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Adrian and I disagree on faith. - (Go to last post)
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12th February 2010, 03:03
Post: #31
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RE: Adrian and I disagree on faith.
(11th February 2010 23:38)Welsh cake Wrote: 1- So mathmatics, philosophy, psychology can't contribute to society, or are they considered real? Why stop there? 2- I agree with your definition of faith, however I'm sure you put more trust in reality a lot more than you give yourself credit for, if not consciously, subconsciously. "I am always amazed at how the Bible, that portrays my Lord embracing the outcasts, .. and inviting 'all of ye,' not 'some of ye,' to 'come unto me,' can, in the hands of a few distorted people be turned into a book of hatred, violence and judgment." J.S. Spong, an author and retired bishop
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12th February 2010, 17:35
Post: #32
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RE: Adrian and I disagree on faith.
Forgive me if I've missed some points in this thread:
You don't take the sun coming up tomorrow morning as a faith based argument. The sun has come up for millions of years, and for as long as human civilization has been around, there has been no deviation from the plan. Scientific evidence does not lead us to accept the sun as an uncertainty, far from it. In our lifetime at least, it is a very practical certainty, not an absolute one. There is always the unforseen event, the factor that is by definition unaccountable that can cause a catastrophic change or demolition to the entire system. This is where faith comes in. You have faith that a destructive or disruptive event WON'T happen. Since you don't have evidence for the unforseen element, you can rely on faith to reinforce your assessment of what is demonstrably certain. You don't have faith that the sun will come up. It demonstrates the furthest degree of physical certainty we can have in this lifetime on this Earth. You have faith that something WON'T occur to impede this event, since faith is an assertion when no evidence is present. We have evidence to fully understand that the sun will continue to provide the Earth with energy for millions of years to come. When you have evidence to infer or predict an outcome that has been accurate beyond deviation, it leaves the realm of faith. |
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12th February 2010, 18:47
Post: #33
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RE: Adrian and I disagree on faith.
As leo pointed out before though, believing the sun will come up tomorrow just because it's done it for the last few billion years isn't an evidence supported belief. I've lived for the past 22 years...that doesn't mean I'll be alive tomorrow.
Our belief that the sun will come up tomorrow is based on evidence because of our knowledge about the laws of nature which tell us *why* the sun comes up over the horizon. "The argument was not bullshit, it was circular." - Edward, Christian Fundamentalist
The Atheist Blogger (My Blog) -- @ah8r (My Twitter)     |
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Kudos given by (1): Saerules |
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13th February 2010, 13:33
(This post was last modified: 13th February 2010 13:35 by Welsh cake.)
Post: #34
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RE: Adrian and I disagree on faith.
(12th February 2010 03:03)tackattack Wrote: 1- So mathmatics, philosophy, psychology can't contribute to society, or are they considered real? Why stop there?These are all models, workings and concepts that are mental constructs based on reality, so they can indeed contribute to society. tackattack Wrote:2- I agree with your definition of faith, however I'm sure you put more trust in reality a lot more than you give yourself credit for, if not consciously, subconsciously.An erroneous assertion; I already said that I don't put absolute trust or "faith" in anything. Science does a good job of explaining phenomena, but I don't put any 'trust' in it. Take my lifespan for example, while I can be optimistic that if I look after my body and avoid taking unnecessary risks then maybe, I'll live to be 90, but I won't have any confidence in that prospect whatsoever. "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)" (12th February 2010 17:35)tavarish Wrote: In our lifetime at least, it is a very practical certainty, not an absolute one. There is always the unforseen event, the factor that is by definition unaccountable that can cause a catastrophic change or demolition to the entire system. This is where faith comes in.What exactly do you mean? While I agree on many points you made, destructive and/or disruptive events are often occurring in our universe. If you're claiming the periodicity of mass extinctions that occur for given any possible catastrophic future change to our orbit and rotation of the sun, we rely on hypothesis using information available to us to predict said outcomes, not faith. We don't need faith for hypothetical unforeseen elements, in the past the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event happened and a similar collision may happen again, we don't know for certain, but you'd be in error to assume having faith in that it won't happen again will somehow make it so, that's not just wishful thinking, its basically Special pleading. For any object large enough to dramatically alter earth's rotation the gravitational disturbances or anomalies caused by the rogue planet/brown dwarf/star tearing through our solar system would be detected *long before* it passed and/or collided. Science doesn't just stop working when suddenly there is new information available. You can't have faith in countless uncertainties and claim it's a sensible thing to do, since we know speculating the "What Ifs" is about the most unproductive thing you can do. "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." — Edward Gibbon
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13th February 2010, 13:51
Post: #35
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RE: Adrian and I disagree on faith.
then our differences lie in the fact that call religion a concept that is a mental construct based on my percievable realityand you discount it because my percievable reality isn't percievable to you.
"I am always amazed at how the Bible, that portrays my Lord embracing the outcasts, .. and inviting 'all of ye,' not 'some of ye,' to 'come unto me,' can, in the hands of a few distorted people be turned into a book of hatred, violence and judgment." J.S. Spong, an author and retired bishop
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13th February 2010, 16:26
(This post was last modified: 13th February 2010 16:27 by Welsh cake.)
Post: #36
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RE: Adrian and I disagree on faith.
Tack can you acknowledge my point that was just made previously please? Let's try to keep our discussion a little more coherent as we've now leapt from one subject to yet another.
Anyway you're generalising a bit, I don't discount your perceived reality merely on the grounds that your subjective worldview isn't the same as reality, neither dismiss it as irrelevant simply because no one else can be justified by your personal experiences. It's because said religious beliefs are abstract in the sense that they're completely incompatible within our shared reality is why I discount them and where the actual 'difference' between us lies. "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." — Edward Gibbon
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14th February 2010, 01:19
Post: #37
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RE: Adrian and I disagree on faith.
(13th February 2010 13:33)Welsh cake Wrote: 1- I agree that mathmatics, psychology, etc are all models, workings and concepts that are mental constructs based on tangible shared reality contributing to society. God, for me, is an intangible shared reality concept that contributes to society. You said incompatible within our shared reality above.. that I'm assuming refers to atheists, not me, because it's not incompatable at all from my perspective. You simply have no evidence to qualify the spiritual. My equation doesn't preclude you from knowing, you're using incomplete data for your assesment in my opinion. 2-I'm not talking about cataclysmic events. I'm talking about practical application of faith in the present , through decision, achieving a specified outcome. You have faith that the chair you sitting in won't fall apart, that your computer won't crash, etc. You don't consciously analyze every single minutae of decision you do every day. You don't consciously evidence every single assertion. Your subconscious does that for you predominantly. Your conscious mind trusts that your subconscious has weighed and measured every decision. You'd be suprised if your chair just collapsed, you might say.. "that's no suprise I'm a fat ass" Or you might say, "what a coincidence" ,etc. None of the reaction matters in this context. You made you decision based on the fact that 99% of the time the chair won't break, because it hasn't yet and most likely won't. Not that it couldn't, of course it could! Just because something is evidenced and tested in tangible reality proves nothing of truth. Science uses many axioms which are mental constructs. "I am always amazed at how the Bible, that portrays my Lord embracing the outcasts, .. and inviting 'all of ye,' not 'some of ye,' to 'come unto me,' can, in the hands of a few distorted people be turned into a book of hatred, violence and judgment." J.S. Spong, an author and retired bishop
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14th February 2010, 18:13
Post: #38
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RE: Adrian and I disagree on faith.
(13th February 2010 13:33)Welsh cake Wrote: What exactly do you mean? While I agree on many points you made, destructive and/or disruptive events are often occurring in our universe. If you're claiming the periodicity of mass extinctions that occur for given any possible catastrophic future change to our orbit and rotation of the sun, we rely on hypothesis using information available to us to predict said outcomes, not faith. (13th February 2010 13:33)Welsh cake Wrote: We don't need faith for hypothetical unforeseen elements, in the past the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event happened and a similar collision may happen again, we don't know for certain, but you'd be in error to assume having faith in that it won't happen again will somehow make it so, that's not just wishful thinking, its basically Special pleading. I completely understand, and I never said faith changes anything. It's simply a psychological concept illustrating mankind's approach to the unknown. I do agree with you though. (13th February 2010 13:33)Welsh cake Wrote: For any object large enough to dramatically alter earth's rotation the gravitational disturbances or anomalies caused by the rogue planet/brown dwarf/star tearing through our solar system would be detected *long before* it passed and/or collided. Science doesn't just stop working when suddenly there is new information available. You can't have faith in countless uncertainties and claim it's a sensible thing to do, since we know speculating the "What Ifs" is about the most unproductive thing you can do. I agree. I never said it a sensible thing to do, perhaps I'm illustrating something that operates on a subconscious level, but I think faith is something that is taken for granted for the most part, and to say "the sun comes up everyday" is a statement of faith rather than evidence is a false assertion. Perhaps I phrased my argument incorrectly. I do agree with you though. |
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