Is 'faith' really a 'great cop-out'?

[Edwardo Piet]

Faith doesn't imply blindness or lack of knowledge. You get to know your parents, your friends, your mate - and have faith in them based upon what you have come to know about them, not what you feel or are blind to.

As others are pointing out there is a huge difference between faith of the religious kind (faith without knowledge & often in spite of it as Dawkins would say) and faith based on reasonable expectation (the kind based on experience) ... I have "faith" that the sun will rise in the east each morning, that faith is not religious but based on reasonable expectation based on the fact that I have been taught that it does so and my own experience has confirmed that. I have faith that my family loves me because I have a kind of idea what love is and because they are fairly demonstrative people and make it clearly known to me that I am in some way very important to them (and not just for the money) ... again, although it is possible to interpret these things in a variety of ways, that is not a religious faith but one based on experience.

Religious faith OTOH is inherently based on blind trust and if you like we can put it to the test

Kyu

Yes but I wouldn't call believing that he sun will come up "having faith" I would call that just a matter of understanding. Not absolute knowledge. Just understanding. You may not have to understand "Why?" the sun comes up, you just have to understand that it does. Perhaps you trust that the sun comes up you could say.
Faith is irrational trust.

[Daystar]

CoxRox, I agree that there is an unfortunate propensity for the 'faithful' to adhere more to traditional, social, and cultural manifestations of religion but I disagree with you that science can't sometimes be used in the same way. It is important for me to stress that at the least both science and the Bible are not in reality the school of thought being properly considered or represented and at the worst used as a tool of propaganda for some other - usually politically motivated agenda.

So when the young impressionable Atheist looks at the faithful and the myopic traditional mainstream Xian there is a sort of xenophobic reflection - a transmogrification of each other which prevents each from seeing that they are actually two sides of the same coin. From the vantage point of this wall that divides the quixotic from the mundane any open minded person that looks up to the sky as David once did and then looks down can see that for this political formation that gets wider and wider never the twain shall meet.

Tell me where science disagrees with the Bible.

[Edwardo Piet]

Tell me where science disagrees with the Bible.

Miracles and the biggest miracle of all, God himself. The scientific method does not support miracles, the bible does.

[Daystar]

Tell me where science disagrees with the Bible.

Miracles and the biggest miracle of all, God himself. The scientific method does not support miracles, the bible does.

You see! That is the problem, buddy. If science could test a miracle it wouldn't be a miracle it would be science. If it could even simply define the word god as I have done for you (any one or thing that is "mighty" or "venerated") it could come to a better understanding.

The apostle Paul advised Christians to avoid spiritism like it was a plague. (Galatians 5:19 - 21) A science minded person would scoff this as superstition. The Greek word he used which is translated as spiritism is pharmakia from which comes our English word Pharmacy. Primitive peoples even today use various drugs to give them access to 'the spirit world.' Many of our modern day drugs come from research done in modern day 'primitive' cultures.

Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words: “PHARMAKIA . . . primarily signified the use of medicine, drugs, spells; then, poisoning; then, sorcery, . . . See also Rev. 9:21; 18:23. . . . In sorcery, the use of drugs, whether simple or potent, was generally accompanied by incantations and appeals to occult powers, with the provision of various charms, . . . to impress the applicant with the mysterious resources and powers of the sorcerer."

I posted here that the Greek word spirit is pneuma from which we get the English words pneumatic, an invisible active force (not entity).

Now, from a scientific perspective, not unlike an archaeologist looking upon the ancient drawings in some cave what does that tell you?

Anything?

---

Kyuuketsuki,

Would you say that you have faith that 'religious' faith is nonsense?

[Edwardo Piet]

Tell me where science disagrees with the Bible.

Miracles and the biggest miracle of all, God himself. The scientific method does not support miracles, the bible does.

You see! That is the problem, buddy. If science could test a miracle it wouldn't be a miracle it would be science. If it could even simply define the word god as I have done for you (any one or thing that is "mighty" or "venerated") it could come to a better understanding.

The apostle Paul advised Christians to avoid spiritism like it was a plague. (Galatians 5:19 - 21) A science minded person would scoff this as superstition. The Greek word he used which is translated as spiritism is pharmakia from which comes our English word Pharmacy. Primitive peoples even today use various drugs to give them access to 'the spirit world.' Many of our modern day drugs come from research done in modern day 'primitive' cultures.

Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words: “PHARMAKIA . . . primarily signified the use of medicine, drugs, spells; then, poisoning; then, sorcery, . . . See also Rev. 9:21; 18:23. . . . In sorcery, the use of drugs, whether simple or potent, was generally accompanied by incantations and appeals to occult powers, with the provision of various charms, . . . to impress the applicant with the mysterious resources and powers of the sorcerer."

I posted here that the Greek word spirit is pneuma from which we get the English words pneumatic, an invisible active force (not entity).

Now, from a scientific perspective, not unlike an archaeologist looking upon the ancient drawings in some cave what does that tell you?

Anything?

Errr, I don't get your point.
Science can't test miracles because there is no evidence for the existence of any!
Miracles are totally against science and science is totally against miracles and miracles are in the bible. Thats the contradiction.
If science could define the word God? The scientific method doesn't design words or interpret definitions. Science is about evidence, researching and re-researching evidence and probability etc.
The reason why no one can define the word God is because there are so many Gods and so many reasons for it! Like Steven Weinberg said, and I'm paraphrasing, "If you believe God is energy you can find God in a lump of coal".
Theres no arguing with that, but how is a lump of coal God-like? it isn't. Its just that the word God can be used so flexibly and diversely that you can disguise it as a supernatural being while still saying its in natural stuff that have nothing to do with anything supernatural!

[CoxRox]

Daystar, sorry mate, but I don't understand your last post. You said: 'but I disagree with you that science can't sometimes be used in the same way'. Are you saying that it is used in the same way? If you are, can you give me an example, cos I'm struggling to think of one.

'Where does science disagree with the Bible?' I can't begin to answer this ('Christians' disagree amongst themselves on the bible), and I don't think it's a good idea to marry these two together at this point. The Bible is such a big topic all of it's own. I'm trying to understand if dna, rna etc, 'suggests' intelligence. This is proving a brain exploding task hence why I probably don't understand your post.

Leo, it's looking like I've entered a minefield and I'll concede at this point that 'language' or 'code' may not be an appropriate comparison, but even so I will continue in my studies and come back to you shortly.

regards Catherine

[Tiberius]

Tell me where science disagrees with the Bible.

How about the origin of species.

Bible: God made every animal in a week.
Science: Evolution through Natural Selection over billions of years.

[Edwardo Piet]

Tell me where science disagrees with the Bible.

How about the origin of species.

Bible: God made every animal in a week.
Science: Evolution through Natural Selection over billions of years.

Yeah, you say you don't believe in evolution Daystar and neither does the bible, it believes in creation. However the scientific method does indeed "believe" in evolution. The scientific method understands evolution via the scientific method.
Are you saying, Daystar, that a book written over 2000 years ago by many different authors who all interpret it in many different ways, know what they're doing more than the scientific method?

[leo-rcc]

Catherine,

Leo, it's looking like I've entered a minefield and I'll concede at this point that 'language' or 'code' may not be an appropriate comparison, but even so I will continue in my studies and come back to you shortly.

regards Catherine

By all means, no one ever got of any worse by studying. I spent 2 days on searching material on Egyptian Plovers, trying to prove a point and lost. It wasn't a waste since now I know more than I ever did on Symbiosis, Commensalism, and Parasitism.

[CoxRox]

After much reading and careful pondering I will accept that using 'language' or 'code' when discussing dna is probably not a good thing to do. It opens up a minefield of problems (semantics, types of philosophical arguments) which tend to side track the issue. (I came across a forum which had been debating this very issue for the last three years!!) One thing seems clear to me: the various molecules are doing things in an ‘ordered’ way which then results in a living ‘creature’. Why do these molecules replicate, break off, move in one direction rather than another etc? So I think this might be where the idea of ‘language’ comes from. If I may be permitted to offer a different perspective and ask: do all of these processes just mentioned, which result in producing very complex living beings, suggest an intelligence or plan even, which is ultimately responsible for their existence? I would say yes, they do. I remember when I was still quite young, in my teens and I watched a film animation about the cell. I was amazed at how similar it was to a factory, how all the parts of the cell had their own jobs to do etc. It was as if I had my own eureka moment and realised that the Creator is perceived via the world. That’s me though.