(February 14, 2010 at 5:52 am)Purple Rabbit Wrote:First of all, Christian dogma does not equate to religion. God and His observable principles of nature do. Think of it for one moment from a religious stand-point; God created all of life as a gift to us, and created us with the extraordinary capability of scientific understanding, which by the way, does nothing to refute Him.(February 13, 2010 at 10:24 pm)Watson Wrote: Bingo! There isn't any line between science and religion, everything in this entire world is connected.Then please connect for me the laws of gravitation with christian dogma. How can we arrive from christian dogma, which is assertion without evidence, to observables?
Quote:I didn't say that all is a lie without religious faith, I said without faith how do you know that all is not a lie? You don't, if you don't have faith. I alsodid not say I don't like how reality is constituted, because reality is constituted in such a way that I can choose to have faith in it or not. Since it is an extremely unhealthy practice to have no faith, I choose faith.(February 13, 2010 at 10:24 pm)Watson Wrote: There can be no less credible or more credible anything, because without faith/belief you have no idea if what you are seeing/hearing/smelling/tasting/touching/feeling is all a lie or not.Why is it a lie without religious faith? That is a non sequitur. It does not follow that all is a lie from the fact that your religion is a lie. I think you are mixing knowledge with morals. However, the fact that you don't like how reality is constituted has no bearing whatsoever on the way reality IS constitued.
Quote:And there is a perfect example of how our scientific models of reality are getting more and more accurate in terms of predicting, explaining and describing phenomena. An example how the scientific method can validate between more probable and less probable: general relativity more accurately describes celestial mechanics than Newtonian mechanics.This...literally proves nothing about what I said. At all.
Quote:A major difference between religion and science is that religion has no such method. It cannot resolve between truth statements even within one creed of religion, let alone between different religions. This is because truth statements in religion are almost all unfalsifiable. The ones that are falsifiable await refutation by science. They are in the gaps of scientific knowledge.I'd like you to show me somethings sciencehas proven and let me take a crack at connecting them to God.

Quote:Are we even in agreement her that the set of truth statements used to model the world should be a consistent set?
Somewhat. Not everything can be said to be cut from the same bolt of cloth, but it is all part of the same tapestry. So yes, in a way, the model of truth should be set for all.
Quote:...What? Seriosly, what does this even mean? Demonstrate to me how I am 'mixing homonyms.'(February 13, 2010 at 10:24 pm)Watson Wrote: Religious agenda? What do you think I'm trying to do, convert you or something?You are deliberately mixing homonyms of 'faith' to credit unsubstantiated religious claims over naturalistic ones. It's parasitic behaviour on the achievements of science.
Quote:I have, thoroughly. And in so doing I have found that the so-called 'differences' between science and religion actually melt completely away. They exist co-dependent on each other, not at each other's throats.(February 13, 2010 at 10:24 pm)Watson Wrote: I'm very thankful for science, you know. Yes, I wouldn't be able to type right now if it were not for science. It would not be able to do many things without science.Then you should be deeply worried by the fact that religious faith cannot say anything about our reality, that god is totally absent in the current scientific model. If you adhere to truth, even if it is not absolute truth, you should investigate how this difference between science and religion arises.
Science as a whole is fascinating and the study of how things work is interesting and cool. Who doesn't want to know things like that?
Quote:"God created theuniverse" is no more a God did it all statement than saying the Big Bang createdthe universe. The proposition that the construction of the universe was God's doing and that His design for it was set up in such a way as to include many different options for us does not contradict at all with a theory like the Big Bang or the singularity.(February 13, 2010 at 10:24 pm)Watson Wrote: Never did I say that God simply 'did it all.' I stated that God as He is created this world and created us in such a way that we would be capable of learning more about life and how it works. Whether or not you believe in Him is irrellevant to that.You are just restating unfalsifiable truth statements one of which (that god reality) is a god did it all statement. If we are indeed agents free from divine intervention than we should be able to choose our nature. Science teaches us that such is not the case. That your behaviour is determined by natural laws in a chain of cause and effect. When your brains fail your identity changes. Investigate these things and you will find that the statements of science are incompatible with that of religion.
I reallydo not believe that, that I'm incapable of doing things if my brain doesn't want me to, or that you are too. I have options, I have dominion over my mind. My decisions are my own, so that if I fuck up, only I can take responsibility.
Quote:It really is very simple. God does not interfere when a kid dies of kid cancer. Science tries to interfere. God is not relevant, scientific knowledge is.Why would God interfere? That goes against His nature entirely, the reason for the kid's cancer is that the cells in his body mutated into cancer cells and now the doctors will try to fix him. Do you want to know where God comes in?
God built a path called life and He gave it many different paths. He gave it to us as a gift because He loves us, and let us pick the paths we want to walk. The kid with cancer has many different options, one being; "be angry and sullen and depressed all the time about the cancer," OR, "be happy that he lived a good life so far and hope for the best, including good doctors."
Both options have an incredible affect on the kid, believe me.
Quote:So clever.(February 13, 2010 at 10:24 pm)Watson Wrote: You're right that religion does not acheive knowledge,...Nothing more than this is needed as a starting point.
Quote:See above.(February 13, 2010 at 10:24 pm)Watson Wrote: ...humans acheive knowledge and have the capacity for understanding that knowledge. It's not a question of knowing, it's a question of understanding all that is around us, and how it is linked.Please enlighten me how you can link god and kid cancer on religious faith alone.
Quote:No it's not. Pick out any Bible verse you'd like, I'll show you what it means from the eyes of God and the eyes of love. Give me full context and passage, too, since that helps/matters.(February 13, 2010 at 10:24 pm)Watson Wrote: And, really, you think love is an abject moral?Of course not, just that it is cherry picking the statements in the bible.
Hm.
Quote:No, take this as combined with te below:(February 13, 2010 at 10:24 pm)Watson Wrote: Look! God just poofed into my room and moved a subatomic particle! It was amazing, this gold beam of light just showed upand said "I'm God" an dthen it showed me the subatomic world and how it could move an atom.Do you think by this you have shown it to me? Don't be a silly boy.
Quote:(February 13, 2010 at 10:24 pm)Watson Wrote: Or how abou this?Yeah, using telescopes on sub atomic particles generally is a bad idea.
Look! A subatomic particle just moved! It was amazing, I looked into a telescope* and saw all these little subatomic particles, and one of them just moved all by itself!
*Forgive me for my lack of knowledge in science if you can't actually do this. The point still stands.
Not the point. It still stands depending on whatever scientific method we have for observing subatomic particles. You see that claiming to see on ethrough science and claiming to see one through God is no more or less credible than the other. Unless you have faith in the answer being given, you don't know that it isn't all a lie.
Hell, how do you know that the world doesn't disappear everytime you close your eyes?