An example of why it isn't always God

[Hurlshort]

Actually yes, you cant magicly go to heaven. Also chrisitans dont support muslims if thats what youre impling. I dont think any major sect of christianity supports you. Faw.

 

Kirottu is correct, actually. Most denominations of christianity have modernized their theology not to make the rest of the world burn in hell. The more you talk, walkerguy, the more I wonder how much you really know about your own religion. What type of church do you attend? I'm not trying to attack, I'm genuinely curious.

[Sand]

Sounds Unitarian.

 

Unitarians are a strange bunch.

 

Strange.

[kirottu]

Edit: Hurlshot said it better than I.

Edited March 18, 2008 by kirottu

[Tigranes]

wee-oo.

 

I haven't read the whole thread, so call me up if I'm being silly, but I never really thought the main point of God is to explain stuff about the world you can't understand. That segregates God. That's like saying "if you can understand X scientifically, woopdey doo, but if you can't understand Y scientifically, go to God!" Nah. Theoretically, being a Christian would mean that the spiritual mode of explaining the world takes precedence over science in every instance. This doesn't mean you need to be an amish oddball that doesn't believe in science, it would basically mean you are saying:

 

"I accept the scientific hypotheses that govern our human societies and believe in them, but I believe that these scientific laws and phenomena were ultimately created by God, and thus if God's word appears at a point to contradict what we know scientifically at this point in time, I would believe God over a human scientist who may be refuted or completely contradicted by other scientists or other scientific findings in the future."

 

A Christian would, theoretically, not refute science as a discipline, but refute science's claim to absolute truth and its own infallibility (not that science really does this anyway, but a lot of people seem to think so). And I think one has grounds to do this even if they were atheist - science is a human discipline. Humans are fallible. Scientific standards of truth and falsehood change constantly and new 'facts' are constantly brought into light. As I say, the purpose of science was never to provide absolute universal truth that we could rely on; that's just how some(many) people have come to see it. In the end, that can be just as dangerous as a "I believe in God so I won't take my medicine or go to the doctor" crazy-o.

 

So what, then, is the point of God? Well, that's something I still struggle with, so I can't be as clear here. The concept of faith, as always, is both the key and the tombstone; if we presuppose God exists and his Word is true, then it makes complete sense to prioritise a set of laws and paradigms which are guaranteed in their truth than one which is not (science). And no, whether God's word is true or not, or whether he exists or not, would have nothing to do with if he can be scientifically proven or not. What you would be doing is taking a standard of judging truth that is made by fallible humans, that changes constantly and over time, that admits to being based on hypotheses rather than absolute truths, that changes its understanding of the world as it learns new things and finds errors, so on and so forth. I don't say science is uselss, because it's one of humanity's great bets at explaining the world, but it is by its nature never complete and never sure. Using science to explain God is from the start untenable, even if you are an atheist. So we come back to the question of faith; if God exists, problem solved. If God doesn't exist, problem solved. Which one? How do we explain this phenomenon of 'faith'? In my experience faith seems to be as much a doctrinal thing as much as a 'natural' and 'spiritual' thing - which is why I am still not comfortable with it. But then, you didn't expect this single post to explain everything, right?

 

edit: Wow, lots of posts while I was posting. Hurlshot, let me just say, while you and Kirottu are right, in my experience, quite a lot of your joe average Christians still have the latent belief that if you believe in a different religion, then you will not go to heaven (and thus, to hell). And I think the Presbyterian Church for example still, well, implies it.

[Nick_i_am]

I'd care about going to hell because I didn't belive in it if I belived in it.

[Azarkon]

HAHAHA, Tale.

 

BTW, those aren't called the "laws of physics" then!

 

Whatever you want to call them is fine with me I'm just saying that the universe is full of purpose - and we understand more of that purpose every day. Science can explain why, but the answers are not necessarily what humans would consider adequate because as intentional agents, we like to ascribe human intention to what we don't understand. It turns out that for many things in the universe, this doesn't make any sense.

[Humodour]

Tigranes: so are you saying it makes sense to believe in science, but choose not to believe certain theories in it, like evolution or the big-bang, in favour of intelligent design?

 

I'm not sure I could have given a better example of doublethink if I tried.

[Hurlshort]

Tigranes: so are you saying it makes sense to believe in science, but choose not to believe certain theories in it, like evolution or the big-bang, in favour of intelligent design?

 

I'm not sure I could have given a better example of doublethink if I tried.

 

Krezack, your inability to understand the concepts of faith has made you as blind as someone who allows faith to blind them from science.

[Humodour]

Tigranes: so are you saying it makes sense to believe in science, but choose not to believe certain theories in it, like evolution or the big-bang, in favour of intelligent design?

 

I'm not sure I could have given a better example of doublethink if I tried.

 

Krezack, your inability to understand the concepts of faith has made you as blind as someone who allows faith to blind them from science.

 

Hurlshot, you can hurl insults at me all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that it is really illogical and irrational to believe in only half of science.

 

It is one single framework. It's just not possible to pull it apart and say bits of it are wrong, whilst simultaneously preserving the integrity of the other bits.

 

See genetics, biotechnology, medicine, agriculture? The advances we make in those stem from evolution and genetics being true. You can go all metaphysical on my ass if you want, but at the end of the day, it is an idiot who denies the truth of science which has accurately predicted and produced an entire technological industry.

 

The same thing applies to the big-bang; it's not some esoteric area of science, it's based on the exact same foundations of our telecommunications industry and electronics industry in general.

 

Science is not just some unknown theory. It is the basis of advanced human civilisation. It is technology. It is not a metaphysical entity whose truth is uncertain any more than human existence is! People need to figure out science and faith are not related. They are very distinct and attempts to merge the two end in spectacular failure.

 

Edit: I'm not saying people shouldn't have faith. It's an important part of life even for atheists, in some form or another (whether faith in humanity or whatnot). But I am saying science and faith don't play well together. It is a very good idea to keep them separate.

Edited March 19, 2008 by Krezack

[walkerguy]

gnnfh.kbnfd.h

Edited March 19, 2008 by walkerguy

[Nick_i_am]

Edit: I'm not saying people shouldn't have faith. It's an important part of life even for atheists, in some form or another (whether faith in humanity or whatnot). But I am saying science and faith don't play well together. It is a very good idea to keep them separate.

 

Actually, i'm pretty sure you're just saying that science and christian faith (and probably most monotheisms) don't mesh well togeather.

[Hurlshort]

I wasn't really looking to insult you Krezack, but your analysis of Tigrane's post seemed purposefully disjointed. At no point does he say to disregard science in favor of faith. But he brings up a good point, that not all science is as solid as you seem to imply. The Big Bang Theory is a theory, hence the name. If it was something proven, it wouldn't be called a theory. And his next point seems to be (not to speak for him) that even if the Big Bang were proven irrefutably, that doesn't disprove the existence of God.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

What I know is that if someone doesn't know Jesus, they go to . Sorry. Yes, even if they never had a chance. Many will burn until the whole world knows. Democracy now! Also, muslims are in the same category as other non-christians, I'd say.

Not that I want to derail the tread, but I thought this would fit in nicely after your comment.

 

Christianity-

The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever, if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.

 

[Sand]

Christianity-

The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever, if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.

 

 

BWAAAHAAAAHAAAAAAAAAA!

[Humodour]

I wasn't really looking to insult you Krezack, but your analysis of Tigrane's post seemed purposefully disjointed.

 

I asked him a genuine question in response to a quick skim of his post.

 

At no point does he say to disregard science in favor of faith.

 

He doesn't? I must have misread it. I was only skimming sorry.

 

But he brings up a good point, that not all science is as solid as you seem to imply.

 

Careful with your words. Not all of science is certain, but that's only true in the same sense that we can't be certain we're not in some virtual reality simulator; it's metaphysics and given that is unprovable by definition, it's something I avoid.

 

But I would certainly say science is solid. Even the so far uncertain areas of science such as string theory are solid. They tell us what is not the case, what cannot be the case, and what any theory of the universe must have on a basic level. I don't follow it much any more, but I know it has already made some correct predictions, too.

 

Science should not be confused with scientific speculation, which while useful to science in the form of new ideas, is in no way proven.

 

The Big Bang Theory is a theory, hence the name. If it was something proven, it wouldn't be called a theory.

 

Not correct. The typical definition of 'proof' applies to scientific theories; it is a theory once it has been proven via the scientific method. Otherwise it is a hypothesis.

 

The only case where something can be proven 100% true is in maths. Science theories in comparison are called theories if they fit our world view and have survived proof by counter-example so far.

 

If even one unknown, average scientist were to find a counter-example for the Big Bang Theory, the theory would have to be revised. This has happened before, such as classical to quantum mechanics. The thing to note, however, is that the new theory must contain the old theory, and ideally predict other similar outlier cases - meaning this doesn't provide any more support for god.

 

The Big Bang Theory is independently verified and predicted by a wide variety of unrelated evidence and fields of physics. It is because of this that invalidation of the Big Bang Theory means invalidation of our telecommunications industry (wave physics). As such, the only way BBT could be wrong is if it was simply missing something; if a new theory were formulated that encompassed Big Bang theory and made all the same predictions and fit all the same data a Big Bang Theory, and then some.

 

Christian zealots that go around proclaiming BBT and evolution are only theories as if it is a problem are only showing their lack of understanding of the most basic of scientific concepts.

 

One of the reasons people put so much trust in science is its predictive power. Science says "given x, you get y". This predictive power is the very basis for human technology. Can recourse to God do the same? No; which is why faith and science must necessarily be separate.

 

And his next point seems to be (not to speak for him) that even if the Big Bang were proven irrefutably, that doesn't disprove the existence of God.

 

That's nice. I said the exact same thing in the first page of this thread.

Edited March 19, 2008 by Krezack

[Tigranes]

Sorry Krezack, I forgot to come back to this.

 

I'd like to focus on what you have termed my 'doublethink', rather than the validity of the scientific method. While it is true that the scientific method is an ever-changing thing that never claims to or can be completely relied upon for the production of universal truth, I don't want to seem like I am out to attack science - that's not really my goal here. Certainly, most of the problems of science today are from a mispractice of science (e.g. 'psychiatry' in the eighteenth-nineteenth century, gynecology in the 1950's) or a misunderstanding of science. What I am trying to say is closer to identifying what science really is and what position it has in the world, rather than refute it.

 

Basically, science as we define it in contemporary Western society, is a designed mechanism for the production of truth. Its primary ingredient is the empirical object, and its primary mode of verification is material sensibility. Simply put, science makes its own rules for the production of truth, then declares that truth as a scientifically proven hypothesis. Then, thanks to the proliferation of the scientific discourse into all areas of society during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, citizens of the Westernised world now generally believe in scientific truth and scientific method as an absolute, timeless, universal and infallible certainty. The actual scientist says, "based on the following presuppositions that are necessarily made for science to work, and based on the following presuppositions made using laws of statistics and so and so, I find it very, very likely, in fact, extremely likely, that X is true." This, in practiced discourse of the average citizen, becomes, "X is true because science said so."

 

Science is very valuable because the mechanisms it uses to investigate empirical reality is extremely sound (or more sound that most other methods we know of) and its perfect practice lies under the realm of reasonable possibility for humans. In other words, as fallible as we humans are, it is still possible to make some pretty darn solid scientific hypotheses. However, two things must always be remembered about science:

 

• Science never produces truth, understood as an absolute, infallible, perfect thing manifest in any and all instances. It simply produces a statistical and logical likelihood of a certain thing, which likelihood is based on various presumptions. This does not make science 'bogus' or 'guesswork', by the way. That's not what I'm saying. I'll come back to this.
  
• The scientific method itself is, just like the truth it produces, never perfect. Firstly, basic presumptions behind scientific projects can and do change. Secondly, the very mechanism of a scientific method, the very basic fundamental things about what constitutes science, can and does change. That means ideas about what is empirical, what is logical, what is scientific information and what is not. With less than two centuries between them, Buffon takes his predecessor of naturalistic sciences in Aldrovandi and declares his work a hotch-potch, 'legend'. Rather than that Aldrovandi was a rogue charlatan, this means that Buffon composes his natural history with a different method and definitions of 'scientific evidence', and can only recognise Aldrovandi's as unscientific.
  

 

What do these two things mean? They do not consign science to the dust; they do not refute the importance of science. What I am saying is that 'science' is a particular mechanism for the production of truth. Its rules are ever-changing, and there is no guarantee that as time passes, we will get closer and closer to the mark until, voila, we have the science that produces absolute and undeniable truth. Big Bang Theory in 300 years' time may be denounced by scientists as bollocks, occupying the same space in children's history-books as countless other discarded theories. Or it may not, and it may be the truth. So, if we forget what science really is, and fall into the illusion that science is and produces absolute truth, then we are trying to take a square peg and put it into a round hole. I am not saying you are guilty of this, Krezack - not at all. This isn't a dissertation on where you are and what your problems are, but simply my ideas on what science is.

 

The second, and more relevant, point that all this makes about science is this. Modern science has decided to use particular tools available to us, such as statistics, the concept of population and normativity, the modern definitions of the empirical and the material, to cultivate a particular way of understanding the world. That means that science does exactly the same thing religion, shamanism, and other things do, but simply in a different way. Modern Christianity (yes, I generalise) use different tools, but to reach the same goal of understanding the world. Christianity uses tools such as faith, prayer, and the logics of spirituality. Now, that means Christianity is actually very logical. What do I mean by logical? I don't mean the popular definition which equates 'logical' with 'common sense' or 'scientific evidence'. I mean that the internal logic of Christianity, which it uses to construct its own perception of reality, is sound and solid, or as much as the scientific one is in its own way. You have two different sunglasses to use to look at the beach; you have two different building-block sets to make a house. Which is better, or closer to the truth? It's very hard, if not impossible, to tell. Why? Humans are incapable of seeing reality as it is. We have to apply some form of mechanism, whether it be the scientific gaze, the religious, or whatever else. So, if you look at something from a scientific POV, of course, religion seems nonsensical, illogical, unfounded. Why? Because Christianity wasn't built with the scientific logic in mind at all. It's like a craftsman who only builds his houses in clay, who looks at a brick house and says, "what the hell are they doing?! That doesn't work". But of course, if you only use their own internal logics to judge them, then everything appears wonderfully and absolutely true. A 'scientific fanatic' is just as blind as the 'religious fanatic'.

 

So. Finally. Back to Krezack's summation as 'doublethink'. I know this is getting away from the original Orwellian meaning, but I would argue that 'singlethink' is actually more dangerous - where you are fully immersed in one particular way of understanding the world, whatever it may be, and fall under the delusion that it is an absolute mechanism that produces absolutes. That is why I would argue that if you are a Christian, you would still be a fool to denounce anything scientific. Christianity does not, I contend, mean giving up everything that is 'secular'... because God is, or should be, 'worldly'. A Christian who refuses to listen to science is like one that refuses to take his medicine or go see a doctor, and instead sits there and prays. He dies; and God says, "you bloody moron, you prayed and so I delivered you medicine, I delivered you a doctor, and what do you do? SIT THERE AND PRAY." Equally, an atheist who believes in science will do well to consider the fallibilities, or rather, the limits of science. But of course, practically, in our daily lives, we can't just hold all these different views in balance, and go nowhere; in the end we have to choose what to believe in and what ideology to live our lives with. I just wanted to stress, in that 'doublethink' passage, that choosing one does not mean the complete denunciation of the other.

 

I'm not happy with how the post turned out - entirely too long and obscures some key points - but it's hard for me to make it clearer without spending even more time on it. Hopefully I have made my general ideas come across; if not, feel free to lambast.

[Hurlshort]

I think you expressed yourself very well Tigranes. Much better than I was managing, that's for sure

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

What is evil?

What is good?

 

The same side of a coin viewed for two seperae angles... There is no good or evil, only perspective.

[walkerguy]

Hey all you athiests won't let me post with claiming science rules over all and I'd bet most mods do too.

[Nick_i_am]

Dude, this is a FORUM, not a 'post what you think and have everyone agree'.

 

You post an opinion in a related thread and people have every right to disagree with you, giving valid reasons.

 

If you can't handle that i'd suggest you visit go-gaia instead.

 

For the record, I wasn't even disagreeing with you, mearly pointing out why other people were, and further pointing out that 'i'm not listening' posts do nothing to further your cause. It's almost as if you WANT people to hate you.

[Hurlshort]

Actually, I asked walkerguy a bunch of questions about his religion, and he seemed to ignore me. Are you interested in actually discussing this or you just trolling the thread? What denomination do you follow? How long have you been active in it?

[Tigranes]

pruuuuunnned, and in last chance salon. Let's see if this has anything productive left. Maybe not.

 

walkerguy, I don't see anyone attacking your posts just because they are Christian. If anything I'm in the Christian camp (though vacillating) and I don't feel I have ever been trounced for it, either. They are raising logical question to your argument - whether you want to reply to them or not is of course, your choice.

[Hurlshort]

The whole reason I'm asking the questions of walkerguy is in an attempt to better understand his perspective, and hopefully support it. I assume walkerguy is fairly young, and there is nothing negative about that, but that usually means he is still learning about his religion of choice. I figured with more information, I might be able to help him clarify his thoughts. Clearly he is following a specific idealogy that he has been taught, which again is very acceptable particularly when you are younger. One of the oldest and most powerful uses of the church is to help guide people in their decisions in life, and while there are always going to be a few bad apples in the bunch, most churches carry a pretty positive message on how to go about living life.

 

Unfortunately many of the people I know who attend church every Sunday also seem to have the most personal problems, but that might just be my bad luck ;-)

[Guest The Architect]

What is evil?

What is good?

 

The same side of a coin viewed for two seperae angles... There is no good or evil, only perspective.

 

Oh of course. Mass genocide isn't evil, is it? Killing people is fun, right? And rape isn't evil, is it? From one perspective, the victim had it coming, right? Setting a kitten on fire isn't evil either, is it? 'Cause flames are kewl, right?

 

When it comes to what is good/right and what is evil/wrong, generally it's more black and white than people may think. Sure, it's not always like that: things like capital punishment and abortion are significantly morally debated topics, but to say there is no good or evil is ridiculous.

 

@Tigranes, I don't think I've ever read a post from you that isn't good.

Edited March 20, 2008 by The Architect

[Krookie]

I find people try to be all "look at me I'm sweet and gothic and dark" by saying stuff like "good and evil are the same thing!" and all that junk are really just idiots. Architect is right, rape and kitten burning is evil. Helping an old lady across the street is good.

 

Get it though your skulls that no one thinks you're cool for acting like good and evil and light and dark are the same thing.