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Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Religion or Science - How do they compare? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
He made a mistake when he decided to trust the apologists. A more scientific attitude would have helped him.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
He’s fallen for questionable or even outright false arguments.
For example, the number of Bible manuscripts is not good evidence that the Bible is reliable or not. It only helps to deal with corruption to the text - it can’t tell us that the original text was reliable at all. Even then we don’t have many really early manuscripts and the earliest are just tiny fragments. So yes, if he is interested in the truth he does need help. Too baD that he placed his trust in people interested only in pushing their own beliefs.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5
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quote: Assuming that they had the truth in the first place. And generally they have no way of telling that, either. Revelation really isn’t much good as a way of knowing.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: Aside from the fact that religion is far too diffuse a phenomenon to be characterised so simply, aside from the fact that religions don’t even need any sort of God, let alone one responsible for humans, the religious attitude far too often opposes understanding in the name of dogma. And that very much includes you.
quote: Except there is nothing obvious about that. There is a lot of revisionism, but whether it constitutes revelation is far from obvious. That the pre-Christian books were building up to the supposed climax seems more likely false than true. You may say that you were answering from the perspective of Christian belief, but that simply takes it back to my previous point - dogma is taken as more important than understanding.
quote: I am not sure how you would measure focus, nor how you would count the increase in the number of people - at least in the West - who don’t associate with any formal religion. Moreover a more focussed view is only beneficial if it is focussed on the truth and there is no way to judge that (except, perhaps, in the way that religionists often avoid inconvenient truths, perhaps)
quote: Regardless of individual,weaknesses, scientists as a group are likely more open-minded about science than religionists are about their religion. And, as an institution Science has a much better record than religion.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: Mere adherence to belief without full comprehension - which includes the implications is not understanding. Inventing excuses - themselves poorly understood - to cling to belief is not understanding. Religion is often opposed to understanding - and that is one of the things that makes it very different from science.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: It’s also a convenient saying for false religions out to enslave people. Like your Christianity Too bad for you that you are one of the most error-prone people I’ve ever met and your religion seems to encourage it.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: I didn’t say that it was understanding that opposed understanding. It is the wilful ignorance of dogmatic belief that opposes understanding, such as your rather desperate attempts to minimise and downplay the differences in the Appearance stories.
quote: The Bible certainly shows changing views. Whether any of those changes are Revelations is another matter altogether, and certainly not something that can be considered obvious.
quote: And yet we see Christians complaining of persecution when they aren’t given special privileges even today. Let alone all the abuses of the past, the anti-semitism, the murderous conflicts between the adherents of different denominations.
quote: Which only illustrates that science as an institution is not dogmatic, since it tolerates the differing beliefs.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5
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quote: You will note that this argument is a massive non-sequitur. By parsimony the rational default certainly does not involve making up a pre-existing intelligence. And that is before we even considered the demonstrated ability of non-intelligent forces to produce so much.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: People who rely on sermons will have a very poor understanding of the Bible. You’ll get opinions and doctrines mixed up with the text - which is selectively quoted if at all. Reading the Bible will let you find that it isn’t as the preachers present it - especially the preachers you prefer. Perhaps you would be more accurate in saying:
I don't understand how anyone could ever have considered himself to be a Christian without refusing to know what is IN the Bible by trusting sermons instead of reading it
One of the big things of the Reformation was encouraging people to read the Bible. You seem to think that was a bad thing.
quote: Wouldn’t preaching the Bible mean admitting to the problems ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: According to Calvinism, God deliberately arranged the Fall. How does it make sense to you that God wanted all the things you attribute to it ? Indeed, even if we discount Calvinistic ideas it is hard to see how it could happen without God at least laying in the groundwork (for no apparent reason) and intentionally allowing things to play out as He knew he would. Maybe you think repurposing the Genesis story as an excuse to blame people for the state of the world was a great idea. But it doesn’t really work with Christian ideas of God. Which is really obvious if you read it.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: Which is still not a good way to understand it. Even if the preacher sticks to the text rather than adding interpretations to it. It’s too episodic and too spread out.
quote: Given the abysmal quality of some of the commentaries quoted here that is not obviously a good thing. And even the less bad ones are liable to be affected by doctrinal commitments.
quote: When it can take weeks to go through a few verses ?
quote: I can see that going very badly - at least in terms of generating real understanding. You need to understand that the Bible is not a coherent text. You get a lot of cherry-picking, misinterpretation and harmonisations that ignore problems. Especially if you are an inerrantist.
quote: But they were the things that preachers typically do ignore. How many tell you about the contradictions, for one ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: But I do know that listening for a relatively short time every Sunday is slow and episodic. I do know that it doesn’t take weeks worth of sermons to simply read a few verses. I do know that commentaries are biased and unreliable. And that’s the good ones. Because reading is better and faster than listening, point me to a transcript of one of your sermons and I’ll read it. I simply don’t want to spend hours listening to recordings which aren’t likely to be of any value to me anyway.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: And I bet they try to cover them up, too. And that’s my point. Real understanding is sacrificed on the altar of doctrine.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: I’ve read enough apologetics to know how that goes. There are real contradictions. Anyone who denies that opposes understanding of the Bible (but then we already know that you oppose that)
quote: Have you got transcripts? That IS what I asked for.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
I’ll look but if I don’t see them I’m not going to waste time on it.
I did watch a video of one of Sproul’s talks and I was thoroughly unimpressed. Message 66
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