Science can address truths about the natural world, the physical etc but it cannot address issues of morality, meaning, how and why to live, issues of the heart etc.

Plus anyway it's not a question of utility but the individuals personal choice and conscience.

How do you know that? Have you asked them?

 

Am I the only one who can see the mahoosive dose of irony in this statement?

 

I'll be gutted when The Hitch' perishes.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/fa...atheism-49977/

 

Not really.

 

There's talk on this thread about being selective about which aspect of religion you choose to believe in, 'fundamantalist' belief where you take the literal meaning of the given word as handed down through many generations, and 'symbolic' belief where it appears you can allow yourself the luxury of interpretation of the given word to suit personal taste and circumstance. How can you say on the one hand that you believe in God, but on the other hand I pour scorn on those suckers that think He literally created the Earth in 6 days?

Taking basic Christianity as an example, just where do you draw the line in believing the given word?
Did God create a man from dust? Or was it a tad more scientific than that? And if so, how much science and how much God? Because if it's wasn't God (as the given word says it was) how much doubt does that cast on the rest of the story.

I am envious of people who have the comfort of a fervent belief in God and the hereafter, the kind of belief that says "Don't worry it will be allright", but I can't allow myself to accept facts as stated in the foundation document of a religion that don't stand up to basic logical scrutiny.

 

Define 'God' - what's your understanding of the word?

 

If you swat a fly does it go to heaven ?

If not I'd like to know at which point in the evolutionary process from primitive life form to homo sapiens we suddenly qualified for entry.

And the neanderthals ? Did they go ? Did they have souls ? If God created man in his image then what were they ?


I regard 'believers' in the same way I would regard people who still believed in witches or vampires - or indeed people who believe mediums are really talking to dead people.

I have a friend who is a professional magician and he can convince any fool willing to part with their money that he can talk to their dead relatives. You can buy 'cold reading' guides that explain exactly how to do it.

Galileo must be turning in his grave.

 

Responding to a question with another question is a poor response.
If you can't answer then you don't have to reply.
It's irrelevent to the question posed what my understanding of God is, I'd be happy to receive an answer in your own terms.

 

surely he is a beardy bloke in a robe

 

Did Neanderthals appear before or after Adam?

 

think Richard Branson in a dressing gown

 

 

..and blue eyed caucasian.

 

I don't think you understood what I was saying.

As far as I am concerned, you can and should believe what your conscience leads you to. I would not try to change your mind if I did not agree with your ideas nor would I accept that people should be ordered to believe what they are told.

Your fine words are all very well, but I feel that all cases should be presented and we should all make up our own minds with no pressure on us to think one way or the other. What you think as the only logical way is not necessarily the same as others believe it to be.

Incidentally, barbaric practices are more likely to be the ideals of people with their own mindset rather than promoted by the basic precepts of a religion which does not have that sort of thing as part of its teachings.

My own school had an Apologetics class which discussed all types of religion and atheism where the straight facts were demonstrated with no pressure on the pupils who were free to believe whichever they thought was right.

I thought that was pretty reasonable.

Les

 

I was just trying to qualify some of the terms. I mentioned 'ignosticism' earlier:

"The view that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of god can be meaningfully discussed. Furthermore, if that definition is unfalsifiable, the ignostic takes the theological noncognitivist position that the question of the existence of God (per that definition) is meaningless. In this case, the concept of God is not considered meaningless; the term "God" is considered meaningless."

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism

You posed these questions:

Take "did God create man from dust?". In order to answer that one would have to ask qualifying questions about God and, indeed, dust. If your definition of God is first-cause and that which did or did not exist before and you define dust as the result of singularity and subsequently the by-product of supernovae - then yes, God did. If one's definition of God is a real, living, personal, supernatural entity and dust is, well, dust, then my answer would be no.

God is and has been accessible to everyone, throughout the ages, irrespective of IQ, education, social circumstances, geographical location, age or culture and can be interpreted accordingly. Newton believed in God and so did the man who tended to his fields, but both would have had different understanding of who or what God is. Astrophysics isn't accessible to everyone. So, the second part of your question: " Or was it a tad more scientific than that?" would be dependent upon your deifinitions of God and dust and range from utterly scientific (atheist), mostly scientific (deist, pandeists, pantheist), partly scientific (many main-stream denominations of Protestantism, see Dr. Rowan Williams), mostly theistic (intelligent design) or absolutely theistic (literalists).

Any relatively literate person can read and get something from religious texts, not everyone can get something from Newton's Principia.

 

Thank you, I am genuinely enlightened by your response.
I think it would be fair to say that most peoples' idea of God, and I include myself in this, would fall in to the "a real, living, personal, supernatural entity" category.
The "first cause edition" I would classify as science and not a deity. Just my opinion of course.

 

but surely the difference is everyone experiences the theories as set out in Newton's Principia

drop an apple and it falls, faith or no faith

but you have to be religious to experience god/religious texts

 

So if God takes the form of Richard Branson, complete with fair skin, blue eyes and a bath robe, would the man downstairs have any semblance to Alan Sugar?

 

The scientific world still (on the whole) relies on Popper's hypo-deductive model when conducting scientific enquiry. Key to this model is the idea of falsification. If a theory cannot be falsified it is rejected. To date nobody has created a hypothesis regarding heaven and god that is falsifiable.

Given the vast majority of us accept the fruits of scientific enquiry on a daily basis then it's a bit of a hypocrisy not to accept that in some capacity if science cannot prove the existence of god etc, then it's unfair to accept its other findings.

That's really why religious people have 'faith' because the ideas commonly accepted about religion require faith. There are obviously a few religious people on the forum, and in this thread. I'll believe what I want, and I'll respect what others want to believe

 

his catch phrase certainly fits -- you might be onto something

and to Pink Floyd - absolutely agree, people are and should be free to choose what to believe

 

If something is not falsifiable it is not testable by science is what Popper is saying.

From that POV religion (not fundamentalist religion) is outside of science as 'is' is not a scientific hypothesis (as defined by Popper).

 

Yes, if it's not falsifiable it is not testable. Correct. Therefore you cannot test religion because you cannot create a falsifiable hypothesis. It all comes down to a falsifiable hypothesis. For example Marxism is not falsifiable because you cannot create that falsifiable hypothesis.

The hypothesis is where the decision is made on whether it can be tested or not. It's not the 'something' that has to be falsifiable, rather the theory and hypothesis.

The philosophy of science is a whole debate in itself........

 

Yes, but how one interprets those experiences will be dependent upon the individual. The person with temporal lobe epilepsy may have a vastly different interpretation of numinous experience than say somebody who's border-line Aspergic or, on the Myers-Briggs indicator, an ENTJ versus an INFP. I'm a rationalist and find beauty in science but also recognise that that's because of the way I'm built. Other's may feel spiritually under-nourished if their world is reduced to no more than the material. Neurotheology.

See above. Additionally, prayer works, but requires faith. Indistinguishable from PMA and that requires self-belief. Or 'The Secret' (law of attraction) which requires belief in the likelyhood of the desired outcome in order to be self-fulfilling. Mantras, positive affirmation, visualisation all require faith.

Do you? Define religious. Einstein was "deeply religious" and a non-believer. And what definition of God's in play?

 

The laws of thermodynamics (one example) are not falsifiable (being axiomatic), so if I understand correctly what you are saying, why are they not rejected ?

 

But that is looking at the idea of God through modern, technologically and cosmologically aware eyes.

Despite TDW's tenuous attempts to assert that primitive humans wrote these texts with some of these ideas in mind, the idea of God as anything but a tangible thing that created the one place that early humans were aware of was simply not possible.

It's one thing to say "oh yes, well if you're definition of God is [insert current metaphor], then it can be etc.etc.", but all religious beliefs are underpinned by the same basic premise, that these people were unaware of what they were part of.

The concept of being on a rock, floating in nothing, in a Universe that is too bog even for most modern people to take it, it not in the mix. It is quite clear that when these beliefs began, gods were very real to them. It was not metaphor for a singularity, dust was not a metaphor for the dust that collapsed to make stars, then planets and ultimately us.

Surely you need to qualify that statement? Prayer works? Prayer clearly does not work. If you are saying that prayer works as something to comfort, then yes, but that is just another way of saying that positive thought or self belief works. Prayer as defined in the bible does not work.

Geezer

 

The Old Testament is full of barbaric teachings! Now, if you believe that the Old Testament is barbaric, because, like you say, that they are the ideas of man rather than God, then you are admitting that the Old Testament is not the word of God, and cannot be trusted for either it's validity, truthfulness or as a representation of what God's word really is.

If you accept that the Old Testament is the word of God, then it preaches some really quite unpleasant stuff, and that's about as basic as you can get, it's God's word!

So, which is it?

Geezer

 

the story of Lot is abhorrent

 

I know very very little about thermodynamics.

An axiom is fundamental and is used as a starting point for the branch of enquiry at hand. Why would you need to create a hypothesis? Unless of course you're trying to question an axiom?

In Mathematics for example you don't have to create hypothesis, merely prove theory. I fail to see why anyone would need to reject the thermodynamic laws based on falsifiability, let alone conduct a test that would be falsifiable? Given that you cannot test what is considered an axiom anyway? The whole thing would surely be counter-intuitive?

Perhaps you could enlighten me?

 

I've had to use asterix as my bold button isn't working. In relation to that statement, why should answers to the big questions be the preserve of the learned? Secularism allows for people of all faiths and atheists and clever people and less clever people and left-brained and right-brained people to choose how they access truth. People come to God through science and to science through God or go straight to God and stay there and vice versa. If you remove religion from the mix you remove a path to a form of truth. Most humans are neurologically predisposed to ask big questions. Some of those questions can, for some people, be answered satisfactorily by a religious tradition. If that's not for you, you have science. If you're wired up in such a way that you crave rational, logical explanations and spiritual nourishment, religious text allows for that via speculation.

You seem to be saying that one's either a literalist or an atheist, whereas I'm of the view that it's actually possible to have your cake and eat it - ignosticism.

So if prayer works as a cognitive exercise, and it ties in with a religion which works metaphorically and supports an appealing philosophy and engenders well-being and doesn't stop science from doing its work, what's the problem? It adds value in a secular society. It's fundamentalism and theism as a source of governance that needs to be dealt with by humans - where choice is removed and the wealth of human knowledge and revelation is reduced to one path. Attack that.

How's prayer defined in the Bible?

 

I think that is partially correct. I mean you cannot test every individual atoms to see if it obeys the laws of thermodynamics!

I'm reaching a bit here but I think an assumption/belief of science is that laws/principles which hold in one part of the universe hold in another....that is to say the universe if not capricious but ordered and understandable.