OP
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When does holding a belief that is contradicted by a mountain of evidence cross the line and become foolish?
Should Religious Beliefs Be Immune From Criticism?
- Thread starter Makalakumu
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Show me some of the "Evidence"... Show me evidnce that "Nothing" turned inexplicably into SOMTHING thru science.
There is a lot of theory, and "We believe that this is happening therefore, we assume this must have" blah blah, but no real hard factual proof... yet creationists are the only ones who are deluded. Yeah ok.
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When actual factual evidence exists to prove it and not conjecture and theory maybe...
Its foolish to believe the earth is not round.
Its not so foolish to belive that ghosts exist, despite the fact some folk will try and tell you it is, because of some science.
It may be foolish to believe that the world was created in days but does it really matter that people believe this? It may frustrate the scientifically minded that people don't believe the evidence but I can't see how it matters. I'm sure we all have foibles and traits that annoy other people (just ask spouses and partners!) but when push comes to shove does it matter? The main thing is that we tolerate each other, not push our views on others and behave decently towards each other. There's too much to do in this world, too much too worry about without fussing over someone elses beliefs!
In the last census in the UK we were required to state our religion, thousands put Jedi down! Foolish or a way of telling the government to mind their own business?
In the last census in the UK we were required to state our religion, thousands put Jedi down! Foolish or a way of telling the government to mind their own business?
Monadnock
2nd Black Belt
They cant.
To explain the unexplainable, they say well, it must have taken millions upon millions of years for this to have occurred, that's why you don't see it today...
Ray
Master Black Belt
Is that any more foolish than to believe the universe (albeit a small one) and the physical laws of nature were created in seconds and minutes?
To be honest I don't actually care how the universe was created! Oh I know that's not intellectually and academically correct thinking! I do like the mysteries of life though! I don't want everything explained away either by science or religion. I don't want 'love' to be explained as just hormones and such or that the sun rising in the morning is caused by the moving of the earth or whatever. I like to look at the dawn and just go 'wow', watch a baby sleeping and go "aww'. I'm easily pleased I guess!
bydand
Senior Master
Tez, i wish I could give you some reppy points for this post, but it says I have to spread it around some more first. This is a great post!
Sometimes you need to just have moments like these to keep life interesting and not just an academic endeavor. (I know I spelled it wrong, I guess I should have spent more time in my academic studies
. )
Cheers Bydand! I was brought up to revere education, my brother and I went to private schools and on to university.I had a good career in the RAF as an Intell officer. I got married and had a son who was going to do much the same. Then my brother who at the time was 20 got very ill with liver problems, he took six horrible years to die, he died a couple of days before my daughter was born, that was 21 years ago. Since then my outlook on life has been completely different. Neither of my children went to uni, both are healthy and happy doing what they do. My daughter lives with her wonderful boyfriend (who's not Jewish, who cares? she's happy!) they're out in Dubai working at the moment. My son's 30 and not married, who cares?
We want to take the wonder out of everything, make everything mundane and explainable. Put things in their place neat and tidy. Life isn't like that though, we need to experience life not examine it away! Which is more fun staring up at the stars in wonder and admiration (preferably with a loved one) or keeping your head down and thinking it's all down to the Big Bang?
Ladies and gentlemen, you can criticise anything anytime but do make sure you have some fun too! Just my tuppenceworth.
We want to take the wonder out of everything, make everything mundane and explainable. Put things in their place neat and tidy. Life isn't like that though, we need to experience life not examine it away! Which is more fun staring up at the stars in wonder and admiration (preferably with a loved one) or keeping your head down and thinking it's all down to the Big Bang?
Ladies and gentlemen, you can criticise anything anytime but do make sure you have some fun too! Just my tuppenceworth.
Blotan Hunka
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One of the best statements in this thread.
bushidomartialarts
Senior Master
seriously, cryo. this is the sort of thing i'm talking about.
we'll gloss over the defensive, confrontational tone part. you've spent much of this thread feeling/being attacked.
evidence in favor of evolution: fossil record, observable evolution in living species under both natural and experimental conditions, creation of amino acids in replicable experiments using only electricity and simple carbon chains. it's not conclusive, but it's certainly suggestive.
evidence in favor of creationism: a poem.
i'm not trying to knock faith. my faith is a strong force in my life. but being dismissive of the science is not the way to win this debate.
Blotan Hunka
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I dont think thats Cryo's argument (as I read it). I read it as people who place all their "faith" in science need to realize that science doesnt contain all the answers. And as history has shown many of the "laws" of science have been proven to be wrong too. Just as science is showing that there are the possibilities of many dimensions and "realities" other than ours, the possibility of the "spiritual" existing as well as the "material" is not too large a step.
bushidomartialarts
Senior Master
i agree completely with that point. in a hundred years, they'll find our scientific 'truths' as quaint as people today consider some things we thought were true back in 1906. probably moreso.
but to make the statement that there's more evidence of creationism than evolution is to show a willful blindness to the available information.
genesis was a poem, fer cryin out loud. a poem. next, people will be telling me there are no atoms because they read 'horton hears a who' and The Book says that the universe is built of tiny little fractal whovilles.
but to make the statement that there's more evidence of creationism than evolution is to show a willful blindness to the available information.
genesis was a poem, fer cryin out loud. a poem. next, people will be telling me there are no atoms because they read 'horton hears a who' and The Book says that the universe is built of tiny little fractal whovilles.
OP
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- #174
I think that people are confusing the words faith and guess. Science isn't faith based. It's guessing and then attempting to see if your guess happens to be right.
Faith isn't guessing. People don't believe in God because its best guess they have based on the relevant evidence. They simply believe that he or she or it exists.
Science isn't like this. It's not done like this. And people who are "doing" science don't think like this (and if they do, they are doing bad science).
The bottom line is that if it were all just a matter of faith, then there would be no discussion here. Scientific principles would carry no more weight then any faith based principles because there would be no logical way to discern between the two.
The reality is that science always trumps faith. It does this because it is based on the relevant evidence that is known at the time. Thus, science is humanities only path to glimpse the reality that surrounds us. Francis Bacon knew this when he designed the scientific method. And it was this insight that led to the existential mythos and Friedrich Neitzche's proclamation.
"God is Dead."
Believe in God all you want. However, IMHO, the realization that this belief will tell you more about yourself and less (probably nothing) about the universe is very important.
Faith isn't guessing. People don't believe in God because its best guess they have based on the relevant evidence. They simply believe that he or she or it exists.
Science isn't like this. It's not done like this. And people who are "doing" science don't think like this (and if they do, they are doing bad science).
The bottom line is that if it were all just a matter of faith, then there would be no discussion here. Scientific principles would carry no more weight then any faith based principles because there would be no logical way to discern between the two.
The reality is that science always trumps faith. It does this because it is based on the relevant evidence that is known at the time. Thus, science is humanities only path to glimpse the reality that surrounds us. Francis Bacon knew this when he designed the scientific method. And it was this insight that led to the existential mythos and Friedrich Neitzche's proclamation.
"God is Dead."
Believe in God all you want. However, IMHO, the realization that this belief will tell you more about yourself and less (probably nothing) about the universe is very important.
OP
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What this statement fails to realize is that God is still important for a great many people. This concept can be a powerful tool to learn about oneself...and that is always important.
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Ya know Bushido, for my part... no where in here have I stated "God did it, it says so in the Bible so you are all wrong" I have simply said show me some proof that The Big Bang is real... so don't talk to me about "My source" being a poem. I simply find the idea that SOMTHING (and you will notice I said SOMTHING before, not "GOD") put everything here far more plausable than the idea that "Nothing" made EVERYTHING.
Yeah, so, onto your "proof": You have a small amount of evidence to prove adaptation, but nothing proving speices have ever made that jump from one to another... and again, "creation of amino acids in replicable experiments using only electricity and simple carbon chains." is still using somthing to create somthing... If you wanna make that leap, ok... It doesn't fly in my book. My point is, as BH stated, that Science has no actual proof just theorys and ideas packaged as "Fact" to those that want to believe that science knows best, but really, you are just taking the popular scientists word as your faith, and trying to disguse it as somthing other than faith because you believe you have evidence that doesn't exist. I can demonstrate non-sequiter proof of events from the bible, but it doesn't make the writings in there any more factual than the non-sequiter proof of events that science claims to have prove the big bang happened, or that my ancestors were a carbon chain that turned into an amoeba, that turned into a monkey...
Here is my challenge to all of you...
Show me undeniable PROOF that God Created the Universe.
or
Show me undeniable PROOF that Nothing suddenly Exploded and became everything.
I Bet a weeks pay neither side can come forward on that with anything real...
But at least *I* take it on faith and admit it, I'm not arrogant enough to claim FACT where there is none.
I could come up with some pretty good evidence that it is 13+ billion years old, and that it is expanding, and that it is cooling down. I imagine someone with actual study done in that area could do substantially better. Yet no one will get you back to the big bang, just a short time after it.
Blotan Hunka
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Nicely put Cryo. It seems that anybody with any sort of belief in God gets lumped in as a Bible totin, Darwin hatin, close minded, neo-con evangelical Christian. Just because I believe in God and dont believe that Science will ever have "all the answers" doesnt make me an uneducated luddite.
I find many of the "science worshipers" I come across very arrogant and condescending in their belief that "they" are the enlightened amongst all us savage "religious types".
I find many of the "science worshipers" I come across very arrogant and condescending in their belief that "they" are the enlightened amongst all us savage "religious types".
Just for some clarification...The theories that are being talked about here do not include anything about "something" from "nothing." In fact, quite the opposite, the theory and observations to support that theory actually include ideas about what exactly the universe came from.
"In physical cosmology, the Big Bang is the scientific theory that the universe emerged from a tremendously dense and hot state about 13.7 billion years ago. The theory is based on the observations indicating the expansion of space (in accord with the Robertson-Walker model of general relativity) as indicated by the Hubble redshift of distant galaxies taken together with the cosmological principle.
Extrapolated into the past, these observations show that the universe has expanded from a state in which all the matter and energy in the universe was at an immense temperature and density. Physicists do not widely agree on what happened before this, although general relativity predicts a gravitational singularity (for reporting on some of the more notable speculation on this issue, see cosmogony)." ~ Wikipedia (Granted, a user based source, but this is consistent with theory and each of these references can be found outside of that source as well, please feel free to continue researching)
The explanation that was given to me was that of a balloon - only in this case, a super compressed molecule of extremely high temperature, pressure and density. The Balloon popped (more accurately expanded...we don't think it was an explosion, just an expansion) and everything escaped and began expanding and has been ever since. A very elementary analogy, but it works. An argument that I have heard is that "Balloons don't pop themselves" meaning something had to cause that molecule to begin expanding....that is definately an argument for the existance of God - the one that put it all into motion.
But the bottom line is that there is evidence that the universe is still expanding.
Another point of clarification - no one ever suggested that any species "jumped" from one to another. The evolutionary theory suggests that these changes took place very very gradually over the period of thousands of years. I remember growing up that everyone was looking for the "missing link." But now I wonder what they are talking about....the fossil record shows an obvious progression, the fact that we don't know at what point Cro-Magnon man achieved self awareness and the other traits that make us human doesn't mean that it didn't happen gradually. By gradually, I mean over thousands of years. Now, on this point, I have also heard the argument that something distinguished humans from "apes" or our evolutionary ancestors and that God must have given them that "spark" of consciousness at some point and I can see that as a perfectly viable argument for the existance of God and to me (for what that's worth!) seems much more likely than *Poof* there's a guy there now. oh yeah *poof* now there's a woman.
If you are missing one piece of a puzzle - you still know what the picture is.
If any of this is in error, please correct me.
"In physical cosmology, the Big Bang is the scientific theory that the universe emerged from a tremendously dense and hot state about 13.7 billion years ago. The theory is based on the observations indicating the expansion of space (in accord with the Robertson-Walker model of general relativity) as indicated by the Hubble redshift of distant galaxies taken together with the cosmological principle.
Extrapolated into the past, these observations show that the universe has expanded from a state in which all the matter and energy in the universe was at an immense temperature and density. Physicists do not widely agree on what happened before this, although general relativity predicts a gravitational singularity (for reporting on some of the more notable speculation on this issue, see cosmogony)." ~ Wikipedia (Granted, a user based source, but this is consistent with theory and each of these references can be found outside of that source as well, please feel free to continue researching)
The explanation that was given to me was that of a balloon - only in this case, a super compressed molecule of extremely high temperature, pressure and density. The Balloon popped (more accurately expanded...we don't think it was an explosion, just an expansion) and everything escaped and began expanding and has been ever since. A very elementary analogy, but it works. An argument that I have heard is that "Balloons don't pop themselves" meaning something had to cause that molecule to begin expanding....that is definately an argument for the existance of God - the one that put it all into motion.
But the bottom line is that there is evidence that the universe is still expanding.
Another point of clarification - no one ever suggested that any species "jumped" from one to another. The evolutionary theory suggests that these changes took place very very gradually over the period of thousands of years. I remember growing up that everyone was looking for the "missing link." But now I wonder what they are talking about....the fossil record shows an obvious progression, the fact that we don't know at what point Cro-Magnon man achieved self awareness and the other traits that make us human doesn't mean that it didn't happen gradually. By gradually, I mean over thousands of years. Now, on this point, I have also heard the argument that something distinguished humans from "apes" or our evolutionary ancestors and that God must have given them that "spark" of consciousness at some point and I can see that as a perfectly viable argument for the existance of God and to me (for what that's worth!) seems much more likely than *Poof* there's a guy there now. oh yeah *poof* now there's a woman.
If you are missing one piece of a puzzle - you still know what the picture is.
If any of this is in error, please correct me.
"In physical cosmology, the Big Bang is the scientific theory that the universe emerged from a tremendously dense and hot state about 13.7 billion years ago. The theory is based on the observations indicating the expansion of space (in accord with the Robertson-Walker model of general relativity) as indicated by the Hubble redshift of distant galaxies taken together with the cosmological principle."
Ok so who made the tremendously hot and dense state and the Big Bang then? Own up now!
Go back as far as you like, something started it all, why not God?
My beliefs don't bother anyone, well at least no one recently has called me names for being Jewish and I actually have no problem with the science, if God is all powerful it's likely that a bit of chemistry and such is not beyond him is it?
I don't know if you can get hold of them, I think they are worldwide now but there are two sets of DVDs, Blue Planet and the Living Planet by David Attenborough you should watch. They are actually nature/wildlife films put out by the BBC?discovery channel. They contain the most breath taking and stunning pictures you will ever see, watch them with your children because some of those plants and animals may never be seen again. While we sit here at our keyboards arguing over who started the world WE are destroying it. Watch these films, get some wonder back in your lives! Trust me you'll love it then we can get together to save what we have left without bitter arguments about science v faith. Both will be needed if we aren't to destroy what is a very beautiful world.
Ok so who made the tremendously hot and dense state and the Big Bang then? Own up now!
Go back as far as you like, something started it all, why not God?
My beliefs don't bother anyone, well at least no one recently has called me names for being Jewish and I actually have no problem with the science, if God is all powerful it's likely that a bit of chemistry and such is not beyond him is it?
I don't know if you can get hold of them, I think they are worldwide now but there are two sets of DVDs, Blue Planet and the Living Planet by David Attenborough you should watch. They are actually nature/wildlife films put out by the BBC?discovery channel. They contain the most breath taking and stunning pictures you will ever see, watch them with your children because some of those plants and animals may never be seen again. While we sit here at our keyboards arguing over who started the world WE are destroying it. Watch these films, get some wonder back in your lives! Trust me you'll love it then we can get together to save what we have left without bitter arguments about science v faith. Both will be needed if we aren't to destroy what is a very beautiful world.
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