Science

[firedragon]

It says "one" in the neuter case. One thing according to the commentators.

SO the Disciples are also one thing with God and Jesus right?

To a Jew, to a Baha'i, to a Muslim, not to a Christian.

To a Christian its a heresy.

Acts 5:3 Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? 4 Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”
Isa 63:9 In all their distress, He too was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence saved them. In His love and compassion He redeemed them; He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. 10But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit. So He turned and became their enemy, and He Himself fought against them.
It is the Spirit of God that went with Israel in the wilderness and whom is called YHWH.
(see Eph 4:30 also)
2Cor 3:16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into His image with intensifying glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.…
The Spirit of God speaks through the prophets.
2 Peter 1:21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
The Spirit knows the mind of God and witnesses to the believer and is alive.
(1Cor 2:11, Romans 8:27, John 4:10,)
John 14:16And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever— 17the Spirit of truth. The world cannot receive Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you do know Him, for He abides with you and will be in you. 18I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.…

None of that says the Hagwi pneumati is YHWH.

 

[Nakosis]

Non material ideas have an effect on us and our behaviour and so on the universe. Whether that is measurable is another thing.

I don't accept that non-material ideas exist and if they did and have any kind of effect, that effect would be measurable.

 

[Windwalker]

It is sometimes how this marvelous and wondrous creation works that is the problem, because the scientific natural methodology has caused it to step into the area of theology, inadvertently no doubt, but there it is.

It's method of naturalism is designed to keep it away from stepping into theology. It is reductionistic by design. If you mean the areas of study themselves encroach upon the same areas as religion, such as the origins of life itself, that can't be helped.

Pretty much anything and everything it studies can be considered "sacred", when viewed through a theological lens. In fact, that is what the sciences were originally doing, was to study how God's universe works. If the answers it gives doesn't square with one's theology, then that isn't science's fault. They were paid to do the job, so to speak.

Science for example ends up with consciousness being a product of the matter.

Others have touched on that in this thread, but there is no consensus whatsoever on that subject coming from the sciences. In fact, that is considered one of the "hard questions", which seems to be outside what science can look at.

But you do have those who are philosophical materialists who want everything to be nothing but physical in nature. That isn't science at that point. That is philosophy. That's a form of religion in itself.

The more obvious areas is what science might say happened in the past to produce the universe and life.

If the science shows that the universe began with the Big Bang, then I say, "How wonderful are all thy works, oh Lord!" Is not the science itself, awe-inspiring?

That could have so many errors because of the naturalistic methodology that it is not funny.

How so? What for instance should be included that would make the math work better than it does? The proof is in the pudding, as they say. I don't think adding anything from scripture will change the science, do you?

Again, if science shows the universe began in a Big Bang, then from what we can see, that's how creation happened. No reason that denies God in my mind. Does it deny God in yours?

Nevertheless I hear what you are saying.

I do hope so. It would be good if Christians were more receptive to these things. I find them quite inspiring, peering into the Mystery that is this creation. There's no reason for it to deny faith.

There is the area of science and the naturalistic methodology being used to study scriptures and decide when they were written and by whom based on naturalistic methodology.

We have to be a little careful here. The empiric sciences which study things of the natural world, are not the same thing as modern approaches to things like critical scholarship. Both are modern, but there are different tools used. I don't know that I'd call the approach of critical scholarship as a "naturalistic methodology", per se, other than to say it removes the supernatural out of the equation, for the sake of using only logic and reason as the tools of study.

There is the 'historical perspective", and then there is the "theological perspective". Those are different sets of eyes. They have different purposes. If the dispassionate view, the critical view using the tools of modernity reveal for instance, that the idea that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible in 1500 BCE, is technically incorrect, then that challenges a traditionally understanding, and potentially one's theological beliefs. If that evidence stands up to intense scrutiny and can be verified reliable, then I believe one's theological view should be allowed to change.

What I don't like is when one fights against evidence that is strong, because of passionate biases, which theological beliefs qualify as. It is much better to re-examine one's theological views in light of strong evidences, and allow them to change. That keeps faith on a firm footing, as opposed to the shifting sands of wishful thinking, or desire to maintain the status quo. The real culprit here, in both cases, between modern science/critical scholarship and faith, is an unwillingness of faith to be adaptable. And that I challenge as a weakness of that faith.

 

[Windwalker]

(continued....)

Whatever this methodology comes up with is seen and/or used by the sceptics of this world to debunk God and the Bible and is circular reasoning really.

That is of course one response people can do with the information. But repressing knowledge because those who may use it a certain way we don't like, lacks integrity on our part. Let the chips fall where they may, in other words. It can also have the effect of growing one's faith.

What I see here is this. What the neo-atheist, the anti-theist which you see in the likes of a Richard Dawkins, is actually just modernity rejecting mythic-literal interpretation of religion. But as I said before, if that is the only face of God being presented by religion, and the choice becomes knowledge and information, reason and rationality, versus faith in that image of God, then that is the source of the problem itself. Not knowledge.

The mythic-literal face of God, while useful historically, is not something religion can continue to hold onto in the face of modernity. That inability, or outright unwillingness to examine or modify or grow that understanding of God, is what is the problem. Not science. Not evolution. Not materialism. But inflexibility of religious beliefs stuck on the metaphor as the reality of God itself. That is the problem.

But I admit that even though I can point these things out to people I have not found anyone that it has been an eye opener for.

Maybe you're asking them to try to reconcile it with an image of God that strains faith and reason for them? Speaking for myself personally, that was an issue for me back when. I was in effect being asked to either discount or distrust my doubts when in came to this for the sake of faith. That ultimately does not and cannot work. Faith and reason need to be complementary to each other, not in tension with each other.

I agree about the Young Earth Creationists. I think they have a lot to answer for.

Agreed. Denialism, pushing your head into the sand and encouraging other to do so with you, is not the path of faith in anyway, other than to teach those who do this how it only makes matters worse for them spiritually.

Nevertheless I find that even though I can live with science I still cannot agree with it completely because of some stuff I have probably already said above.

I don't know there is anything such as agreeing with it completely, in that it is a system that in continually adding new knowledge to it. I see it as the most powerful tool we have available to us for understanding the natural world. But I don't elevate it to a religious belief that it holds all the answers to all things human! That's Scientism, not science. That's just replacing placing ones faith in the Church, to faith in Science. Same externalization of authority for Answers with a capital A. That leads to a crisis of faith for the 'true believer'.

It no doubt would be easier for me if I did not believe that Genesis is a book of history. I can't stop believing that however esp when I see that what science is discovering can sort of fit with what Genesis says.

Yes, it would be considerably easier for you if you shifted how you think about the biblical texts. Most definitely. And that is my very point.

Yes, some things science shows can be made to "fit" with the texts, but you can really do that with just about anything, like trying to read headlines of the daily news and 'fit' them with biblical prophecies. Ultimately that's kind of a slight of hand, an illusion, like reading the daily horoscope and seeing how some things are 'true' to your life today. That's really not a good approach to the Bible, or any text.

What I can say to that, at best is this. It is not surprising that ancient peoples could inuit certain things about the world, especially if they were mystical in nature. One can sense certain truths about the world, eons before modern science came along with its tools and begins to confirm those intuitions. This is something we all have within us, if we are so attuned with it through spiritual disciplines and practices. We become "sensitive" to things about who we are and the nature of the world, because we are connected with it. Ancient mystics have always said everything is connected with each other, if you were to read the Upanishads for instance. Now just recently today, with the complexity sciences, systems theory, chaos theory, quantum physics, and whatnot, they are saying pretty much the same thing ancient religious texts have said all along. That does not mean these people were supernatural scientists before the modern age! It just means they had some really good insights.

Yes, Genesis has some tremendous insights into human nature captures in its story. They are metaphors, to point to some deeper truth beyond the symbols themselves. They are not stories of history and science as we understand those today. And to try to force fit modern science into the texts, as "supernatural knowledge" as proof of Divine origins of the texts, is a mistake. It misses the point of the stories. They don't need to be read literally, to speak timeless truths. They don't need to be scientifically accurate, or science being wrong when it conflicts with the story, to be true in symbolic truth nonetheless. This is something for faith to deal with.

It is interesting that with sceptics you have to go the whole way or nothing. You're either a whole hearted evolutionist, saying it all happened the way science proposes, or you are a religious fanatic.
I can't help but think that free thinkers are anything but.

I agree with with you here. Many are after all, just fundamentalist who take that literalistic black and white thinking of religious fundamentalism with them as they lose faith. The old saying applies. You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy. Changing how we believe, is much much more difficult, than changing what we believe in. The objects of belief can be modified much more easily than the patterns of thinking behind them.

Thanks for the advice. I actually do try to do that but I am not a liberal Christian in that area and so cannot fully embrace all that science says.

I don't think liberally fully embrace everything it says either. I take take it as a voice of respectable authority, which should be give all due attention when it says something. But I also realize it is only one set of eyes, not all sets of eyes. I believe in an 'epistimological pluralism', meaning more than one way of knowing truth. There is the eye of flesh (the empiric sciences), the eye of mind (hermeneutics), and the eye of spirit (meditation). But these should not be at war with each other, but complete each other. Each investigates different domains of human knowledge, the natural world, the world of the mind, and the world of spirit.

I sort of more see my job as to tell people about the pitfalls of science and how science is used in ways that it should not be used by sceptics. No doubt we plod on with what we do even if we do not see results.

I would point out the limitations of believing science holds all answers for life, which is a philosophical/religious view of science as Scientism. But I don't find it useful to try to put chinks into the science itself about some area of study, because it conflicts with how we interpret the Bible. That's doomed to fail and doesn't not serve faith in the least.