Religion proves itself unscientific.

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

Yes! I believe that Christianity is rationally consistent and fully congruent with the world of science.

It certainly has worked for me!

Larry

Well that comes to definitions. Christ asks us to be perfect as our father is perfect, and that the pure religion is helping the widows and orphans and being faultless before god.

That has nothing to do with science or even the supernatural under that there is no contradiction to science. But that is not the only definition of Christanity. So the scientific theists can exist with they understanding and in part reject the supernatural claims, or consider them something that was out of the norm with no bearing on the natural world.

 

[cottage]

Many scientists are also believers. Certainly they make enquires. They demand rational
reasons for holding their beliefs.

Some of those reasons can be congruent with scientific facts. Our understanding of scientific theories change but well tested facts do hold up. Einstein's theories find application where Newton's would not - but Newton's still apply and work well for
many applications.

Modern science is very congruent with belief. It always will even though science will advance. Because one of the things you need in order to do science - in order to have it - is and orderly universe. A universe where things are repeatable and you need the expectation that that state of affairs will continue into the future.

Else why bother to do the work?

So the fact that the universe reveals itself to be orderly - that the laws of physics can be discovered at all , that math yields insights at all are facts that are congruent with faith.

Science yields discoveries - well tested ideas that stand up to scrutiny - that provide intimations of God's existence.

That carbon can only be formed in stars and that under very exacting conditions is a fact that is not likely to change. The forces of gravity and electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces have to pretty much be what they are - the constants
or formulas that describe those forces and the way they interact are not likely to change or the ideas of the way the molecules have to interact - but there is an amazing process there - just one example.

But these are intimations of a Creator and it is rational to accept them as such. maybe some day we will have an even better understanding of this but that understanding would likely only be more of an intimation rather than otherwise.

Some might be historical reasons. Thinking about the historicity of the resurrection of Christ. That is a rational inquiry. The facts have to be explainable in an intellectually satisfying way.

Some reasons are personal - come by way of personal experience - to the believer there is a relationship - an interaction - that provides rational belief to him or her.

I believe I have experienced providential care over the course of my life, for instance.
On the battlefield when I was in Vietnam. How I fell into my career.

These involved answered prayer and an improbable chain of events.

So this sense of being cared for and the way life progressed in a fairly satisfactory way - sometimes when I would have made other choices had I been able to - these become reasons that support my faith.

I have other reasons - that the Gospels ring true for me. Prophecies about the nation
of Israel that I see coming true today. the statements were made in the Old Testament - the people would be dispersed fro disobedience- but then later restored to the land - which though it had become a desert would be made to flourish.

Those are recorded in the Dead Sea Manuscripts so we know they are at least that old - yet they are coming true today. There is a congruence there.

These are not trivial reasons - they may not prove anything to you - they can be explained away. If you adopt a position that says the supernatural does not exist, you will discount them.

But then may only be holding on to your faith - your basics philosophical beliefs - in the dogmatic fashion you accuse believers of doing.

BTW , I think many individual believers would abandon their faith were it not intellectually satisfying and plausible to hold it. Some may not but I think many would.

There is a difference between having a plausible faith - one where several different
kinds of reasons seem to be congruent and has a breadth of explanatory power and works in the life of an individual and holding a faith or belief that does not have rational support.

Larry

In my view religious faith is a disposition or an emotional attachment that is apparent in some people, not necessarily a specific religious belief or an innate idea of God but possibly a genetic or inherited inclination that makes them suggestible to faith systems, which are reinforced by the family and or peer groups during the formative years. And the reason I say this is that generally, although again perhaps not exclusively, it can be argued that people do not come to their religious beliefs through reason alone. If a previous unbeliever were to study logic, philosophy and cosmology, come to the conclusion that God exists and then turn to the Bible or some other creed, affirming that the narrative tallies with the conclusion, that would still suggest to me a prior inclination to religious belief.

However, it is important to note that it is not being asserted that all believers hold to their faith entirely independent of reason. In fact for many religious people their faith is not beyond question and they work continuously to justify their beliefs to themselves and to others. Believers, like unbelievers, come from all walks of life and neither side has the monopoly on intelligence and knowledge. But I feel that with very few exceptions the faith is prior to the reasoning, although the believers’ reasoning will to be tuned to accommodate the teaching or elements of the preferred doctrine or belief system. So my argument is that belief in God and the allegiance to a particular faith is learned and established mostly in the formative years, facilitated by a predisposition, and this faith does not come about only after weighing probabilities on the balance of reason. And nor do I think that people might come to their settled religious beliefs through pragmatism as famously presented by the argument known as Pascal’s Wager.

And I don’t think anybody is stating that ‘the supernatural does not exist’. To speak in such absolute terms is akin to the theist asserting ‘God exists is a certain truth’, which of course it is not. If supernatural beings exist then they exist, but subjective belief systems fail to demonstrate the truth of what is claimed. And let’s be clear about one thing: theists are making claims to the truth, something that the sceptic cannot do without demolishing his own position.

 

[sonofdad]

I will tell you like I told cottage...as long as the universe is contingent, no scientific explanation is sufficient enough to explain its origins. And by "universe", I mean everything that physically exists, even physical reality that we don't know about.



Be my guest, although that is not something that I would do.



Before I do that, do you believe that we should only believe things that can be scientifically proven?

1. I get that's your claim, the question is, why do you think that the scientific method cannot be used to learn about the origins of the universe?

2. Sure, remember it is a given that all premises are true

Something is eating space
Space munching fairy princesses are the only things capable of eating space
Therefor, space munching fairy princesses exist

It's valid and sound according to our new bizarre rules of logic.

3. I assume that we cannot know whether our believes are true or not unless we have some way to test them.

 

[Larry0048]

In my view religious faith is a disposition or an emotional attachment that is apparent in some people, not necessarily a specific religious belief or an innate idea of God but possibly a genetic or inherited inclination that makes them suggestible to faith systems, which are reinforced by the family and or peer groups during the formative years. And the reason I say this is that generally, although again perhaps not exclusively, it can be argued that people do not come to their religious beliefs through reason alone. If a previous unbeliever were to study logic, philosophy and cosmology, come to the conclusion that God exists and then turn to the Bible or some other creed, affirming that the narrative tallies with the conclusion, that would still suggest to me a prior inclination to religious belief.

However, it is important to note that it is not being asserted that all believers hold to their faith entirely independent of reason. In fact for many religious people their faith is not beyond question and they work continuously to justify their beliefs to themselves and to others. Believers, like unbelievers, come from all walks of life and neither side has the monopoly on intelligence and knowledge. But I feel that with very few exceptions the faith is prior to the reasoning, although the believers’ reasoning will to be tuned to accommodate the teaching or elements of the preferred doctrine or belief system. So my argument is that belief in God and the allegiance to a particular faith is learned and established mostly in the formative years, facilitated by a predisposition, and this faith does not come about only after weighing probabilities on the balance of reason. And nor do I think that people might come to their settled religious beliefs through pragmatism as famously presented by the argument known as Pascal’s Wager.

And I don’t think anybody is stating that ‘the supernatural does not exist’. To speak in such absolute terms is akin to the theist asserting ‘God exists is a certain truth’, which of course it is not. If supernatural beings exist then they exist, but subjective belief systems fail to demonstrate the truth of what is claimed. And let’s be clear about one thing: theists are making claims to the truth, something that the sceptic cannot do without demolishing his own position.

My concern is with the quality of my own faith. I quit school in the ninth grade - age 15.

But I have led a fairly successful life and , though mostly self taught, I think I am doing Ok intellectually.

I attribute that to my faith and the motivation to learn that it has provided. Reading some thoughtful books - Intervarsity Press has been a blessing for me - and other resources.

John Stott's "Basic Christianity" and other books that dealt with the Resurrection of Christ from historical perspectives.

That was a while ago but very influential in my development.

I won't be able to post fro a while.

I do invite people to view my webpages.

Does God exist? | Why people believe in God

American Founding | wall of separation

I grew up in a broken home with mental illness - parents where not people of faith.

I kind of had to build life from scratch without much direction from family.

But I found enough to suffice for which I am grateful.

Larry

Larry

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

1. Does it seek to? What is the Origin of it's domain supposed to mean? The universe, the formation of nature...?

The "origin of its own domain" simply means that the origin of the universe cannot be explained using the scientific method. Science is the study of physical reality, and if there was a point at which physical reality (the universe) didn't exist, then there can be no scientific method used to explain its origins.

2. Science cannot be used to explain morality? What is morality? I mean i'm sure you have a "strict" definition of it based on the bible, but it would appear that morality even in the bible has changed over time (like is it morally acceptable to own a person, no i'm not asking about how you treat them, but just is it morally acceptable to own another human being as property?). However there are research in psychology which answers those type of questions because that's psychologies domain. Science as well can maybe scratch the surface.

Morality, the sense of right and wrong. Evolution or natural selection doesn't tell us whether Nazi Germany's worldview was right or wrong. Evolution or natural selection doesn't tell us whether rape or murder is wrong. In order to have objective morality, there must be a moral standard that transcends the standard of mankind.

3. The origin of life? What says that it can't? They have working hypothesis, we have the pieces, viruses, prions, creatures that are not truly alive but contain the basic components of life (DNA, RNA and Proteins) and reproduce using other things including each other (Yes there are viruses that infect other viruses). We know that under certain conditions that simple amino acids can be created.

We have the pieces, but we can't seem to find out how these pieces "came together" without Intelligent Design. So if this is what you (in general) believe, you have to believe that a blind, mindless process was able to do something yesterday that intelligent people of today haven't yet figured out how to do.

Now I won't discount the "hands" of God not taking a part of it as well though.

I admire your modesty.

4. What is Consciousness? Simply saying something doesn't mean anything because I'm not sure if you mean it in laymen terms or in biological terms, or or in psychological terms, or philosophical? Because we know a lot more about the brain now and there is so much more to learn.

If you start the universe off with a big bang, at no point will you get consioussness. If you are sad, are you sad, or is your brain sad? If you are happy; are you happy, or is your brain happy? At best we can show that the brain and the mind correlate, but they are not the same thing. The brain and mind are independent of each other and if the brain cant be used to explain the origin of the mind, yet the mind exist, then where does it get its origins?

Here's the problem with your statement "science will never" it's an absolute...which makes no sense since...we aren't all extinct. When we are down to the last two humans on earth, who cannot possibly reproduce because they are both infertile...then you can say "science will never", but while there are new discoveries being made every day, new theories tested, new hypothesis created to be tested...I think it's a little premature to say "Science will never" because the people who have said that have been proven wrong quite a few times.

So answer me this, how can you explain the origins of the universe by using science??

Not to mention Modern Science as we know it is what? 200+ years old...maybe even less, and the advances we've done in technology from the 60's to now...take a look at a computer in the 60's look at your computer now...it's faster, more powerful...and cheaper...give things time. What's the point of being given brains, and the ability to reason if using it is such a detriment?

We can do a lot of cool things with science, no doubt. But we are speaking in terms of absolute origins. Those are the deeper questions.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

1. I get that's your claim, the question is, why do you think that the scientific method cannot be used to learn about the origins of the universe?

LMAO, think about it sonofdad, if the universe didn't exist, then how can you apply the scientific method to something that doesn't exist???

Something is eating space
Space munching fairy princesses are the only things capable of eating space
Therefor, space munching fairy princesses exist
It's valid and sound according to our new bizarre rules of logic.

The question is are the premises true? You have to give reasons why the premises are true, so it isn't a matter of just making statements.

3. I assume that we cannot know whether our believes are true or not unless we have some way to test them.

Can you scientifically test whether or not carrying out the Holocaust was a right thing to do or wrong thing to do?

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

But I was responding to your second point, which you’ve now answered again with your first!

Well, if what I said was wrong how about offering a response to why/how it is wrong instead of all of this off the wall stuff.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

And I don’t think anybody is stating that ‘the supernatural does not exist’.

Well, I'll state as much, if nobody else will. This assertion appears to admit of proper justification, and is eminently tenable. (seeing as, for instance, the absence of necessary evidence is necessarily evidence of absence)

To speak in such absolute terms is akin to the theist asserting ‘God exists is a certain truth’

I don't see how that is so, for a truth being certain and a truth being absolute don't appear to be equivalent- a truth being absolute means that it is a proper truth; it is subject-invariant. But being certain is another story- and asserting that something is the case (such as, for instance, that "the supernatural" doesn't exist) doesn't entail that this assertion is certain (either psychologically or epistemically).

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

The "origin of its own domain" simply means that the origin of the universe cannot be explained using the scientific method. Science is the study of physical reality, and if there was a point at which physical reality (the universe) didn't exist, then there can be no scientific method used to explain its origins.

If, that's the main point...if. Science doesn't seem to be claiming that the Universe from nothing, it seems to be applying that the Universe as we know it now, is not like the Universe as it was back at the time of the big bang.

I'm not at anyways of an expert so what I'm saying may indeed be incorrect. We know that at a point of a black hole gravity becomes so strong that all matter is put into a point where it is infinitely dense with infinite mass (correct me if I'm wrong), this point is called a singularity. All that swirling condensed mass creates energy however as it's gathered towards that point that is released. This released energy output is massive, in the theorized black holes in the middle of every galaxy this output comes out to 1000X's the output of our milkyway. That's a lot of mass producing that energy. If the big bang was anything like that but on a larger scale, it would make sense that hte mass and energy expelled from that energy output would result in our current universe. Now if your question is where did that mass and energy come from, well that I don't know, but just as you can say God always was, you can make the same claim that Matter and Energy always were.

Morality, the sense of right and wrong. Evolution or natural selection doesn't tell us whether Nazi Germany's worldview was right or wrong. Evolution or natural selection doesn't tell us whether rape or murder is wrong. In order to have objective morality, there must be a moral standard that transcends the standard of mankind

.

What is objective morality? There really doesn't seem to be any, morality may be objective by civilizations, by societies, but certainly not overwhelmingly as a species. Again I point to slavery, is it moral to own another human being. Not how you treat them, not whether it was the only situation that could work for them (because in that case the moral option would be to create a society where such a case does not exist). The OT seems to indicate that slavery is not immoral. The United States for the first 200+ years of it's existence certainly looked it as moral. As did many nations, now we look at it as a detestable act. Is it rape if a husband has sex with his wife despite her not wanting to? If so, is that moral? Does a woman even have the moral right to deny her husband sexual satisfaction? Despite the belief that women should submit to their husbands. Because that is considered a form of rape, but few hundred years ago, that wasn't an issue. If morality is objective and our immoral behavior results in destruction, then our history of slavery, rape, murder among the human species should have ended up with our demise millennia ago.

We have the pieces, but we can't seem to find out how these pieces "came together" without Intelligent Design. So if this is what you (in general) believe, you have to believe that a blind, mindless process was able to do something yesterday that intelligent people of today haven't yet figured out how to do.

Blind and Mindless are related to things that are alive. When it gets cold doesn't water freeze? When it gets too hot water evaporates. That is a blind and mindless process but it does it anyway. Is it intelligent design telling water that it needs to do this? I do believe that the laws were put into place, but in what means IDK, for all we know God can be a being from another Universe that visited ours and likes ours so much that adopted us because God was lonely. Who really knows? But claiming intelligent design doesn't prove the existence of the Christian God, just a God, or An Intelligent Designer.

If you start the universe off with a big bang, at no point will you get consioussness. If you are sad, are you sad, or is your brain sad? If you are happy; are you happy, or is your brain happy? At best we can show that the brain and the mind correlate, but they are not the same thing. The brain and mind are independent of each other and if the brain cant be used to explain the origin of the mind, yet the mind exist, then where does it get its origins?

This interesting because it seems people ignore how our nervous and endocrine system works. IT also ignores the connection between our brains and our bodies. When you touch a hot stove, you jerk your hand away, your brain isn't the one that told you to do that, that was an automatic response ignoring your brain, because it doesn't need the time to decide whether or not touching this is a good idea. The pain however reinforces for your brain that this is unpleasant, at that point your body floods with endorphins to ease the pain. We now make the connection that something that burns us leads to pain, and so we avoid hot things. Our bodies produce lots of chemicals some react slowly some react quickly. Let someone scare you and see how quickly you want to run away. Animals have that same instinct too, It is an early form of reasoning. If I do X, Y will happen, I do not like Y because Y makes me feel bad. Same as how animals will look for drugs and alcohol (elephants, Jaguars, monkeys), because there is a form of reasoning (I will consume X because X causes Y and Y felt good, so the more Y i have the more I will feel Good), What is Good? The release of Dopamine, something that is found in some bacteria and almost all multicellular organisms and so far only in arthropods has the "reward/action repeat" effects of dopamine not been shown...they have some other form that does this...however what is the mind? How do you define it?

So answer me this, how can you explain the origins of the universe by using science??



We can do a lot of cool things with science, no doubt. But we are speaking in terms of absolute origins. Those are the deeper questions.

I don't know, I"m not a scientist, what I do know is that at one point people thought that touching the heavens would be impossible, but we have landed on the moon. We've seen distant galaxies, every week we push the presupposed limits on us. So I cannot agree that Science will never know, because we haven't seen the end of science.

 

[ChristineES]

Whoever said religion was scientific in the first place? They are two separate things.

 

[cottage]

Well, if what I said was wrong how about offering a response to why/how it is wrong instead of all of this off the wall stuff.

No need to be so spikey! We’ll go from the beginning again to see where things went wrong.

1) You said: “First off, science has limitations. Science cannot be used to explain the origins of its own domain. Second, the existence of God can be argued for based on logical reasoning alone, and these logical arguments do not need nor use science as the backbone for its premises. Third, naturalism is a self-refuting concept, and anything that is self-refuting need not be believed.”

2) To which I replied: “Everything has its limitations. Science cannot be used to explain science just as logic cannot be used to explain logic. But at least science for all its limitations is relevant to experience and what actually exists, whereas logic is only relevant to concepts and tautologies and can never demonstrate the existence of any object.”

3) Then you said: “My point is as long as the universe is contingent, science cannot be used to explain its origins.”

4) I replied: “And my point was that the existence of things cannot be explained by tautological propositions.”

5) You came back with this: “’Well, call it what you want, but as long as the statement "science cannot be used to explain the origins of its own domain" is intuitively true, the fact still remains.”’

6) So quite reasonably I pointed out this to you: “But I was responding to your second point, which you’ve now answered again with your first!"

Note: I had already acknowledged the limitations of science (2) but you continued to labour the point in (3) without acknowledging what I said concerning logical concepts. And again you ignored what I said to you in reply (4) and continued repeating the same thing (5). And when I informed you (6)that you were answering with what I had already accepted, ie: ‘First off, science has limitations’ you are now rather puzzlingly saying this: “Well, if what I said was wrong how about offering a response to why/how it is wrong instead of all of this off the wall stuff.”

So in fact it is you who owes me a response to the second clause in my second paragraph in (2). I don’t believe that’s being at all unreasonable.

 

[cottage]

Well, I'll state as much, if nobody else will. This assertion appears to admit of proper justification, and is eminently tenable. (seeing as, for instance, the absence of necessary evidence is necessarily evidence of absence)

You speak as you see fit but I’m not saying ‘The supernatural doesn’t exist’, since it might. And stating there is ‘absence of evidence’ is presumptuously saying that there is no evidence, when the correct form is to respond to the knowledge claims instead of dismissing them outright in advance. In fact I’m very surprised that you should say such a thing.

I don't see how that is so, for a truth being certain and a truth being absolute don't appear to be equivalent- a truth being absolute means that it is a proper truth; it is subject-invariant. But being certain is another story- and asserting that something is the case (such as, for instance, that "the supernatural" doesn't exist) doesn't entail that this assertion is certain (either psychologically or epistemically).

I think you’re being unnecessarily picky for in both cases we are talking about an epistemological claim and an ontological assertion. ‘God exists’ and ‘God doesn’t exist’ are both absolute truth claims, supposedly true because they cannot be false, or in other words certain.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

You speak as you see fit but I’m not saying ‘The supernatural doesn’t exist’, since it might.

That's fine- to each their own. But the fact that "it might" does not entail that one cannot reasonably assert or believe that "the supernatural doesn't exist"; the possibility of error does not preclude reasonable belief, or even knowledge. I can responsibly say that I know the sun will rise tomorrow, even though it is possible it might not.

And stating there is ‘absence of evidence’ is presumptuously saying that there is no evidence, when the correct form is to respond to the knowledge claims instead of dismissing them outright in advance.

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean; noting that there is an absence of necessary evidence, when this is what appears to be the case in light of all the relevant data, is not "dismissing them outright in advance".

I think you’re being unnecessarily picky for in both cases we are talking about an epistemological claim and an ontological assertion. ‘God exists’ and ‘God doesn’t exist’ are both absolute truth claims, supposedly true because they cannot be false, or in other words certain.

No, this connection between truth or knowability and certainty is a false standard, as above with the sun example, or any number of such examples we care to pick. Take another- I know that Nietzsche was born in 1844; but its possible I may be mistaken (for instance, it is possible, if extremely unlikely, that all documents regarding his birth had been systematically falsified as a part of some vast conspiracy, for whatever reason). Certainty, as in the exclusion of the possibility for error, is not a criteria for knowledge or reasonable belief, even though it frequently has been held to be (leading to the absurd conclusion, for instance, that inductive reasoning can never produce knowledge)

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

If, that's the main point...if. Science doesn't seem to be claiming that the Universe from nothing, it seems to be applying that the Universe as we know it now, is not like the Universe as it was back at the time of the big bang.

All empirical evidence, and all logical inferences suggest that the universe began to exist at some point in the finite past. Nothing in the universe is infinite. It had a beginning. Its originator could not itself be natural…so an immaterial external cause is necessary.

I'm not at anyways of an expert so what I'm saying may indeed be incorrect. We know that at a point of a black hole gravity becomes so strong that all matter is put into a point where it is infinitely dense with infinite mass (correct me if I'm wrong), this point is called a singularity. All that swirling condensed mass creates energy however as it's gathered towards that point that is released. This released energy output is massive, in the theorized black holes in the middle of every galaxy this output comes out to 1000X's the output of our milkyway. That's a lot of mass producing that energy. If the big bang was anything like that but on a larger scale, it would make sense that hte mass and energy expelled from that energy output would result in our current universe. Now if your question is where did that mass and energy come from, well that I don't know, but just as you can say God always was, you can make the same claim that Matter and Energy always were.

That’s where you are wrong, my friend. Causality cannot be extended to an infinite past. If it took an infinite amount of “causes” to reach the singularity point at which this universe sprung from, then the singularity point would never be reached because you cannot traverse infinity. This is the “logical inference” I was talking about earlier. This is a problem for those that postulate Pre-Big Bang models, and this problem does not hinder those that postulate the God hypothesis so it isn’t a two-way street as you suggest.

What is objective morality? There really doesn't seem to be any, morality may be objective by civilizations, by societies, but certainly not overwhelmingly as a species. Again I point to slavery, is it moral to own another human being. Not how you treat them, not whether it was the only situation that could work for them (because in that case the moral option would be to create a society where such a case does not exist). The OT seems to indicate that slavery is not immoral. The United States for the first 200+ years of it's existence certainly looked it as moral. As did many nations, now we look at it as a detestable act. Is it rape if a husband has sex with his wife despite her not wanting to? If so, is that moral? Does a woman even have the moral right to deny her husband sexual satisfaction? Despite the belief that women should submit to their husbands. Because that is considered a form of rape, but few hundred years ago, that wasn't an issue. If morality is objective and our immoral behavior results in destruction, then our history of slavery, rape, murder among the human species should have ended up with our demise millennia ago.

So if you have a 10 year old daughter and the United States pass a law that legalizes sex with minors that are 10 years or older, and an old pedophile thinks to himself “I’ve been waiting 60 years for this day and it has finally come”, and he has sex with your 10 year old daughter, you would accept this, as the man is not breaking the law. The man is acting morally just according to your view. Do you agree with this?

Blind and Mindless are related to things that are alive. When it gets cold doesn't water freeze? When it gets too hot water evaporates. That is a blind and mindless process but it does it anyway. Is it intelligent design telling water that it needs to do this?

Yeah when it gets cold water does freeze, but water doesn’t freeze to form a snowman or a snow angel with an arrow. Blind and mindless processes don’t write books, build space shuttles, and create software codes. This is “specified complexity”, and you don’t get specified complexity from blind and mindless entities. Those type of things come from intelligent designers.

I do believe that the laws were put into place, but in what means IDK, for all we know God can be a being from another Universe that visited ours and likes ours so much that adopted us because God was lonely. Who really knows? But claiming intelligent design doesn't prove the existence of the Christian God, just a God, or An Intelligent Designer.

Granted, and that is why Christians use other arguments for the existence of the Christian God, and that is the historicity of the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This interesting because it seems people ignore how our nervous and endocrine system works. IT also ignores the connection between our brains and our bodies. When you touch a hot stove, you jerk your hand away, your brain isn't the one that told you to do that, that was an automatic response ignoring your brain, because it doesn't need the time to decide whether or not touching this is a good idea. The pain however reinforces for your brain that this is unpleasant, at that point your body floods with endorphins to ease the pain. We now make the connection that something that burns us leads to pain, and so we avoid hot things. Our bodies produce lots of chemicals some react slowly some react quickly. Let someone scare you and see how quickly you want to run away. Animals have that same instinct too, It is an early form of reasoning. If I do X, Y will happen, I do not like Y because Y makes me feel bad. Same as how animals will look for drugs and alcohol (elephants, Jaguars, monkeys), because there is a form of reasoning (I will consume X because X causes Y and Y felt good, so the more Y i have the more I will feel Good), What is Good? The release of Dopamine, something that is found in some bacteria and almost all multicellular organisms and so far only in arthropods has the "reward/action repeat" effects of dopamine not been shown...they have some other form that does this...however what is the mind? How do you define it?

What does this have to do with what I said, Frankie?

I don't know, I"m not a scientist, what I do know is that at one point people thought that touching the heavens would be impossible, but we have landed on the moon. We've seen distant galaxies, every week we push the presupposed limits on us. So I cannot agree that Science will never know, because we haven't seen the end of science.

You are assuming that science is the root to all knowledge, which there is no basis for.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

No need to be so spikey!

Cool, lets smoke :cigar:

Note: I had already acknowledged the limitations of science (2) but you continued to labour the point in (3) without acknowledging what I said concerning logical concepts. And again you ignored what I said to you in reply (4) and continued repeating the same thing (5). And when I informed you (6)that you were answering with what I had already accepted, ie: ‘First off, science has limitations’ you are now rather puzzlingly saying this: “Well, if what I said was wrong how about offering a response to why/how it is wrong instead of all of this off the wall stuff.”

So in fact it is you who owes me a response to the second clause in my second paragraph in (2). I don’t believe that’s being at all unreasonable.

Um, Cot. I said science has limitations, and based on these limitations science cannot be used to explain the origins of the universe. Once again, and by "origins", I mean all space, time, matter, and energy in ANY physical universe, even universes that we don't know about.

You follow me so far?? Now, if science can't get the job done, then what else is there?? The SUPERNATURAL/RELIGION. It is either science or religion, those are the only two games in town. Science can't get the job done, so that only leaves the other option...the last option standing...Religion.

That was my point. If you disagree with this, then enlighten me on how can science explain the origins of a contingent universe. In fact, that is the ONLY way you can disagree with me, if you are able to somehow explain to me how science can adequately explain the origins of a universe that didn't have to be here.

I will wait.

 

[sonofdad]

LMAO, think about it sonofdad, if the universe didn't exist, then how can you apply the scientific method to something that doesn't exist???



The question is are the premises true? You have to give reasons why the premises are true, so it isn't a matter of just making statements.



Can you scientifically test whether or not carrying out the Holocaust was a right thing to do or wrong thing to do?

1. Are you claiming that your god does not exist ?

2. Exactly.

3. Yes. If we can define the worst possible world we can use science to figure out what is morally right and morally wrong.
If you've read some Sam Harris, you may be aware of his concept of worst possible misery for everyone.
Basically, if we picture a universe where every conscious being suffers as much as possible for as long as possible, that world would be bad.

Surely we could find some ways to quantify suffering. We could determine how much suffering an event causes and how much suffering it removes.
If we conclude that the holocaust increases overall suffering, it would follow, given the prior assumption, that carrying out the holocaust is an immoral act.

 

[Skwim]

Religion is what people believe based on evidence that they see or hear.

Science is what people believe based on evidence that they see or hear.

Two words for the exact same thing. Science is Religion and Religion is Science.

However saying that there are both Truth and Lies in Science and Religion.

Definition of religion

Religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to the supernatural, and to spirituality.
​

Definition of science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Source:Wikipedia

​

Please tell us you see the difference.

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

All empirical evidence, and all logical inferences suggest that the universe began to exist at some point in the finite past. Nothing in the universe is infinite. It had a beginning. Its originator could not itself be natural…so an immaterial external cause is necessary.

I didn't say that the Universe isn't finite, I said that Science never says that there was nothing they say that there was change. So There was something else and that became the Universe.

That’s where you are wrong, my friend. Causality cannot be extended to an infinite past. If it took an infinite amount of “causes” to reach the singularity point at which this universe sprung from, then the singularity point would never be reached because you cannot traverse infinity. This is the “logical inference” I was talking about earlier. This is a problem for those that postulate Pre-Big Bang models, and this problem does not hinder those that postulate the God hypothesis so it isn’t a two-way street as you suggest.

What is infinite, we know that this Universe has existed for this long, we don't know what was before it. Logical inference is to discover what was before not attribute some assumption beyond that.




So if you have a 10 year old daughter and the United States pass a law that legalizes sex with minors that are 10 years or older, and an old pedophile thinks to himself “I’ve been waiting 60 years for this day and it has finally come”, and he has sex with your 10 year old daughter, you would accept this, as the man is not breaking the law. The man is acting morally just according to your view. Do you agree with this?

There was a point in time where the marriage of a younger man was legal and accepted, and there are parts of the world were that is okay. What does that show you? There was a time were a widow was expected to jump into the burning pyre of her dead husband...morality is subjective to society, not the individual. Because morality is a societal thing, not an individual thing. People learn their morality based on their society. There is a reason why the society of the south was perfectly okay with owning slaves.



Yeah when it gets cold water does freeze, but water doesn’t freeze to form a snowman or a snow angel with an arrow. Blind and mindless processes don’t write books, build space shuttles, and create software codes. This is “specified complexity”, and you don’t get specified complexity from blind and mindless entities. Those type of things come from intelligent designers.

You get very specified complexity with blind and mindless entities. You can see it in things like the Fibonacci sequence showing up in nature.

Granted, and that is why Christians use other arguments for the existence of the Christian God, and that is the historicity of the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

As do Hindu's, and Buddhists, and Zoroasters, and Jews, and Muslims...so which one is correct?

What does this have to do with what I said, Frankie?

Your assumption that the mind is outside of the body and removed from the brain is a lack of understanding of how the endocrine/nervous system works in the body. As well as a lack of understanding of psychology. All the things that people attribute to the mind have been shown to be related to the brain. The reason a concept like the mind even exists is because people at a point in time did not know the actual abilities of the brain, it was attributed to other organs. The brain wasn't considered important, now that we have learn more and continue to learn more, we discover the brain and our endocrine system play a profound effect on who we are as individuals and as members of society.



You are assuming that science is the root to all knowledge, which there is no basis for.

No, I am assuming that it is foolish to say that something cannot be learned by science when science still exists. There may be questions that you ask that are outside of the realm of science, but those will be questions that will never have actual answers in the first place, but the things you have posed have been addressed by multiple science-based disciplinary fields. Science isn't just the hard sciences that you know (Chemistry, Physics, and Biology), the techniques that it used can be applied to psychology and sociology. It's methodology is an important one in almost all fields of study...so I guess to that degree it is a root of all knowledge.

But we all believe what we want to believe so no harm no foul.

 

[Sculelos]

Definition of religion

Religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to the supernatural, and to spirituality.
​

Definition of science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Source:Wikipedia

​

Please tell us you see the difference.

I see the difference but I see a lot of religion influencing science textbooks even if it's the secular humanist kind.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

No, I am assuming that it is foolish to say that something cannot be learned by science when science still exists.

So like I said, you are assuming that science can explain everything and just because it can't explain it now doesn't mean it won't be able to explain it later. So you are basically saying science doesn't have limitations, which is foolish.

There may be questions that you ask that are outside of the realm of science, but those will be questions that will never have actual answers in the first place, but the things you have posed have been addressed by multiple science-based disciplinary fields.

You are begging the question in favor of naturalism. You are saying that if science explain it, then it can't be explained. This is clearly question begging, because you don't know whether there is a supernatural realm that can explain things...so how can you say whether or not things will ever have actual answers??? Second, the origin of morality...the universe...and life are things that have not been answered by science as of yet...so to say things questions have been answered by science is....just flat out wrong.

Science isn't just the hard sciences that you know (Chemistry, Physics, and Biology), the techniques that it used can be applied to psychology and sociology. It's methodology is an important one in almost all fields of study...so I guess to that degree it is a root of all knowledge.

But we all believe what we want to believe so no harm no foul.

There is no science that can explain the origins of morality, the universe, and life. None.