RE: reason vs faith vs reality
July 27, 2013 at 8:49 am
(This post was last modified: July 27, 2013 at 9:17 am by wandering soul.)
(July 26, 2013 at 5:50 pm)whateverist Wrote: I just stopped for lunch and read this but I'm having some difficulty processing as it seems so abstract. I think I'll need to think about it some more after I finish my project. Our side gate and front fence need major work and I'm going to try to do it myself. So right now my head is in a very concrete problem solving mode. Bear with me for a while.
totally understand! I also have many other things needing attention so whenever you have a thought or two I'll check back.
(July 26, 2013 at 10:38 pm)Undeceived Wrote:(July 26, 2013 at 2:50 pm)wandering soul Wrote: I see the atheist data set defined as exclusive to the material universe studied through the hard sciences, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and history. (I have a side theory that many of those who prefer the debate over discourse model are from the hard sciences rather than such disciplines as history or anthropology which deal with all the variability that human populations bring to any data set!). There is no need for a god, no data for the existence of a god and in fact the addition of a god throws the whole system off. So by definition this reality set can have no god.
I don't understand. Hard sciences have to do with the world at present. God has to do with the origins/purpose of the universe. How does God's creating the hard sciences "throw the whole system off"?
It doesn't throw anything off in the world / reality structures of Christianity. You are in that reality structure so you would see it that way. But even in Christianity, God didn't create the hard sciences - science was created by the human mind to understand the universe. And the exclusive materialist reality set of data is not confined to the hard sciences but to everything and anything deriving from the material universe - so including history, art, psychology, etc. and ad-infinitum
People create sciences to study something. The methods and data sets used to study the material universe have nothing to do with God. And attempts to prove God through material science is an oxymoron. The purpose of any science is to understand something. The selected methods chosen either do or do not shed light on the thing studied or increase understanding; you continue to devise and use methods that do. The methods to study the data set of God would be totally different from the methods and data set used to study the material universe.
Christians believe that God is immaterial, outside of time and space, "Higher than your thoughts." How could investigation of the material universe even begin to study That?
To reduce your idea of God to: "God has to do with the origins/purpose of the universe." is a failure to actually understand God as such.
I would place the primary role of God as the one who entices the human mind to think beyond it's limited personal interests and see our connectedness to everything and everyone. God, if existing and if involved in the universe, doesn't really care whether we believe or not as long as we can be drawn out of our self-centered, self-investment and find connections with everything.
having passed through many states of believing I was right I have come to the place of finding "rightness" rather irrelevant to the project of becoming human
