RE: Is 'faith' really a 'great cop-out'?
October 31, 2008 at 6:01 am
(This post was last modified: October 31, 2008 at 6:19 am by leo-rcc.)
Hi Catherine,
I had a (rather lengthy) reply ready and while doing some fact checking I closed the wrong tab in Firefox deleting my reply.
I will try to recreate what I wanted to say:
Faith basically means that trust something to be true based you observe and have experienced, rather than solid evidence. Faith is a belief in the trustworthiness of an idea or concept.
The workings of faith, trust, experience, is to make you to be able to make snap second decisions without having to weigh the pro's and con's first. This is an excellent survival technique, because you don't want to examine all the facts when there are some leaves rustling in the bushes. Your first belief is "there is a predator there, get out of here" and that will help you survive.
Though that technique works well when in a bind, it works a lot less when you apply these tactics on more philosophical issues about life, the universe, and everything (to quote my favorite atheist). There the predator in the bushes can be pretty much everything you can imagine, and as humans are prone to do so anyway, that's what they did. So the early man came up with the concept of gods to account for things they didn't understand. And even though these men were not stupid, they just didn't have the luxury of evidence to falsify their explanation.
And even today we don't hold all the answers, we do know now that the probability of gods are very small. People have believed in Zeus for longer than Christianity exists, but as time went along the claims made there became less and less plausible in light of new evidence. Christianity is still clinging on to some things in the bible, but even the church has had to concede based on evidence they did not have in the Bronze and Iron age that some things in the bible are wrong, and the art of apologetics sprung from that. Christianity is trying very hard to conform their god into a god of the gaps. Where science has no answer, that is where god comes into play. As time progressed, the Christian god became less and less a person, and more and more a untangable object with powers more obscure that the version before that so Christians could shoehorn that god in again. And I am not even mentioning Islam in that regard because they are even worse and more stubborn as Christianity.
Consider this: You are an atheist in 99.99999999999% of all religions in the world, yet you put faith in that one god. What solid basis do you have for that, apart from "faith" or "well it is comforting to know it doesn't end when I die" when there is no evidence to support it?
No, it is what we see as a code, since our minds are presupposed to see patterns. We use the recurring patterns as a code because it makes it easier for us to catalog. just like Zebra stripes the patterns change, it does not mean it is a code.
DNA consists of two long strands of simple units called nucleotides, with backbones made of sugars and phosphate groups joined by ester bonds, that form together and build up the chromosomes in every living creature, animal and plant form alike.
If you want a nice indepth explanation of DNA and its replication, I would refer you to Youtube and look up DonExodus2 ( http://www.youtube.com/user/donexodus2 ) a very good biologist and even a Christian though I will not hold that against him.
Right, I have looked at the wiki for String theory and it gave me a splitting headache (which is not that strange considering I still have nightmares from getting my head around time dilation which I still don't get).
String theory is a part of a science field called Theoretical Physics. To tell you the truth I hate that field with a passion, though I do freely admit it has its merits. The thing is, to me it is more a part in the science of Math than it is a part of Physics. It is a field where you do have the luxury to postulate "what if" and work with abstract mathematical models with 26 dimensions and are totally and utterly counter intuitive (which is the part I hate about it).
The thing is however, even though it works with hypotheses, these hypotheses derive from various actual physical models and theories, and speculating from there. What they will not do however, is is put faith on what the outcome of these hypotheses will be. Scientists can work on hypotheses for years, only to find that what they have been working on for so long turns out to be false. But that is okay, because from those mistakes you learn that this is not the correct avenue of approach and you do it another way. Faith is kept out of the process as much as possible. And the way to do that is through the scientific method. Peer review, publications, testing from independent sources.
I liked my first version better.
I had a (rather lengthy) reply ready and while doing some fact checking I closed the wrong tab in Firefox deleting my reply.
I will try to recreate what I wanted to say:
Quote:I think 'faith' can mean different things to people.
Faith basically means that trust something to be true based you observe and have experienced, rather than solid evidence. Faith is a belief in the trustworthiness of an idea or concept.
The workings of faith, trust, experience, is to make you to be able to make snap second decisions without having to weigh the pro's and con's first. This is an excellent survival technique, because you don't want to examine all the facts when there are some leaves rustling in the bushes. Your first belief is "there is a predator there, get out of here" and that will help you survive.
Though that technique works well when in a bind, it works a lot less when you apply these tactics on more philosophical issues about life, the universe, and everything (to quote my favorite atheist). There the predator in the bushes can be pretty much everything you can imagine, and as humans are prone to do so anyway, that's what they did. So the early man came up with the concept of gods to account for things they didn't understand. And even though these men were not stupid, they just didn't have the luxury of evidence to falsify their explanation.
And even today we don't hold all the answers, we do know now that the probability of gods are very small. People have believed in Zeus for longer than Christianity exists, but as time went along the claims made there became less and less plausible in light of new evidence. Christianity is still clinging on to some things in the bible, but even the church has had to concede based on evidence they did not have in the Bronze and Iron age that some things in the bible are wrong, and the art of apologetics sprung from that. Christianity is trying very hard to conform their god into a god of the gaps. Where science has no answer, that is where god comes into play. As time progressed, the Christian god became less and less a person, and more and more a untangable object with powers more obscure that the version before that so Christians could shoehorn that god in again. And I am not even mentioning Islam in that regard because they are even worse and more stubborn as Christianity.
Consider this: You are an atheist in 99.99999999999% of all religions in the world, yet you put faith in that one god. What solid basis do you have for that, apart from "faith" or "well it is comforting to know it doesn't end when I die" when there is no evidence to support it?
Quote:Coming to your point Adrian about the dna, would you agree that the 'four letters' in dna comprise a coded language?
No, it is what we see as a code, since our minds are presupposed to see patterns. We use the recurring patterns as a code because it makes it easier for us to catalog. just like Zebra stripes the patterns change, it does not mean it is a code.
DNA consists of two long strands of simple units called nucleotides, with backbones made of sugars and phosphate groups joined by ester bonds, that form together and build up the chromosomes in every living creature, animal and plant form alike.
If you want a nice indepth explanation of DNA and its replication, I would refer you to Youtube and look up DonExodus2 ( http://www.youtube.com/user/donexodus2 ) a very good biologist and even a Christian though I will not hold that against him.
Quote:Going back to the String Theory for a brief minute, the guys who are working on this are not basing their 'theory' (in this case not quite the scientific kind) on a tested model, but rather they have other evidence (or clues) that supports the idea of string theory, so their faith in it is not blind or irrational, but a result of other things which lend it credence.
Right, I have looked at the wiki for String theory and it gave me a splitting headache (which is not that strange considering I still have nightmares from getting my head around time dilation which I still don't get).
String theory is a part of a science field called Theoretical Physics. To tell you the truth I hate that field with a passion, though I do freely admit it has its merits. The thing is, to me it is more a part in the science of Math than it is a part of Physics. It is a field where you do have the luxury to postulate "what if" and work with abstract mathematical models with 26 dimensions and are totally and utterly counter intuitive (which is the part I hate about it).
The thing is however, even though it works with hypotheses, these hypotheses derive from various actual physical models and theories, and speculating from there. What they will not do however, is is put faith on what the outcome of these hypotheses will be. Scientists can work on hypotheses for years, only to find that what they have been working on for so long turns out to be false. But that is okay, because from those mistakes you learn that this is not the correct avenue of approach and you do it another way. Faith is kept out of the process as much as possible. And the way to do that is through the scientific method. Peer review, publications, testing from independent sources.
I liked my first version better.
Best regards,
Leo van Miert
Horsepower is how hard you hit the wall --Torque is how far you take the wall with you
Leo van Miert
Horsepower is how hard you hit the wall --Torque is how far you take the wall with you
