the universe, though, strengthens these heart convictions. What is the difference between an uncompromiseable heart conviction and fanatacism?

I saw a bumpersticker last weekend: I :heart: schizophrenia. Well, I do too. I suppose if I believe that my actions, deeds, and spoken beliefs, have a manifestative ripple onto infinity--someone who thinks they can affect infinity: sounds like the classic paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur. I feel this is preferable head space than to regular old paranoid, cynical, disillusioned, and jaded. If those are my options I'm going with delusion all the way!

But I've yet to figure out some kind of checks and balance to this inifinite criteria that could prevent its use by extremists trying to justify jihads of terror. The only check I have against that, I pray the universe sends out as much thumbs down feedback to infinite projections of violence as it sends thumbs up feedback to infinite projections of peace, such that someone sensitively using this infinite criteria for self shouldn't ever arrive at dogmas of terror guiding the self they are creating in any and every reality.

And this belongs in the Faith and Religion megathread, because I think I just made up a religion. Now I just need a patreon account for tithes.

The thing that I refer to as "philosophy of science" is, as I said, an attempt to apply "rigor" to the process of exploring things of scientific interest which – for one reason or another – cannot be directly or experimentally observed. I turn once again to Darwin's work as an example: "species level" evolution can be readily observed, but nothing beyond that. We see every form of life reproducing "after its own kind," and with apparent biological mechanisms in place which prevent (almost ...) all other matings from producing a viable, non-sterile life form that can then reproduce itself.

But we still want to think about "how the incredible diversity of life upon this orbiting rock came to be."

Okay. So, we proceed to do that, while carefully observing the purely-speculative thought processes by which we necessarily must do that. We are, as I've said, "thinking about thinking."

As for me, and with due respect to Carl Sagan (RIP ...), "billions and billions" simply doesn't cut it for me. That's just hand-waving. Biological processes obviously have built-in error-detection and error-correction controls. A woman will never give birth to anything but a human baby, and a monkey will never give birth to a human child. A certain number of pregnancies result in miscarriage, when the female body apparently detects that "something's wrong" and naturally aborts. Donkeys and horses can be mated but the resulting animal is never fertile. And, so on. There is something going on that we still do not fully understand. And that's why Darwin very-carefully titled his book: "The Origin Of Species."

On the one hand, we observe an apparent lack of "diversity" at every level above species, yet we also see enormous (and viable ...) diversity within species. And this diversity appears to be an adaptive, direct, reaction to ever-changing environmental conditions.

Funny thing about this planet: "in spite of all that we now know, there is vastly more that we still(!) don't." Is that cool, or what?

Originally Posted by slac-in-the-box Difficult is the decision to remove life from this world. My beloved maremma sheepdog is 16 years and two months old, over 50kg, and she can barely get up. I just want her to go to sleep and chase rabbits forever. Several times on the farm, I've had to make such decisions: always the animal has let me know. But how exactly I know that they will be at peace and that the time has arrived to help them pass: science hasn't helped--it's created many methods to remove life... but not a method to tell us when its time; vets leave this decision to the owner.

I feel for you. I had to make the same decision a few years ago. I had always told myself that as long as Roger still had an appetite for food, I would let him enjoy it, although he was old and had a dicky heart and chronic kidney disease. But in the end, I decided to put him down because he had clearly developed lymphoma as well. I still think it was the right decision but I felt awful doing it and you probably will too. Whatever logic may say, a pet is not like a farm animal.

Originally Posted by hazel Whatever logic may say, a pet is not like a farm animal.

Even so, "a pet" is still a fellow traveler on Planet Earth, and very likely participants in worldly experiences beyond our ken.

("How utterly silly we Humans are, and how pretentious, to even consider(!) that 'we know!')

I consider myself privileged to have [sometimes, very briefly ...] known them, and to have tried to help them along their way to wherever they might be going.

Meanwhile, others among them have been in our company for decades now. I'm pleased to distribute food for them, every morning and every night. (And, to "gently redistribute them" on the bed. So it goes ...)

It is interesting to watch children's perceptions of sprit evolve: I tried to not inculcate any one particular spritual tradition upon my sons, but let them shape their own views. When my son was four, he noticed a cross on the side of the road and asked about it, and I told him it marked where someone had a fatal car crash, and the loved ones put the marker there to remember them and to remind everyone to be safe when they drive... On a road trip later that year, passing through New Mexico, dining at a small mexican food restaurant with a strong catholic vibe: there was a collection of ornate crosses mounted on one wall of the restaurant... well my son asked the waitress if those crosses were for all the people who had died at their restaurant?

He had an aquarium, and there was a malfunction in the temperature sensing power controller to the water heater, and the temperature got too hot and he lost some fish: I subsequently noticed a small cemetary of scotch taped crosses on one corner of the glass. I have since told him about crucifiction--but back then he had yet to receive any formal presentations of any kind of theology. Nevertheless, he just noticed a custom and latched on to it.

He draws pictures of spirit animals (especially his horse, who developed a medical condition which made her unable to process the sugars in her forage properly, and a side-effect of this condition is the hoof getting too soft to bear her own weight; laminitis; founder; difficult experience for him at age 7). We have quite a collection of Spirit Horse sketches.

I didn't try to tell him: maybe there is no spirit horse--we really don't know. Science hasn't proved that the horse continues beyond death... maybe nothing does... probably nothing does.... if you think there's a spirit world where your horse went, then that's just magical thinking. Rather I encouraged every magical spirit thought he had, saying I don't really know, but I sure hope so, and it feels like it in my heart.

Regardless of whether claims of any spiritual tradition are scientifically verifiable, these traditions, imho, help folks grieve. My son naturally took to believing the dream world we goto when we sleep may indeed be the spirit world that we goto when we pass. Beyond that, I haven't tried to give him any formal definition, though I have shown him the books in our home relative to a variety of spirtual traditions, and since our copy of the bible has my named engraved and was presented bo me by my grandmother (who also hid money deep within its folds, I found out years and years later), and that probably has some impact in that Christianity is the spiritual tradition that we inherited from our grandparents... (our parents mainly put on a show for their parents, our grandparents, for whom Christianity clearly was extremely important: I think it was too important, and created unhealthy pressures, expecially on young women, to get married first and have babies second, or risk the scorn of the scarlet letter... which created heaps of cancer causing guilt and lies...

Regardless of what sprititual tradition, if any, one adopts or espouses: the health is in the fidelity. So if you go along, publically saying you had a baby under wedlock, meanwhile marrying someone who is not even the father just to not shame grandma's piety; this creates an inner hypocracy that can be harboured to a much earlier grave--such inner infidelities feel too terrible to be healthy.

Before I ever formulated an epistemology with infinite criteria, my habbits were already shaped by external pressures such that I was addicted to two packs of tobacco cigarettes, and two six packs of beer day after construction working day. For years, I told people I was going to quit the tobacco, but then wouldn't quit. It got to be that I didn't like the sound of my own voice when it said it was quitting: it was the voice of the inner hypocrite, just lying to stop someone from nagging me about my filthy habbit that I knew I was too weak to really stop, because thus far I had been. If my attitude had been: I love tobacco and I'm gonna smoke it whenever I feel like it, the habbit would have been much healthier than my attidude of perpetual failure. It was my own self-disgust in the hollowness of my voice, as well as my freiends' disgust in the hollowness of my own voice, that finally strengthened my fortitude to not flake on my resolve.

Even with infinite criteria and heart beacons pointing to how I wish I was in any and every reality--actually being that way--fidelity to the vision that was planted in my brain and still remains: it is always a challenge; because of the inertia of ones habits before. Flaking on resolve feels bad--it makes me feel like its bad karma, and now I deserve to have something bad happen to me--or worse--to my loved ones... What if that was how the bad karma came to get me--by taking away a loved one? This is magical thinking: there is no scientific proof of karma... but it worked at helping me gain mastery over some fility habbits. In regards to the tobacco, I didn't like the absolutism of never tobacco, so I decided to honor it ceremonially every February 29th. Riding the bull every four years feels much stronger and healthier than being trampled by it. Next tobacco day, Feb. 29, 2024.

My point is that, in spite of all the scientific evidence linking tobacco use to lung cancer, it was fearing that If I broke my tobacco-day vow, my wife might have a car crash--and totally irraational tricks of the mind--that actually worked on me. I've convinced myself that smoking on non-tobacco day threatens other people besides myself, and so I won't do it. This rediculous medicinal use of tobacco in a ceremony I created, has been working since the first tobacco day of feb. 29, 2004. It is a strong feeling.

But I still flake out on other resolves, and this infidelity is unhealthy.

This applies to religion. If one is supposed to martyr oneself like Jesus to be a Christian, then doesn't every day of hypocritical non martyrdom just tear its practitioners up on the inside?

What is healthy in honour becomes a carcinogen in deceit. I don't think science can prove this. It is a magical thought. Hypocracy is physically carcinogenic. People are given the message to change their diet or something... and they do for a little, and then just go back to their old diet in a kind of defiant despair that kills them. (diet is a comomon example where people flake on their resolve).

Some religions have dietary components. My POV, if you want to be religious, then be religious... but don't be fake religious: go out there and get cruicified, or behead some infidels, or whatever your religion dictates... or give up that religion and try one that doesn't require any internal fakery.

I just cannot believe the Christians still have heads with all these Muslims in the world: seems like both sides are fake. If a few Christians would willingly volunteer their heads to Muslim swords, perhaps they would no longer be perceived as infidels. But the Christians who profess that Jesus did all the hard part on the cross, so they can watch football, frack, and cast their guilt away every sunday... well those kind of Christians are morally degraded infidels in a constant state of flaking out on their resolves, because after all, He was perfect, and they're not. The spiritual hypocracy in those kind of churches is absolutely dangerous to the flesh.

Science likes to find physical factors to sickness and then try and find physical solutions. But the roots of sickness and disease are spiritual. Science will try and treat everything except the actual cause. A child born into a cruel home who retreats and escapes to an imaginary headspace, doesn't pay attention in school, and rather than address the hostile home enviornment, science delivers a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder and prescribes some drugs. And so on. Science is still in denial about the manifestive ripple effect. Without the magical thinking that helps spritual traditions provide ethical frameworks; science doesn't have any ethical framework of its own; if science can do it, it will, regardless of whether it should; as it has, when it shouldn't have already. This is certainly the case when it comes to tranquilizing social problems rather than address their roots in deep seated social injustices. Why use religion as the opium of the masses, when science can just use actual opium.

I'm writing all this as a form of procrastination. Back to the code. Back to the code. I do apologize for being long winded. But if we're going to discuss religion and faith, I'd like to discuss more than ancient scribes and the history of religions, and embark on this tangent: what is the relationship between faith, religion, and health. Is there such a thing as "faith healing?" IMHO, faith healing occurs when the spitual root of a malignancy is solved.

I also wrote all this, because I'm hoping to convey to @enorbet and others, why I believe that vaccination is a spiritual decision.

Hello again slac-in-the-box, and thank you for thinking of me hopefully in a kindly way. Just FTR I would never accuse someone of magical thinking when it involves personal well-being. Whatever twirls ur beanie is cool with me regarding private choices. In that arena I embrace spirituality since. for me, that's what we become involved in once the information is slight and the odds drop below even. I raised my Son much like you. I never tried to influence his take on spirituality unless he asked me a direct question and I always noted my response was only my opinion that there are many other opinions. That's how it is when odds are not compelling and growing up is largely gathering the means to discriminate those odds.

As for vaccination, I don't "look down my nose" at those who choose to not be vaccinated, although I admit that it does concern me some that many seem to choose so because of what they view as political identity and virtue signaling as opposed to the only thing, in my view, that really matters, the health of oneself, family and neighbors. I fervently hope the US, if not the world, manages to get out of such divisive conditions as politcs. Growing up I had friends from the far right as well as the far left and everything in between. Somehow that seems better than today where that seems less and less likely.

I am angry that the people who peddled these "not-a-vaccines," and who purposely suppressed other treatments in order to secure "emergency use authorization" that is still(!) in place, did so deceitfully. They knew – and they are now being forced to release documents proving that they knew – that there were disastrous consequences in some people. We shut down the entire "swine flu" program after only fifty unexplained outcomes. They tried to hide this proof for seventy-five years, until all the victims were dead of old age.

I know that the one-and-only difference here is: money. If you ever wondered what a human life is worth, now you know. The answer is: "not much." And, this is a crime.

21 USC §360(bbb)(3), et seq, says that you must give "informed consent," that you can also decline without consequences, and that above all you must be informed of everything that is known good or bad before you freely decide for yourself. Millions of people were not, and hundreds of thousands of people have died or been irreversibly maimed. People who never suspected, nor were given any cause to suspect. They simply trusted their government. This makes them (or their estates) plaintiffs. But it can never "un-do" what happened to them.

No parent should have to bury their fourteen-year old daughter, who died of a heart attack in his arms three days after receiving an injection because she was told she had to have it in order to participate in extracurricular activities at her school. Her last words were, "Daddy, my heart is beating too fast."

Geez sundialsvcs, why are you still quoting that disinformation from a Jane Doe who has been deeply investigated and found an actual fraud? Actually "hundreds of thousands" that you state is more than double even that quack layer's claims of 45,000. Perhaps you might consider rounding out your news sources and deciding for yourself who is agenda-ridden and who is actually researching before they write.

Here... try Snopes
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/45...id-19-vaccine/

I absolutely agree with you that we, the people, are in dire need of just a smidgen of integrity these days and specifically it is unconscionable and criminal (not to mention counter productive) that Big Pharma continues to decrease our confidence in their reports because of cover-ups. Forget about "slanted", this is lying in the sense of "the whole truth and nothing but the truth". They should be tried and likely fined as well as be forced liable for damages. I don't care if 2 people died let alone 6,000.

That said we shouldn't be doing the very same thing we rightfully condemn them for - disinformation. We do tend to get what we give, except when dealing with crooks and poitical pundits.

"Snopes" is of no value as a "de-bunker" anymore. Anyone can write an article to post there and everyone does. There are an abundance of peer-reviewed medical papers now which report exactly the things that I am saying now: this is no hoax.

There were easily enough serious consequences found in the original few months(!) of so-called "trials," by the people who were conducting them, to have properly stopped the whole thing in its tracks and to prohibit any release. But they knew how much money there was to be made out of something that had never before made any money at all. And, due to patent royalty arrangements, the FDA, CDC, NIH, Fauci and so-on were all set to profit very handsomely, as they did and still do.

This is not a "vaccine." It is literally something that has never before been tried in humans – yet it was "tried" in millions of humans who were never given any reason to suspect that anything might go wrong. There are reasons why everything, including a true conventional vaccine, is supposed to be rigorously studied for many years. A "medical emergency" is supposed to be a most dire emergency ... not a way to allow drug manufacturers to completely bypass the system and(!) to hide information from the public. In fact, the law expressly requires them to be fully informed of everything that is known, both good and bad, and to freely make any decision whether "yes" or "no" without pressure or coercion. Let alone "mandate."

When Big Pharma tried to conceal their papers for seventy-five years, an astute Federal Judge immediately knew without further study that they were trying to cover-up a crime ... and, they were, and they still are.