RE: Christianity compatible with atheism
October 1, 2011 at 6:07 pm
(This post was last modified: October 1, 2011 at 6:25 pm by coffeeveritas.)
(October 1, 2011 at 3:38 pm)Phaedra Wrote: I don't know if some people have become "better" because they embraced faith. I can see how a sudden belief in a deity would correlate with better behavior, but not necessarily truly becoming a better person. I think that MLK would would have done what he did regardless of his faith, or lack thereof. Being an atheist doesn't make you an immoral jackass. I'm probably a better person now that I lack faith.
Oh, I totally agree that being an atheist doesn't make you immoral. I know some really great atheists. I would also agree that there are people who are better for leaving their faith. When I walked away from my old church I think I was a much better person for making the change, even if I had never gone back to the faith. I also feel that my faith since then is what really helped me get my life back together, and really become a better person. It is a really odd situation since the church is what screwed me up in the first place, but what really helped me get my life turned around was . . . another church. It really is odd.
(October 1, 2011 at 3:53 pm)Chuck Wrote: Valuing science and think Jesus saved the world is in itself a very severe sign of deep intellectual dissonance and/or complacent ignorance. The inescapable and unredeemable vice of any religion, and the ultimate source of all evil they prepetrate, is promotion of intellectual dissonance and complacent ignorance. The virtue of science is it provides a frame work for systematically attack on the effects of intellectual dissonance and complacent ignorance. Therefore a man who thinks he values science and loves Jesus does not understand the nature of science, and whether he is conscious of it or not, lauds superficial fruits of science while denying the bases that allows it to work and progress.
A man can no more both understand science and value science, and also honestly think jesus saved the world, any more than a man could not genuinely understand and value diligence while honestly preach salvation through indolence. So long as Christianity think Christ is anyone special, it has no real redeeming value. Since Christianity is unlikely to exist otherwise, I would say there is no way to make Christianity acceptable.
Well, I certainly understand being disenfranchised with religion, I'm pretty much there myself, but isn't it a tad harsh to say that an individual person can't believe in Jesus and appreciate science at the same time? I'm a Christian and I ran a research lab and did published scientific research (published in regular scientific journals, not Christian ones). I believe that the data is the data; regardless of what results you expected or hoped for what is important is what you're actually seeing. (This seems pretty basic, but there are people who would pool their variance just to be able to publish something.)
Science is the objective study of the universe we find ourselves in. It's just data, Science doesn't make any value judgments. Science has nothing to say on whether or not there is a deity that was behind what we see. Saying whether or not there's a God is philosophy. Science has data, which people then interpret as saying, "there's an order to this creation!" or "the universe resulted from natural causes completely apart from and fictional 'god'!" I've been a Christian and a scientist at the same time, and I really didn't feel any conflict. The universe is how it is, and I don't expect to be able to prove God exists with an objective measurement. Science is a tool, and it can't be used for everything. I really believe that meta-narrative is dead. You can certainly move the the debate about the existence of God into the personal or philosophical sphere, but science really just has nothing to say either way.
