Science, Religion, God – Let’s just be honest

You need to stop misrepresenting my position.Just being a Christian does not imply in anyway that my morals come from Jesus.You need to move beyond black/white, right/wrong, yes/no thinking.And again, I have explained to you that I do not use quote mining. When will you learn to read?You are still as clueless as when you posted the OP it seems.

jar, your position has no consistency to even really "represent", except for piece-meal comments here and there with no real relation to each other. So of course it's easy for you to forever fall back on "you're misunderstanding and misrepresenting". That's really all you know how to say instead of delineating clearly WHAT exactly your position is (Christianity?) and WHY you hold your position.

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Just being a Christian does not imply in anyway that my morals come from Jesus.

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And here's a classic example of your "enshrouded in mystery" Christianity.

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You need to move beyond black/white, right/wrong, yes/no thinking.

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This is just to excuse inconsistency in your own position and your lack of willingness to actually talk about it rather than allude to it.

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You are still as clueless as when you posted the OP it seems.

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Faith was definitely right about you in my welcome topic. You intentionally want others to be confused by your position(s) because it excuses you from actually having to put forth something that can be analyzed and challenged in an intellectually honest way.It appears that you prefer to retreat to some sort of smug "untouchable paradigm" that you've created for yourself. It must be great!At this point I'd rather not take you seriously until you can put forth a very clear description of exactly what your version of Christianity consists of (i.e. How much of the Bible is correct and how much of the Bible is incorrect, what your criteria is for interpreting a verse in Biblical literature as accurate and another as inaccurate, etc etc etc etc...). Until then, you're a waste of my time because we aren't actually debating positions, you're just posturing phantom "hide and seek" positions instead of presenting one. "No no, you still haven't figured me out yet!!!!" Yeah, quite the thrill!Your seeming objective to bait in order to repeat your never ending mantra: "you need to stop misrepresenting my position", is getting old. You haven't actually presented anything but bits and pieces of your position, completely inconsistent with each other, I might add.Link me to some outside topic or thread in existence where you clearly lay out your position and your version of Christianity and I'll be happy to continue with you, but as of right now I started this topic to get people to think, and question their ideas about what they "know".Thank you for playing!Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.

I see at least 2, what I see as, fatal flaws in your discourse.First, I think you are conflating the purposes of religion and science; they seek to answer distinctly different questions. Religious endeavors seek to answer meta-physical questions such as does God exist? How should I treat others? Is there life after death? What is my purpose in life - why am I here? Science cannot address these types of questions.Science is designed to address questions about the physical world. Its pursuits are limited to things which we can experience with our senses or can convert into a form which we can experience with our senses (example: we can't detect radioactivity directly with our senses but have developed instruments that can detect radioactive particles and then converts it into a format that we can observe with our senses).Sure there is some overlap in the two systems, but the problem comes when that overlap becomes too great. When you use science exclusively to answer these types of meta-physical questions it becomes a type of religion, not in the strictest sense of belief in and worship of a supernatural being(s), but in the more general sense of a set of beliefs that relate humanity to an order of existence. It becomes a set of beliefs that attempts to answer the same questions that I mentioned as the purpose of religion.The second flaw I see is that you seem to attribute all human failings to religion. When in fact, human corruption is the base problem and religion simply becomes a justification for personal conduct. You seem to believe that should we eliminate all religion that would somehow eliminate human corruption. I don't believe that to be the case. We have seen a significant departure from organized religion in recent years, and yet I don't think it can be shown that human corruption has significantly improved.Science is important, even crucial, to our understanding of reality, I would agree, but I don't believe it can answer all of our questions; that it can address all the challenges of the human condition.HBD

So run away.Little kids like little answers. Sorry, I am no longer a little kid.But if you are interested in "my path to Christianity" then you can start with Message 1 and then go on to Message 1 and then ask questions. How so? You asserted that my morals came from Jesus. I'm telling you that is not correct. Morals don't come from anyone, they are developed and evolve from society, culture, personal experience, teachings, empathy, understanding and wisdom.Maybe it's time for you to start questioning what YOU know?Edited by jar, : may ---> maybe

Run away? Puh-leez. I'm challenged you to actually give me a thorough understanding of what your position is and what your Christianity exactly consists of instead of running around like a gazelle screaming "catch me catch me". You can take that or leave it.I'll happily read your "path to Christianity" and get back to you. Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.

I am not trying to answer for jar but will try to deal with this from my perspective.As modernists we like straight forward clear cut answers to questions. As a result some Christians, instead of focusing their faith on Jesus focus it on the Bible, and look for answers by finding a couple of verses, (usually ones that give them the answer that they agrees with what they want to hear), and they are done.I contend the Bible is a narrative of the story of God reaching out through the hearts, minds and imaginations of His very imperfect people with it culminating in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the imperfect embodiment of His Word in Jesus. The epistles then go on to flesh out Jesus' message and what God was doing and is doing through Jesus Christ.The Bible should be read through the lens of the message of Christ with the faith that God is good, wants goodness for us and wants us to reflect His goodness into the world. It is still done with faith however and not absolute knowledge.In the end it is about the heart. The question is about our basic nature about what and how we love. Are we lovers of ourselves above all else or are do we have hearts that love unselfishly and altruistically?If you are interested in my views there was a recent very lengthy thread on them. Here is a link to the first message in the thread. Message 1 It is too long to read the whole thread unless you have a great deal of time on your hands but you can get a bit of a feel for it by reading the first and last posts in the thread.

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As modernists we like straight forward clear cut answers to questions. As a result some Christians, instead of focusing their faith on Jesus focus it on the Bible, and look for answers by finding a couple of verses, (usually ones that give them the answer that they agrees with what they want to hear), and they are done.

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Do you really blame a lot of Christians though from (supposedly) finding their answers in the Scriptures and for believing that the Bible is the Word of God? I mean, after all, isn't that where the whole concept of Christianity comes from to begin with? Why would God have a bunch of men write about Him inaccurately if the Bible was really the only way in which He makes his "identity" known to us? Put yourself in their perspective here: "Would God intentionally deceive us"? You can't possibly expect Christians who are trying to find ground in their ideas to just make up their own teachings based on characters and perceived concepts from the Bible but not from the Bible itself?

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I contend the Bible is a narrative of the story of God reaching out through the hearts, minds and imaginations of His very imperfect people with it culminating in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the imperfect embodiment of His Word in Jesus. The epistles then go on to flesh out Jesus' message and what God was doing and is doing through Jesus Christ.

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I understand that it's your contention, but how is it justified. By what authority is this so? How do you establish that the Bible in general is a narrative? From Scripture itself or from the fact that God has told you this? How is your contention justified, in other words?How would someone totally without your persuasion be able to understand that this is the "true" way to be interpreting God's "purpose" or the "understanding" what He truly wants us to have?

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The Bible should be read through the lens of the message of Christ with the faith that God is good, wants goodness for us and wants us to reflect His goodness into the world. It is still done with faith however and not absolute knowledge.

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And where do you get this "should" idea from? Is this a divine revelation that was made known to you personally? The Bible does not only communicate the "goodness" of God, it communicates all sorts of behaviors from commanding the Israelites to slaughter other nations to regulating slavery etc etc. Is it your contention people reading the Bible should only focus on certain verses and then decide that only those are the ones God meant for us to understand as being representative of His character?You have to realize that none of this is new to me, I've been in the Bible camp, I know how "we" think. I've been everywhere from a more or less literalist interpretation of Scripture all the way to "well, I'm a Christian but I still can't know 100% for sure". We want to somehow justify ideas that we have wrapped up in these little heads of ours instead of just admitting "okay, alright, I actually don't even know if this idea of my God even exists". Remember, "we" HAVE to make these notions work somehow because that's what "we" WANT to believe. I mean, it just HAS to be that way!Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.

You can, as I said, Jesus's message in the New Testament is important, whether you believe that he is divine or just a really smart Jew, who saw that the poor and downtrodden needed help and pledged himself and anyone who wanted to follow him to help these individuals. Still a powerful message, and a person is still following in Jesus' example. Since this is the person you are supposed to trust to be a Christian, even following him without belief in the divine can make you a Christian. Also, you continue to conflate religion with individuals "Knowing" they are right and this isn't quite accurate. The beliefs of a congregation are varied and far different from one another. Does the religion itself have a dogma, most likely, but many individuals place these things as metaphysical experiences, outside of the purview of science. Just because the Holy Catholic Church states something, does not mean that all of the religious follow it to a T. Conflating the dogma of the entire faith with the faith of an individual is a huge mistake that you are making. Claiming that metaphysical explanations cannot exist alongside honest to god scientific discoveries is another mistake you are making because this is a belief that stands outside of science's applicability. Yes, Science can make a belief ludicrous to continue to hold onto, such as a flat Earth. However, this simply explains why a religion can exist alongside science with the required flexibility within the natural world. The spiritual/metaphysical/supernatural world it does not need to bow to science on because science does not and cannot say anything about this idea. Perhaps philosophy can attempt to refute the logic in this area, but science will leave it be. Science and Religion answer much different questions. First, let me be up front, I do not believe in any gods/God/deities, but you are placing science as the ultimate arbiter, when even science itself states that it cannot investigate outside of the natural world. Individuals who place God in a different plane of existence (i.e.-metaphysical) never run the risk of being told by scientific discovery that they were wrong because science leaves that for philosophy and religion. Should we continue to increase our knowledge of the natural world through science, of course, but it does not mean that religion and science cannot coexist reasonably well. Also, your statement about Zeus is not quite correct. Those religions were absorbed by other groups, primarily the Christians, and the powers were given to Yahweh, far before a solution for those "mysteries" was discovered by science. In fact, Thor and Zeus were well out of fashion prior to the discovery of the cause of lightning. So, here you state that these were unchanging religions, but that is not the case at all. They simply were absorbed and its members converted, it had nothing to do with science making Zeus and Thor look foolish. People can have faith that the holy book is accurate in some regards, which will possibly put them against scientific discoveries of the future, but many religions accept scientific discoveries, outside of the fundamentalist ones. So, how is discovering the origin of the species stepping on the Catholic's toes, when they gladly accept the findings of biological evolution?Did it for a while, of course, because you are expecting a paradigm shift. And guess what, these happen in Science as well! Look at Plate Tectonic Theory. This idea stepped on many toes within the scientific community and was laughed at by many professionals. Yet, as the evidence continued to build the community underwent a paradigm shift and acceptance was forthcoming based upon the amount of evidence (another example is the fact that meteors had caused great devestation in the past, this was not accepted at first).This is similar to what happens when science and religion meet, there is dischord followed slowly by resolution and a paradigm shift in the belief of the faithful, especially within non-fundamentalist Christianity. Science is not forced to back down, at least since the enlightenment, because it is evidence based. A great example you can see happening now is the much greater acceptance within the religious of the homosexual community. Is it there yet, no, but the process has begun and you find many Christians that are not against same sex marriage and a homosexual lifestyle....if you aren't seeing them, look to the younger generation especially. I'm not sure what religion you were raised in, but being raised Catholic, I was definitely told to question my faith, not "it is this way and just deal with it". Also, I was not looked down upon for questioning very fundamental aspects of the faith because looking for answers is one of the important aspects of the religion. And here again, you throw in the "inherently incompatible", which as previously stated is just you looking at the issue in black and white and not seeing any shades of gray. The Metaphysical, the acceptance of scientific discovery, the evolution of religion within the modern age. These are all aspects that you don't seem to be considering when you state that these ideas cannot be reconciled with one another. You keep seeing this because there is an enormous gap between fundamentalists and those who question their faith, help others, and find the answers that lead to a better life for themselves and those around them. I'm not exactly sure how you do not see the difference between one group that refuses to listen to things outside of a Holy Book and a congregation and a group of individuals who are willing to accept the discoveries of the modern world and learn how they can fit within the framework they already have from religion, including occasionally removing portions they had originally agreed with in their faith.ABE - Also, you still haven't answered how science and Buddhism cannot co-exist. Since you simply state religion, how is Buddhism affected by the discoveries, which they always tend to accept readily? My point here is that you seem to have recently come out of your religion and are angry at it, which i understand from my own deconversion, but simply placing all blame at the feet of religion is a faulty premise to begin with, especially when you don't even seem to be considering all religions.Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.

Tempe, I can't address all of this because a lot of it is just a rehash.

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Claiming that metaphysical explanations cannot exist alongside honest to god scientific discoveries is another mistake you are making because this is a belief that stands outside of science's applicability.

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I didn't say that they can't co-exist, I said that the principles of the two things are just not compatible, even if someone imagines that they can make them work. It's all the difference in the world between someone informing you that they have an as-of-yet unheard of disease and one person saying "I have the answer, it's Jesus!" and the other person saying "we need to figure out how to find a cure for your disease because we don't know". I don't need some long philosophical explanation from you to try to make the two things fit.

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Yes, Science can make a belief ludicrous to continue to hold onto, such as a flat Earth.

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I originally misread this. People just assumed the earth to be flat based on sight, but also mostly on the basis of religion, before anyone questioned it. Science made no such belief. And even if it did, science is always willing to revise itself, a religion is not (at some point or another).

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The spiritual/metaphysical/supernatural world it does not need to bow to science on because science does not and cannot say anything about this idea.

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The "spiritual/metaphysical/supernatural" doesn't exist as a possibility unless we find evidence for it. Your statement is no different than me saying "the tooth fairy, flying spaghetti monster and santa claus do not need to bow to science because science does not and cannot say anything about those creatures." And you're right, so if it can't be "knowable", it's not even worth considering. "I believe that there is a moon outside of the universe that is made up of cotton candy". Okay, lovely, now moving on...

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However, this simply explains why a religion can exist alongside science with the required flexibility within the natural world.

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Unless I'm misunderstanding what you are saying here, there are a host of religions that deal with ideas relevant to the natural world. The whole concept of Jesus coming down to earth to die, for instance, deals with something involving the natural world. Islam has a host of precepts involving the natural world. Religions that try to forge their own realities completely in the metaphysical with no relation to the real world are almost nonexistent. If a religion asserting a metaphysical nature makes itself "known" to the real world, then it's automatically in the way of science rendering it implausible, especially if it has a holy book dealing with precepts for human beings and the world and universe.

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but you are placing science as the ultimate arbiter, when even science itself states that it cannot investigate outside of the natural world.

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Science is the only mechanism that has produced real answers in the form of electricity, medicine, airplanes etc, I didn't say it's the ultimate arbiter. No other process has shown effective YET. Science does NOT "itself state that it cannot investigate outside of the natural world". Science is just the mere exploration of truth on a number of different fronts dealing with what we can possibly know and test and challenge and deduce with high or low probability, that's it. It assumes nothing and makes no parameters of "this is attainable and that isn't". That's in your head.

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I'm not sure what religion you were raised in, but being raised Catholic, I was definitely told to question my faith, not "it is this way and just deal with it".

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I'm sure the Pope told you to question whether or not he's the Vicar of Christ, and also whether or not Peter was the first Pope!And yes, I think almost ANY religion talks about how you should "question",...otherwise it makes them look unreasonable, and they all want to LOOK reasonable.

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You keep seeing this because there is an enormous gap between fundamentalists and those who question their faith, help others, and find the answers that lead to a better life for themselves and those around them. I'm not exactly sure how you do not see the difference between one group that refuses to listen to things outside of a Holy Book and a congregation and a group of individuals who are willing to accept the discoveries of the modern world and learn how they can fit within the framework they already have from religion, including occasionally removing portions they had originally agreed with in their faith.

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Because there's no difference between someone who imagines what their deity wants outside a holy book or within a crazy range of interpretations within a holy book. How do you think the holy books started? It started with people imagining what they wanted to be true and started writing it down for others to believe. People forging religious belief will always be a contemporary to the knowledge around them. Back in Bible times the people who invented Christianity thought the earth was flat because everyone said so, and that was part of their reality in the Bible and so they made it fit. Now we know the earth is round so people today make that compatible with their current teaching, whether they have to somehow make it fit with the Bible or make it fit with an abstract version of their religious reality outside of a holy book.Despite the fact that one can hold religious beliefs and still embrace a lot of realities in the real world and scientific ideas, the notion of religion clashes with the principle of scientific advancement. Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.

Yes, you have said that "it ceases to become a religion" already.
But that's wrong.Again, you do not get to decide when something is a religion and when it is not.
And "absolute adherence to dogmatic rules" is not necessarily a defining aspect of religion. This statement is valid.
Yes, that's what a religion is.Note that the presumption does not have to be absolutely 100% dogmatic.Some religions make it that way, yes.
But not all.You're discounting the "not all" just because they don't have this aspect you're clinging to.
Again, you don't get to decide what's a religion and what is not. Okay. It can.
But it doesn't have to... which is why "one must assume that these god(s) really do exist" isn't part of the definition. People embrace such a thing for all sorts of reasons.
The point is... you do not get to state those reasons for other people.Just because some people embrace organized religion on the assumption of absolute dogma doesn't mean that all do.It's the embracing of the organized system that makes it a religion... not the assumption of absolute dogma.
Again... this is why "the assumption of absolute dogma" does not exist in the definition, because it's not a required element. Yes, actually, that is how it is usually meant.
That may not be the way you think of it because in your experiences it's not usually meant that way.But, again... "you" and "your experiences" don't get to decide how things are for everyone. You are only 1 person in billions.You can experience only chocolate ice cream for your entire life... it doesn't mean that other flavours do not exist.
The religion you experience all your life isn't necessarily how everyone else experiences religion.It's still religion, just not the way you say it has to be. I'm the one that's good using the dictionary definition... and the definition being shown to you by the reality of the people in this thread.
You're the one who's making up another definition and insisting that everyone must adhere to it. You're the one denying the reality of the information being presented to you here.Not only are you playing semantics... you're insisting that your semantics are the only possible definition, without supporting why that must be the case.

Suffice it to say that when a person says they are "religious" or "very religious", it nearly invariably means that they don't accept a possibility that they are wrong in what they believe. It really just goes with the territory. Ask any person who puts a great deal of time into upholding their particular religious strain. If you want to find a loophole, that's fine, but let's not kid ourselves about what it usually means to be "religious". Scientists on the other hand go into believing something realizing that there is a high possibility they are wrong if their particular idea isn't supported with evidence. Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.Edited by scienceishonesty, : No reason given.

"usaully" is not the same as "always", that's the point that you seem to be missing.

You continue to make your assertions that are just plain wrong. One of the foremost, if not the most foremost Christian scholar in the world, N T Wright often says in his talks that about third of what he says is wrong, with the problem being he doesn't know which third it is.I have adjusted my views many times and I am sure that I will again in the future as I continue to read, think, pray and observe.

Well no, the whole concept of Christianity began with Jesus the Christ and the Bible exists in its present form as a result of Him. The Bible is pretty clear, read John 1 that it is Jesus that is the "Word" of God incarnate. The Bible is the 'word" of God as told through the narrative of Him reaching out to mankind as told by imperfect humans.You like the fundamentalists seem to want clear answers to issues. Mankind's relationship with God isn't like that. It is ambiguous. In the end, as I have said, it is all about the heart and as Paul often says, in the end it is our hearts or motivations that will be judged, and not our beliefs, doctrines or even our actions. It is not by anyone's authority. It is my belief. It is my faith. It makes sense of my life and of the world as I perceive it. Do I know it to be true? No. Am I prepared to base my whole life on the truth of it? Yes. In a manner of speaking yes. Read the "Sermon on the Mount". Even just using those three chapters in Matthew, in which Jesus continuously quotes what we call the Old Testament we can understand what was of God as opposed to what came from human desires to try and conform God to their image and purposes. Does a God who tells you to love your enemy also tell you to commit genocide? No. Does a God who tells us to forgive time and time again command you to get together and stone your neighbour to death for picking up firewood on the Sabbath? No. It really isn't that hard. Your posts don't support that claim. There you go again by claiming to know what I want to believe. Interestingly enough people like Dawkins and Hitchens have agreed that they want to believe that there is no god as they find the idea very small and trivial, or words to that effect. You may not accept this but my beliefs are part of an ongoing search for truth as I can best understand it.You continue to impose your previous beliefs on others and then attack that position.

If you believe something that is unfalsifiable then there is no chance that you are wrong.Or right.