God and Science are not mutually exlcusive......

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That is a ridiculous statement. Some approaches will be naturally more than objective then others. Holy doctrine aims to be infallible and immutable , falsifiability is a key aspect of any objective scientific hypothesis.

This "you are an idealist too" wont wash. Of course I can be an idealist but in science you must guard against this when you test your hypothesis.

I question my beliefs constantly. I don't rely on faith, or suspension of disbelief. This alone makes me more objective than Orthodox religion. Of course we all have cognitive dissonance, but some are in denial of this.

Also I think you are skirting round my points rather than directly addressing them.

What I'm saying is the creation part of religion comes with other doctrine which has nothing to do with creation question.

Therefore in logical terms just becuase B is doctrinally attached to A, doesn't mean to have to accept B is true if A were to be true. So the the Christian hypothesis of having a creator, is not a validation for Christianity as a whole, nor is it a validation of the entirety of the Genesis text. It is Christianity that says becuase genesis may have happened this way, therefore you are expected to believe the rest of the text.

It should be obvious, but the point of that list was to question the B and A relationship. To say you might assume there is a creator, but it doesn't necessarily follow that you have to believe in the rest. Belief in a creator is not a validation of religions.

You can believe it, but it is not scientifically relevant.

You might have heard of the 19th century Deists. They held a similar view that a creator doesn't necessitate deferring to religious authority or text.

Whose 'Holy doctrine'? The Southern Baptist Convention?



We're all 'idealists'. Read your Sorel.



Hang on, how can you be objective when you've already chosen your perspective? You've already determined the criteria by which you are going to assess the world.



Do you know what faith is? Doubt is a huge factor in it. Read R. S. Thomas, or even the Talmud if you feel like putting in a bit of work.



That's fair enough if you're a Deist. Just don't cheat yourself into thinking that you've got any better grip on the truth than anyone else.

No

Science is "know what"

Technology is "know how"

Philosophy is "know why"

Religion is a subset of "know why" in which the knowing why invokes dieties, or a diety.

On the issue of doubt - doubt has always been the companion of faith. Because of doubt, faith can be tested, and can rebound that much stronger. In the Lutheran tradition (which I am of), the old man, Luther, had lost his daughter and was hounded by terrible anger and doubt directed at God (something that doubtlessly would test anyone's faith), but was able to learn and grow from the terrible experience.

The best criteria, however subjective that might be.......

Determining a criteria is necessary and useful, evidently, an epistemology is shown to work and the possibility of failure, the alternative fails even more, science has a working methodology including limiting bias, surely it works better than pseudosciences, and religions are known for supporting pseudosciences.

About objectivity, well yeah, complete objectivity is impossible, however the limitations of objectivity in science, it doesn't necessarily undermine its epistemic value.


What a load of crap. Doubt is NOT a factor of Faith.


Doubt is a key component of the scientific method, and is incompatible with biblical faith.

And don't expect your sources to be taken seriously, might as well you provide a fairy tale for toddlers, it would make no difference.


As I have pointed out earlier, which is shown to work best "gets a better grip on the truth" than anything else. And I'm not referring to absolute certainties.

By the way I and others here do not adhere to relativism when it comes to epistemology as you do, much less philosophical skepticism, so at least I, am not "cheating myself".

I guess it could be.

I read it somewhere once as a science-loving religious Christian's attempt to explain how those two things can co-exist. I think it was a rebuttal to an argument that science renders religion obsolete, worthless, and et al.

I've carried it around ever since, as sort of a comforting talisman reminding me that I can embrace religion (because I like it, I like life better with it than I do without it) without having to reject science. They can co-exist, because they address separate spheres.

Science tells us HOW and WHAT.

"What is autism?" "A certain collection of behaviors, strengths and deficits, and patterns of brain activity."

"How did I get it?" "Either from an inherited mutation, a de novo mutation, or a reaction to something introduced into your system at an early age."

Religion and philosophy give us the opportunity to attempt to tell ourselves (or figure out the Great Puzzle, or whatever) WHY and TO WHAT END.

"Why did this happen to me?!?!"

"The Devil twisted what the Lord made." "To make up for something that happened in a past life." "Because you chose it as part of your cosmic progression." "Where wast thou when I made the wild goats?" "Before I formed you in your mother's womb, I knew you" (AKA, "That's for me to know and you to find out, but I have My reasons."). "It is the will of Allah." Ad infinitum.

Science, of course, is provable at least in the sense that it is repeatable. Religion?? Well, I can prove that believing certain things makes it easier for me to get out of bed and go about life. As far as Big Proof goes?? I guess we'll have to wait until we get there...

...and if there is no "there" to "get to," then I guess it doesn't matter.

It COULD be satirical. I could probably base a pretty good piece of satire on it (although a lot of us could probably do better). I didn't mean it that way, though. It's something that comforts me because I do not wish to discard either science or religion, nor do I wish to be absolutely black-and-white slavishly bound to either one.

You may, of course, fill in the deities/forces of your personal preference for "God." I grew up with God. It seems like a great generic proper noun (Deity never sounded right) to me. I used to type [God], but now I have an uncooperative keyboard that particularly dislikes certain keystrokes.

Like return, backspace, and brackets. I think someone spilled something....

Sciences are known for supporting pseudosciences too, so I don't see where that angle gets you.

I'm glad to hear you agree.



Says who, you the Christian?



Oh great! You've got eight lines of Bible, without any history, commentary or context of any sort. Why didn't you say so? That obviously renders the rest of all religious thought and tradition completely redundant.




I thought you were an open minded scientist, willing to go where the evidence takes you!



Different angles work better for different perspectives.

On the notion of objectivity.

My 35+ years as a Christian was quite subjective. I could rationalize just about any challenge to it. It was only through being open to objectivity that I was forced to change my mind. And that change did not come easily. I fought against it for many years, The hardest thing I had to do was the moment I had to admit to myself that I am no longer a Christian. Why? Because I had invested most of the years of my life in it. Every choice I made for came back in one way or another to my beliefs. Imagine the cost of that investment and then the cost of quitting it.

Objectivity was forced on me, and I'm glad it was.

Evidence please.


Not really, you are discrediting its epistemic value because of it.


I would have thought that in the story Peter almost drowned because of lack of faith (he had doubts!).

The issue is faith and doubt is biblically incompatible, this isn't about crisis of faith, which is a different thing, but rather the place for uncertainty for some things in religion (which it has to be biblically rejected) "I believe God probably exists but it may be possible that he doesn't exist" or "I believe the resurrection was possible but it could be false" there is no place for such falsifiability. Pascal's Wager is incompatible with biblical faith.


That is believing without evidence.


I never said I was a scientist, rather I am a skeptic, in fact I rather be identified as a skeptic than an atheist but that's another issue. Open-mindedness doesn't mean one has to fall for anything; "you don't buy X you are not open-minded" it doesn't work that way.

Ok, I was too dismissive in the sources thing, the talmud isn't something that will be much of of use for this purpose, and it wouldn't make a difference if a rabbi or a pastor connects faith with doubt (anybody can make up anything they want and sell a book) a source has to be reliable and credible, evidence has to be valid you can't just name any crap as evidence. That said, some sources are crappier than others, there is a problem when they lack neutrality and expertise regarding an issue.

I mean for example, creationist text books, they don't serve any purpose.

Some religious text books are not going to be taken too seriously to prove certain points in academic and secular terms, and some probably will.


I can prove Gravity you can't prove The Resurrection, they are not in the same epistemic plane. This sort of relativism is useless.

That is a false dichotomy. Science can also explain why things happen. Science and religion are opposites.

It depends on which gods you are talking about. A vague creator is not in opposition to science. The claims about Yahweh and his doings in the bible are often opposed to modern findings.

It would still be opposed to the principles of science, since there is no evidence for it, and Occam's Razor applies.

Homoeopathy, eugenics, and unquantifiable bucket-loads on autism are the first which spring to mind. Or forget that; have you ever picked up a newspaper and read the health pages in there? These all take place within the scientific community. The former few are largely rejected today but arose from the scientific context and still maintain proponents within that language. This is in much the same way that religions reject [heresies]. In the end it's not the arguments of either which determine the truth, but whoever happens to have the most money.



Do you really think that if that were true you would be the first to notice it, in over two thousand years of Christian history?



You're judging a book from over a thousand years ago by the language of truth standards today. It's as if I were speak Arabic and you were speaking Dutch.



I'm glad to see you change your stance, but it seems quite ignorant to call the Talmud an unreliable source. I fail to see how the work of an Anglican priest are irrelevant either. Are you rejecting these because they challenge your preconceived ideas?

You're looking at it far to teleologically.



If you mean that in a pseudo-Foucauldian sense then I agree completely.

Last edited by YourMum on 17 Sep 2014, 5:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh right, so that's why the study of maths and science are seen as so important in (non-Wahhabi/Deobandi) madrasahs, and explains why the Roman Catholic church is quite possibly the most important scientific institution of all time.

Right, they were considered before and now rejected, and few supporters still exist, I don't see a problem there.


Actually I would have thought that YOU would not notice


I am a former christian, so I pretty much have a good idea of christian faith, and again, I don't mean things like crisis of faith. Faith itself has no place for uncertainty in it, is incompatible, nothing more to say.

Interestingly, different minds make different ways of looking at reality. Some folks see more of subjective truths in the inner life that makes the outer life real and some folks see more of the objective truths that make the outer world be an illusory inner world, too. Yes, that's an oversimplification but nature vs. nurture is always a balance of human being, and is very much determined by the culture/environment a human being grows up in.

The more culture there is more often the less time there is to look within with instinct to find the greater truths of life, intuitively.

Part of why folks who live in poverty wherever one looks in the world may have brighter eyes and more depth of emotional life is they live more in an internal world of instinct, empathy, intuition, and love, than one of mechanical cognition to determine all the complex contingencies of societal norm to even make it through life to step one of getting a mate and finding some dam way to get subsistence, when the parental coverage, if you will, runs out.

Religion addresses the subconscious archetypes of mind and emotion that science is finally now just catching to find some understanding for. Science also is just now even coming to a common understanding in scientific terms of how human empathy works and yes breaks too.

There are many metaphors and parables of religion used to defeat the literally thinking mind. One can attempt to understand that any heresy of moving away from the literal ways of social norm in cultures of the past and unfortunately many cultures of today is a punishment that can range from flogging to death.

Poetry in all its forms is how historical folks with deeper minds delving into the internal instinctual mind relate truths to help others who have the ability to think this way have a better life.

The human attributes of relative free will, faith, belief, hope, and yes unconditional love are real human attributes and powerful ones that can and have changed the world many times before and will always do this as long as human beings are human beings, and perhaps not manipulated by genetics to remove their metaphorical soul from their body, or in an environmental way to remove their metaphorical souls from their body, through a way of life in culture and or fundamentalist religion through limited mechanical cognition thinking that basically kills the instinctual 'soul' of human being.

There are literally thinking Scientists and fundamentalist religious folks in the world, who seem very similar to me, except they follow the rules of different text and culture. However, both can be fundamentalist in effect and merit, as they leave out a huge part of human being, per the subjective emotional part that is the true 'emoter' or motivator of all of human being productivity and creativity.

And for fundamentalist religious folks who repress human sexuality, this does the similar as they walk down the aisles of Wal-Mart with little to no spark or skip in their step, as sexual freedom and libido is a great source of human productivity and creativity too.

So in short science shows the mistakes of religion and religion shows the mistakes of science.

Most people don't do leisure reading for science abstracts as they are devoid of human emotions and in effect boring as hell for the human learning process as emotions are core to human beings learning, whether through humor or whatever device of emotion may be used.

Science is good at premises and determining what works and what does not work, but it horrible so far at basic human reciprocal communication that does require emotion to work well for the populace as a whole.

Part of the issue there is inherent in the folks who are doing the science obviously as a mind spent mostly in mechanical cognition rather than social or empathizing cognition becomes what it is fed.

Nature vs. Nurture; there is no escaping Mother Nature or cultural nurture. However, there are many ways to understand it, overcome the functional disabilities it creates in humanity, and have the best full balanced human being with both emotion and logic well balanced.

And yes, that requires a great deal of time, effort, and focus to find the success that makes a balanced life true and very enjoyable every now of now.

But to either discount the deep human emotional archetypal meanings of religions in general or the scientific method of science is a mistake in my opinion and one or the other is the source of great human suffering in my opinion, too.

Life has always been about the balance of the metaphor of so-called Yin and Yang; that is human nature and will never change as long as human beings are human beings.

Science is just now getting around to touching the surface of the archetypes of human sub-conscious mind of emotion.

For me science only proves the most meaningful metaphors of religion that ring true, from the ancient sacred texts attributed to the man Yeshua aka Jesus, and many other philosophers, like 'As above so below', and looking within to find the reflection of ALL IT IS aka GOD of nature, everywhere one looks AND FEELS.

Some of the most important lessons to date, are rarely learned in school; the most vital elements too, of simply being a successful well balanced human being per logic and emotion.

Just because a person is not able to understand a parable or poetry, in general, does not mean there is not great truth in gems of emotional human archetypal knowledge housed within. The journey to understand it for those who cannot can indeed be a very long journey, if ever reached in one lifetime, I know for sure, from a personal perspective now, too.

Even reading more than 140 characters is a challenge for some, who yes definitely do have the potential to read much more, and understand more too, if one finds a way to escape the illusions and reality of culture now.