Christianity compatible with atheism

[Ace Otana]

I will say that my grandmother is beginning to suffer from dementia. She calls me about twice a week and cries her eyes out because "She's afraid she won't see me in heaven.". Do I try to talk her out of believing in heaven? Hell fucking NO! Besides what people think of atheists, I am an atheist with compassion. I tell her I love Jesus now. My grandfather asked me to do so for her sake, and so I do. I just remind her when she calls that I have faith again, and it really does calm her down.

I probably would of gone with something like "there shouldn't be anything to fear, I haven't rejected god, just the claim and I've done no wrong". Don't think I could bring myself to lie about being a theist.

She must be really sure (or completely certain) that her beliefs are right. To cry over and all that. I certainly couldn't handle a religious relative who's obsessed with religion and fears that I'll go to a place that don't exist. Thankfully very few of my relatives are religious.

To the OP.
I don't think there is anything about religion I look to. It tried to pressure me into it, it looked down on me when I kept questioning it and it has caused much evil in the world.

He said that atheism serves a vital function because it seeks to liberate people from superstition and destroy the oppression of religion

Error there, atheism is just lack of belief in god's existence. What they're talking about is secular-humanism. Funny how they keep confusing the two.

[Anomalocaris]

He said that atheism serves a vital function because it seeks to liberate people from superstition and destroy the oppression of religion

Error there, atheism is just lack of belief in god's existence. What they're talking about is secular-humanism. Funny how they keep confusing the two.

Superstition can menifest itself in many ways that is orthagonal to theism. Atheism only counters theism, and has no impact on other aspects of superstition.

Most religions, on the other hand, is founded on theism. So atheism does liberate people form the vital, theistic aspects of most religion. But even theistic religions also has non theistic aspects. This atheism does not directly address either.

[Bystander]

I was banned from two Catholic forums when I tried to find some common ground between my agnostic views and theirs. Why did I try? I spend half my life in the Philippines, a deeply Catholic country and am married to a Filipina, who was also a Catholic, but has now seen the error of her ways! I care about the people there who are very badly served by their Church.
My proposition to them was that if we can respect their total opposition to abortion, will they also respect that others don't share their viewpoint and then see how we can work together to try to reduce the need for them in the first place. I got nothing but abuse in return.
They have no ability to even see another viewpoint, let alone understand or respect it. They are right. They know the "Truth" (note the capital T). Everyone else is wrong. These people are literally unbelieveable and the sooner they fade away into the oblivion that evolution has them destined for, the better.

[frankiej]

They will often take offence if you try to question them at all... Banning will almost always happen if you challenge them.

[Minimalist]

They have no ability to even see another viewpoint,

Be happy they didn't burn you at the stake. They would if they could.

Welcome, btw.

[coffeeveritas]

I don't know if some people have become "better" because they embraced faith. I can see how a sudden belief in a deity would correlate with better behavior, but not necessarily truly becoming a better person. I think that MLK would would have done what he did regardless of his faith, or lack thereof. Being an atheist doesn't make you an immoral jackass. I'm probably a better person now that I lack faith.

Oh, I totally agree that being an atheist doesn't make you immoral. I know some really great atheists. I would also agree that there are people who are better for leaving their faith. When I walked away from my old church I think I was a much better person for making the change, even if I had never gone back to the faith. I also feel that my faith since then is what really helped me get my life back together, and really become a better person. It is a really odd situation since the church is what screwed me up in the first place, but what really helped me get my life turned around was . . . another church. It really is odd.

---

Valuing science and think Jesus saved the world is in itself a very severe sign of deep intellectual dissonance and/or complacent ignorance. The inescapable and unredeemable vice of any religion, and the ultimate source of all evil they prepetrate, is promotion of intellectual dissonance and complacent ignorance. The virtue of science is it provides a frame work for systematically attack on the effects of intellectual dissonance and complacent ignorance. Therefore a man who thinks he values science and loves Jesus does not understand the nature of science, and whether he is conscious of it or not, lauds superficial fruits of science while denying the bases that allows it to work and progress.

A man can no more both understand science and value science, and also honestly think jesus saved the world, any more than a man could not genuinely understand and value diligence while honestly preach salvation through indolence. So long as Christianity think Christ is anyone special, it has no real redeeming value. Since Christianity is unlikely to exist otherwise, I would say there is no way to make Christianity acceptable.

Well, I certainly understand being disenfranchised with religion, I'm pretty much there myself, but isn't it a tad harsh to say that an individual person can't believe in Jesus and appreciate science at the same time? I'm a Christian and I ran a research lab and did published scientific research (published in regular scientific journals, not Christian ones). I believe that the data is the data; regardless of what results you expected or hoped for what is important is what you're actually seeing. (This seems pretty basic, but there are people who would pool their variance just to be able to publish something.)

Science is the objective study of the universe we find ourselves in. It's just data, Science doesn't make any value judgments. Science has nothing to say on whether or not there is a deity that was behind what we see. Saying whether or not there's a God is philosophy. Science has data, which people then interpret as saying, "there's an order to this creation!" or "the universe resulted from natural causes completely apart from and fictional 'god'!" I've been a Christian and a scientist at the same time, and I really didn't feel any conflict. The universe is how it is, and I don't expect to be able to prove God exists with an objective measurement. Science is a tool, and it can't be used for everything. I really believe that meta-narrative is dead. You can certainly move the the debate about the existence of God into the personal or philosophical sphere, but science really just has nothing to say either way.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Well, I certainly understand being disenfranchised with religion, I'm pretty much there myself, but isn't it a tad harsh to say that an individual person can't believe in Jesus and appreciate science at the same time?

Yes,a fatuous thing to say. However, in my experience, it's highly unlikely such a person will allow science,evidence or reason to challenge those beliefs. If he did he would cease holding them.

Science doesn't make any value judgments.

Ideally,no it does not,but scientists do all the time,what with being human beings.. Ideally science draws inferences from facts,such as evolution,heliocentricity, gravity.

As important,science declines to draw inferences from lack of facts. .EG the veracity of any religious text.

Holders of faith-based dogma get their panties all out of focus all when science contradicts dogma. Their invariable response is to claim the science is wrong..

[coffeeveritas]

Well, I certainly understand being disenfranchised with religion, I'm pretty much there myself, but isn't it a tad harsh to say that an individual person can't believe in Jesus and appreciate science at the same time?

Yes,a fatuous thing to say. However, in my experience, it's highly unlikely such a person will allow science,evidence or reason to challenge those beliefs. If he did he would cease holding them.

I really don't see science as challenging anything about my beliefs. There was a trend in Christianity that dates back a very long ways that believed that nature was the "second book" that revealed God. It makes sense if you believe that God created the universe that it would be consistent with faith. There are people like Nancey Murphy who use things like quantum mechanics to try to understand the nature of life in Christian philosophy. (She's a philosopher/ psychologist /theologian who writes all kinds of articles about subjects ranging from the quantum Zeno effect to the function of neurons.)

Science doesn't make any value judgments.

Ideally,no it does not,but scientists do all the time,what with being human beings.. Ideally science draws inferences from facts,such as evolution,heliocentricity, gravity.

As important,science declines to draw inferences from lack of facts. .EG the veracity of any religious text.

Holders of faith-based dogma get their panties all out of focus all when science contradicts dogma. Their invariable response is to claim the science is wrong..

Well if scientists draw value judgements, being human, that doesn't make them scientific value judgements, it makes them the personal interpretation of the scientist. So the value judgements of the scientist has no more scientific validity than that of anyone else.

And if science declines to draw inferences from lack of facts, i.e. the veracity of any religious text, then its lack of facts mean that science has no bearing on the veracity of the text. Sure you can't prove the text using science, but that doesn't mean you disbelieve it either. It just means you have no scientific reason to believe it, (because it's not a scientific matter) and thus the debate becomes a philosophical one.

Once again I feel you generalize too much when you say, "holders of faith based dogma get their panties all out of focus all when science contradicts dogma." Members of the religious right? They likely would. Most of the Christians in my crowd? Not even a little bit. Like I said, I have a science background, whatever the data shows it shows. I'm not really worried about it since like I said earlier, science has nothing to say either way about the existence of God. Value judgements from a scientist or from a theologian have no scientific veracity.

[The Grand Nudger]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

[Anomalocaris]

Well, I certainly understand being disenfranchised with religion, I'm pretty much there myself, but isn't it a tad harsh to say that an individual person can't believe in Jesus and appreciate science at the same time?

Not at all. A person can appreciate science at many levels just like a person can appreciate, say, an airplane, at many different levels. A person may not believe in the atomic theory of matter, yet appreciate the the beauty and performance of an airplane. A technician and engineer may even understand the high level empirical rules governing flight, say, center of life and center of mass, and possess the ability to refine and improve an air plane without mastering or even believing the atomic theory of air and how it effects fluid dynamic, and of aluminum and how it effects the behavior of the plane parts, and the stochiometry of engines. But such an technician or engineer, while capable of producing useful work, does not appreciate the whole of airplane, from the most fundamental level of why the plane works.

So to a person who believe in Jesus does not believe in the basis of why science works. He is cognitively dissonant in appreciating science while worshipping a view that, when stripped of is fluff, says science has no fundamental reason to work.

I'm a Christian and I ran a research lab and did published scientific research (published in regular scientific journals, not Christian ones).

I did not mince words.

I believe that the data is the data; regardless of what results you expected or hoped for what is important is what you're actually seeing. (This seems pretty basic, but there are people who would pool their variance just to be able to publish something.)

Science is the objective study of the universe we find ourselves in. It's just data, Science doesn't make any value judgments. Science has nothing to say on whether or not there is a deity that was behind what we see. Saying whether or not there's a God is philosophy. Science has data, which people then interpret as saying, "there's an order to this creation!" or "the universe resulted from natural causes completely apart from and fictional 'god'!" I've been a Christian and a scientist at the same time, and I really didn't feel any conflict. The universe is how it is, and I don't expect to be able to prove God exists with an objective measurement. Science is a tool, and it can't be used for everything. I really believe that meta-narrative is dead. You can certainly move the the debate about the existence of God into the personal or philosophical sphere, but science really just has nothing to say either way.

Of course science is about data, everything is about data. Fantasy is about data - data on what can be and has been dreamt up, and data on how does that intersect with what would amuse people. Lies are about data - data on what is true, and data on what one desires others to believe, and data on how others might be influenced to believe it. Religion is about data - data on what one is, for whatever reason, convinced to be true, and data on what one thinks would elevate oneself, in whatever way, by prevailing on others to believe in these things. Nothing is not about data, so both christianity, like lies and fantasy, is also strictly about data. Not high quality data, not having any good way to make quality use of the data, and not even necessarily real data about what it is talking about, but christianity is also all about data.

What sets science apart from fantasy, from lies, from christianity, is not whether one concerns data and the other concerns itself with presumable something else useful and yet involve no data, but how it evaluates data and what it does with the data. Science develop systematic ways to improve the quality of the data, and systematic ways to improve how data is used to discover things. Everything is data, science handles data in a way that is an improvement over the barbarous wish thinking and make belief of the paleolithic. In the order of decreasing concern for such improvements, fantasy, lies, and religion, do not. Science can be used for everything that uses data. That is to say religion can't ever devise anything that is in principle not susceptible to judgement by science.