PHILOSOPHY IS KING

I'll start by pointing out a possible flaw of your premise, the quote from Romans in the NT.Quoting from the bible is hardly a logical argument. For one thing, anyone could argue that it is a circular argument by using the bible as a reference for such a major logical argument such as the existence of God and his role in life.Why is it a circular argument? First, we must assert that the bible IS the word of God, that everything in the bible has to be correct for it to be used in this aspect. Second, you would then say that the bible asserts that God exists and that his role is very much active in the lives of his creation.Now, we may ask "how do we know that the bible is God's word and that it is completely accurate?" The only answer anyone can give to this is that God says so in the bible, and we concluded in the previous paragraph that God exists by using the premise "the bible IS the word of God and that it is entirely accurate." But in this particular logic problem, we are trying to prove that the bible is accurate enough for us to use it as a reference in other problems.Thus, we have a problem. How do we know that the bible IS God's word and that it is accurate? Answer: Because God saids so. How do we know what God has to say? Answer: Because the bible is God's word and it is accurate.Besides the circular argument problem, there are also other problems about using the bible as a reference. Perhaps the best example of why the bible today might not be accurate is the discovery and translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Scholars have long suspected for centuries that the book of Esther was not part of the original OT, that it was added on later on by God knows who. The Dead Sea Scrolls justified this suspicion when scholars couldn't find the book of Esther anywhere, even though everything else was there. If part of the OT couldn't be trusted, what about the rest of the OT and perhaps the NT?Now, we then run into the problem of accurately translating the texts. Anyone who speaks more than 1 language knows that translating a language from one to another is not as easy as looking up in a dictionary for each word and putting them together.I know 3 languages, and I can tell you that this approach would be disasterous. The sentencing structures are just too different from one language to another, especially for something as important as the book that tells the "truth." Even words can't be translated accurately from one language to another without running into cultural references and other barriers. For example, (I've pointed this out before) Vietnamese has no word for "sex," "you," etc.... French has no words for "warm," "cool," etc....I am writing everything off the top of my head, so there may be some specific details that I missed.After those few problems with translation, you then run into another problem, which is a major problem with the accuracies of the bible, especially the OT. OT was written in ancient Hebrew, which had no vowels, spacings, or punctuations. If I were to write the equivalence of this sentence in ancient Hebrew in English imitation, it would look like this: FWRTWRTTHQVLNCFTHSSNTNCNNCNTHBRWNNGLSHMTTNTWLDLKLKTHSAny scholar who has attempted to translate Ancient Hebrew would tell you that translating something like this, especially thousands and thousands of pages of it, is the most difficult thing. Some even claim that the whole OT put pronounced together is the name of God... but that's another story.We yet run into another problem. Both the OT and NT were translated many times before they became today's bible. I don't exactly remember the order of translation, but here is how it roughly look: Ancient Hebrew --> Ancient Greek --> Greek --> Hebrew --> Latin --> everything else. The NT went through something similar: Ancient Greek ---> Greek ---> Latin ---> King James ----> everything else.To be continued...Edited: Forgot to mention the fact that the NT was first put down on paper almost a generation after the death of Christ. The books were later named after the orginal apostles of Christ by the Vaticans.[This message has been edited by Lam, 04-06-2004]

PART 2I am very very tempted to go into the philosophical issue regarding the existence of God, but since your question is directed at the scientific view, I'll jump right to it.There are different interpretations of where science stand in regard to the existence of God. Some, like a friend of mine, would argue that because the theory of evolution already explains how life could exist the way they do without divine intervention then it proves that God does not exist. Some, like me, would argue that the fact that life could exist the way they do without divine intervention tells us nothing whether God exists or not. Then, you have some that try to incorporate the theories of science into religious faith to glorify God.I am sure there are other views out there, but I will only explain my view on this matter.Science doesn't try to prove anything! Think of the scientific method as a tool, or a guide, to objectively discover and explain certain observable phenomena without any subjective bias view.Since I already shown you in my previous post to why we cannot use the bible as a reference in this matter, I cannot think of any reason how God can be empirically and scientifically tested. However, this does not mean that science has proven the inexistence of God. There are many things that CAN exist without us being able to scientifically and empirically test it using our current abilities. For examples, black holes, the existence of the other 6 dimensions predicted by the string theory, dark matter, dark energy, entanglement, etc... are all scientific concepts that cannot be tested by any mean known to current mainstream science.Therefore, God is just another concept that might be true but is untestable by any mean known to man.The only reason why black holes, 10 dimensional universe, dark matter, etc... are considered more valid concepts or theories than "God" by the scientific community is because we can see these other concepts in mathematical terms. As far as I know, and I may be wrong, we have no known mathematical equation that can show the existence of God.If you have any question, feel free to ask. I'll respond whenever I can.

Man, that was a lot less resistance... in fact no resistance at all to my idea that the bible is not an accurate source of info. I was talking to some 18 year old Christians about these concepts and they put up more of a fight than you did.

I am simply amazed to how well you were able to dodge completely some of my points. Further more, you continued to use the bible as both premise and conclusion in your argument, which proves my point about circular argument.I will come back and write in more details after my freaking migraine is gone.

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But aren't you the people who suggest it is 66 seperate books, in which Esther is now not supposedly part of it? If they are all seperate, then information in the bible CAN confirm itself IF the books are seperate.

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Based on your logic there, then we should also conclude that the Olympian Gods are real, since we have so many books written by the ancients about them and they all seem to agree that the Gods were as emotional and horny as humans. Let us take a step further and say that fairies and goblins exist also, because we have a whole bunch of books written about them.

Up until last night, I'd been on a 4 day road trip. Right now, I am both tired and satisfied to have gotten away from school for once.Anyway, here goes.

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Negative : That is an unprovable opinion. This is a Jesus Seminar subjective invention created to slander the content of the N.T.
Evidence this outrageous claim or withdraw it.

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I don't really live here, so I do not have the will or the time to look this up. Therefore, I'm just going to withdraw it, for now.You've somehow completely ignored on what I had to say about science and God. Let me say this again. Mainstream science is completely neutral on the issue of the existence of God. What science does is just look for facts and attempt to explain them with theories, not to disprove anything you religious people claim... except for some of your rediculous assertions from time to time like the "gay plague."I was talking to a professor of mine, who is a Christian, about translation of the bible. He confirmed that there is no such thing as a non-interpreted translation from language to the next, especially from an ancient language to a new one. That is why we have the liberal versions of the bible and the conservative versions of the bible. What happens is that a committee will vote to chose what word should be used to translate an ancient word. Depending on which version you are looking at, issues from capital punishment to abortion are addressed differently, because each word means different thing.That is what I mean when I said that the bible cannot be as reliable as you people think. Meanings of words change from language to language. Even if the original was the word of God, unless you go back in time and learn the language from the people at the time you can't know for sure what certain passages really mean.

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Romans says God can be deduced from what is seen/made. Failure to make this deduction qualifies violator to be stripped of ability to recognize God in what is seen/made.

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I was hoping to avoid saying what I have to say now regarding this particular passage from Romans.This passage basically say that you have to have faith first before you could see "God's work" in everything. This is completely the opposite of what the discipline of the scientific method. For one thing, how do you know that you are not delusional when you decide that that tree right outside your house is the "evidence" you've been talking about? Ever heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy?I'm sorry, but this goes against everything that I believe in. I believe that you should be objective when you approach every problem, not try to beat the data with a hammer to make it fit your faith.

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If not, are you claiming science to be the only avenue to determine truth?

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Nope. In fact, I see science more as a tool to determine certain "truth" to be not true. Since I don't believe that not a single person in this world can know truth... you can guess where I'm coming from.By the way, the reason I've been not responding to you is because I am having a hard time understanding and thinking in your mindset, which tells me that (1) either there is a miscommunication between us somewhere along the line or (2) I am simply not advance enough to think the way you do. Either way, I'm tired of the age old argument whether science is a conspiracy that is out to do satan's work or the all-the-books-in-the-bible-are-100%-accurate argument, for now.