The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Originally Posted by lupusarcanus What about things like a man with an aggressive, terminal form of cancer getting healed the next day for no possible reason? Is it all just by extreme coincidence?

Sounds like "I do not know how it happened, so a god did it". A very weak argument, in my opinion.

A miracle is something that cannot be currently explained. However, a miracle does not prove existence of a deity - it is still possible that a rational explantion will be discovered later. To prove existence of a deity using miracles, you'll have to prove that miracles are caused by said deity and could not have been caused by anything else.

Originally Posted by lupusarcanus What about the origin of humanity? I mean, how can you explain that we are so much more developed than other animals, if not by divine creation? Why isn't the bear in the forest just as technologically advanced as humans?

Not knowing the origin of humanity also doesn't prove existence of god.

I think it is nearly impossible to prove that god exists - no matter what evidence you present, people can always say that it was an accident, a coincidence, a process with rational explanation that hasn't been discovered yet, a lie, a fairy tale, hallucination or a result of mental disorder/intoxication.
It is even more difficult to prove that god doesn't exist - for that you'll have to know ALL laws of universe (you'll have to prove that), otherwise it is always possible to say that a god cannot be found, because current human technology isn't advanced enough to register it.

Originally Posted by lupusarcanus Religion: At least, in my case, Christianity doesn't make stuff up. Christianity is based off the Bible, which itself is a compilation of first hand experiences.

Have you ever translated anything into another language? As far as I know, perfect translation to different language is almost impossible - a lot is lost, no matter what. Bible wasn't written in english, so how can you gurantee that a translation you're using is correct and has no mistakes?

Originally Posted by lupusarcanus Hypothetically, if we did somehow prove there was a God, you wouldn't consider this an advancement of our understanding?

I think that knowing for certain if a god exists or not is useless for practical application. If you could find a deity and reverse-engeneer deity's power, it would have been way more useful.

Originally Posted by reed9 From an evolutionary perspective, emotions are a way to sort of calibrate people to behave in certain ways. Familial love, for example, benefits genes, because your family share many of your genes. On average, I share 50% of my genes with my sister, so from the perspective of propagating genes, it makes sense to sacrifice some of my own resources to benefit her - there is an expected gain is gene replication. But genes have no consciousness, purpose, or direction. They can't say, oh helping this person is going to give me a leg up, so hey body, let's do that. So emotions are a bit of a cludge, and it isn't surprising the our emotional mechanism can be co-opted or expanded to include animals for example. Not everything is a direct adaption. (Though, animals have certainly helped us survive both as food and as companions, so maybe there is an argument to be made for direct adaption.) Also, once an organism starts down an evolutionary path, there's no going back, it can only work with the materials at hand. We should expect remnants and vestiges that aren't the most efficient method, but are good enough method. (For example, the path of the vans deferens in humans. Not the most efficient, but good enough.)

This still doesn't explain random acts of kindness, or why humans feel the need to help animals, why people hate themselves, why people hate everything, why people end their own life, why we are all different, why people react differently when put in the same situation, irrational behavior, why poor people spare pennies for people poorer than they are, why we try to be optimistic in situations, why we are pessimistic in situations... I have a million questions spurring from this observation alone. I do not honestly believe emotions are just responses to stimuli. No one has ever adequately proved this to me.

And we 'were good enough' to survive on this big Earth a long time ago. How come we didn't stop there? We still have the same materials to work with!

Originally Posted by reed9 You absolutely can say that millions of accounts over thousands of years are all null. Anecdote is not evidence and popularity doesn't make something true. And when for most of that time we had absolutely no idea how the universe worked, why should we think ancient accounts should be at all accurate? Or put it this way, for thousands of years almost all civilizations engaged in slavery. From that should we deduce that slavery is ok? We can't say that millions of accounts over thousands of years are all null, can we?

This is different!!! I am talking about observations. Slavery certainly is existent!

Originally Posted by reed9 Most atheists I know take my position. It is possible there is a God, but lacking evidence or plausibility, we assume not. And the evidence against any particular deity is fairly strong. You can quibble and call that agnosticism, but I feel it's a stronger position that agnosticism. It's not like, eh 50/50 one or the other. It's like 1 to many billions against a deity.

But atheism specifically rejects that there is a God. They do not even allot one 0.000000000000000000000000000000001% percent chance that there is a God. I'm not quibbling at all, it's just a fact. There is still the open recognition that there is a chance; a belief that does not ideologically reject a God at all. Maybe your a 'doubtful agnostic'?

Originally Posted by reed9 There is more to this world that meets the eye, absolutely, but that doesn't mean it's supernatural. The mysteries of quantum mechanics, the devastating beauty of the solar system, realities that for most of human history could not have even been imagined. Religion and supernaturalism seem to me to be drab and unimaginative compared to the universe as it actually appears to be.

But millions of observations are present that disagree with rejecting any sort of supernaturality at all. In fact, with these mysteries, how do we know if there isn't another realm or dimension or something? It's not drab at all... watch some GhostHunters!

Originally Posted by reed9 \"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked — as I am surprisingly often — why I bother to get up in the mornings." -Richard Dawkins

Somehow I see this as invalidating the whole 'emotions are stimuli' thing. Nevertheless it is a beautiful quote.

Originally Posted by reed9 It doesn't make life irrational, it makes it lacking intrinsic purpose or meaning. The universe appears cold and indifferent. That does not mean that life is meaningless, though, only that meaning does not come from outside of ourselves.

But if life lacks any purpose, then isn't it irrational?

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I find discussing with you stimulating. Your views are interesting, even though I disagree with some of them. I am going to go for the day though. This is intended as a compliment. Nice talking with you, have a good day.

Originally Posted by MrCode …aaand here we go with the whole "life is meaningles and everything is predetermined" sh*t again. I'm sorry, I just can't take the constant barrage of fatalism that I see in these kinds of threads anymore. Have a nice day. EDIT: Just so's you people know, this is the only beef I have with science: it keeps trying to tell me "you could not have done otherwise", "your life has already been laid out by the laws of physics", etc. It's sickening, I tell you…it depresses me to no end. It keeps me from actually fscking doing something with my life. …and yet it seems to be the only thing that truly makes sense if one thinks about the topic for long enough. I apologize if this seemed harsh/rude, but frankly, I can't stand the fatalist throat-cramming anymore. EDIT: I apologize for not reading your post all the way though : Got any advice for a wandering, depressed determinist then? Someone who's so conivinced that his life is already laid out for him that it gives him the worldview of a meaningless existence defined solely by singular outcomes, rather than possibilities and choice?

I am not a fatalist. Determinism and free will are not necessarily incompatible.

Obviously, there is a great deal of controversy around this. But even if free will is illusory, humans have and I think will always have limited knowledge, making choices important functionally even if on some cosmic scale they are in a sense determined.

Beyond that, I find that secular humanism satisfies my need for a positive philosophical life stance.

The meaning of life is not to be found in a secret formula discovered by ancient prophets or modern gurus, who withdraw from living to seek quiet contemplation and release. Life has no meaning per se; it does, however, present us with innumerable opportunities, which we can either squander and retreat from in fear or seize with exuberance. --Paul Kurtz

Originally Posted by lupusarcanus Cancer miracles: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c...racles&spell=1 It doesn't mean God isn't the right explanation, either, does it?

True, it doesn't mean God isn't the right explanation. You'd just have to come up with some fairly convincing evidence on why it is. "I don't know, therefore, God" is not convincing.

There was a fairly large double-blind study involving prayer and heart patients, and the interesting finding was that the group who was being prayed for and knew it did the worst of all groups. That would make the power of prayer a myth busted. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html

Originally Posted by lupusarcanus Humanity: Still doesn't explain technology, infrastructure or anything else. We are an advanced civilization. YMMV, but I've never seen a dolphin do much of anything past essential basics. I don't want to be ignorant, I am just saying that humans are pretty darn special when compared with other animals.

Of course it explains technology. It's all a natural outgrowth of social behavior and complex communication. It makes it possible for one person to make a breakthrough and share it with others, at which point it becomes part of collective wisdom that can be passed down to generations. As successive generations add to the collective... technology.

Dolphins don't do much of anything past the essential basics because they have no need. Their physical form gives them everything they need to thrive. Humans are woefully slow and weak compared to our competitors and our prey animals, so our early survival depended on our ability to develop new strategies, new tools, and pass that knowledge down.

I recently saw a program on Yellowstone National Park, and it showed a bear family emerging from hibernation in a year with a late thaw. They showed the mamma bear demonstrating to her two cubs how frozen fish could be found under the ice, so she passed that knowledge down to her next generation, improving their chances of survival. But what if they'd had an early spring, and those kids had never seen that demonstration? The advantage of human communication is we can pass that knowledge on without a demonstration.

Originally Posted by lupusarcanus Religion: At least, in my case, Christianity doesn't make stuff up. Christianity is based off the Bible, which itself is a compilation of first hand experiences. You can not definitively say it is real or made up (though there is evidence of . Same with science. Many different areas of it are just inferences.

The Bible is assuredly not a compilation of first-hand experiences. Not one word of the Old Testament even existed in written form until several centuries after the fact. Until Cyrus the Great of Persia released the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity and sponsored the reconstruction of Solomon's Temple, it existed exclusively as oral traditions, and as oral traditions tend to do, it acquired multiple influences and morphed over time. That's why, for example, there are two very different stories of how the universe and man were created in Genesis. Both were a part of the Jewish oral traditions, each telling a different story, and so both were used.

The Gospels weren't written by eye-witnesses. They were falsely attributed to eyewitnesses, a practice known as pseudepigraphy, which was common in that time, in order to lend a work greater authority. The Gospels as you know them didn't exist until nearly 30 years after Jesus' death.

And that leads to Paul's letters. Yes, they're first-hand work, but by this time we're talking about a dude who never met Jesus in life.

It's one of the things that frustrates me most about Christians, is that so few of them know the very basics of where their book came from. Particularly annoying are the ones who go to Bible study every week, but instead of actually studying the Bible, they just pull a couple of quotes out of context and talk about how to apply them to their personal lives.

Originally Posted by lupusarcanus This still doesn't explain random acts of kindness, or why humans feel the need to help animals, why people hate themselves, why people hate everything, why people end their own life, why we are all different, why people react differently when put in the same situation, irrational behavior, why poor people spare pennies for people poorer than they are, why we try to be optimistic in situations, why we are pessimistic in situations... I have a million questions spurring from this observation alone. I do not honestly believe emotions are just responses to stimuli. No one has ever adequately proved this to me. And we 'were good enough' to survive on this big Earth a long time ago. How come we didn't stop there? We still have the same materials to work with!

There is a huge body of research trying to address these questions, far too much to try and summarize here. All I can say is that there are if not answers, the beginning to answers, in fields like evolutionary psychology and game theory. There is certainly plenty of reason to think altruism can be beneficial on average to a population and therefore selected for.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

But atheism specifically rejects that there is a God. They do not even allot one 0.000000000000000000000000000000001% percent chance that there is a God. I'm not quibbling at all, it's just a fact. There is still the open recognition that there is a chance; a belief that does not ideologically reject a God at all. Maybe your a 'doubtful agnostic'?

I'm not really concerned with labels. If you want to call me an agnostic, to quote Thomas Jefferson, "it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." From a scientific perspective, all truth is provisional, so you can never something something is 100% certain. Even Richard Dawkins agrees there is a possibility there is a God since we can never be 100% sure.

But millions of observations are present that disagree with rejecting any sort of supernaturality at all. In fact, with these mysteries, how do we know if there isn't another realm or dimension or something? It's not drab at all... watch some GhostHunters!

We don't know for certain - as I said all scientific truth is provisional. We only know that every single instance that has been rigorously studied has proven to be purely natural. What I'm saying is, take orbs for example. Thousands of people think they're evidence of the supernatural. But isn't it so much more interesting and thrilling to instead understand the science behind cameras, optics, and so on?

And I've seen Ghost Hunters. It's about as close to science as the Twilight series is to Shakespeare. Their methods and conclusions are highly questionable.

Somehow I see this as invalidating the whole 'emotions are stimuli' thing. Nevertheless it is a beautiful quote.

I don't see that understanding emotions as purely material phenomenon in any way detract from their importance to us. I am no less affected by beauty just by dint of accepting naturalistic explanation.

"The beauty that is there for you is also available for me, too. But I see a deeper beauty that isn't so readily available to others. I can see the complicated interactions of the flower. The color of the flower is red. Does the fact that the plant has color mean that it evolved to attract insects? This adds a further question. Can insects see color? Do they have an aesthetic sense? And so on. I don't see how studying a flower ever detracts from its beauty. It only adds." -Richard Feynman

But if life lacks any purpose, then isn't it irrational?

I'm using rational in the philosophical sense. Perhaps I don't understand how you're using it.

Originally Posted by reed9 And I've seen Ghost Hunters. It's about as close to science as the Twilight series is to Shakespeare. Their methods and conclusions are highly questionable.

I saw it once, and found it HILARIOUS.

During the day, they waved around some tools they clearly didn't understand. One of the guy is measuring electromagnetic fields, and gets excited when he gets a reading near the center of the ceiling... right next to the glowing light bulb. Hello.

Then they stayed in the house with no lights on and worked themselves into a panic over every bump in the night.

Originally Posted by reed9 I am no less affected by beauty just by dint of accepting naturalistic explanation.

I am…for me it does nothing more than reduce emotions to a mere physical phenomenon. Full stop.

I think that's why it disturbs a lot of other people, too. They don't become curious, they latch onto one fact and get woefully depressed about it (assuming they even try to accept it). "My happiness is nothing more than a bunch of chemicals reacting in my brain. It's meaningless." Full stop.

Wow, you lot have gone around in circles.

I love to read when people pick at Christians for "not knowing the Bible". How many people really know science? Science is an incomplete and flawed security blanket for to many people. Science says one thing one decade and then it will change to something completely opposite, an example of this, in my lifetime, is red meat is no good for you eat more vegetable, then all of a sudden they see that people who don't eat red meat lack extremely important vitamins and minerals so guess what they change their minds. Science claims to have empirical evidence but all to often that empirical evidence is incorrect.

LIkewise I love to read when Christians cannot back up their own statements with anything more than well science is ..... How does one argue with that? You can't because both camps have turned to childish statements and emotiveness to somehow show their argument is better.

Neither religion nor science has all the answers and saying one is better than the other because of ...... and the other is meaningless or wrong because of ....... without actually giving any evidence does nothing for either side.

The Bible can quite easily be interpreted multiple ways. Does that mean it is correct or invalid?
Science can quite easily be interpreted multiple ways. Does that mean it is correct or invalid?

I had an online discussion once with an "evolutionary christian" (a name he gave himself small c and all). My initial point was that from an evolutionary perspective we must all have evolved from the 1st primordial mold spore yet he vehemently denied it and so do many non-christian scientist. When the discussion ended his argument boiled down to "I have seen the bones, they must have come from somewhere so that shows humans evolved from a common ancestor with apes". He never did answer where the common ancestor come from even though evolutionary theory indicates everything come from the 1st living thing and that most certainly couldn't have been a complex organism.

My point here is we actually know very little, there isn't much visible evidence for either side and what is there can be taken to represent many different things.

Originally Posted by k3lt01 Wow, you lot have gone around in circles. I love to read when people pick at Christians for "not knowing the Bible". How many people really know science? Science is an incomplete and flawed security blanket for to many people. Science says one thing one decade and then it will change to something completely opposite, an example of this, in my lifetime, is red meat is no good for you eat more vegetable, then all of a sudden they see that people who don't eat red meat lack extremely important vitamins and minerals so guess what they change their minds. Science claims to have empirical evidence but all to often that empirical evidence is incorrect.

First off, the fact that science changes with new evidence is a strength, not a weakness. That said, a lot of the time the seeming rapid change of "science" has nothing to do with the actual science and everything to do with science reporting. What happens in that we get preliminary studies, which almost always end up being partly or all wrong, being reported as scientific findings. There was an egregious example of this recently, with headlines running "Nasa reveals life on Mars". Of course, that was absolutely not the case.

When it comes to something as complex as diet and health, there will often be seeming contradictions and there is to date, as far as I know, only tentative evidence suggesting red meat poses a serious health risk. But sifting through the garbage to figure that out is difficult. (An argument for teaching critical thinking skills starting in elementary school, in my opinion.)

But for a large part of science, the basics haven't changed for centuries. Newton's laws still work perfectly well for most things. They are incomplete, yes, they have been supplemented by relativity and quantum theory, but they aren't outright wrong and there's no reason to suspect they will suddenly become so. Or do you think tomorrow you might wake up to find computers no longer work because whoops, we had the science all wrong? We're inundated with technologies that demonstrate pretty effectively the validity of most of our scientific theories. The next time religion discovers something novel about the universe that leads to a technological breakthrough, you let me know.

Neither religion nor science has all the answers and saying one is better than the other because of ...... and the other is meaningless or wrong because of ....... without actually giving any evidence does nothing for either side.

No one in their right mind would suggest science has all the answers. And of course, science cannot answer questions of value. "Why should we care for the homeless" is not a scientific question. Some people argue such a question falls squarely in the religious domain. I disagree. While there is a large body of work involving ethics coming from religious traditions, there is nothing intrinsic to ethical questions that makes religion any more competent to answer them than plain old secular ethics and philosophy. And religion frequently lags behind secular ethics, as we see currently in the fight for gay and lesbian rights.

The Bible can quite easily be interpreted multiple ways. Does that mean it is correct or invalid? Science can quite easily be interpreted multiple ways. Does that mean it is correct or invalid?

The difference is of course that there is a way to settle scientific questions. Science can be falsified, religious claims cannot. If I say antibiotics can cure an infection and you say they cannot, it's something that can easily be determined. The whole scientific edifice is built around settling such questions as best as possible.

Originally Posted by MrCode I am…for me it does nothing more than reduce emotions to a mere physical phenomenon. Full stop. I think that's why it disturbs a lot of other people, too. They don't become curious, they latch onto one fact and get woefully depressed about it (assuming they even try to accept it). "My happiness is nothing more than a bunch of chemicals reacting in my brain. It's meaningless." Full stop.

You're probably right about that. I don't know of any easy answers. The meaning of life has never been an issue that particularly bothered me. There have been times when I thought it was all meaningless and times when I feel that life was ripe with meaning. In either case, just living a modest life, taking joy in small things, pets, friends, hobbies, is meaning enough to make me content.

The origin and the why of our universe (s) appears to be infinately more mysterious than any information provided by the abrahamic religious texts - If there is a ''God'' which ''created'' our universe-system, it would be a ''supernatural entity'', probably be unknowable from within the system (our universe) certainly not benevolent (it would be neutral), and certainly not interfering with daily life on our planet - look at it this way - something must have happened in the ''past'' for our universe and us to exist - maybe the cause of that ''something'', is God.

I suspect the real answer is simply beyond our comprehension though, and perhaps always will be....... - it would spoil it if we did know

.

Originally Posted by reed9 First off, the fact that science changes with new evidence is a strength, not a weakness.

You miss the point, science does change (and if you think religion is stagnant then think again) and this proves that plebs like you and I do not know everything there is to know about science. Science changing maybe a plus (I sometimes think it is a political tool and look at the current Climate debate in my own country with politicians using school kids asking stupid questions like "Do you believe the "Science" about climate change?) but when science changes so rapidly and people in discussions like this come out saying that science is the best option I wonder how much they really know.

Originally Posted by reed9 When it comes to something as complex as diet and health, there will often be seeming contradictions and there is to date, as far as I know, only tentative evidence suggesting red meat poses a serious health risk. But sifting through the garbage to figure that out is difficult. (An argument for teaching critical thinking skills starting in elementary school, in my opinion.)

That garbage was only 30 years ago scientific fact. Keep pushing the critical thinking idea oneday someone may just start doing it. As it stands science is just theory, albeit theory that should be tested and tested vigourously, but scientific theory can never and should never be sprouted as fact.

Originally Posted by reed9 But for a large part of science, the basics haven't changed for centuries. Newton's laws still work perfectly well for most things. They are incomplete, yes, they have been supplemented by relativity and quantum theory, but they aren't outright wrong and there's no reason to suspect they will suddenly become so. Or do you think tomorrow you might wake up to find computers no longer work because whoops, we had the science all wrong? We're inundated with technologies that demonstrate pretty effectively the validity of most of our scientific theories. The next time religion discovers something novel about the universe that leads to a technological breakthrough, you let me know.

I was wondering when someone would do this in this discussion. I have not said what I believe and have been rather deliberate in this. What I think about computers not working because whoops etc etc etc ..... means very little apart from the fact that you as an individual has just resorted to a childish comparison to make your argument more appealing to the masses. In doing so you prove my point, neither has all the answers and to show that science does you are making things up.

Originally Posted by reed9 No one in their right mind would suggest science has all the answers. And of course, science cannot answer questions of value. "Why should we care for the homeless" is not a scientific question. Some people argue such a question falls squarely in the religious domain. I disagree. While there is a large body of work involving ethics coming from religious traditions, there is nothing intrinsic to ethical questions that makes religion any more competent to answer them than plain old secular ethics and philosophy. And religion frequently lags behind secular ethics, as we see currently in the fight for gay and lesbian rights.

Yet you expect religion, your point in the quote above, to be able to discover something that brings about a technological breakthrough. You do realise this stance is hypocritical don't you.

Originally Posted by reed9 The difference is of course that there is a way to settle scientific questions. Science can be falsified, religious claims cannot. If I say antibiotics can cure an infection and you say they cannot, it's something that can easily be determined. The whole scientific edifice is built around settling such questions as best as possible.

Who said religious claims cannot be falsified? The RC has made claims for approximately 1600 years, I could mention more "peripheral" groups but I don't want to offend people and be labelled a troll for showing how they are, and they are easily falsified (e.g. the Pope being infallible).

Originally Posted by reed9 I am not a fatalist. Determinism and free will are not necessarily incompatible. Obviously, there is a great deal of controversy around this. But even if free will is illusory, humans have and I think will always have limited knowledge, making choices important functionally even if on some cosmic scale they are in a sense determined. Beyond that, I find that secular humanism satisfies my need for a positive philosophical life stance. The meaning of life is not to be found in a secret formula discovered by ancient prophets or modern gurus, who withdraw from living to seek quiet contemplation and release. Life has no meaning per se; it does, however, present us with innumerable opportunities, which we can either squander and retreat from in fear or seize with exuberance. --Paul Kurtz

Good post and quote. You've got me thinking about the free-will paradox. I think it may only appear as a paradox because we, once again, are getting caught-up in dualist (black-and-white) thinking. The two choices are not either free will or determinism, but the middle ground. And, that's not a cop-out. Specifically, as an intelligent agent, I am programmed by society and myself to behave in a deterministic way. But, only some of those influences come from the outside and some from within. To claim that I have free will is to say that the mechanisms for my actions originate within me, even if they are deterministic in and of themselves. But, these same internal mechanisms must be independent from external influences. But, again, at some point, this boundary fades and external influences start to have an affect. So, in short, I am saying that we have partial free will, depending on the amount of mastery we have in our lives and depending on an arbitrarily chosen boundary between our internal self and the external world.

Did you know that some believe (Gurdjieff) that we are not born with a soul, but that a soul has to be DEVELOPED through conscious effort? I kind of like the sound of that. It means there is no "free" lunch... are you picking-up on the connections?

Originally Posted by k3lt01 That garbage was only 30 years ago scientific fact.

I was referring to garbage studies. Poorly designed, poorly executed, or incomplete.

Keep pushing the critical thinking idea oneday someone may just start doing it. As it stands science is just theory, albeit theory that should be tested and tested vigourously, but scientific theory can never and should never be sprouted as fact.

Ah, this argument just breaks my heart. It's such a misunderstanding of what science is. A scientific theory is fact. Or as close to fact as we can get, given that all science is provisional. It's the Theory of Gravity, the Theory of Evolution, Germ Theory, the Theory of General Relativity, and so on. Things with an overwhelming amount of evidence in their favor that have withstood massive scrutiny. It very very rare for an established theory to be completely overturned.

I was wondering when someone would do this in this discussion. I have not said what I believe and have been rather deliberate in this. What I think about computers not working because whoops etc etc etc ..... means very little apart from the fact that you as an individual has just resorted to a childish comparison to make your argument more appealing to the masses. In doing so you prove my point, neither has all the answers and to show that science does you are making things up.

My argument was only directed at what you said. It was in no way intended to presuppose your beliefs beyond what you wrote, ie, the false equivalence you made between science and religion. And again, I have not stated that science has all the answers. It doesn't. I'm saying that nothing else can give us good approximations of how the material universe works. Whatever the limitations of science, it's the only game in town as far as that goes.

Who said religious claims cannot be falsified? The RC has made claims for approximately 1600 years, I could mention more "peripheral" groups but I don't want to offend people and be labelled a troll for showing how they are, and they are easily falsified (e.g. the Pope being infallible).

You're right. Specific religious claims about the world can be falsified. My argument was poorly constructed here. What I had in mind were religious questions such as "Was Jesus the Messiah or just another prophet?" or "Is the doctrine of the Trinity true?" And also "theories" such as Intelligent Design, which just boil down to saying God did it. They're not set up in a way that you can test them. The second idea I had in mind was that true believers will always find a way to maintain belief. This of course applies well beyond religion. For anti-vaxxers the fact that Andrew Wakefield is a discredited fraud doesn't in the lease bit sway them from thinking vaccines cause autism, with sadly deadly effect.

The great thing about science, whatever flaws it does have, is the ideal that nothing is sacred, any theory can be overturned, there are no infallible authorities, we can question anything and we have a method for determining whether we are right or wrong. No other human endeavor puts as high a value on truth and has a wildly successful method for determining what is true.



1. When the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain.

2. When they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert.

3. When they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment. --Bertrand Russell

Originally Posted by Coresay Good post and quote. You've got me thinking about the free-will paradox. I think it may only appear as a paradox because we, once again, are getting caught-up in dualist (black-and-white) thinking. The two choices are not either free will or determinism, but the middle ground. And, that's not a cop-out. Specifically, as an intelligent agent, I am programmed by society and myself to behave in a deterministic way. But, only some of those influences come from the outside and some from within. To claim that I have free will is to say that the mechanisms for my actions originate within me, even if they are deterministic in and of themselves. But, these same internal mechanisms must be independent from external influences. But, again, at some point, this boundary fades and external influences start to have an affect. So, in short, I am saying that we have partial free will, depending on the amount of mastery we have in our lives and depending on an arbitrarily chosen boundary between our internal self and the external world. Did you know that some believe (Gurdjieff) that we are not born with a soul, but that a soul has to be DEVELOPED through conscious effort? I kind of like the sound of that. It means there is no "free" lunch... are you picking-up on the connections?

Well, I don't believe in a soul at all. (At least nothing immaterial and separate from the body.) But the sentiment is echoed by Eric Fromm, "Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality."

But you're right, we're not completely free agents, yet we do seem to have the ability to make choices. When I touch a hot stove and flinch, that's certainly not my will at work, but no one seems to mind the loss of free will there.

Theory Vs Fact Please note the 2 are not the same.

Compare them to belief and you should be able to gather that religion is a belief system not a fact system. Belief is actually closer to theory and until theory can be proven without a doubt it is not a fact.

Originally Posted by reed9 Ah, this argument just breaks my heart. It's such a misunderstanding of what science is. A scientific theory is fact. Or as close to fact as we can get, given that all science is provisional. It's the Theory of Gravity, the Theory of Evolution, Germ Theory, the Theory of General Relativity, and so on. Things with an overwhelming amount of evidence in their favor that have withstood massive scrutiny. It very very rare for an established theory to be completely overturned.

Read the definitions again, theory is not fact. Theories change and so do beliefs but neither are fact.

So are you saying that people didn't know that things fell to the ground and the effects of it until some guy sat near an apple tree and witnessed an apple fall and then come up with a name for the cause of the fall itself? The Romans crucified people knowing that the body would stop functioning after a while due to the fact that people could not breath because the weight of the body was pulling down. People built defences on higher ground knowing it was harder to get missiles up high. They may not have known the cause, we will never really know because there are no extant texts saying they did know, but they most certain new there was a reason things fell and they used that knowledge to great effect

I'd love for you to start discussing the theory of evolution, I'm very interested in what you know.

Originally Posted by reed9 My argument was only directed at what you said. It was in no way intended to presuppose your beliefs beyond what you wrote, ie, the false equivalence you made between science and religion. And again, I have not stated that science has all the answers. It doesn't. I'm saying that nothing else can give us good approximations of how the material universe works. Whatever the limitations of science, it's the only game in town as far as that goes.

Please explain to me what part of my statement that you responded to, quoted below for your convenience, prompted that reply. I also haven't made any false equivalence, instead I am trying to get you to see that your comparisons are invalid because the 2 ideas deal with different subject matters. Science is theory, religion is belief.

Originally Posted by k3lt01 I love to read when people pick at Christians for "not knowing the Bible". How many people really know science? Science is an incomplete and flawed security blanket for to many people. Science says one thing one decade and then it will change to something completely opposite, an example of this, in my lifetime, is red meat is no good for you eat more vegetable, then all of a sudden they see that people who don't eat red meat lack extremely important vitamins and minerals so guess what they change their minds. Science claims to have empirical evidence but all to often that empirical evidence is incorrect.

Originally Posted by reed9 You're right. Specific religious claims about the world can be falsified. My argument was poorly constructed here.

How nice of you to admit that.

Originally Posted by reed9 What I had in mind were religious questions such as "Was Jesus the Messiah or just another prophet?" or "Is the doctrine of the Trinity true?" And also "theories" such as Intelligent Design, which just boil down to saying God did it. They're not set up in a way that you can test them. The second idea I had in mind was that true believers will always find a way to maintain belief. This of course applies well beyond religion. For anti-vaxxers the fact that Andrew Wakefield is a discredited fraud doesn't in the lease bit sway them from thinking vaccines cause autism, with sadly deadly effect.

Again you are mixing things. The doctrine of the Trinity or Jesus being the Messiah has nothing to do with scientific testing procedures but are tested using the books (talking about all religious texts) themselves. Intelligent design is something that is promoted by "evolutionary christians" to support an ill conceived idea that has nothing to do with religious beliefs and everything to do with attempting to bring religion and science together, it will not and cannot happen. Resorting to telling a person to let you know when a book about mystic beliefs etc etc etc lowered your ability to mount a convincing argument.

Originally Posted by reed9 The great thing about science, whatever flaws it does have, is the ideal that nothing is sacred, any theory can be overturned, there are no infallible authorities, we can question anything and we have a method for determining whether we are right or wrong. No other human endeavor puts as high a value on truth and has a wildly successful method for determining what is true.

Well this is the exact opposite of your 1st statement in your last reply. Do you remember saying this?

Originally Posted by reed9 Ah, this argument just breaks my heart. It's such a misunderstanding of what science is. A scientific theory is fact. Or as close to fact as we can get, given that all science is provisional.

The bible, among other religious texts, tells believers to test false teachings. Of course the methods used millennia ago won't be as robust as they are now but then again methods 50 years ago weren't as robust as they are now.

Originally Posted by reed9;4341382 [I 1. When the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain. 2. When they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert. 3. When they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment.[/I] --Bertrand Russell

I totally agree with this.