Whats so good about religion?

[Dancing Mustard]

You should change the pic to say "now with awesome new gameplay features" in red or something... that'd catch a few eyes.

[t-o-m]

You should change the pic to say "now with awesome new gameplay features" in red or something... that'd catch a few eyes.

or...
GRAPHICAL OVERHALL
VOTE IN POLL
FREE CANDY (just for the children )
(and no im not a paedo!)

[muy_thaiguy]

You should change the pic to say "now with awesome new gameplay features" in red or something... that'd catch a few eyes.

or...
GRAPHICAL OVERHALL
VOTE IN POLL
FREE CANDY (just for the children )
(and no im not a paedo!)

Yeah, because DM is the local pedo, and he would be pissed if someone took hs position away.

[joecoolfrog]

Sorry it has taken so long. I get involved in these discussions and really mean to respond but other things get in the way and the time it takes to properly gather my thoughts and write them down sometimes is much greater than anticipated.

I appreciate the response and think you misunderstood what I meant by scientism being a religion, but I will try to better explain myself. Forgive me for not being clearer in the first place.

1)
I think this is where you misunderstood me first. I agree that we (as humans) make the definitions we use. God did not say that the "t" was "t". There are many different languages and definitions. So we are in agreement that.

What I think you misunderstood was that I was defining scientism NOT science.

• SCIENTISM as is the faith that science has no boundaries, that in due time all human problems and all aspects of human endeavor will be dealt and solved by science alone.
  
  SCIENCE refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on scientific method. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

Do you see where I am coming from? Both may seem similar but they are different. One is the system or tool in which we acquire knowledge. The other assumes that system can prove everything even without proof or testing but just faith that it can.

Just let me tell you about myself a bit. I have a degree in mechanical engineering. I love investigating and exploring new ideas. I desire to understand how things work. Shows on the Discovery Channel are some of my favourite TV programs. Understanding how things work is one thing I really enjoy. I love science! I appreciate science! Science has done incredible, and will continue to do incredible things for humanity!

So again I do not think SCIENCE is faith. However, believing science has ALL of the answers is not science, but faith in science to explain all. That is the problem with some people and how they feel about science. There is a difference. Now on to the next section…

2)
Science is based on proof. I agree with this entirely. I asked if anyone believes that science will eventually provide all of the answers to questions we have. You said probably not, it answers the questions it answers. So my new question is, if you think it can't answer everything, when will you stop looking for an answer to a question? If science can't answer everything, why can't the universe have been created by supernatural means that science cannot understand or test because those means are beyond them?

It has been said that creation offers no answers to how or why. Who says there are natural answers to these questions? Me? You? A professor of (pick a scientific field)?

Again I am not saying science is bad or that we should stop investigating things, I am asking when do we say, "maybe science can't explain this."?

By the definition above (SCIENCE), knowledge and data is collected through observation and experimentation and testing. Since we cannot create a universe or test what happened in the past, we cannot prove the universe created itself or the Big bang happened. It is just a theory. A theory based on the assumption that only naturalistic processes exist in the universe. Is that a correct assumption? I don't think so.

People in threads here and other places all over the world have said "I don't believe in God/god/creation/supernatural events… because they cannot be proven by science."
Well of course they cannot be proven by science. They, by their very nature, are outside of the natural world thus cannot be looked at with science.

So there are two views is see:

• 1) Everything in the universe is answerable with science. We will eventually know everything there is to know through revelation with scientific process. SCIENTISM
  2) There are things outside of science (supernatural) that cannot be proven with science. These things must logically be discussed but "scientific proof" is not possible because these take place outside nature.

So a person can have: faith in science to prove all things or faith that something exists beyond science.
Take your pick.

WM

EDIT: You seem to have edited your post player. I have a copy of the original post you had and responded to that. I will read over that later to see if you edited the content and see if I have any other agreements or disagreements. Thanks

You appear to have neglected the third view ( I suspect deliberately ) ;

3) There is very possibly nothing that cannot be proved by science but there is a strong chance that we do not have the wit or resources yet to discover the answers. Because we dont have the solutions at this time DOES NOT mean that there is a supernatural dimension, that is simply wishfull thinking because there is no evidence whatsoever.
Im sorry to say it but your posts are beginning to make me despair, you offer no evidence to forward your views other than to say this or that cannot be absolutely proven and so therefore there is a viable alternative. The key word here is viable, seriously at home or at work do you make key decisions on the basis of probability or just go with hunches because the obvious answer is only 99.99% certain. If everybody you know gives you the same advice on a certain product would you ignore them simply because they were not absolutely certain to be right and therefore there must be a better alternative, you wouldnt because it makes no sense yet this is precisely the kind of logic you keep foisting on us.

[tzor]

(and no im not a paedo!)

No your worse, you're a dentist.

[PLAYER57832]

Widowmaker. I missed your post for a while, but here is my answer:

I appreciate the response and think you misunderstood what I meant by scientism being a religion, but I will try to better explain myself. Forgive me for not being clearer in the first place.

• SCIENTISM as is the faith that science has no boundaries, that in due time all human problems and all aspects of human endeavor will be dealt and solved by science alone.
  [piece excerpted]
  SCIENCE refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on scientific method. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

Yes, I did misread your intent ... to some extent. But you also rather skirted my point.

By this definition proponents of science are not necessarily proponents of scientism. In fact, almost no TRUE scientist would. Why? because few people claim that "science will solve everything". It is a point of inquiry ... that's it. Any answers not given are points of speculation.

So again I do not think SCIENCE is faith.

Science is the opposite of faith. In science you prove. Faith just is. They can definitely work together (and that's were we seem to disagree, for the most part).

However, believing science has ALL of the answers is not science, but faith in science to explain all.

Yes, but few people really and truly think this way, except some athiests (not even all). It is definitely not my thinking. And, though I could be wrong, does not seem to jive with other opinions posted here. Nor, does it address the topic question "What is so good about religion?".

2)
Science is based on proof. I agree with this entirely. I asked if anyone believes that science will eventually provide all of the answers to questions we have. You said probably not, it answers the questions it answers. So my new question is, if you think it can't answer everything, when will you stop looking for an answer to a question? If science can't answer everything, why can't the universe have been created by supernatural means that science cannot understand or test because those means are beyond them?

It has been said that creation offers no answers to how or why. Who says there are natural answers to these questions? Me? You? A professor of (pick a scientific field)?

This is where you make your PHENOMENAL error.

I absolutely do believe in God. I am a Christian. And, as I have tried to explain ... in the U.S., so are most Scientists. This is the part that you "don't get". A Majority of those who are not Christian have another faith. (in US, Jews represent the next biggest group). Many more are "unsure" ... Agnostic. Athiests are a minority in this country ... and, in Europe (the percentage of faithful is lower in Europe, but still a majority).

For most, Science works together with faith, not in opposition.

People in threads here and other places all over the world have said "I don't believe in God/god/creation/supernatural events… because they cannot be proven by science."

I don't.

Well of course they cannot be proven by science. They, by their very nature, are outside of the natural world thus cannot be looked at with science.

No, they are not. Parts of these questions CAN and have been studied, observed, recorded, etc. Some things are "not yet known, but will be known". We don't for example have a cure for AIDS right now. Will we? Most likely. It is pretty much just a matter of time and effort. Some day humans will likely walk on Mars.

Some things, though will almost certainly never be known. The exact nature of our souls ... what, exactly happens when we die ... why does someone love one person and not another. etc. Science CAN approach and find partial answers. Science can study palm and heart rates and put people through various tests to see what sorts of emotions are elicited by various factors. Science can study the brain waves of people doing all kinds of things. Science can tell us that certain phermones are released when you are "in love" ... and that a different sort of reaction is elicited from teens "in love" and long married people "in love". BUT, they cannot really tell us definitetively why one person loves this person and not another. Close, but not exact. Frankly, I rather hope they never do find the real and exact answers.

EDIT: You seem to have edited your post player. I have a copy of the original post you had and responded to that. I will read over that later to see if you edited the content and see if I have any other agreements or disagreements. Thanks

Probably. I only just recently discovered the "save" button.

[PLAYER57832]

OOPS, accidental double post, deleted.

[Zaqq]

K yall gotta stop this. You are looking at an irrelevant tangent of a problem which the idea of catching up with after neglecting to read through another of these threads astounds and intimidates me. And on top of that it appears as though you have succeded in little else than revolving in philosophic circles, or perhaps more appropriately spirals, to arrive at your original arguement. Nevertheless, progress is as it is so I suppose you chaps should just carry on... I would love to join you two but I dont want to add another oversized post to your burgeoning posts. That last one looks as though it's about to explode .

BUT you are terribly off-topic. What's so great about religion? Well now, there's a broad question. I brings hope, sanity, advice, kindness, and connectedness to those who search for it. It can also bring terrible doom upon the landscape. I dont know how else to answer that.

[PLAYER57832]

It also provides an interesting discussion topic for people who might otherwise .... [ fill in your own blanks]

[MeDeFe]

I'll just mostly disregard the first half of your post because it would be cruel to pick on it excessively, you're really saying that lightning and thunder were supernatural back when people couldn't explain them scientifically and now that we can explain them they aren't anymore.

No that's exactly what I am saying. Let's use an easier example. Medicine, for example, was often derived from herbs and other natural ingredients. Do that in the middle ages and they would call you a witch for using the "supernatural" and burn you at the stake. Because we didn't know how they worked is no reason we can either dismiss them as having worked at all or make equally wild assumptions in the opposite direction.

Inbetween the domain of what we know and the domain of what we don't know is the domain of what we vaguely know. We can't explain everything, even asprin wasn't fully understood until many decades of use had passed, we only knew it worked. There is a tendency to either reject the vague stuff or to put it out of the range of discussion by theological edict.

Consider this bit of supernatural wisdom. Animals can detect earthquakes ... well that's because they have better hearing and could detect the audiable (to them) effects of the pre-conditions of the earthquake. The evolution of our knowledge is always a growing situation. Sometimes we prove the vague stuff right and sometimes we prove the vague stuff wrong. But the vague stuff is not a-priori wrong because we have not yet proved it.

I'm not quite sure I get your point, but it sounds very relativist, you seem to be saying that the difference between 'natural' and 'supernatural' is merely one of human understanding, what we understand, at least to a large enough degree, is natural, what we don't yet understand to that degree is supernatural. But why then differentiate between the two? Why not instead say there is natural stuff we understand, natural stuff we don't yet understand and maybe natural stuff we don't know exists? Why add the 'super' and make it seem like they are different things when you say that the only difference between the two is in our minds?

[WidowMakers]

Supernatural:
- Of or relating to existence outside the natural world.
- Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces.

That is what I mean by supernatural.
Below are a few things that I believe do not have a natural explanation. They have theories but non e of them have been proven.

People say that evolution has been proven. But it has not. There are tons of assumptions that when used "prove" evolution. But who says those are correct?
-The Big bang has not been proven. it is a theory. A theory that assumes teh only way the universe could have been formed is from a natural aspect. What is that true. The assumption of evolution is that only nature exists.

-Abiogenesis (Life from non-life) has not been proven only theorized. Currently there is no know way for this to have taken place. Only theories. Non of which we can do in a lab. And even if we could do them in a lab, that does not prove that they could have taken place randomly in nature. The assumption is that they did happen. Is that a correct assumption? We have never seen any l;ife form from nonlife. Then why do evolutionists assume id happened? Because they need it to have happened to make evolution "real" to them. If it did not then evolution could not have taken place. So the assumption is that is has happened even though there is no evidence that it has or can or ever will.
Here is aquote from another thread about this topic.

Macroevolution. The thing that macroevolution has that creationism does not, is that it has made predictions that have turned out to be accurate. That's pretty close to being "proven" as far as science goes. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it isn't true.

That does not sound to much like science to me. That sounds more like faith that your idea is true even though there is no evidence to support it.

-Where did all of the information come from (laws, DNA, order, etc). How did nature just happen to form with all of these perfect laws and information. There is no know method in which information can form and the methods of interpreting and understanding that information formed with it. There are theories that the information made itself and through random chance and enough time we got here. But that is impossible. Think of it this way. If I keep typing on a keyboard random letters what does it mean to you?

Code: Select all

sdkfjahsdklfhasdljkfhasdjklfhsdjklf asdkfjhasdljkfhasdklfh asfljshdfklj as

Anything? Why does it not mean anything. Because you have no method on decoding it. It may mean something but for you to be able to read and comprehend it you need that decoding information. Well according to evolution the information and the method to decode it randomly happened at the same time.

These a just as few thing I have talked about before and I am sure I will get TONS of responses saying then where is the proof or you are just dumb or creation does not explain the way these things happened.

Well, as I have said before, creation does explain them. The creation model gives an explanation for how things are the way they are. Why there is order, where the order came from, why creatures and life in the universe are so similar, it is supported by the natural laws (loss of energy, things running down, etc), morality, ...

The thing is many of you do not accept this as an explanation because you either: don't want to believe in a creator, or you want an natural explanation to everything. And again, just because you don't want to believe in something does not mean it does not exist. And just because you want a natural explanation for a problem does not mean there is one.

WM

[Snorri1234]

Well, as I have said before, creation does explain them. The creation model gives an explanation for how things are the way they are. Why there is order, where the order came from, why creatures and life in the universe are so similar, it is supported by the natural laws (loss of energy, things running down, etc), morality, ...

And, as I have said before, it doesn't explain anything. Explanations deal with how.

[tzor]

Why add the 'super' and make it seem like they are different things when you say that the only difference between the two is in our minds?

Super: Etymology: Latin, over, above, in addition, from super, adverb & preposition -- more at OVER

[tzor]

-The Big bang has not been proven. it is a theory.

The "Big Bang" has been proven, this is distinct from the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang is now considered the moment the universe went from an opaque state to a transparent state which happened (according to the Big bang Theory) quite some time after the actual event 0 of the universe from an atomic scale of time. Going backwards before the big bang is difficult because the universe was opaque before the "Big Bang" event. We now know that the universe was not uniform at the moment of the Big Bang, which could explain the formation of galaxies.

[WidowMakers]

Well, as I have said before, creation does explain them. The creation model gives an explanation for how things are the way they are. Why there is order, where the order came from, why creatures and life in the universe are so similar, it is supported by the natural laws (loss of energy, things running down, etc), morality, ...

And, as I have said before, it doesn't explain anything. Explanations deal with how.

No you mean it does not give a naturalistic explaintion. Again it is based on your assumptions. What one must do is look at those assumptions and see if they are, in fact , correct or justified when look at with an open mind and compared to everything else.

Example. Evolutionist assume that life came from non life because it had to to make evolution true. Not because it has ever been seen or know to be possible. This is an evolutionary assumption that has no scientific basis or explanation yet you believe it, Why?

WM

[MeDeFe]

Neoteny, you do the biology part, and I will take care of the philosophy, ok? That way we can share the workload.


So WM, what does it then mean to be "outside the natural world", and for that matter, what's your definition of "natural world". You still have a lot to explain there, what is the inherent difference between natural on the one hand and supernatural on the other? Will you join Tzor's relativist position or can you offer something more?

You say that the inherent assumption of evolution (which you seem to take to even to include the beginning of the universe, strange definition there) is that there is only nature, I assume by that you mean the assumption is that only physical entities exist, that there is no dualism. But is that really such an unreasonable assumption? Waves and magnetism, everything has been observed to ultimately boil down to physical entities, I don't think it is at all unreasonable to theorize using only what has been shown to exist. As I see it it's far more unreasonable to look at things and assume that some external agent, a "supernatural" agent even, must have made it all because we don't yet know everything and never might.
You claim that postulating a creator explains the holes in the theories and fills them, but it doesn't. "God made it" is more or less equivalent to "because!", you assume that something that isn't "natural" exists, that a being that is powerful enough to create a universe just exists and even has to exist, that this being has always existed and didn't need to come from somewhere. Compared to just working with the things you know exist that's a really big leap of faith.

[tzor]

Evolutionist assume that life came from non life because it had to to make evolution true. Not because it has ever been seen or know to be possible. This is an evolutionary assumption that has no scientific basis or explanation yet you believe it, Why?

First of all the creation of the first self replicating organic molecules which then in turn formed into ogranizational units which then in turn formed into what we commonly know as "life" is not per se necessary to prove evolution, macro or micro.

In general people who are looking at evolution want the entire soup to nuts package, going from organic soup to modern man. That's harder to prove, but then again lots of fields have problems with soup to nuts packages. Consider the grand unified field theories in physics.

[MeDeFe]

Why add the 'super' and make it seem like they are different things when you say that the only difference between the two is in our minds?

Super: Etymology: Latin, over, above, in addition, from super, adverb & preposition -- more at OVER

I still don't get your point, and what happened to the rest of my reply to you?

[Snorri1234]

Well, as I have said before, creation does explain them. The creation model gives an explanation for how things are the way they are. Why there is order, where the order came from, why creatures and life in the universe are so similar, it is supported by the natural laws (loss of energy, things running down, etc), morality, ...

And, as I have said before, it doesn't explain anything. Explanations deal with how.

No you mean it does not give a naturalistic explaintion. Again it is based on your assumptions. What one must do is look at those assumptions and see if they are, in fact , correct or justified when look at with an open mind and compared to everything else.

No I mean that it doesn't give an explanation. It doesn't explain in the slightest how God went about his bussiness.
Maybe he used his power to direct atoms into directions where they would form things, or influences movement through quantum-mechanica and that that is the reason we don't see him with science. Maybe he can be found in some unknown force we haven't discovered yet. For all we know evolution wouldn't work without god's influence.

But the key is that those are explanations of what happened, and that simply saying "God did it" is a reason but not an explanation just like "Because." isn't an explanation.

The simple fact is that you put God in everytime we just don't know something. What if in 20 years we have an experiment where life is created from non-life? Are you going to recant your claims then or make it look like you never really disagreed with it in the first place?

Example. Evolutionist assume that life came from non life because it had to to make evolution true.

Hah, two points there.
A.) Not everyone believes that.
B.) Really it doesn't have to be to make evolution true. Fact is that life could've easily been put there by god and then he waited for it to grow. It doesn't matter.

[Snorri1234]

-The Big bang has not been proven. it is a theory. A theory that assumes teh only way the universe could have been formed is from a natural aspect. What is that true. The assumption of evolution is that only nature exists.

Wrong because the big bang says nothing about the agent that sparked that bang. It's just the point where the universe begins.

Macroevolution. The thing that macroevolution has that creationism does not, is that it has made predictions that have turned out to be accurate. That's pretty close to being "proven" as far as science goes. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it isn't true.

That does not sound to much like science to me. That sounds more like faith that your idea is true even though there is no evidence to support it.

Are there any countries you have never been to in this world? If so, why do you assume they exist?

Either you have absolutely no clue what science is, which is probably the reason why you seem to think most things done in physics aren't science (due to not being directly observed), or you're just ignoring anything that contradicts you.

Science doesn't only hinge on direct observation, it also depends on reason. If you have a hypothesis and you make a prediction based on that and then test that prediction and find it to be accurate, it means the hypothesis is accurate.
If this was not the case most of what scientists use each day to make medicines or develop machines wouldn't exist or function.

-Where did all of the information come from (laws, DNA, order, etc). How did nature just happen to form with all of these perfect laws and information. There is no know method in which information can form and the methods of interpreting and understanding that information formed with it. There are theories that the information made itself and through random chance and enough time we got here. But that is impossible. Think of it this way. If I keep typing on a keyboard random letters what does it mean to you?

Quite a shitty analogy, as letters don't function that way.

However, look at atoms and molecules. Those things can stick together and if you stick them together in the right way they can do things. If they suddenly stuck together in a primal-dna-type structure, then that would mean it would replicate itself all the time. Now imagine that those molecules grew bigger and bigger and bigger untill they were so large they could react to the environment.

Anything? Why does it not mean anything. Because you have no method on decoding it. It may mean something but for you to be able to read and comprehend it you need that decoding information. Well according to evolution the information and the method to decode it randomly happened at the same time.

Not randomly, also language is way too complex for it to serve as a good analogy.

[tzor]

I still don't get your point, and what happened to the rest of my reply to you?

I think it got lost somewhere betwen me cursing at my internet service provider and me yelling at Quicken for only half way working with PayPal.

My definition of supernatural is relative because the very question of natural is relative. What's natural? There is a lot of things we once thought were strange properties "beyond" nature which we now know the natural explanations for. Our definition of natural grows with our general understanding. There is a general tendency to view supernatural as not natural or unnatural but this is not the case.

[MeDeFe]

I still don't get your point, and what happened to the rest of my reply to you?

I think it got lost somewhere betwen me cursing at my internet service provider and me yelling at Quicken for only half way working with PayPal.

My definition of supernatural is relative because the very question of natural is relative. What's natural? There is a lot of things we once thought were strange properties "beyond" nature which we now know the natural explanations for. Our definition of natural grows with our general understanding. There is a general tendency to view supernatural as not natural or unnatural but this is not the case.

Ok, so the only difference is in our heads, I can accept that definition, though I still do not see why the distinction is necessary. I take 'natural' as meaning 'within nature' and since nature in my understanding encompasses everything that exists... well, I guess you see where I'm heading.

[Neoteny]

Neoteny, you do the biology part, and I will take care of the philosophy, ok? That way we can share the workload.


So WM, what does it then mean to be "outside the natural world", and for that matter, what's your definition of "natural world". You still have a lot to explain there, what is the inherent difference between natural on the one hand and supernatural on the other? Will you join Tzor's relativist position or can you offer something more?

You say that the inherent assumption of evolution (which you seem to take to even to include the beginning of the universe, strange definition there) is that there is only nature, I assume by that you mean the assumption is that only physical entities exist, that there is no dualism. But is that really such an unreasonable assumption? Waves and magnetism, everything has been observed to ultimately boil down to physical entities, I don't think it is at all unreasonable to theorize using only what has been shown to exist. As I see it it's far more unreasonable to look at things and assume that some external agent, a "supernatural" agent even, must have made it all because we don't yet know everything and never might.
You claim that postulating a creator explains the holes in the theories and fills them, but it doesn't. "God made it" is more or less equivalent to "because!", you assume that something that isn't "natural" exists, that a being that is powerful enough to create a universe just exists and even has to exist, that this being has always existed and didn't need to come from somewhere. Compared to just working with the things you know exist that's a really big leap of faith.

I got beat to the punch...

[PLAYER57832]

Example. Evolutionist assume that life came from non life because it had to to make evolution true. Not because it has ever been seen or know to be possible. This is an evolutionary assumption that has no scientific basis or explanation yet you believe it, Why?

WM

Wrong on both points.
First that life came from non life is one point upon which BOTH the strictest Creationists ("from dust we came...") and Evolutionists believe. To say otherwise is to say that life has always been here. In a sense, this is sort of like the Hindu belief ... but, not the Christian view.

Second, the building blocks to form life have been formed from non-living matter within the laboratory.

[OnlyAmbrose]

Second, the building blocks to form life have been formed from non-living matter within the laboratory.

If you're referring to the Miller experiment, then, while you are technically correct, you are using its result out of context. The chemicals present in the Miller experiment were radically different from those which scientists believe actually existed in Earth's atmosphere 3.7 billion years ago. If the same experiment were repeated given the actual conditions of the atmosphere, something similar to present-day embalming fluid would have been the product, not the amino acids.