Do We Need Faith?

[Truthseeker]

When religion goes beyond a hobby - e.g. when it starts to influence governments or gets imposed on people who didn't choosr it - that's when the problems begin.

I do believe that the ethics of religion should influence all spheres of life, including government. It should not be imposed on people.

 

[Dao Hao Now]

Which computer program do you download to tell you whether to marry Nicole or Sharon?

Who's going to win next years superbowl.

Anyone can predict where the train that left Omaha and is traveling 65 miles per hour will be but how does a breakdown or derailment affect this calculation. Man didn't invent mathematics. We merely observed that quantifying logic was a useful tool.

Wow, really?

Of course none of these questions concern science since they are not about understanding the way our surroundings function.
Surely you recall your false claim about not being able to determine what causes a sunrise other than subjectively.
To paraphrase:
“It might be the planet rotates or it might be that God does it”.
This is a question about the way our surroundings function…. a question that science can reliably answer.
Not religion.



Since I don’t know Nicole or Sharon…, I guess none?
Since nearly half of marriages (at least in the US) end in divorce and most of the citizens report to be religious…..assuming they prayed about it….
religions don’t seem to be doing to well in this department.
I wouldn’t describe it as reliable….would you?
Seems about the same odds as a coin toss!

Who’s going to win the super bowl?
Again not a science question….
However, applied statistics could narrow the odds quite a bit.
How well do you suppose your religion would be at predicting the outcome?
Tell you what….
How about you pray to your God to reveal to you the answer to your question and head out here to Vegas and put your money where your mouth is.
Especially before the season starts, the casinos will give you some great teaser odds.
We see it all the time…people praying as they place their bets, while the house cleans up!

Anyone can predict where the train that left Omaha and is traveling 65 miles per hour will be but how does a breakdown or derailment affect this calculation.

Again, not a question of science.
Lucky for us though, science leads to technology which monitors travel (air, train, and auto traffic) and alerts us in real time to accidents, congestion, and weather events that affect the flow of traffic so we can choose alternate routes etc.
You know….there’s apps for that.

Do you get feedback on your prayers for safe travel in real time and at great distances by revelation?….
You know; without relying on technology which was provided by science?

Man didn't invent mathematics. We merely observed that quantifying logic was a useful tool.

And we’ve also, with the help of mathematics and logic, devised science as a very useful tool (our best yet) to help us understand the nature of reality and our surroundings.

If we had stopped at “God did it”, we wouldn’t have the trains, planes, and automobiles…..
the computers, phones (smart or otherwise) internet, satellites, instant global communication, refrigeration, modern medicine,
etc., etc., etc., the list goes on seemingly for ever.
Including knowing where and when to go to see a total eclipse of the sun!

 

[Dao Hao Now]

I might suggest doing the calculations (looking them up) and praying I can be somewhere with no clouds. This would be the old definition of "praying" which is "studying" and "attending to" available evidence.

In other words relying on information that science and technology provided?
And of course praying for good measure.

If religion was as reliable a method…..
Why wouldn’t you just pray and wait for revelation from God and depend on it?
Why would you seek out the assistance of scientific knowledge?

 

[Dao Hao Now]

Nothing in science is proven.

Pray tell….what in religion is proven?

 

[ChristineM]

I mean there are things that can't be put in a lab and subject to a controlled and repeated experiment. These are personal experiences not scientific ones. That's why I brought up experiences and asked you if a mother's love for her child was solely due to oxytocin or if there was a meaning beyond treating the parent-child bond as mere biology.

A child exists the mother gave birth to it and physically nurtures it. These things are falsifiable, No faith needed

 

[MonkeyFire]

If an atheist said you don’t need to be perfectly happy and safe, and then God showed up who would you believe in.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I do believe that the ethics of religion should influence all spheres of life, including government. It should not be imposed on people.

Anything that influences government is imposed on people.

Just make sure that whatever ethics you try to influence "all spheres of life" with, whatever its source, can be justified with your - or any - religion.

 

[QuestioningMind]

Faith and evidence is the only path to truth about God. God can never be demonstrated to exist.

I'm sure that faith is also the path to truth about magical pixies existing as well. In fact faith is the path to believing that absolutely any fantastical claim is true, which makes faith a completely unreliable path to finding actual truth. And since magical pixies and any sort of god being can never be demonstrated to exist, I will never have sufficient reason to warrant belief in either of them.

 

[PureX]

Evidence isn't proof, which is why we need faith. The ability to trust in a possibility without knowing it to be a probability. Knowledge does not negate faith because we never have that much knowledge.

 

[QuestioningMind]

The essence of faith is fewness of words and abundance of deeds; he whose words exceed his deeds, know verily his death is better than his life.
(Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 156)

This is a different concept of faith than you are used to, I'm sure.

True. My concept of faith has a clear and precise definition, not just an abstract collection of words designed to sound like they're filled with wisdom, when in actuality they convey no real clarity.

'The essence of faith is fewness of words and abundance of deeds'? Is this a clumsy attempt to say that a person should have faith in people who say little and do much? If so, then I have to conclude that 'he whose words exceed his deeds, know verily his death is better than his life..' is a clumsy way of trying to say that it's better for such a person to die than to go on living, since 'his death is better than his life' COULD be interpreted to mean that in death he'll be rewarded with a better existence than he had in life.

It's far from a workable definition of what it means for someone to believe something on faith.

 

[cladking]

There is actually a program at NASA that scans our solar system (particularly the asteroid belt) and identifies and tracks all discernible asteroids and other bodies that could do sizable damage to earth as an early warning system.

If a rouge asteroid ever gets us we'll probably not see it coming and if we do it will be picked up by an amateur. The comets we see can be predicted and it's very unlikely any are going to get us anytime soon.

Comets are hardly the only threat to the continued existence of humans or the planet.

Do you believe a religion could do a better and more reliable job at any of these tasks?

Mebbe some religion would help you cope if we saw it coming?

 

[Dao Hao Now]

If a rouge asteroid ever gets us we'll probably not see it coming and if we do it will be picked up by an amateur. The comets we see can be predicted and it's very unlikely any are going to get us anytime soon.

You’re the one who brought them up while clutching at straws.

 

[gnostic]

e.g. when it starts to influence governments or gets imposed on people who didn't choosr it - that's when the problems begin.

My thought, exactly.

Religion and politics is a recipe for disaster.

 

[Dao Hao Now]

Mebbe some religion would help you cope if we saw it coming?

I’ll take that as an admission that reliance on God would fail at these tasks, and an attempt to save face.

Once again science is already at work;
on methods to redirect any threatening incoming bodies and have already had successes in landing probes on moving asteroids and comets.

Waiting on Gods assistance has never had a material benefit for anyone aside from possibly being a crutch to soothe their fragile psyche.

 

[gnostic]

"Science" is not religion. But among those who don't understand how and why it works it is a religion and its Peers are the high Priests.

What baloney.

Science isn’t religion.

Peers are not priests.

Why do you insist on making up bs conspiracy theory about peer review?

Only a person who make up 40,000 year old science and 40,000 year old metaphysical language wouldn’t know anything about how science work or how language work. Your 40,000 language & science are your belief and your religion, where you are it’s high priest.

What you believe are just a bunch pseudoscience and pseudo-language fantasies.

 

[Trailblazer]

I'm sure that faith is also the path to truth about magical pixies existing as well. In fact faith is the path to believing that absolutely any fantastical claim is true, which makes faith a completely unreliable path to finding actual truth. And since magical pixies and any sort of god being can never be demonstrated to exist, I will never have sufficient reason to warrant belief in either of them.

Faith is unreliable unless there is evidence that supports the faith.
There is no evidence for magical pixies but there is evidence for God.

 

[cladking]

Of course none of these questions concern science since they are not about understanding the way our surroundings function.

All questions can not be answered by science. Sure, with the current level of scientific knowledge we can compute the time the sun comes up to many decimal places but of what real value is that if even on the ocean the apparent sunrise is dependent on tides imparted by the sun and moon and even by mars when it is nearby? Most people live among hills and mountains. No two experts will agree about any prediction without extensive data and that there are no confounding variables. I might remind you that just like ancient science, modern science was invented to make predictions and while it does an excellent job on some things there are still butterflies in China that will upset them. Experts can't even agree on what has already happened because in most real ways even understanding events is a sort of backward prediction. It is irrelevant that so many people have no clue to the vast ignorance of our species and our science. Rather than seeing anomalies and what we don't know they are blinded by the countless trillions of things we do know. This is simply the way our species has always thought; we know everything because everything we see is what we already believe.

There are no answers to any practical questions like whom to marry or how life arose and the only predictions possible are like a parlor trick that work because we can model experiment and apply a quantified logic called mathematics.

 

[cladking]

Science isn’t religion.

Peers are not priests.

These are your beliefs not mine. Remember you're the one who believes theory is based on evidence and logic. You're the one who consults Peers as the arbiter of all things. You're the one who has a ready answer to every question regardless of the fact that science can prove nothing. it is your models and beliefs that are flawed but we've never spoken of any of mine because you don't debate or discuss, you lecture.

The opinion of Peers is often nonsense. How it's possible you can't see this is remarkable. When I list times in the past they were each and all wro0ng you tell me that that was back before we knew everything.

Let me break this to you gently. We know less that 10 ^ -1.000.000.000 of everything there is to know. We may no less than 1% (even far less) about fundamental forces and processes. Our species is blinded by its knowledge. I call us "homo omnisciencis" because we think we know everything. In time all Peers will be proven wrong about all things. Those who kowtow to Peers are either ignorant about a subject or have no clue how and why science actually works. Spoiler alert: it's experiment.

 

[cladking]

Once again science is already at work;
on methods to redirect any threatening incoming bodies and have already had successes in landing probes on moving asteroids and comets.

ROFL.

Perhaps someday this can be done but the chances of developing the technology that will see it coming in time are very slim. Something massive enough to replace every species on earth might not be seen until mere hours before it hits.

I’ll take that as an admission that reliance on God would fail at these tasks, and an attempt to save face.

Waiting on Gods assistance has never had a material benefit for anyone aside from possibly being a crutch to soothe their fragile psyche.

To each his own. Frankly, I find it pretty frightening that the only rules for many of our leaders are "greed" and "the odds of getting away with it".

 

[Dao Hao Now]

All questions can not be answered by science.

I never said they could be.
That’s just where religious adherents move the goal posts when faced with the fact that science works exceedingly well at reliably answering the questions about the nature of reality and the workings of our surroundings.

In contrast religions don’t answer any questions…
reliably or otherwise.