Science and religion

[Darkstar]

Do you know who Richard Smalley is? He is a noble prize winner who discovered Buckey Balls. He rejected evolutionary theory.

Do you think you are a better scientist than he is? What about Raymond Vaham Damadian, the inventor of the MIR machine who nearly won a nobel prize.

Am I supposed to care? What makes a chemist an authority on evolutionary biology. Talk about someone who only know their own field. This is an incredibly flimsy argument from authority, and I would be embarrassed if I had made it myself.
Level of support for evolution

You have confidence in a popular level understanding of science. You may be right about evolutionary theory, but many people in the science world have been completely convinced about issues in the past. The fact that you accept evolutionary theory, which is a mainstream theory that has dominance in the biology world and many application in pharmaceuticals, some call it a cornerstone of modern biology, does not make you an authority on the natural world.

It is true that evolutionary theory is a very significant paradigm by which people understand biology. There have been other paradigms in the past, such as Newtonian physics that have since been replaced.

There is nothing foolish about suggesting that mans present state of understanding is likely not the final understanding. History has proved that to be the case.

I know that. That is why science is constantly evolving and refining itself; something religion rarely attempts.

As for abiogenesis, it is absolutely related to evolutionary theory. Evolution stands of falls based on a certain number of conditions that are created through the origin of life and other factors. Evolution cannot explain these things, whether it is true or not, it has no ability to deal with the issues that support it.

As a theory that cannot explain fully the nature of life or how it originates, it should be treated as such, not as a catch all theory that replaces God, because evolution cannot do any such thing.

Did you not read the part where I said that evolution only relates to what happens once life exists, and that the explanation of how life originated is something entirely different?

Evolution is certainly a controversial issue that has many dissenters.

Just because scientifically ignorant people don't understand it, doesn't mean it isn't true.

It is a mainstream scientific paradigm, but it is not universally accepted. It is not necessarily a sign of a lack of knowledge of science to question evolutionary theory, as some of the brightest scientists have.

Yeah...it is. Lack of understanding of biology, at least, though not necessarily science in general. Or perhaps even just a lack of understanding of evolution (or a refusal to accept it even when it is understood because the person is a creationist).

How many nobel prizes do you have?

Ditto.

And that is the problem with your "objective" morality. You presuppose that he exists and is legitimately the ultimate moral authority, despite the fact that there is evidence to the contrary.

There is not a shred of legitimate evidence anywhere against God's existence. What do you have? Post it. Why do you make naked assertions?

It is a naked assertion that you presuppose that god exists and is the ultimate moral authority? You mean to say you aren't saying either of these things?

Of course, if you blindly accept that he is, then slavery must be okay, and stoning people who work on Sunday is too. Those laws may not apply now, but god said them before, and why would an omnipotent, omniscient god change his mind?

This displays an extremely superficial knowledge of the two covenants in scripture. God does change his mind, why else would God give two covenants.

Then he must have made some sort of mistake with the first one, and hence he is imperfect.

The nature of the Israelite theocracy is very different from the nature of the modern world. What makes it wrong to stone people to death for working on Sunday? Can you make an argument?

There is no reason to take away someone's life for working on Sunday. Working on Sunday does not inherently cause harm to anyone, nor violate their rights, so inflicting punishment (especially harsh punishment) for this would be immoral.

That is not self evidently wrong to me,

it is different from modern culture, which seperates political life from religious. Also, what is wrong about slavery, absolutely, that makes slavery wrong even in circumstances where people that would be enslaved would either die of starvation (in a famine) or would be slaughtered (in a war). What makes slavery evil?

So if you threaten to kill someone, but simply enslave them instead, it's okay? If you find someone starving on the street and you take them home and enslave them, but feed them to keep them alive, it's okay? Slaves have basically no rights (although Israelite slaves had some limited rights), so wouldn't such a thing be immoral, especially if the slave had done nothing wrong?

I should add that Christians today are ending slavery against the world and Christians have been some of the main participants involved in created the modern free secular societies which you benefit from. Christianity is a flexible and adaptable application of spiritual principles that happens through history.

This is good, although they aren't that flexible, but maybe someday...

The one constant is that the central teaching of the Christian faith is to love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10:17). This is what all ordinances in the Bible center themselves around, whether ordinances to care for the poor and widow and orphans, ordinances to sanctify, ordinances that regulate slavery in a limited context and even ordinances that establish religious norms and punish deviance with death. They all come out of a desire to have a society that is ruled by God's love.

Jesus, yes. God, not so much. Jesus was "turn the other check" and "love thy neighbor" and god was more of a genocidal type. Of course, if you call it loving to massacre those heathen pagans, to make way for the "real" children of god, then...