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Author Topic:   Balancing Faith and Science
Rahvin
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Posts: 4039
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 8.2


Message 89 of 137 (222446)
07-07-2005 8:01 PM


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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