(January 19, 2009 at 4:29 pm)lilphil1989 Wrote: Now if I may ask a question, why do you belive your mythology and not that of, for example, the Vikings? After all, there is as much evidence for Thor as there is for your Sophia.
Why are you not a jew, not a muslim, not a jehovah's witness, not a follower of Zeus?
When you realise why you reject other religions, you'll begin to understand why we reject yours.
But I don't reject other religions. I am with the Dali Lama on this one in my opinion that all religions are a route to the same thing. I just prefer my way. Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am right-I will find out soon enough.
(January 19, 2009 at 4:50 pm)Eilonnwy Wrote:(January 19, 2009 at 3:59 pm)dagda Wrote: Blake once said 'If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetical Character, the Philosophic and Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things and stand still, unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again.' I am inclined to agree. Falling outwith the realm of science does not make anything more or less valid.
So atheists don't have imagination can't appreciate art? Do you even know what the scientific method entails? I love art, I love fiction, I love music (Whether such things are in reverence to a god or not) I however can differentiate from what is real and what is imagined. I can discuss all day what might be a nice theory of how the world works but I realize that doesn't make it true. The only way we have ever been able to find out what is true is through science and reason. The reason you can communicate with us, with people all around the world, is science. The reason you have alarm clock to wake you up in the morning, a tv to entertain you, a microwave to cook food. All this shit happens because of the scientific method. No prophet or poet made this stuff happen. No prophet or poet can figure out how to go to moon. That's all science baby, and it pushes the limits of our imagination every day. We never knew how truly vast this universe, how beautiful it was until science got out there and discovered it.
I think you are wrong in this one. Before the romantic movement mountians were things to be avoided. The poet changed this perception so that people concidered them beutiful. And so reality was changed. The mountians transform into majestic areas through our changed perception so, reality is altered by our perception. The mountians have not changed but, to all intents and purposes, they may as well have.
Yes science has given us great things, but that does not demean the other art forms in any way. Without poetry and painting, how are we to appriciate the beuty of the discoveries science has made? Are the Northern Lights to remain gases reacting in the atmosphere? Science and art spring from the same source, one is useless without the other.
