Religion Discussion Thread

[Freddy Rumsen]

I realize we are in a make-your-own-truth world but Christianity is defined by its Creeds, statements of faith which every branch, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism agree on.

Those are the Apostles' Creed (not written by the Apostles, hence the location of the apostrophe), the Nicene Creed, and the Definition of Chalcedon.

If you cannot say yeah and Amen to those three you are not a Christian. Full Stop.

[shmenguin]

I realize we are in a make-your-own-truth world but Christianity is defined by its Creeds, statements of faith which every branch, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism agree on.

Those are the Apostles' Creed (not written by the Apostles, hence the location of the apostrophe), the Nicene Creed, and the Definition of Chalcedon.

If you cannot say yeah and Amen to those three you are not a Christian. Full Stop.

If a person is never going to adopt full stop Christianity, would you prefer they not attend mass? Just curious. No point. Well...maybe a follow up point but it's not inflammatory.

[Freddy Rumsen]

I'd prefer them to stop attending mass primarily because I'm a Protestant.

But, no I'd not rather they not stop attending "mass" if you are using the term to speak of worship in a general sense. However, I don't think such should have access to the Sacraments or the benefits of membership.

I'd say the same of someone who denied the divinity of Christ regardless if they were a Protestant, Orthodox, or Roman Catholic.

The Rachel Dolezalization of these things is not new, but still not acceptable.

[columbia]

Rachel Dolezalization

[shmenguin]

Sidebar...are you worried about Christianity dissolving over the next few generations? It would be surprising if, in 50 years, the landscape isn't drastically different. To the point where the Vatican has to keep appointing cool new popes who keep lowering the membership requirements. I know you're not catholic, but this seems tangentially related to your deal. The Catholic Church is going to lose their American revenue stream before the end of my life. Wondering what measures will be taken to prevent this.

[columbia]

Letting priests get married would be beneficial.

The Catholic school that Factorial and I went to no longer has any brothers or nuns, who teach there. I honestly don’t know how the Church digs up enough men to have a priest per parish...maybe they don’t.

[Freddy Rumsen]

Sidebar...are you worried about Christianity dissolving over the next few generations? It would be surprising if, in 50 years, the landscape isn't drastically different. To the point where the Vatican has to keep appointing cool new popes who keep lowering the membership requirements. I know you're not catholic, but this seems tangentially related to your deal. The Catholic Church is going to lose their American revenue stream before the end of my life. Wondering what measures will be taken to prevent this.

I think the Roman Catholic church is in serious trouble, ironically because of the "liberal" movements before, during, and after Vatican II. In trying to be all things to all men and women they took all the mystery and uniqueness of Roman Catholic doctrine and watered it down to the point where why would you even bother.

The growth in the Third World is a mirage, as Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Pentecostals are all claiming the same souls as these people just kind of join all the local churches.

And to Columbia's question, they can't find priests. Attendance at the seminaries continue to plummet. People who are going are not really qualified (read here: idiots) and no American wants to go to Mass where the priest from the Phillipines can't speak English.

The situation in Protestantism is worse. Most of the downtown churches are shells staying open because of endowments.

For example, First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh (across from the Duquesne Club) has 50 members and a church which seats 1500.

[Kaiser]

I believe in micro evolution, not macro evolution. I was just thinking about this the other day: take for instance a mother, whether it be an animal or a human. When the mother has a baby, its mammary glands produce milk. This is an essential part of animal life. Taking humans out of the equation, without mother's milk, the baby will not survive.

Macro evolution teaches me that over time, a species evolved to contain these glands, as well as produce a substance suitable for its species survival. Obviously the species didn't develop these glands overnight. It took thousands, maybe millions of years to develop. Where is this transition period, and how does the species survive during this transition? When did the species "decide" that milk would be its sustenance rather than (whatever the old method was)? I see a lack of proof of transitional development, let alone transitional species in archaeological findings. It's there, but not on a large enough scale to convince me macro evolution is a thing. I'm only talking about one thing here, not to mention the millions of other developments in macro evolution that must have happened in synchronicity to get us from point A (single cell organism) to point B (humans).

Your key miss is the word "decide". The animal didnt decide to produce milk, or have claws, or eyes, or to breathe through a hole and lungs instead of gills. Over time, reproduction introduces variation among genetics, the further away from a common family tree, the more variation is possible. Too far away, they are incompatible to breed. Those variations bring mutation through pure attrition, the more offspring, the more chances for a defect in the genetics. Those defects sometimes are crippling, sometimes beneficial.
The beneficial defects are not always noticable in the first generation, like a frog being more athletic than its predecessors, but because of them, that frog is more likely to survive than another. It survives, and passes the "defect" to its children, who are now more athletic than the average frog. They pass along the genes, until the less athletic frogs are simply not athletic enough to survive among their competitors, or are deemed unsuitable mates by their peers, and go extinct. This occurs over millions of years, over and over with each living species. There is no "transition period", because we are always in transition in some form or another.

That's just the science side of it all. As shafnutz alluded to, the majesty and beauty of the universe holds no purpose, yet it exists. Why?

I also cannot fathom how a big bang could create a universe in such order, yet coincidentally in such chaos, without intelligent design. How many big bangs must there have been before THE Big Bang actually worked? Where there big bangs that were soooooo freaking close, but just didn't get it? Were there bb's that were perfect in constructing a universe full of planets and stars, but failed to make any life forms? Being that THE BIG BANG was a 1 in a ~quadrillion chance, there have to be other, observable, parallel universes where other big bangs existed. Otherwise, you're 1/1,000,000,000,000 chance is more like 1/10^10^10^10 and so on shot that the very first and very only big bang worked. If you're going to believe that, you might was well believe it was an intelligent designer behind the whole charade.

This is assuming things at a very focused, and small scale. For one, you seem to think that a universe without life is a failure. A universe is a universe, whether you exist or not. So any preceeding big bangs that did not produce habitable planets would still be as viable a place to study for these answers, if you could. And like i said above, the conditions we find ourselves in are not perfect for us to survive because we needed them, they are what we need because that is what we have. Besides, if there were already 100 quadrillion big bangs just using the matter in our universe (based on the above big crunch theory), it wouldnt make the slightest difference to us.

Time is relative, and not just because we have dialation around heavy gravitation. Time as we measure it is only useful around our own planet. Every other place with accumulated matter in the universe has its own time(its own measure of it relative to ours), because of the differences in gravitational fields of each and every object. 1 quadrillion universe lives would have a time value of Zero to us, because we werent there for it.

[shmenguin]

I also don't think it requires a fluke for life to blossom. Not when you consider the size of the universe. There are countless solar systems. a zillion stars and planets and meteors carrying life juice across space. Something being rare is just that. It doesn't mean anything special. It's just a thing that's very uncommon, but has still likely occurred many many times.

[shmenguin]

Sidebar...are you worried about Christianity dissolving over the next few generations? It would be surprising if, in 50 years, the landscape isn't drastically different. To the point where the Vatican has to keep appointing cool new popes who keep lowering the membership requirements. I know you're not catholic, but this seems tangentially related to your deal. The Catholic Church is going to lose their American revenue stream before the end of my life. Wondering what measures will be taken to prevent this.

I think the Roman Catholic church is in serious trouble, ironically because of the "liberal" movements before, during, and after Vatican II. In trying to be all things to all men and women they took all the mystery and uniqueness of Roman Catholic doctrine and watered it down to the point where why would you even bother.

The growth in the Third World is a mirage, as Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Pentecostals are all claiming the same souls as these people just kind of join all the local churches.

And to Columbia's question, they can't find priests. Attendance at the seminaries continue to plummet. People who are going are not really qualified (read here: idiots) and no American wants to go to Mass where the priest from the Phillipines can't speak English.

The situation in Protestantism is worse. Most of the downtown churches are shells staying open because of endowments.

For example, First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh (across from the Duquesne Club) has 50 members and a church which seats 1500.

So then what? If Big Church has an expiration date, there won't be casual church goers to fill the building and the collection dishes for much longer. The end game is no more religion at all (casual or otherwise) for 99%+ of the population. Is this troubling or is this sort of a "not that important since my faith comes from within" thing?

[Kaiser]

There are multitudes of perfect conditions concerning Earth, at least as far as we're concerned. It is because of those conditions that we appear now. Those conditions were cultivated by the surrounding universe, the life that came before us, the moon and the way it came to be, the distance from the sun, our axis and rotation that gives us a heat gradient.
All of these things work out to a place that supports our type of life, which is why we have evolved to be harmonious with it. If the conditions were different, we would be different, or not exist. Our form of life has nothing to do with "perfect" conditions, we are this way because of the conditions we have.

That's a fair point. I guess beyond that, one of the other problems I have with the total atheist viewpoint is the idea that the Big Bang just was. Why did the universe even exist in the first place? It was just...there?

We dont know, but it is entirely possible that the universe itself rose from nothing. I dont really buy that, but my own answers lie before the bang, and arent measurable(yet). The cyclical nature of a contracting universe isnt very likely either, given the accelerating expansion of space-time. The expansion would have begun slowing after the first instant, if that were to occur, which suggests two things: 1. Our universe is expanding into something, and 2. there would be other adjacent universes, possibly with their own physical laws, including some of robbie's failed universes with no life. We may merge with these, expanding into each other, or be restrained from them by a local space-time brane. By the way this is considered the most plausible theory of the multiverse going.

Personally, i dont consider the big bang the beginning of anything, other than our personal physics and time. If we are contained in our universe, and time began at the big bang, it would mean that it both had a beginning, and also has always existed.

[columbia]

The mega church thing seems to still be prospering.

<insert prosperity gospel joke here>

[Freddy Rumsen]

Well, obviously in a broad sense it's not "good", but I think there is some whinnowing going on right now, separating wheat from chaff, that is not entirely "bad" in the sense of the process of purifying always results in a smaller, stronger core when the dross is removed.

[shafnutz05]

So then what? If Big Church has an expiration date, there won't be casual church goers to fill the building and the collection dishes for much longer. The end game is no more religion at all (casual or otherwise) for 99%+ of the population. Is this troubling or is this sort of a "not that important since my faith comes from within" thing?

There is one religion in the world that continues to grow by leaps and bounds despite the declining popularity of others...

[Kaiser]

There are multitudes of perfect conditions concerning Earth, at least as far as we're concerned. It is because of those conditions that we appear now. Those conditions were cultivated by the surrounding universe, the life that came before us, the moon and the way it came to be, the distance from the sun, our axis and rotation that gives us a heat gradient.
All of these things work out to a place that supports our type of life, which is why we have evolved to be harmonious with it. If the conditions were different, we would be different, or not exist. Our form of life has nothing to do with "perfect" conditions, we are this way because of the conditions we have.

That's a fair point. I guess beyond that, one of the other problems I have with the total atheist viewpoint is the idea that the Big Bang just was. Why did the universe even exist in the first place? It was just...there?

if god is the creator, then the same question is posed to you. was he just...there?

Both take a leap of faith. It’s just which side do you leap towards.

Only one requires any leap of faith, the other is built upon the scientific evidence we have, and the new evidence as fast as we can reveal it and make sense of it.
Just because we're better than the rest of the things that live here doesn't mean we have all the answers, as centuries of discoveries prove time and again. Someone may have thought a heliocentric solar system required a leap of faith, but it just required better technology, and the freedom to investigate the idea. We can't say for sure what caused our universe to be, but that doesn't mean we will never know.

One thing is for sure, those looking for answers and those claiming to already know are on very different trajectories. I can't imagine many people will grow up in the future we're building, and take the word of dead people who didn't even know what the sun was, over the advancements of people who are providing facts as fast as technology allows.

[shafnutz05]

I respect the above viewpoint. I admit I am a bit of a weird case because I am that rare combination of an avid amateur astronomer who also happens to believe in ID. I've never felt conflicted about combining that hobby and that belief. I'm not a New Earth Creationist either, mainly because I don't believe God is planting dinosaur bones out there, and carbon dating them millions of years, to see who the "real" believers are.

[Freddy Rumsen]

It is a bit disingenuous to say everything in science is based on only empirical evidence. There are a lot of unkowable unknowns undergirding many theories which collapse all the time taking down universally accepted teaching in the scientific community.

I also demur from the idea that "faith" is a leap or a resting and trusting in the dark, blind things, something which cannot be proven.

[count2infinity]

It is a bit disingenuous to say everything in science is based on only empirical evidence. There are a lot of unkowable unknowns undergirding many theories which collapse all the time taking down universally accepted teaching in the scientific community.

I also demur from the idea that "faith" is a leap or a resting and trusting in the dark, blind things, something which cannot be proven.

I would agree that "gaps" are generally filled in with what seems logical based on the evidence available at the time. These are constantly being tweaked as new evidence becomes available. I suppose the question is: How much evidence is enough evidence? For instance macro vs. micro evolution... I think there's more than enough evidence to support the theory of evolution. Clearly others (a minority of others in the first world with the evidence that is put before them mind you, but still, others) do not.

[robbiestoupe]

I believe in micro evolution, not macro evolution. I was just thinking about this the other day: take for instance a mother, whether it be an animal or a human. When the mother has a baby, its mammary glands produce milk. This is an essential part of animal life. Taking humans out of the equation, without mother's milk, the baby will not survive.

Macro evolution teaches me that over time, a species evolved to contain these glands, as well as produce a substance suitable for its species survival. Obviously the species didn't develop these glands overnight. It took thousands, maybe millions of years to develop. Where is this transition period, and how does the species survive during this transition? When did the species "decide" that milk would be its sustenance rather than (whatever the old method was)? I see a lack of proof of transitional development, let alone transitional species in archaeological findings. It's there, but not on a large enough scale to convince me macro evolution is a thing. I'm only talking about one thing here, not to mention the millions of other developments in macro evolution that must have happened in synchronicity to get us from point A (single cell organism) to point B (humans).

Your key miss is the word "decide". The animal didnt decide to produce milk, or have claws, or eyes, or to breathe through a hole and lungs instead of gills. Over time, reproduction introduces variation among genetics, the further away from a common family tree, the more variation is possible. Too far away, they are incompatible to breed. Those variations bring mutation through pure attrition, the more offspring, the more chances for a defect in the genetics. Those defects sometimes are crippling, sometimes beneficial.
The beneficial defects are not always noticable in the first generation, like a frog being more athletic than its predecessors, but because of them, that frog is more likely to survive than another. It survives, and passes the "defect" to its children, who are now more athletic than the average frog. They pass along the genes, until the less athletic frogs are simply not athletic enough to survive among their competitors, or are deemed unsuitable mates by their peers, and go extinct. This occurs over millions of years, over and over with each living species. There is no "transition period", because we are always in transition in some form or another.

Yes, "decide" was a poor choice of words. Of course species don't consciously decide to evolve. What I meant to portray was at one time, our human "ancestors", according to macro evolution, came from a single cell organism. This single cell organism obviously didn't need milk to survive. But over the course of many iterations along the line of human ancestry, the species developed the ability to produce milk. Before that, it had subsisted on whatever else kept it alive. There was a transition period where perhaps both were an option - the milk and the other means. If the other means of feeding the young was sufficient enough to keep the species going for the millions of years it took to develop mammary glands, why would the milk producers win out? Where are these special creatures that possessed both the ability to produce milk and to subsist on other means? That is what I mean by transition period.

Most of your examples above deal with micro evolution, of which I do not argue. What I don't believe is that humans were at one point a single cell organism, then evolved to live in the ocean, then grew legs and became a land animal, then eventually became human. No, humans were always humans. Our teeth may have evolved to eat more meats, or our feet may have evolved since we do not walk as much as we used to, but we didn't come from apes, and we won't evolve into a future species higher on the food chain than what we are now.

That's just the science side of it all. As shafnutz alluded to, the majesty and beauty of the universe holds no purpose, yet it exists. Why?

I also cannot fathom how a big bang could create a universe in such order, yet coincidentally in such chaos, without intelligent design. How many big bangs must there have been before THE Big Bang actually worked? Where there big bangs that were soooooo freaking close, but just didn't get it? Were there bb's that were perfect in constructing a universe full of planets and stars, but failed to make any life forms? Being that THE BIG BANG was a 1 in a ~quadrillion chance, there have to be other, observable, parallel universes where other big bangs existed. Otherwise, you're 1/1,000,000,000,000 chance is more like 1/10^10^10^10 and so on shot that the very first and very only big bang worked. If you're going to believe that, you might was well believe it was an intelligent designer behind the whole charade.

This is assuming things at a very focused, and small scale. For one, you seem to think that a universe without life is a failure. A universe is a universe, whether you exist or not. So any preceeding big bangs that did not produce habitable planets would still be as viable a place to study for these answers, if you could. And like i said above, the conditions we find ourselves in are not perfect for us to survive because we needed them, they are what we need because that is what we have. Besides, if there were already 100 quadrillion big bangs just using the matter in our universe (based on the above big crunch theory), it wouldnt make the slightest difference to us.

Time is relative, and not just because we have dialation around heavy gravitation. Time as we measure it is only useful around our own planet. Every other place with accumulated matter in the universe has its own time(its own measure of it relative to ours), because of the differences in gravitational fields of each and every object. 1 quadrillion universe lives would have a time value of Zero to us, because we werent there for it.

Well for one thing I never said a universe without life is a failure, I was just suggesting that we are living in the one instance where the universe "worked" for lack of a better term and there are theoretically eleventy-bagillion other non-life inhabitable universes out there. Where is this evidence (note: this is separate from verification of other life forms in our known universe. I'm talking about other big bangs)? Or do you subscribe to shmenguin's theory that the universe is eternally expanding and collapsing, and we are just living one iteration?

I understand your premise regarding the environment. Any other circumstances and we wouldn't be who we are, or simply wouldn't be. That's fair. It's a chicken vs. egg thing, and we both know what side we're on.

[columbia]

http://spaceengine.org/

[robbiestoupe]

Sidebar...are you worried about Christianity dissolving over the next few generations? It would be surprising if, in 50 years, the landscape isn't drastically different. To the point where the Vatican has to keep appointing cool new popes who keep lowering the membership requirements. I know you're not catholic, but this seems tangentially related to your deal. The Catholic Church is going to lose their American revenue stream before the end of my life. Wondering what measures will be taken to prevent this.

I think the Roman Catholic church is in serious trouble, ironically because of the "liberal" movements before, during, and after Vatican II. In trying to be all things to all men and women they took all the mystery and uniqueness of Roman Catholic doctrine and watered it down to the point where why would you even bother.

The growth in the Third World is a mirage, as Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Pentecostals are all claiming the same souls as these people just kind of join all the local churches.

And to Columbia's question, they can't find priests. Attendance at the seminaries continue to plummet. People who are going are not really qualified (read here: idiots) and no American wants to go to Mass where the priest from the Phillipines can't speak English.

The situation in Protestantism is worse. Most of the downtown churches are shells staying open because of endowments.

For example, First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh (across from the Duquesne Club) has 50 members and a church which seats 1500.

So then what? If Big Church has an expiration date, there won't be casual church goers to fill the building and the collection dishes for much longer. The end game is no more religion at all (casual or otherwise) for 99%+ of the population. Is this troubling or is this sort of a "not that important since my faith comes from within" thing?

I don't know how many churches this has happened to, but the church I go to is not a revenue generator. Sure, they'll collect tithes and offerings, alms, etc. but I don't think the church would dissolve if this went away. I'm pretty sure the church is in the red, but we gather for the fellowship because that is what we are called to do.

It's hard for me to say what will happen to the big churches. They still exist, and may continue to exist for some time. Perhaps what will happen is a more centralized system where instead of 10 churches per area, it's down to 1 or 2. Denominations may start to evaporate and you end up with a bunch of non-denominational churches (which is how it should be, IMO).

sidebar on denominations: It's one of my biggest peeves about the Christian faith that there are many denominations. I really don't care about the non-essential traditions and beliefs that have separated churches in the past. Most, if not all denominations came to pass out of a need to institutionalize and have control over something not meant to be controlled by humans. One of my good friends who goes to my church said this, "There are things I believe about the faith that will probably make you uncomfortable and upset, and vise versa. But those things are not the foundation of our faith, so we shouldn't dwell on them."

[robbiestoupe]

Source of the post One thing is for sure, those looking for answers and those claiming to already know are on very different trajectories.

You're mixing science with religion here. Christians, at least most of the ones I know, don't claim to know everything about the universe and how it came to be. We're only given a small glimpse of what the beginning looked like, not all the fine details. But Christians do claim to know that there is a God, even if that "knowing" is from faith. In the same sense, the non-religious claim to know there isn't a God by putting their "faith" in the big bang or other theories, but also don't know everything scientifically. I propose that nobody ever will, since science in and of itself is a man-made creation. It's our own way of understanding something that is way beyond our scope of imagination. The human brain, even if all human brains were combined into one mega brain, is not capable of comprehending the universe we live in.

I think what you are trying to say above is that non-religious people tend to use science to explain life, while Christians don't. It doesn't mean all Christians are anti-science.

The best I can explain it is Christians have a decent idea of the boundaries created within this world. The Bible gives us an idea of what the world was and what the world will become, and from that we form our opinions. It's our worldview, and most things are seen through that lens. Granted, the Bible was not intended to be a historical document, but you would have to agree that at least part of its purpose was to give some historical content.

Non-religious people are trying to find those boundaries, and their worldview changes based on the new findings within the ever changing boundaries. 200 years from now, our ancestors may look back at all the big bang theorists and evolutionists and think of them in the same light as we do the Flat Earthers. To me, that doesn't make one iota of a difference in what I believe.

[Willie Kool]

What I don't believe is that humans were at one point a single cell organism, then evolved to live in the ocean, then grew legs and became a land animal, then eventually became human. No, humans were always humans. Our teeth may have evolved to eat more meats, or our feet may have evolved since we do not walk as much as we used to, but we didn't come from apes, and we won't evolve into a future species higher on the food chain than what we are now.

So, to you, it's more believable that some magical, unknowable entity created humans out of nothing? I guess it's just coincidence that we share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees?

[grunthy]

There are multitudes of perfect conditions concerning Earth, at least as far as we're concerned. It is because of those conditions that we appear now. Those conditions were cultivated by the surrounding universe, the life that came before us, the moon and the way it came to be, the distance from the sun, our axis and rotation that gives us a heat gradient.
All of these things work out to a place that supports our type of life, which is why we have evolved to be harmonious with it. If the conditions were different, we would be different, or not exist. Our form of life has nothing to do with "perfect" conditions, we are this way because of the conditions we have.

That's a fair point. I guess beyond that, one of the other problems I have with the total atheist viewpoint is the idea that the Big Bang just was. Why did the universe even exist in the first place? It was just...there?

if god is the creator, then the same question is posed to you. was he just...there?

Both take a leap of faith. It’s just which side do you leap towards.

Only one requires any leap of faith, the other is built upon the scientific evidence we have, and the new evidence as fast as we can reveal it and make sense of it.
Just because we're better than the rest of the things that live here doesn't mean we have all the answers, as centuries of discoveries prove time and again. Someone may have thought a heliocentric solar system required a leap of faith, but it just required better technology, and the freedom to investigate the idea. We can't say for sure what caused our universe to be, but that doesn't mean we will never know.

One thing is for sure, those looking for answers and those claiming to already know are on very different trajectories. I can't imagine many people will grow up in the future we're building, and take the word of dead people who didn't even know what the sun was, over the advancements of people who are providing facts as fast as technology allows.

They definitely knew what the sun was.

Also yes taking some science requires a certain leap of faith. And you are assuming that all Christians don’t believe in the science of the Big Bang or universe creation. I believe God works within the laws of nature to create. So he used evolution to create life and used the Big Bang to create the universe. I still believe in the science, but also believe a higher power is behind the laws that govern the universe.

[grunthy]

What I don't believe is that humans were at one point a single cell organism, then evolved to live in the ocean, then grew legs and became a land animal, then eventually became human. No, humans were always humans. Our teeth may have evolved to eat more meats, or our feet may have evolved since we do not walk as much as we used to, but we didn't come from apes, and we won't evolve into a future species higher on the food chain than what we are now.

So, to you, it's more believable that some magical, unknowable entity created humans out of nothing? I guess it's just coincidence that we share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees?

We share like 84% of our DNA with a dog. What’s your point?