Faith based science: The first nuclear blast test. It was reasonable at the time to believe it would start an unstoppable chain reaction. They did it anyway.
Religion
- Thread starter wkmac
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wkmac
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I'm fascinated by the discussion over consciousness yet I'm not convinced any real conclusions have emerged to settle the debate one way or the other.
MrFedEx
Engorged Member
Religion "explains" the unexplainable to the weak-minded. Haven't you heard about the "Young Earth" theory, or the folks who believe man co-existed with dinosaurs? For the faithful, who can find "evidence" by interpreting the Bible as they see fit, it all makes sense.
MrFedEx
Engorged Member
Good try. People used to think the Earth was flat too. Some still do. Were the people who sailed over the horizon and didn't fall off also faith-based scientists?
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What in the world? What? Just what?
First off, no one says the world is 138-150 million years old. It's about 4.5 billion years old. And religion has nothing to do with it. The age of the earth is important to understanding geography, the climate, and evolution. Time scales in the billions sew incredibly hard to comprehend, but they're necesary to wrap your head around things like speciation and the formation of the continents. These things simply couldn't have happened in 150 mil years, let alone 10k.
Do you base your opinion on the age of the earth on whether or not you find its age useful to your religion? Again, here I was thinking your faith had at least partially spared your thinking mind. Sorry, I'm just astounded. Do you just pick a nice sounding number?
No it wasn't. That's a myth. Do you honestly think they would do something likely to destroy the entire world just forkicks?
And even if they did do that, how would that qualify as faith based? It would be utterly disastrous stupidity. Is that your definition of faith? Doing something almost sure to be catastrophic because it might benefit you?
Yeah, the evidence definitely points to materialism, but it's such a profound mystery that it's impossible to say right now. Until someone can describe how consciousness emerges from a collection of unconscious particles, no one can say for sure. Although I lean towards materialism strongly simply because if you alter someone's brain, you alter their consciousness as well.
One thing that's always fascinated me though, is that if you believe in a strictly physical interpretation of the universe: we are literally the universe observing itself, composed mainly of elements produced in exploding stars.
Of course, I guess I put too much faith in my fellow humans intelligence. I mean, really? It's depressing.
That anecdote is false anyway.
wkmac
Well-Known Member
I think the flat earth analogy is far over used (abused) for effect. Even ancient astronomers understood the roundness of our world just by observations of the sky. Looking north they could see the fixed position of our north star along the axis point but as one moved north, the further they traveled, the further overhead the north star would move. Go far enough and the north star would be overhead. Travel far enough south and the north star would move lower and lower on the horizon until out of sight.
On a flat earth, the north star would stay fixed in the sky regardless how much one moved in any direction.
On a flat earth, the north star would stay fixed in the sky regardless how much one moved in any direction.
newfie
Well-Known Member
That may be true Old but this presents what I think is a real problem here in this thread. The definition of terms. Hope, faith, belief, what do they actually mean? What is the history and the historical meaning of those terms and then how were those terms used and grafted into our culture in regards to social mores, religious or otherwise? Is my use of those terms correct? Is your use correct? Is anyone here at all using the terms correctly?
Seems to me until some consensus on terms is arrived at, any discussion that moves forward for any benefit goes nowhere.
As to the point about religion and science. There was a time where religion and science were not separated at all and yet there were points in history where religion was not also as rigid and dogmatic, even literal. There was space to breath and move around in. And not that science can't have its own rigidity and dogmatism too.
One of my favorite quotes is from the late Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman who speaking to a group of science teachers said, "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
As to the nature of science and religion, before being crushed by Christianity, there were schools of thought within so-called paganism, a term of abuse imposed by christians, that did wonderful work and yet easily moved in and out of both worlds of religion and science. One example would be the great city of Alexandria and among its philosophical schools often called mystery schools was the central source of knowledge in the Library of Alexandria. Now christians often get the blame for the knowledge lost in Alexandria but it is a bit more complicated than that. Also the muslims had a hand in it as well but the great war of Christianity and Paganism as a result of Christian Orthodoxy post Constantine did not help matters at all. The great Alexandrian pagan scholar Hypatia and her tragic story may well be a good account of this and many feel was the death knell that carried our world into the 1000 years known as the dark ages. I on some level subscribe to that but more generally than specifically to Hypatia herself.
But in regards to science, science holds a great debt to religion and in fact to Islam specifically. As christianity was deep in the throws of ignorance and bloodshed as religion was abused for the sake of power, in Islam an enlightenment was at work. In the late 10th century was born Ibn-al-Haytham who would go on to change the world of science as we know it. And it was interesting that this eye opening moment came about when in the early 11th century, Ibn moved to none other than Egypt and from his learning there emerged what we today refer to as the Scientific Method. More on Ibn-al-Haythem found here but there are many sources should one choose to look.
Yep, it was from the world of Islam that science got its foundational method to which it establishes what is called truth or fact. At TAM (The Amazing Meeting) a few years back, Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke of this very subject along with the fact that much of Astronomy and mathematics came from the Islamic world and during a time christians were locked in their own dungeon of ignorance and abuse, again, not for the sake of religion but for the sake of power. Religion only served as the weapon. Sound familiar? We're not really that complicated you know!
It is also suggested that the Genesis story and what science sez about the creation of our universe matches on some level and I can see why some would argue that. As I said elsewhere, the father of the Big Bang theory, Catholic Priest George Lemaitre, saw the Big Bang and its singularity as the source, the cosmic egg of all being, in his case God. The irony that science has taken the hypothesis of a religious man and moved it forward to offer a secular explanation of our being here. As to the creation stories (yes stories as in more than 1) the english translation does seems to make that claim valid but do the Hebrew source language and culture of the time support such a conclusion?
At another time because it will get in depth in order to do both sides justice, I'd like to take that claim on using the bible itself along with contextual scholarship of the bible and see if such claim is indeed valid in the first place. It may well be so.
The backstory also explains (solves the contradiction) why the order of creation in Genesis Chapter 1 differs from the order of creation in Chapter 2 (thus more than 1 story) and that the Chapter 2 story (7th to 6th century BCE) predates the Chapter 1 (post Babylonian exile) and chapter 1 was to impose the new monotheism to supplant the old polytheism of Chapter 2.
Hmmmm!
its ok , god will help you in your search for an answer.
newfie
Well-Known Member
moot is the attempt to moot an answer
newfie
Well-Known Member
who says?
newfie
Well-Known Member
god will answer your questions if you will listen
newfie
Well-Known Member
your passion for your "religion' is evident
newfie
Well-Known Member
proof can be found within
newfie
Well-Known Member
there is clearly much anguish within, hopefully you will listen to god and find your answer.
I agree that the whole flat earth thing is overblown, as most educated people have known about its spherical nature since at least the time of Aristotle. However, there are some passages in the bible which suggest the authors believed in a flat earth.
I mention this because it's always interesting to see which issues religious people defer to science on and which they refuse to budge on. It clues you in to their most fundamental beliefs, and it charts the steady progress of science over time. The list of things considered unknowable by science and thus the sole province of religion has steadily grown smaller and smaller.
Oh goodness,
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