leejo

Excellent point. At the heart of any scientific discipline is a big fat "who knows?". Divide any number by zero. Wait, don't. Ever heard of the EPR experiment? In fact, all of science is based on inductive logic, the idea that the more often you get the same result the more likely it is to get the expected result the next time you run the experiment. Finding a proof for inductive logic has so far stumped everyone. (Bertrand Russell took a long stab at it and came up empty) The entire basis of the scientific method remains unproven.

Don't get me wrong, science is a useful tool to help us understand the world around us and build useful tools, but Goedel's proof shows that it will always be either inconsistent or incomplete. It certainly requires a leap of faith. As we discussed above, to date every scientific theory has been shown incorrect. The most shocking outcome of all would be if we have it "right" now.

I don't see it as an "either way you go" proposition, though. Many scientists are deeply religious.

DudeMan

tjhat is a completely unfair assumption and further more quite an arrogant point. if one reads the bible, does this make them researched, because i have read the bible, not to the extent that i would know every story but to the extent i will know the general goings on.

i do not believe in God does this mean i am one of those people you speak of. if you are not interested in the theory of evolution because you favor religion, i would not expect you to go out of your way to stay up to date with researching the subject, because as you put it, the guy has made the model himself. therefore you will not be happy with those conclusions.

in the same light, i believe that the bible was written not by jesus but by compliations of others writtings, and the same principal applies. whoever wrote it, it is their model, their base and their creation. it doesnt stop it being 100% true, or false,

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Mot73

I guess the thing that has confused me is that those who don't believe in a God due to lack of Proof or it doesn't make sense or whatever have no problems believing in the theorys created by science.

Its as if science was flawless and as Lee pointed out better and more factually than me...it just isn't.

Pokerface

The best argument for belief in a higher power is apply order to that which is unordered.

There are basic questions for which science has yet to come up with good answers, and that's a God-shaped hole if ever I saw one. Questions like "Where did we come from?" and "Why are we here?" have answers that are fundamental to our lives. In the absence of clear answers, the imposition of a universal order (or alternatively, the denial of one) grants those answers.

Why believe in a god? Because you gotta believe in something, and a god is as fine a choice as any.

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Mot73

I appologise if I seemed arrogant. I was just pointing my experience in past discussions and was not aimed at you personally Dudeman. Sorry.

_Ender_

No doubt. The Bible does have some historically correct events in it. The problem is though, its mixed in with stuff that couldnt possibly happen (logically) or events that happen, just got exaggerated to make them seem bigger then they really were.

The best example of the history is the flood that lasted for 40 days and 40 nights. According to findings, the bible isnt the only account to this flood. However, the people who wrote the bible had to exaggerate it by saying it was the "work of god" to "cleans the earth" or whatever when in reality it just rained a lot and the rivers got backed up.

The people who wrote the bible liked to put a little spin on things, to make them sound more "god-like". Reminds me of somebody else....

wickerman

My problem with the whole "god" answer to everything is quite simple (at least from my perspective). In the 2000+ years since the supposed birth of his "son", and even before that, a being so supremely powerful as to have created the universe has been woefully incapable of sending a clear message that each of his creations can understand. This creator was powerful enough to create the sun and earth but can't master a simple, direct message?

Religion is indeed the opiate of the masses.

"Your life may suck now but it'll be better when you die..."
"Don't worry that you're poor, the streets of heaven are lined with gold..."
"All your loved ones will be there waiting for you..."
"The bible is the word of god because it says so in the bible..."

If when I die there is nothing but a void, nothing at all, I don't have any problem with that. If when I die I have a chance to go to a place where the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson hang out for eternity I'll choose somewhere else, even if that somewhere else is a lake of fire.

I've been down the religious route, with every ounce of my being for several years, until I finally woke up and unless a burning bush talks to me (he supposedly did that once, what's he waiting on? His mana to recharge?) I won't be changing my mind.

_Ender_

Thats the problem I have with it. If god talked to all these people, then why doesnt he conintue to talk to people? Why did he suddenly stop?

I feel, if there is a god, he has given up on us many many years ago and we're now on our own which I am fine with. He didnt really do much to help out anyway.

Mot73

This will be my last post because I'm truely not trying to insight hostility but if someone choses to reject the God theory I certainly hope its not because of some other human being like a Jerry Falwel or anyone else.

That would truly be tragic. The baseline unfortunatly isn't upheld by a human being. We're all fallable and will fail in our life at some time or another. Its almost like saying that the entire US military is corrupt and screwed up because of a few poor examples running a prison in Iraq. Simply not true.

Respectfully
Mot

and Ender...maybe we've stopped listening? Have children? Its not hard for us to do, just watch your kids sometimes.

wickerman

The esoteric "Maybe we just stopped listening" arguments don't hold water with me. You can't stop listening to a burning bush or stone tablets that suddenly appear with writing on them. Kids also believe whole-heartedly in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and the easter bunny because their parents told them to.

(***SPOILER ALERT*** )

The only reason they stop believing in them is because someone lets them in on the joke. I'm of the opinion that those who could have let us in on the religion joke passed away before they got the chance.

I hope I don't come across as hostile, I really don't have animosity towards individual christians who've done me no harm. I have my views and you have yours and while I may disagree with your position I do respect you for sticking to your guns.

leejo

With respect, comparing God to the easter bunny doesn't come across as a very respectful attitude, nor does referring to "the religion joke". I do hope that someday you find a little less anger toward religion or the people who turned you off of yours, as I hope I simmer down some myself in many ways.

Pokerface

An omnipotent god -- while ABLE to speak through miracles -- need not do so. A sunset, a symphony, the vastness of the ocean... an all-powerful creator doesn't have to use words, and I'd go so far as to say that to expect such an entity to would be awfully presumptuous.

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Geisha

Oy, good luck with this. God vs. Not-God generally takes over these threads.

Yes, there are actually people who believe in Adam and Eve and that the world is only 12,000 years old. One of my best friends in high school, in fact, was a very devout Mormon, and believed this implicitly. She politely answered all biology questions with the Lies of Evolution to maintain her good grades, but would carefully phrase them as "Darwin's teachings say" or "our biology book says" so that she could be true to her religion as well. As far as she was concerned, the Book of Mormon and the approved portions of the Bible answered all. Everything science said simply had yet to be disproved. I wish I'd kept track of her after college to see if she still believes.

It is true that science is an ever-changing field and that we're constantly learning new things about the universe. There is no such animal as the brontosaurus, because the discoverer screwed up and put a something-or-other head on a diplodocus body. Darwin wasn't completely right, some of his minor theories have since been disproved. Those that have faith in pure Creationism have faith that science will fail entirely someday and Evolution will be exposed for the pure idiocy that they know it is. *shrug*

Most moderate Christians that I know believe in the evolutionist interpretation of Genesis, stretching words and translations to fit whatever scientific theories they support, which is as reasonable as pure science to me. It's especially hard for the branch of Southern Baptists I knew, who for some reason are required to believe that every single word in the Bible is 100% sacred and that apparently God spoke modern-day American English and not Hebrew or Latin. I felt sorry for them, because when forced to take their version of the Bible literally, they couldn't logically reconcile it with evolutionist teachings, and most of them solved their internal quandaries by ignoring them and declaring that humans just weren't meant to understand. God just made billions of years happen in a day, because God is all-powerful and he can. Again, taking the premise that a Creator IS all-powerful, I can't argue against that either.

A pair of rather pleasant missionaries of some sort of Christian persuasion has been coming by our house recently, and Greg has been encouraging them because he loves the Evolution vs. Creation debate. Recently the ladies brought a copy of one of their periodicals, which had an article listing scientific proofs of Creationism. I sincerely wish Greg hadn't thrown it out in disgust, because I would post the major points here. Unfortunately, nothing in there was convincing to either of us because most of the proof was ultimately based on the premise that humans are the be-all, end-all and center of the Universe.

Here are the points as I remember them:
1) Humans are so fantastically complex that it is mathematically impossible for us to have been created by chance (this depends on how big you believe the universe is). Note that about half of the iterations of this argument stated that the human species is already perfect in a general physical sense.
2) Successful meiosis could not have been spontaneously created by evolution, and there is no genetic linkage between genderless organisms and dual-gender organisms (I guess they don't know about paramecia).
3) There are gaping holes in the fossil records. (Forgetting that only very hard substances like bones and shells create fossils, and only under specific environmental circumstances. It's impossible to get a fossil of a squishy four-celled organism.)

I think there were a couple others but I was surprised by the one thing they DIDN'T point out. Science still has no explanation (that I'm aware of) for what the life force is that actually animates the collection of carbon-based molecules that makes up the recognizable forms of life on earth, aside from some hazy theories about electrical impulses. Science cannot, that I know of, create life whole-sale, just perpetuate it. And for some reason, that argument was NEVER in that article. I really can't imagine why, since it's about the only argument that I've ever heard for a scientifically-proven Creator that has ever stumped people.

Sorry for the long post. I sincerely hope I haven't offended anyone, because I'm trying to present things as objectively as possible, given my obvious bias.

wickerman

No offense intended but that's one of the "cop out" answers that helped change my mind about religion. Then I'd ask "but WHY doesn't he just once and put this all to rest?" and I'd be told something equally vague and (at least to me) meaningless. It's like when a kid asks to do something and the parent's say "No" and the kid says "Why" and the parents respond "because I said so". That's just not good enough, at least for me. I decided I wanted no part of a creator that was that detached from his creation, if indeed there even is such a being.

I'll make this my last post to this thread. I hopefully didn't offend any of the posters, it wasn't my intention.

leejo

Well part of religion is understanding that it isn't about you. GOD is up hyah, we're down hyah. A private doesn't ask a general why, and the difference between God and us is far greater. It's about service.

Along those lines, I recently was looking up some stuff about fatherhood, since I'm on that road. Step #1: Get over yourself. That's basically what I struggle to do in my religious life. Hell, that's basically what I struggle to do in every way!