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Author | Topic: Balancing Faith and Science | |||||||||||||||||||||||
New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
quote: And how are the things you listed above scientific? Its these things that exist that are out of the reach of science that have lead me to believe that science cannot detect everything. So, because something has not been detected by science is no reason to assume that it doesn't exist. The existance of the things that cannot be detected by science are some of the reasons why I have made a rational decision to believe in god. I think that believing in god can be rational. What is irrational is when I take it one step further and choose a specific religion, say christianity. I also believe that Jesus is god. This belief is irrational and based on faith and what I've read about him in the bible.
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nator Member (Idle past 2191 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is more accurate and rational to say that you don't know. quote: No. We aren't comparing belief in the unseen to what you believe. The fact is that you cannot get away from the logic; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is reasonable and rational to conclude that there is no evidence for unseen beings, so they probably do not exist. You are not all-knowing, however, so you cannot make a positive statement about something's non-existence.
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nator Member (Idle past 2191 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. quote: Uh. What?
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nator Member (Idle past 2191 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: No, that's not rational. What would be rational would be to say "We do not currently understand X" and leave it at that. To fill in the gap in knowledge with what essentioally works out to be magic is not rational.
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tsig Member (Idle past 2929 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So you require evidence there is no bigfoot, ufos or orgonians? This message has been edited by DHA, 07-07-2005 05:23 PM
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
To fill in the gap in knowledge with what essentioally works out to be magic is not rational. I filled in the gap in knowledge with my own personal subjective feelings and interpretations of those feelings to make a rational decision about the world we live in. That decision includes the existance of a god.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
So you require evidence there is no bigfoot, ufos or orgonians? Despite the impossibility of evidence of non-existance....yes. You cannot know that orgonians don't exist just because there is no evidence of them. You can assume that they don't for all practical purposes, but you can't know that they don't.
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tsig Member (Idle past 2929 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
I filled in the gap in knowledge with my own personal subjective feelings and interpretations of those feelings to make a rational decision about the world we live in. That decision includes the existance of a god. Once again personal experience parading as truth.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Once again personal experience parading as truth. whoa, whoa, whoa.....Slow down, Turbo. I'm not claiming my position is truth, I claiming its rational.
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tsig Member (Idle past 2929 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
You cannot know that orgonians don't exist just because there is no evidence of them. You can assume that they don't for all practical purposes, but you can't know that they don't. Yes I can, what I know is not your opinion.
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tsig Member (Idle past 2929 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
I'm not claiming my position is truth, I claiming its rational. Okay, (stops, takes deep breath) give me the rational reasons to believe.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
you mean re-write the posts that I just posted today?
no. Read what I've already posted and reply to those.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
now THATS irrational.
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4039 Joined: Member Rating: 8.2 |
A belief in God is not rational, by definition. It is faith.
The pure truth is that there is absolutely no empirical evidence for the existance of God or anything spiritual. The only "evidence" that does exist is the Bible, and if validity is given to the Bible simply because it is a really old book, then the ancient religions of any number of civilizations (both those that remain today and those that have faded into history) have equal credibility. Giving the Biblical God validity because of the number of historical followers is similarly a logical "appeal to tradition" fallacy - just because it's always been done doesn't make it true. There IS no evidence for God. Belief in Him, faith, is a choice that only an idividual can make, and is irrelevant to science.
You will disagree, but I believe that from God we have in us the concept of right and wrong, altruism, generosity, love etc and that we have also been given free will so that we can accept or reject those attributes. Christianity and other religions suggest that we should choose the positive attributes and reject the negatives. To say that "the concept of right and wrong, altruism, generosity, love" etc. are beyond science is also false. Science is simply the observation of what is, and the use of those observations to describe natural processes. The concepts mentioned are easily described inscientific terms, though they lose some of their wonder in the explanation, just as a magicians tricks are not so wonderous after being revealed. Love (in the romantic sense) is an emotional factor of reproduction, nothing more. Altruism and generosity are traits beneficial to civilization and thus the species as a whole, and have passed through natural selection whereas individuals with a marked lack of these traits (extreme examples would be serial killers) are removed from society. "Do unto others as you would have them do to you," after all, is purely logical. These things exist independant of God. People of non-Judeo-Christian faiths and atheists feel the same emotions, have the same basic moral compass of logic. God simply represents the concept of good and all it entails. Right and wrong exist independantly of God. God points out the way to be good, and encourages us to be good rather than evil. Similarly, science exists independantly of religion. The two do not mix - religion is static and unchanging, with preconceived notions. In other words, it has made conclusions without examining evidence first. Science does the opposite - scientists gather evidence, and draw an impartial and unbiased theory attempting to explain how those observations came to be. Science cannot begin from the position that "the universe was created in six days, and several thousand years ago a great flood destroyed all life except for the organisms preserved on a large boat," and then attempt to prove it. Science begins with examining the geological record, plate tectonics, and the amount of water on the earth. Since no observable evidence points to a flood or six-day creation, such an idea never enters the mind of scientists. With God, the only rational decision is to say "he might exist, it cannot be proven that he doesn't, but I just don't see any reson to believe he does." A person can choose to believe in God with no evidence out of faith. This is not rational, it is a personal choice to have faith. This decision may be based on various personal experiences (I believe in God because of experiences and feelings I have had, for instance), but these experiences are not able to be reproduced or provable to others. These experiences cannot pass a peer-review or be tested. Therefore the decision to have faith is not a rational one.
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nator Member (Idle past 2191 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. quote: It is impossible to prove a negative. There is currently no reliable evidence for any of the phenomena you listed, except the UFO's (we do, indeed, have evidence for unidentified flying objects, just not that they are alien spacehips or whatever). The scientific conclusion we must reach is that there is no evidence for such things, not that they do not exist. Since we are not omnicient, we cannot know if they do not exist. We just don't know.
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