Religion Discussion Thread

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Postby shafnutz05 » Wed Dec 18, 2019 7:06 am

Moving this conversation here:
No matter how badly a person wants the earth to be 6000 years old, or wants the universe to contract to prove their belief, it won't be true
I agree. Big reason why I do not adhere to Young-Earth Creationism, which I do think is straight up batty.

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Postby count2infinity » Wed Dec 18, 2019 7:59 am

If you want to make the argument that science is a religion, well, you can go pound sand.

If you want to make the argument that atheists have to take a leap of faith to say all religions are bullsh*t... same.

If you want to make the argument that atheists have to take a leap of faith to say there is absolutely no god or higher being: I agree.

Seems those three were being convoluted in the previous thread location.

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Postby robbiestoupe » Wed Dec 18, 2019 9:02 am

I say the following as a way to describe my beliefs, not trying to persuade anybody:

Science is too fluid and unknowing for me to base my belief on it. It is by no means omniscient or ever will be. When broken down to its basics, it is a man-made language. Science in and of itself is not a thing - it only exists because man exists. Using it as a tool to formulate your belief is placing man at the highest order - essentially believing that no other sentient being or "spirit" if you will exists beyond man. Perhaps this is where most agnostics sit, waiting for science to find that higher being.

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Postby count2infinity » Wed Dec 18, 2019 9:16 am

Science is not man-made... it is universe made.

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Postby count2infinity » Wed Dec 18, 2019 9:30 am

Additionally, this weird idea that science is at odds with religion needs to stop. They are not at odds. They're not even related.

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Postby robbiestoupe » Wed Dec 18, 2019 9:49 am

Please explain. Science says matter is neither created nor destroyed. But obviously, that is a false statement as something had to create all that exists (who/what is not being debated).

My background is in mechanical engineering, so I understand the larger picture of science and how it works. I may know that in theory P1V1 = P2V2 but I also know that this is based off of PV=nRT and you are taking a few of the variables out of the equation to simplify things (also knowing that the removed variables do not completely cancel each other out). If P1V1 = P2V2 is a very accurate approximation, then what's to say PV=nRT is just a higher order of approximation? Where does this end? There are an infinite amount of variables at play when observing anything, and science is only able to approximate these things based on what we see and observe.

That is where I come from when I say science is man-made. It's only there as man's way of observing what we see, not as something borne into the universe.

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Postby Kane » Wed Dec 18, 2019 9:57 am

Image

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Postby count2infinity » Wed Dec 18, 2019 10:21 am

Please explain. Science says matter is neither created nor destroyed. But obviously, that is a false statement as something had to create all that exists (who/what is not being debated).

My background is in mechanical engineering, so I understand the larger picture of science and how it works. I may know that in theory P1V1 = P2V2 but I also know that this is based off of PV=nRT and you are taking a few of the variables out of the equation to simplify things (also knowing that the removed variables do not completely cancel each other out). If P1V1 = P2V2 is a very accurate approximation, then what's to say PV=nRT is just a higher order of approximation? Where does this end? There are an infinite amount of variables at play when observing anything, and science is only able to approximate these things based on what we see and observe.

That is where I come from when I say science is man-made. It's only there as man's way of observing what we see, not as something borne into the universe.
If you want to discuss origin of all matter, science takes a step out and says "no clue". Matter is neither created nor destroyed, so where did it come from? Again, those two are completely separate from one another. One is a discovered law of the world around us, the second is a philosophical discussion. Not a scientific one.

Your second paragraph has no substance to it at all... that is the "Ideal" gas law. So when you say "then what's to say PV=nRT is just a higher order of approximation?" Ummm... that's EXACTLY what it is. There are a lot of assumptions built into that equation that do not show real world behavior.

As to your last paragraph, I have no idea what you're saying. Science is man's way of explaining the universe's laws... yes. I agree. But man didn't make those laws. They are our understanding of the universe that change over time as new information and techniques become available. We (man) didn't make the laws of physics or chemistry or any science, we simply observe them for what they are.

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Postby tjand72 » Wed Dec 18, 2019 9:27 pm

If you want to make the argument that science is a religion, well, you can go pound sand.

If you want to make the argument that atheists have to take a leap of faith to say all religions are bullsh*t... same.

If you want to make the argument that atheists have to take a leap of faith to say there is absolutely no god or higher being: I agree.

Seems those three were being convoluted in the previous thread location.
I'll add that if you think that agnosticism is a "religion" that requires faith or belief, you can go pound sand. I get the argument that atheism is a "belief" that there is no/are no god(s), but not believing in something due to an absence of evidence is not a belief in and of itself.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Thu Dec 19, 2019 6:53 am

I certainly wouldn't say agnosticism requires faith or belief. I don't think anyone here is.

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Postby tjand72 » Thu Dec 19, 2019 7:20 am

You're probably right, but I think that people conflate atheism and agnosticism. I guess I was trying to separate the two in a less than elegant way.

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Postby bhflyhigh » Thu Dec 19, 2019 7:36 am

Additionally, this weird idea that science is at odds with religion needs to stop. They are not at odds. They're not even related.
:thumb:

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Postby bhflyhigh » Thu Dec 19, 2019 7:54 am

As I get older, I have less and less that I am certain of. When I was young, the world was very black and white. Now, I see grey all over. I grew up in a hard core Catholic family and I was raised to be very conservative. Now, I see a lot of human reasons behind the catholic traditions, customs, and even the bible. I still believe in God for a number of reasons but it is not that same God that I believed in even 10 years ago. It's a less well defined God, but a God closer to my heart if that makes any sense.

And this shift in my thinking about God had nothing to do with science. It was more due to reading history. There is an unbroken line of events that lead right to where we are today. Once you start examining those lines, so much of what we do today is obviously directly tied to events that happened long long ago, and many of those events have nothing to do with religious reasons.

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Postby CBear3 » Thu Dec 19, 2019 9:52 am

As I get older, I have less and less that I am certain of. When I was young, the world was very black and white. Now, I see grey all over. I grew up in a hard core Catholic family and I was raised to be very conservative. Now, I see a lot of human reasons behind the catholic traditions, customs, and even the bible. I still believe in God for a number of reasons but it is not that same God that I believed in even 10 years ago. It's a less well defined God, but a God closer to my heart if that makes any sense.

And this shift in my thinking about God had nothing to do with science. It was more due to reading history. There is an unbroken line of events that lead right to where we are today. Once you start examining those lines, so much of what we do today is obviously directly tied to events that happened long long ago, and many of those events have nothing to do with religious reasons.
:fist:


Science is the language humans have come up with to define the behaviors of the Universe we inhabit. The natural behavior of the universe already exists, we're just translating it so we can understand it.
But I think dismissing the creation of matter as a non-scientific question is a mistake. As scientists look back at the Big Bang, there are absolutely attempts to see right to the point, and even past it. The methods we have available to us presently can't explain the exception to the rule, but we're still trying. Conservation of mass was even revised with special relativity, a law we thought was solid changed when we began to be able to observe things at a deeper level.

I guess what I'm saying is, there's a belief that given enough time humans will be able to define every action of the universe with an equation. But that's still a belief, and we've translated the universe incorrectly plenty of times over the years or made assumptions on it.

And to piggyback onto what bhflyhigh said, in no way do I consider science to be an enemy of my spirituality. Understanding History has revised my belief system much more than science ever has.

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Postby count2infinity » Thu Dec 19, 2019 10:38 am

But I think dismissing the creation of matter as a non-scientific question is a mistake. As scientists look back at the Big Bang, there are absolutely attempts to see right to the point, and even past it. The methods we have available to us presently can't explain the exception to the rule, but we're still trying.
That's what I mean when I say it's philosophical, not scientific. At this particular point in time, it's philosophical. Might that change in the future? Sure! That's the great thing about science, as technology develops and our understandings change, science changes with it.

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Postby Kaiser » Thu Dec 19, 2019 5:43 pm

The creation of matter at the big bang isn't even the main event. Next to inflation, the antimatter annihilation, the construct of physical laws, and the causality problem, matter coming along later isn't that interesting.

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Postby count2infinity » Tue Mar 31, 2020 1:39 pm

Was out at lunch picking up some milk and picking up boxes from work, and Bart Ehrman was on Fresh Air discussing the origin of our idea of heaven and hell. Was a fascinating discussion.


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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Tue Mar 31, 2020 2:35 pm

Bart Ehrman is a classic case of "I got embarrassed by my evangelical faith so I figured out a way to make money going around 'disputing' the faith".

His scholarship is like getting your revolutionary war history from Rush Limbaugh books.

Here is a good example of that:

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/revi ... e-gospels/

and here:

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/how-god ... n/10099302

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Postby count2infinity » Tue Mar 31, 2020 2:44 pm

Is he disputing the faith though? From the snippets that I heard, he said that the bible didn't really lay out our (and by our, I mean society, not scholarly Christians such as yourself) idea of what heaven and hell are. It came from the idea of the end of times, human's need for immediacy (Paul figured that Jesus's resurrection meant that everyone else was going to be resurrected as well and the end of times were there... when they weren't he started pondering what happens to him after death... is it a waiting game? how long? where is his "soul" in the mean time? etc and he developed the idea that the soul goes to be with Jesus and God until the the end of times), and the Greeks. I found his description of how it all went down fascinating, so I'd love to know where he went wrong.

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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Tue Mar 31, 2020 3:11 pm

Is he disputing the faith though? From the snippets that I heard, he said that the bible didn't really lay out our (and by our, I mean society, not scholarly Christians such as yourself) idea of what heaven and hell are. It came from the idea of the end of times, human's need for immediacy (Paul figured that Jesus's resurrection meant that everyone else was going to be resurrected as well and the end of times were there... when they weren't he started pondering what happens to him after death... is it a waiting game? how long? where is his "soul" in the mean time? etc and he developed the idea that the soul goes to be with Jesus and God until the the end of times), and the Greeks. I found his description of how it all went down fascinating, so I'd love to know where he went wrong.
Well, for one he disputes Paul's understanding of what appears in the Gospels. In other words he teaches (in his other books, like Misquoting Jesus) that Paul was confused to the point that he didn't have access to or any real true knowledge of anything Jesus taught.

Whereas if you take the Bible as it presents itself that is an impossible position. Paul in his office as chief persecutor of the early church would have spent days interrogating Christians and would have been immersed in Christ's teaching well before is his road to Damascus experience.

It is fascinating to me how often Erhman treats 1st century people as ignorant Cro-Magnon level thinkers.

As an example on the end times a large portion of the books of 1st and 2nd Thessalonians (which of course conveniently Ehrman doesn't think Paul wrote) deal with the false teaching, which was prevalent, that Jesus's return was imminent. The New Testament in no place teaches that the Second Coming, the end of the World event, was going to happen in the lifetime of the Apostles. There were prophecies, as Jesus Himself makes for instance in Mark 13 and Matthew 23 and 24 that God's judgment would come down in that day, and was confirmed in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

The Book of Revelation, written by the Apostle John in the late 1st Century, details an extensive prophesy covering thousands of years of human history which culminates in the final battle between Satan, his armies, etc... and the King of Kings, Jesus Christ.

On another subject, that of the soul, a lot of that comes from, again, the mistaken idea that the Old Testament has no concept of Heaven/Hell or the soul itself, that it is an imposition of Greek thought onto the Christian worldview.

Here is a short video that touches on it.


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Postby shafnutz05 » Tue Mar 31, 2020 8:11 pm

This is great stuff, thanks. Biblical history, whether you are a believer or not, is fascinating to me. Especially the history of the very early Christian church.

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Postby count2infinity » Tue Mar 31, 2020 8:43 pm

Yeah. Haven’t gotten to your post yet Freddy, but plan to at lunch tomorrow. I hope you know any of my questions are out of ignorance and curiosity and nothing else.

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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Tue Mar 31, 2020 8:45 pm

I apologize if I come off harshly on Ehrman.

He's got hammer and everything is a nail.

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Postby count2infinity » Wed Apr 01, 2020 6:13 am

Freddy, the development of our idea of heaven and hell is what peaked my interest the most. Is it not true that Jews do not believe in the concept of heaven and hell? The reason I ask is because they are pretty much the religious authority of the Old Testament, no?

Also, from that video, the guy was talking about the faith or how God reveals himself building upon itself over time. Out of curiosity, have there been prophets or writings that are biblical like (books that Christians as a whole accept to be holy, so to speak) since the time of the bible?

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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:59 am

Freddy, the development of our idea of heaven and hell is what peaked my interest the most. Is it not true that Jews do not believe in the concept of heaven and hell? The reason I ask is because they are pretty much the religious authority of the Old Testament, no?

Also, from that video, the guy was talking about the faith or how God reveals himself building upon itself over time. Out of curiosity, have there been prophets or writings that are biblical like (books that Christians as a whole accept to be holy, so to speak) since the time of the bible?
On the first it depends on what you mean by Judaism.

Contemporary Judaism (Reformed, Orthodox, etc...) is a religion of the Talmud, the Mishnah, and other post-1st Century writings. It is less so a strictly Biblical religion, in the sense that the Old Testament is not the only rule of faith and practice. So that is a little bit of a more difficult question to answer.

Pre-Jesus Judaism (if I can put it like that) had three major branches: the Pharisees, the Sadduccees, and the Essenes. Of those three the Sadduccees did not believe in an afterlife per se, and definitely denied the possibility of resurrection in any form. The other two did have a doctrine of Heaven and Hell.

Biblical Christianity believes that the revelation of God ended in the coming of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 1:1-4 summarizes it:
"God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high."
Obviously some of the more modern cults (Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, some Pentecostal groups) believe in continuing revelation.

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