And that's why science is reasonable and is not dogmatic at all (except when made so by a person).

(April 3, 2009 at 5:44 am)athoughtfulman Wrote: And that's why science is reasonable and is not dogmatic at all (except when made so by a person).

Indeed

Kyu

To answer the question posted to me about discrediting philosophy my answer is no.I am not discrediting philosophy,my argument is that philosophy is not an appropriate discipline for the analysis of religion in general.Philosophy is mere speculation and when it comes to the topic of religion and the existence of God etc. it tends to cloud the issue so much more by over thinking the matter.Adding new definitions and terminologies to a subject that is already rife with both.

When it comes to religion philosophy does nothing more than cloud the issues at hand.I am of the opinion that religion is not as complicated as many philosophers or thinkers of our time tend to make it.I am of the opinion that religion is obviously a creation of man,man at one time or another has pretty much worshipped everything on this earth in his search for wholeness.The history of religion is full of religions that worship nature,animal,ancestral,kings,imaginary deities etc.

Regarding insane philosophers I will not even bother to indulge in creating a list of them because that is not what this thread is about.Hell, if it makes you happy I will take back that statement and move on with the issue at hand.

When it comes to religion I am pretty sure that God or gods did not come to Earth to reveal themselves to anyone.In my view all illusions to visitations from the gods is nothing more than myths and folklore.

I agree that philosophers overcomplicate things, and on the whole, I agree that they cloud reasoning. Philosophy misses the point, from my perspective. Nevertheless I find it an intriguing subject in it's own right. It offers some poignant reasoning.

This thread and in fact this whole site and the encounters that I have had here have led me to go back and re-read some of the classic works of philosophy on religion.I just got through reading 'The Antichrist' by F.Neizche and was amazed at how he and I agreed on so many points.Namely: Man created religions, it was used as a means to control the masses and supress the spread of knowledge and anything that contradicted its teachings.And there were a couple of other issues upon which we agreed on.

Philosophy is an interesting study, it is just way too much window dressing.

(April 4, 2009 at 10:42 am)chatpilot Wrote: Philosophy is an interesting study, it is just way too much window dressing.

I think philosophy is much more useful than you understand. Think about it this way. Science gives us facts. Raw data that we can fit into a bigger picture, which is incidentally, just more facts. Science is the study of everything and anything observable by empirical means, however it does not fit it into a worldview. We need philosophy to make sensible use of science.

Conclusions which are based on science but cannot be sensibly called "scientific fact", are conclusions of philosophy. For example the implications of evolution on morality, and whether it is objective. Sure we can look back and observe with scientific observation that morality developed through evolution, but when we start discussing the implications on morality being subjective or objective, we start using philosophical measures.

I only thought of this the other night, so correct me if I'm wrong.

I believe science doesn't give a complete picture of what we are as humans. We need philosophy to make science fit into the big picture.

athoughtfulman,thanks for the feedback and to be truthful I do agree with some of the things you said in the previous post.I think that philosophy and science do compliment each other.But in my view philosophy is not objective fact but rather the musings of man on objective facts as presented by science.A means of interpreting those facts and trying to extrapolate as much knowledge from those facts.

But some philosophers tend to take things way beyond the norm in my opinion and instead of clarifying the issues discussed tend to make those issues more complicated and cloudy.This is prevalent in the discussion on origins and religion.

We have so many definitions for each terminology the philosophers have invented.Atheist,agnostic, etc. dont mean what they meant anymore so much more has been added.Honestly in my view an atheist cannot argue from the bible since the bible in my opinion is not a reliable source of information.The bibles very authorship is in doubt and the fact that it so contradicts science and history is also an indicator of it's uselessness as a source of reliable knowledge.

Alot of the philosophers that argue about God do so from a biblical perspective which in my view is futile.Man has always had some concept of God or gods way before the bible ever came into existence.Instead they should argue about the origins of religion as far back as they are able to take it.

(April 6, 2009 at 10:49 am)chatpilot Wrote: But some philosophers tend to take things way beyond the norm in my opinion and instead of clarifying the issues discussed tend to make those issues more complicated and cloudy.This is prevalent in the discussion on origins and religion.

Of course, I completely agree here.

However because science does not offer a 100%, complete, undeniable proof of the non-existence of a god, then philosophy must be invoked. When science can give us an objective answer to the question of god's existence, then the need for philosophy in matters of god's existence will be obsolete. But until that day, we must employ philosophy as a means to a reasonable answer.

The fact that some philosophers overuse, overcomplicate and overall confuse things should not detract for the fact the philosophy is necessary to provide us with answers.

As for the bible, sometimes I think it's useful to develop the contradictions in religion, however you're right in that it does not offer proof of anything.

athoughtfulman it is impossible to prove the non-existence of God because he is beyond the reach of science.His so called plain of existence is in the metaphysical realm and therefore it is unreachable through objective and therefore physical means of research.

On the other hand I feel that Religion and all its gods and stories are a creation of man and therefore not able to be refuted from a scientific standpoint.I think that the scientific search for god or gods is futile and no matter how much searching we do it will always yield inconclusive results.

I believe that it will be pretty hard to try and prove a myth.Philosophy itself is also useless in the search for god since it is nothing more than mere speculation and musings about god.My search of God ended when I realized that it was all a myth.Trying to prove the existence of god or gods of any kind is like trying to prove the existence of Santa Clause.

So what? I agree with everything you said.

Of course it's impossible to prove the non-existence of god. However I am willing to admit that the inconclusive results might one day show us atheists to be wrong, though I'm definitely not betting on it.

As for the thread topic, science is incapable of either proving god's existence or his non-existence and hence is detrimental to the analysis of religion, in that respect. Science does not offer a conclusive answer (which I know you've said), hence we must employ philosophy to better understand the dilemma.

Despite this, I do believe science can offer us answers to some of the claims of Christianity, such as the case of Creation, Jesus, or the bible.