I just find it interesting that someone like you, who appears to have some knowledge, can take something like this so far. Well, I don’t find it unusual, but interesting.
Here’s a man, claiming to be enlightened, to have understanding and to have a grasp of reality, using science to back up his equation. Now I’m sorry, but as someone who also knows a few things, I know that science, a religion in and of itself, is NOT the worlds answer to all of our questions. In truth, the scientific method taught in our schools is NOT the true scientific method. You know that as well, don’t you?
You should also know that science is merely a tool meant to take observations and, after all is said and one, to comment on those observations. And what’s silly is, how can you be so absolutely certain that what you have not seen, that is what existed before you, really existed at all? Sure, you can take things that are here now and use that as your evidence, but where is the true science in that? You’re only observing what you see and know now, not what really was or wasn’t. There is absolutely no way science can prove or disprove anything about the origins of life, about where this solar system or universe came from, because we were simply not there. And this tool we call science is just a tool, created by human minds, molded and shaped to fit the confines of our understanding. Where science is good is when it is used to do what it is good at doing – observing and commenting. Where science fails is when it tries to enforce and justify a philosophy (whether of “intelligent design†or not).
To go further with my point, our modern understanding of science began with philosophy. It began as a thought and as a way of looking at life. So science, which was once a philosophy (even used by many Christian philosophers), still IS a philosophy, and philosophies change as societies change, as people change. Science will change, and in fact has MANY times since its methods were invented. Today the idea (yes philosophy) of no intelligent design will be pushed, tomorrow it will be disproved by the very thing that tried to substantiate it. It’s been this way for thousands and thousands of years, and you know this.
But through all of this, there is one thing that has NEVER changed (well, the principals have never changed anyway), and that is the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Heck, your science has found the very places and even artifacts pertaining to the life of the Christ. But put that aside, and simply think about how you put your faith in the religion of science, a constantly changing and disproving liquid, while there is something changeless and timeless that exists, which calls you by name – a rock that never moves or breaks. Though it breaks the heads of many who do not believe.
It’s all faith, sir, and you well know that there is no science or philosophy that can substantiate your claims to the origins of life – because we were NOT there to witness it. But we WERE there to witness Christ and his death. And we WERE there to witness his resurrection. It’s written in the history books – and not just the Bible. The crumbs of true enlightenment lead to the cross – they always have, and always will.
So push your science all you want to, but I hope and pray that you will come to a realization of the truth in your walk, and in your search for it. Because only the truth will set you free, and freedom is what you are searching for.
Roy D Carlson
Roy D Carlson, one last time,
‘I think it’s time, Gill, that you stop drinking scientific milk and move on to more solid methodology’
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I am scratching my head about this one. Throughout your post, on the one hand you have upheld faith in the utterly unprovable as a positive virtue, and have on the other hand sought to define science as ‘only’ about ‘things’, and not, therefore, relevant to faith. I find this really very worrying. Deep inside, you must see that, between ‘making decisions based on the observable facts of the world and people around you’ and ‘making decisions based on whatever you feel like and calling it faith’, one is significantly better than the other as a way to live. (You will hate this description, which you will see as a caricature of your faith. It is not. Look at what you have told us logically. And read on.)
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Before you give up on me as constitutionally unable to comprehend where you are coming from, let me quickly say that I used to be Christian. Not just an ‘I reckon there’s a god, maybe, so I must be a Christian’ sort of Christian. An honest, thought-hard-before-I-accepted-Jesus, went-to-Bible-study type of Christian. I *do* understand the powerful, powerful sense you must have of your faith as just being *right*, of it *feeling* right, of it making *sense* of the world in a way that all the jabbering on about ‘evidence’ in the world will never achieve. I understand that you know that the more effort you put into your faith, the more your faith rewards you, and that every time you struggle with doubt, your faith will feel all the stronger when you have triumphed.
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Yes. I remember all of this.
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This is going to be hard to accept: It’s *better* outside religion. Honestly. Maybe there was a time when you weren’t religious and you had a hard time. Maybe you feel god gives your life all its direction and meaning. It’s probably true, in fact, that your faith has taught you a huge amount about yourself as a person, who you are, and what you need.
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If you feel that, then you have got out of faith everything good that it has to offer. It is time to move beyond faith, and into reality.
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It’s hard when you become an atheist. Harder than when you become a Christian, in fact. As an atheist, you have to get used to being without someone whom you’ve spent a long time believing was always there for you. It takes time.
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But the rewards! Those people who are all around you – they matter *so* much more. People are what life is made of. You will never spend another night afraid that someone you care about and whom you know to be a wonderful person is going to go to hell for reasons that contradict every bit of *human* moral fibre in your body.
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You can look at the universe in honest awe. You can be completely flabbergasted at the majesty and complexity of life. And you can share in a sense of hard-won, justified pride that bit by bit we’re learning about it – and be awestruck afresh at how every discovery raises a raft of new questions.
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You may miss your god, but the feeling of *knowing* him to be false is wonderful in a completely different way from the feeling of ‘putting faith’ in him. You have this great sense of intellectual honesty by knowing you have faced up to the facts, weighed them up, made the tough decision and embraced them. It’s challenging, because you have to live without a habitual support. But it’s invigorating, uplifting, inspiring, self-assuring and *right* feeling in a way quite unlike theism.
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A lot of things in the world that seem threatening when you are a theist suddenly are not threatening any more. And, the things that *are* threatening are things that are *actually*, really threatening – the things that could really harm you and your loved ones. You can use your own faculties or reasoning, unhindered, and refer to those of other people in confidence. You are no longer being told what your instincts should be doing. They work properly.
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And that niggling doubt that we’re always told is a natural part of Christianity – it’s gone. You can have *proper* doubts about things without feeling that you just *have* to overcome them. It’s fine to be doubtful. That’s just using your brain. And, if you come up with something new, it’s not ‘contrary to His Word’, it’s a *discovery*! (Scientists, unlike god, accept being proven wrong as a step in the right direction. Sure, they’re not always best pleased about it – they’re only human – but they accept that fallibility is an inescapable part of progress. Science is all about truth. Ever wonder where the word science comes from? Look it up: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=science)
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That’s all carrot. There is a sort of a stick. Like it or not, whether you accept reality or choose a belief based on something else, you still share reality – the world of those scientific ‘things’ – with the rest of us. Some of those scientific things are *us*. We’re very worried about the way you feel able to view us as less important than someone you can’t show us, who won’t speak to us, who contradicts the world we see around us and who has prompted a lot of people to do a lot of horrific things. We are worried about you. We are sympathetic to you. But we are also aware, based on the abundant evidence of history, that people of faith are an enormous threat to us. As individuals, as groups and as a species. We are worried, alright.
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I’d rather end on the positive stuff, though. So I’ll refer you to Davey, who says things much better, and much more concisely, than I do. Go to the thread called ‘for my part, my christian beliefs’ and scan down to Davey’s thread of Oct 23rd, 2006 at 4:25 pm Read away. It’s all true.
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Thanks for your time.
To my dear Roy D C. :
“You cannot prove what you do not knowâ€â€”but you can prove what you do know, right? And if there’s evidence towards something then you can’t just ignore it. Evolution is not death or the afterlife. It’s something that is well on its way to becoming proven.
“You know, by faith, that there is nothing - and thus you have nothing to hope in beyond the grave.â€â€”I believe in god. I also believe that god doesn’t want us chalking every little thing up to ‘faith’ when we could very easily prove it ourselves. *shock aw horror!*
“So faith in Christ Jesus has been disproven?â€â€”Funny, I don’t remember saying that. Have faith in Jesus, I don’t care—it’s faith that evolution is wrong because of god that’s been –more or less- disproved via evolution. Kindly don’t put words in my mouth.
“See, good science realizes that it is the study of THINGS, of the MATERIAL UNIVERSE, of MATTER, and of our EXPERIENCES with THINGS.‗ I agree. So why can’t you agree with evolution, I see no conflict here.
“if you dare call yourself a scientist.â€â€”I’m no scientist. Never have been, never will be. Planning on being a creative writing major, actually.
“please stop making this an “us - them†thing.†–but it IS an ‘us-them’ thing. Us being people who can accept that science has some answers that go against faith, and that science is right in that debate because science has supporting evidence and faith doesn’t, as with evolution; Them being people who…..kinda can’t. (Although I don’t remember calling it an ‘us-them thing’, either, come to think of it.)
“‘I think it’s time, Gill, that you stop drinking scientific milk and move on to more solid methodology’†First of all, milk is nasty and I do my utter best to avoid it. Second of all, which out of the two of us is arguing for faith—which can hardly be considered ‘solid methology’?
Lastly, your comments on ‘bad science’…again I ask, who discerns what ‘bad science’ is? Is there some man in a pretty white lab coat in charge of all of this? Even if a hypothesis is proven false, that doesn’t make it ‘bad science’; as far as I understand it, evolution has yet to be proven false and seems to be very ‘good science’, really.
But what about faith having answers that go beyond science? Again, I don’t have anymore trouble with science as the next person who sees its benefit. But when one assumes that science goes beyond faith, it’s no different than saying faith goes beyond science. It’s the same argument through a different pair of glasses. I have faith, you have science. I believe in God, you believe in god. Does science, or should science interfere with that? The trouble with evolution is that, by its nature, it evolves every day. Now, I have heard it say on the Discovery Channel, there are some who see evidence that life never started here on earth at all. But I digress…Why is evolution taught in our public schools? Why, knowing that evolutionary theory is no theory at all? Well, before I answer that, here are some things to think about…
“Evolutionary theory, as it is normally presented in the schools and in the popular media, is less than honest in at least six major ways”…
The first problem is that no one ever teaches that evolution is taught on a purely material sence. In other words, it assumes - yes “begs the question” that all there is is material. This is NOT science, but materialism - a predominant philosophy in the mid to late 19th century. The progressive movement took this idea and loaded into what we now call the evolutionary theory. To completly or even partially accept the evolutionary theory REQUIRES that the person completly deny the possibility of something beyond the material. Personally I think that is very short sighted. Thus this is where I coin the term “bad science.” When someone uses the evolutionary theory to try and prove there is no god (God), he closes his mind to anything beyond himself. That is at best, foolish. Now you say that you believe in god well enough. And I will trust that you are open minded enough to consider what that “could” mean.
The second problem: biogenesis. Evolutionary theory avoides trying to answer the question: “how did life come from non-life?” They claim that it’s not important, but the DNA is what is important. Where that DNA came from, well…we’ll know one day, but for sure it is from chance, not from design. This, of course goes against what thermodynamics states not to mention the information theory.
The third problem: the mechanism for macroevolution. How does a bat come from a mouse or a human from a fish? Classical and neo-darwinism says that “the answer is selection pressure acting on the natural variation in a species population over many generations–that is, protracted microevolution.” Macroevolution requires more than this, however, in that it requires a way to change or add to the complex structure of genetic material in such a way that the organism doesn’t completly turn to goo. Evolution offers no way to explain this. This continues to cause even the most predominant scholars to think twice. (but they don’t teach that in our schools, do they?)
Here is a quote from Murray Eden, a professor of Information Theory at MIT: “No currently existing formal language can tolerate random changes in the symbol sequence which expresses its sentences. Meaning is almost invariably destroyed. Any changes must be syntactically lawful ones. I would conjecture that what one might call ‘genetic grammaticality’ has a deterministic explanation and does not owe its stability to selection pressure acting on random variation.” Interesting how one would conclude this - one who has done as much research as the next guy who accepts evolution as the final answer. Could culture/world view have anything to do with this? Hmmmm. Again, why do they teach these things in our schools?
The forth problem: fossil records…Darwin himself said about fossil records: “the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against [my] theory.” There are GAPS in fossil records! Paleontology does NOT fill those gaps…the very theory of evolution itself is dependant on paleontology, and it is flawed and contradicts itself! So who has jumped to conclusions here? And who decided that these unfounded things should be taught in our schools? Why does he want to teach lies to our kids? Could it be more than scientific discovery? Could it be politics? Could it be something more, like man trying to play God? Hmmm. Again, I digress.
The fifth problem: global extinction. It took HUGE amounts of energy to create the Paleozoic and Mesozoic formations. MUCH more energy than we can observe today. So….what happened? Where is all that energy? Our observations can’t tell us, so we must rely on assumptions…yes faith. I believe that energy to be the Word of God. But we can’t speak of that and be considered wise in a world that can only acknowledge material.
The sixth problem: radiometric dating. Radiometric techniques are in glaring conflict with most non-radiometric means for estimating geological time! For example, the rate of soluble ion accumulation in the oceans…Concentrations of highly soluble species like sodium, that are far below saturation levels in ocean water, are readily measurable in the world’s rivers. By simply dividing the current mass of sodium in the oceans by the current rate of sodium deposition show that the age of the oceans is less than 2% of radiometric dating suggests about the earth. Why? Again, the small extent of physical diffusion of radiogenic helium measured in highly radioactive zircon crystals in Precambrian granite from cores drilled at Fenton Hill in the 1970’s yields a dramatically shorter age than that obtained by radiometric methods. Why is this?? The state of preservation of bone protein in dinosaur bone from many locations in the world, including New Mexico’s own Seismosaurus, likewise suggests profound conflict with radiometric techniques. Why??? And this is just an example of the many problems with radiometric dating. Yet the evolutionists swear by it. It doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t answer my original question. Why is such a flawed and inconsistant collection of ideas being taught like pure fact in our school system? If your child came home and told you that his teacher taught him that everything rotates around the flat earth, wouldn’t you want to set him straight? And yet, these theories - theories that spit all over what science is all about - are being forced down the throats of our children. Many are told they are fools for believing in any sort of god or more powerful being beyond us. Why? I can tell you! Because we human beings do not want God. We want to be our own gods. And we doom ourselves because of it. It is what makes the “us” and the “them” one in the same.
So I live by faith that in spite of my own foolishness, I have a clear answer to life’s three questions. You go by propositions that your ever changing facts are the answer. You say you believe in “god”, but I will tell you: that is not good enough. In the realm of faith, even the demons believe in God and tremble. “god” just can’t stand up to that.
J,
are you trying to convert me? Are you trying to save me from the destructive and self-centered life of faith? Come now, J, you ought to know then, as one who was a Christian, that I would not trade my Father in heaven for your father on earth. You could throw every piece of proven (or otherwise) statements at me and it would not cause me to change my mind. Because, faith is not a matter of my mind. Faith is a living breathing thing that you cannot kill or destroy with words. I wonder why you would walk away from it…I pray it wasn’t because of what some of our more fundamental churches preach and practice - works righteousness.
“But what about faith having answers that go beyond science?”
Given enough time and enough fresh lab coats, everything that is answerable can be answered. Everything else has, being unanswerable, has no answer. Faith has no answers, it assumes that the answers provided to it by church/god/your elder brother/a bloke on the street/any fictional higher power are reliable and unquestionable. Faith, far from having any answers, asks no *questions*.
“Faith is a living breathing thing”
Then you can show it to me. A photo will do.
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“Faith is a living breathing thing”
Then it can be killed. Perhaps not with words, but it’s worth a go.
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“I would not trade my Father in heaven for your father on earth”
Neither would I. Your heavenly father is a fiction, whereas my dad is a nice man who shares his stash of fine single malt whiskys whenever I go round to see him.
“But what about faith having answers that go beyond science?â€
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My imagination has more answers than even faith, so what?
faith IS the imagination of explaining the (yet) unknown. Of course we can’t explain anything yet, that what science is all about: research! Faith is the fear to die and be dead, so life won’t have a meaning. Most people can’t imagine being gone, so they believe in something. But, be honest, as sad as it is: what meaning has life if there is an afterlife? And why did god make everything so complicated: DNA, metabolism, Fossils …. if he is almighty, why does he need beings so complex? Why aren’t we just beanbags filled with his spirit then????
“Why, knowing that evolutionary theory is no theory at all? “–Just so you know, a theory is fine to teach in science class. Yes, there are gapsd in the evolutionary theory, yes, it could be disproven one day–but as a theory based on the scientific method, it can be taught in science class. (Gravety is a theory too, remeber?)
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“You go by propositions that your ever changing facts are the answer. You say you believe in “godâ€, but I will tell you: that is not good enough. In the realm of faith, even the demons believe in God and tremble. “god†just can’t stand up to that.”–What ‘ever-changing facts’, exactly? Theories aren’t facts, they can and do change. People thought the world was flat, now they know it’s round. Are we not supposed to believe in science because it changes as we learn more?
Lastly, I find your last few comments quite funny. Are you calling me a demon? *I wish, they’ve got cool horns.* My faith in ‘god’ is strong enough that I don’t feel the need to go around trying to convince other people to agree with me, and it’s strong enough to accept evolution and still be there. Obviously you can’t say the same…..I kinda feel bad for you, that you can’t just live your life with your faith instead of going around forcing it on others.
“J,
are you trying to convert me? Are you trying to save me from the destructive and self-centered life of faith? Come now, J, you ought to know then, as one who was a Christian, that I would not trade my Father in heaven for your father on earth. You could throw every piece of proven (or otherwise) statements at me and it would not cause me to change my mind. Because, faith is not a matter of my mind. Faith is a living breathing thing that you cannot kill or destroy with words. I wonder why you would walk away from it…I pray it wasn’t because of what some of our more fundamental churches preach and practice - works righteousness. ”
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J is not asking you to trade yor father in heaven of his father on earth. What he is asking you is to trade the warm comfort of the christian lies and help us search for the truth, but if you do it involves you passing a test first.
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I hate to use this but remember the Matrix, where the lead character has to choose between to two pills,
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Every human in deep down knows that death is the end, otherwise we would not go to such lengths at staying alive. The question is can you face up to this?
OMG! you are so completly convinced that christianity is a lie. I can see that talking to you people is like talking to more brick walls. but you know what? I don’t do this to convinced the learned and wise to believe in God. I do this in hopes that one fool - one person out of a million who might be reading this would be willing to at least take on the challange of seeing for himself. Getting outside of his shell of piety and asking the question “what if?” If only one person came to faith by what i wrote, then my mission has been accomplished - and i shall meet you one day in paradise
@Roy D Carlson
..OMFSM! you are so completly convinced that pastafarianism is a lie. I can see that talking to you people is like talking to more brick walls. but you know what? I don’t do this to convinced the learned and wise to believe in FSM I do this in hopes that one fool - one person out of a million who might be reading this would be willing to at least take on the challange of seeing for himself. Getting outside of his shell of piety and asking the question “what if?†If only one person came to FSM by what i wrote, then my mission has been accomplished - and i shall meet you one day in FSM heaven.
RAmen
Upon reading deeper, I see see the initial post has already been well covered by the ever vigilant, eloquent and tireless gill and J. (amongst others)
RAmen
Why are you people so close minded? Why can’t the possibility even exist in your mind? Why? Must everything be answered with science? Are you that dull? As the very faith I believe in states “God has made foolish the wisdom of the world…” and “the wisdom of the wise shall be made dull…” and as I say in my own words…When you stand for something that does not stand on its own, you stand for nothing. Use that against me if you wish, but I know the truth. And you’re arrogance and blindness is beginning to annoy me. You so easily and wholeheartedly give into a system of beliefs that are all based on what you can see, and you use it to deny what you cannot see. Don’t you see the foolishness in that? Don’t you? Don’t you?? If you could, then you would not despise me, and you would not despise God. But you are no more wise than the lies you so trust in and rely on to get you through the day. I was trying to be civil with you, but I think civility went out the window when you accuse me of being foolish for believing in what I don’t see, and when you accused yourselves of being demons. I never called you a demon, gill, those were your words and your conclusions. Some science-minded people you are, jumping to conclusions before you even weigh the evidence. You hypocrates. You say that your enlightened thinking is so in touch with reality, but you are so blinded by your wisdom that you wouldn’t recognize reality if it bit you in the butt and danced naked in front of you. And I thought being civil with you would make you at least respect what I have to say. NO, instead you mock me, but not me, you mock your creator.
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Well here’s what your creater says “have your wisdom and your great knowledge. Use it to try and make me disappear. But in the end, every knee will bow, and oh yes, every tongue will confess, including yours.” I have no more words to say to you, though I’m sure you’re happy. Double-minded people.
@Roy D Carlson
Anger at not being able to convert someone to your own christian belief? What about all the other religions? Do you feel this same anger at not being able to convince them?
“Onward christian soldiers marching unto war” as usual !!! You also appear to have a fundmental misunderstanding of the differences between science and theology. How would you feel if I told you that I was bought up as a Hindu?
How insulting and intolerant of you to declare yours is the only true god.
“Why are you people so close minded?”
By the way, exactly what did you expect when you posted on this site. When I re-read your posts the term “narcism” springs to mind. Look up the correct meaning of the term in a dictionary.
ps. “When you stand for something that does not stand on its own, you stand for nothing.”
The disease cures discovered through years of scientidic research seem to be coming along quite well. A great product of our “beliefs”. Let’s hope you never require one so as you won’t feel like a “hypocrates”.
It’s been a pleasure.
Roy D Carlson
You sir, by your own hand, bring your belief system more disrepute than any of your adversaries could ever dream of.
“Why, knowing that evolutionary theory is no theory at all?………………
………To completly or even partially accept the evolutionary theory REQUIRES that the person completly deny the possibility of something beyond the material. Personally I think that is very short sighted. Thus this is where I coin the term “bad science. …..”
Wonder why we have sucessfully used flies, worms and rats (mainly) for biomedical research into diseases and come up with a better and often a new understanding of these as well as successfull treatments (cures)? The reason these organisms are used (other than the fact we don’t get a lot of humans volnteering to be guinea pigs) is based on an understanding of evolutionary relationships between these different organisms and humans. (gene simularities)
Also I do not believe it was you who coined the term “bad science”.
Bloody bigots!
Roy, you can call us close minded, and we can serve that claim right back.
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The simple fact here is that we (well, the more pedantic among us) are either scientists or hold a skeptical viewpoint. Now what this means to us, is that we simply like a logical argument behind what we believe, and given the choice, we will tend toward something that we can either test, or at the least reason.
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To us, God is a dillemma.
How can we test for a god? There is no lab test that lets us do so.
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How can we explain it’s actions? Compassion? Sin? Hell, even Gnosticisms explanations (big fight, good V bad) are opposed by observable nature.
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The violence that marrs the world can not be justified as the action of any decent being.
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Which then begs the question of course, why are we supposed to respect something like that?
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You say we always resort to science. Of course. We like logic here.
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Science is merely a way of looking at the world logically. We can’t verify something, why should we believe it?
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Before you say the same thing about evolution as what I am saying about faith, I would like you to remember the existance of microevolution has been confirmed beyond doubt of all who have even the slightest understanding of the theory behind it.
While macroevolution is a little harder to picture, it does follow the exact same mechanism, merely over a longer time frame.
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What evidence we have does not disprove macroevolution.
We cannot prove it conclusively, put at least it is an explanation that follows a logical structure of the same form as a quantifiable mechanism.
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We have some small chance of explaining what we see through science. We don’t through god. For me, that iswhat it all comes down too.
Roy D Carlson,
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Why do you belittle my faith? I have faith. I believe in the FSM. It takes more faith to follow a radical god than a mainstream, popular god. It’s easy to go with the flow. Try swimming against the current once in a while.
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I can accept the possibility that the Christian god may be real. I see no proof of it, but like all things, it has the ‘potential’ to be true. Why can you not see the same potential in the FSM?
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We are not the close minded ones. You are the one that cannot accept the possibility that we may be right and you may be wrong. No need to convert to FSM. All I ask is that you understand that Jehovah, Yahweh, Vishnu, FSM, and the Great Green Arkleseizure all have the potential to be real.
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OEJ, aspiring FSM Theologian