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Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Religion or Science - How do they compare? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Phat Member Posts: 18262 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.1 |
I attempted to find a transcript for the sermon that I picked, but found that transcripts cost $50.00!!!
I then went to the church website but so far have not found any transcripts anywhere. This makes it rather difficult for us to discuss these things.Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith Paul was probably SO soaked in prayer nobody else has ever equaled him.~Faith
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
The list of contradictions would certainly be written down. If we can identify it, I can find some of the stronger examples and you can use the audio sermon to argue, since you intend to listen anyway.
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Paboss Member (Idle past 1765 days) Posts: 55 Joined:
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Faith writes:
When I was becoming a Christian in my mid-to-late forties in the late eighties, entirely from reading books about religion, I found the doctrine of the Fall/original sin to be the most amazingly illuminating thing I'd ever heard. It explains just about everything about our current condition, our propensity to sin, to disobey all God's laws, and our lack of communication with God, it explains war and violence and murder, just about everything. Nothing makes sense without it.
It makes sense of everything and of anything because it can magically explain anything we cannot make sense of: Why do we see contradictions in the Bible? We have fallen minds.Why do our moral values differ from those of God? We are fallen beings. Why do we hurt each other? We are fallen beings. Why Science leads us away from God? It is carried out by fallen minds. Why do we misinterpret the Bible? We have fallen minds. Why do some feel sexually attracted to same sex people? Fallen human nature. Why do we think women and men are equal? We are fallen beings who cannot get God’s order. Why do animals eat each other? Nature is fallen because of us. Why natural disasters? See above. You see I can keep going ad infinitum explaining anything I want with the fall, making sense to everything, but it doesn’t make it true.
Faith writes:
We are magnificent creatures, I've always felt that, and that "science" is so determined to demote and degrade us there has to be something wrong with science. Something I felt long before I was a Christian. But we are also broken creatures. Biblical doctrine explains that we were meant for a high destiny but that disobedience of our Creator cut us off from that high destiny.
It doesn’t need to be anything wrong with Science; perhaps you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. You think Science is determined to demote and degrade us because it says nothing about us having that high destiny the Bible talks about. But Science is not in the business of making value statements about anyone, it is simply a method for approaching and understanding the natural universe around us. I find it amazing that we are here against all odds; that we are very fortunate for that, and that it makes it worth to seize the opportunity to make the most of our little time around here. It also gives us good reasons to try to make things better for others, because this is the only chance we have at life, and as far as we can tell, those who are oppressed in this life won’t get any compensation in any other life; so it is better to be kind to each other in the only life we have.
Faith writes:
That fits what I always felt about human beings better than I could ever have thought it. And then on top of that I find out that God has given us a way to recover our high destiny out of love for us, and it reduces me to tears of gratitude.
I get it that you find it appealing, and I would agree that at least some of the Christian worldview is appealing for me too. But we don’t have the power to wish alternative realities into existence. We can only deal with the reality we are presented with. Science is making progress in understanding that reality so that we can make the most of it. On the other hand religions are in conflict with each other and creating confusion, because none have sound arguments or evidence to become reliable guides for our lives.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined:
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I appreciate being able to explain all those things in terms of fallenness. I'm not sure exactly why you object to it.
"Science" at least the evolutionary "sciences," has pointedly seemed to enjoy demoting us. You think it's just objectively assessing the world, I don't, I think that's a sort of reverse romance about science, the kind of sciences that try to define us anyway, and that it has had a demoralizing effect on the world. There are objective sciences but not the ones that define us. You think they are defining reality, I do not. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Faith writes:
It isn't Biblical. I appreciate being able to explain all those things in terms of fallenness. I'm not sure exactly why you object to it.An honest discussion is more of a peer review than a pep rally. My toughest critics here are the people who agree with me. -- ringo
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2106 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
"Original sin" is among the most evil of many evil ideas to come from the fevered minds of our shaman class:
Ayn Rand on Original Sin Ayn Rand on “Original Sin” | Antheosis - Meanderings of an ex-Jehovah's Witness Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not. It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some inexplicable claim upon himit does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man. The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man’s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code. Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a tendency to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free. What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledgehe acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evilhe became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his laborhe became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desirehe acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joyall the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man’s fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he wasthat robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without lovehe was not man. Man’s fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he’s man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives.Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge. Belief gets in the way of learning--Robert A. Heinlein In the name of diversity, college student demands to be kept in ignorance of the culture that made diversity a value--StultisTheFool It's not what we don't know that hurts, it's what we know that ain't so--Will Rogers If I am entitled to something, someone else is obliged to pay--Jerry Pournelle If a religion's teachings are true, then it should have nothing to fear from science...--dwise1 "Multiculturalism" demands that the US be tolerant of everything except its own past, culture, traditions, and identity. Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other points of view--William F. Buckley Jr.
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Faith writes: "Science" at least the evolutionary "sciences," has pointedly seemed to enjoy demoting us. It is not Science that demoted humans but rather truth, honesty and reality. Humans ain't any more special than pond scum and that's a fact Jack! You want to be special? Then throw away your dogma and begin to learn.
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NoNukes Inactive Member
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The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin. Couple Original Sin with Calvinism, and you've really got something monstrous. Not only are you born evil, but if you let Calvinists tell it, you are not even responsible for your own remorse and repentance and requests for salvation through grace. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We've got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand. Neil Young, Rockin' in the Free World. Worrying about the "browning of America" is not racism. -- Faith I hate you all, you hate me -- Faith No it is based on math I studied in sixth grade, just plain old addition, substraction and multiplication. -- ICANT
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Pollux Member Posts: 303 Joined: |
One would expect that the accounts of the Resurrection would be pretty accurate, but there are significant differences. In Mark the women are afraid and tell no one; in Matthew they meet Jesus while running to tell the disciples; in Luke they inexplicably neglect to mention the highly significant fact of meeting Jesus, so even by the evening the ones going to Emmaus do not know, though they know of angels at the tomb; and in John Mary meets Jesus in the garden after seeing the disciples.
The late additions to Mark only add to the contradictions.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
You missed the fact that Matthew has the disciples head off to Galilee and see the resurrected Jesus there, without any hint of the meeting on the road to Emmaus or Pentecost. And more.
There are other good contradictions, too.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
All this defense of humanity against the idea of original sin actually makes a virtue out of a deficient condition. Oddly perhaps, to my mind original sin, our basic depravity, exalts humanity by implying that we are meant to be so much better than we are. So you think we are perfection itself? Seems to me the flaws really ought to be obvious. In any case what we originally were meant to be shines through this doctrine, with lost abilities that are hard to imagine since we take our broken condition as the standard, abilities I expect to have restored to believers at the resurrection, mental abilities, moral abilities, physical abilities, and most of it things we can't even imagine.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
So you think we are perfection itself? Where does Coyote make any claim that anyone is perfect? Men have flaws as do all living things. You've missed the entire point. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We've got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand. Neil Young, Rockin' in the Free World. Worrying about the "browning of America" is not racism. -- Faith I hate you all, you hate me -- Faith No it is based on math I studied in sixth grade, just plain old addition, substraction and multiplication. -- ICANT
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Just not those flaws attributed to the Fall, OK, with no hope of correction of those particular flaws as I was describing. OK. I was trying to get something across about the implications of original sin but oh well.
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Pollux Member Posts: 303 Joined: |
Agreed. I was not aiming for completeness. It is said that the accounts are different because eyewitnesses to an event often give differing accounts. But at least two of the Gospel writers were not eyewitnesses - probably none were - and would the women have told of the empty tomb and angels and omitted the rather salient fact of seeing Jesus? Either Matthew or Luke (or both) has to be wrong.
The birth accounts only agree on the parents and birth-place. They don't even agree on the time of birth, or the reason and time for going to Nazareth.
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Faith writes: Just not those flaws attributed to the Fall, OK, with no hope of correction of those particular flaws as I was describing. But there is no Fall in the Bible Faith. Nor is there any claim of some original perfect mankind. In fact the best that can be said is that God looked at all of creation and found it very good; humans no better than pond scum it seems.
Genesis1:31 writes:
31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
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