LOL at the guy breaking into scientific discussion about the inexistence of dark and cold
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God vs Science
- Thread starter Fuzznip
- Start date
Faith in the scientific method does not require that one put aside one's belief in the potentiality that knowledge can come from other areas.
I don't really care to argue that people are justified in believing in faith - I want to argue that the two are not mutually exclusive, and the reasons and goals for believing in the two are different. Science can't tell you anything about whether or not the life you live has meaning other than that which you make up for it. Furthermore, it's not as if the leap to faith is made in a vacuum devoid of logic - people reason from the unexplainables in the world that don't make sense to them, especially the big ones regarding existence, that there must be something higher.
@Brain: I think we agree then on the fundamental natures of morality and truth.
you don't believe a book exists because you know it exists, you believe it exists because there is evidence for it: you can see it and feel it, so you decide the best explanation to explain the observed phenomena is that there is actually a book there. A religious person, from what I hear, believes in the religion because he or she can find evidence for it in his or her life, or rather finds unexplained phenomena in the form of human existence, and has decided that the best model, between the one that we are meaningless blobs of life and that we are part of something transcendent, is the latter. From the second point it diverges. Of course, existence is something that is harder to think empirically about than a book, and clearly not all the evidence is there that humanity is linked to divine creatures. That is why there are competing models.
By the way, I apologize for confusing you with Ascalon. I felt something was wrong when I attributed that somewhat arbitrary value-system to you, and I should have gone with my gut instinct.
By the way, I looked at the first post, and the point of the [badly-written] story given in the first point seemed to be that even science required a leap of faith: faith that one's senses were trustworthy. It was not the best presentation though, and the author's intent falls through.
The scientific method requires no faith.
Why can't it? Why are you excluding science from morality per fiat? Why does something that you can't explain necessarily mean you need to assume it has some higher power (how the fuck do you even define that) and why is it so implausible that there is a simple, logical reason for it that you just don't know of yet?
The scientific method requires faith in your senses in order to produce something considered true. I mean, it operates fine even if you don't believe the world exists outside of your perception.
Well, is faith necessarily illogical? The religious folks I talk to find a rational basis for their faith. Likewise, it doesn't necessarily imply a higher power. You can go staunch materialist if you want; I'd consider that equally valid as any other explanation if it is the model of existence that makes the most sense to you.
I'm only saying that the two are not incompatible, and the reasoning behind religious people is that science cannot explain morality.
Anyone who thinks that the best explanation for a phenomena is god is probably wrong. People believe in religion because it is comforting and they want it to be true. Also the nonexistence of a god does not imply that life is meaningless.
I agree with the last statement completely Latios. If anything, the existance of God would make life meaningless since dying would be so much better. Why live when you can be in Heaven?
EDIT:
I still think that 80 or so years lived on Earth is pretty meaningless when compared to an eternity in paradise. I was not, however, saying that religious people claim this, because this is my claim.
Also, still no response from DK on morality :(
Few religions claim that the life on earth is meaningless. If religion really was about rendering non-afterlife life meaningless, how would it attract so many adherents who place so much emphasis in the living of their present lives? Furthermore, Heaven is only a concept in a few religions.
Likewise, a religious person doesn't conclude by necessity that the best explanation is god, only that something transcendent is the best source of significance.
Likewise, a religious person doesn't conclude by necessity that the best explanation is god, only that something transcendent is the best source of significance.
You still don't get the point. Of course it is ridiculous that people would choose the a religion without already having morals with which to judge it. Most people don't. And that is exactly my point... when a person uses their own moral judgement to choose an external code of conduct, the external code isn't responsible for their beliefs. Those beliefs are obviously in place before the person chooses said code, otherwise it would be just trusting the source a priori. Let me make the punch line very clear here: if someone chooses the Bible based on their current morals, then the Bible is not responsible for their morality. If this is the case - and this is completely independent of whether or not the Bible is true - then their morality is not divine in origin unless God's perfect morals are naturally in everybody from the get-go (which would shatter the argument that being religious is somehow necessary for morality). You and DK and religious people the world over are making these claims (that all good people get their morality from the Bible, that your morality is divine, that atheists therefore only have morals they stole from Christians) and I am showing you that they are inconsistent with what most religious people, including you, will admit.
Deck Knight said atheists choose their morals, yes. And then he said that it was a fault of atheism and not of Christianity. Don't pretend he was trying to support what you are saying - he is the one who thinks choosing your own morals is ridiculous. You know the claim that Christian morals are divine and that this is because they come from the Bible and the Bible is divine truth. Don't pretend this isn't the common Christian argument (if you don't subscribe to it, let me know, but understand it is what I'm refuting here). You can't have it both ways. Either you decide your morals, or you put all of your trust in the Bible to decide for you. If you decide the Bible is right based on its content, the value judgement of the Bible's morals rests within you, a fallible human. The only way you can claim to be following divine judgment is if you believe the book to be so true that you would do what it says no matter what it says. In this case you aren't using your own value judgments, so your morals truly come from the book. If you say you wouldn't follow the Bible if it condoned pedophillia, then you cannot continue to claim that it is the origin of your moral code. I know it is hard to understand, but whether or not the Bible is true is irrelevant to my argument, if you admit that you have used your own value judgments to analyze the Bible.
Because I have been repeatedly misinterpreted, I'm going to do one final summary. Some people claim that all morality comes from the Bible. This claim is inconsistent with the admissions of religious people who say that they wouldn't follow the Bible if it said certain things. This inconsistency arises because if someone judges the Bible before trusting it, then they must have already had a moral understanding against which to judge it. This isn't a claim that the Bible isn't true, it is only a claim that morality does not come from the Bible.
Do not respond that you can decide the Bible is true based on your own morals and still believe the Bible is divine. Of course you can. The point is that even in that case the origin of your morals is not the Bible.
At first glance upon the title of this thread, I only wondered how much controversy would result. As I am too unmotivated to type, my stand- God exists, the purpose of life lies within him, we have no pipe-dream hope of going to heaven, and yes the student really had no viable ground to sustain an arguement, as it was entirely non-pertinent.
Faith in my senses? That is nonsense. My senses are faulty too and they are as much tied to the scientific method as anything else. Senses are not infallible.
"I believe the bible says it so it must be true" is not rational. "This world is so pretty so God must have done it" is not rational. In any way, shape or form. I have yet to see a SINGLE rational argument for the existence of God. Not for the existence of religion which is explained by Brain better than I can.
Why do you need to explain the existence of morality? It just doesn't make any fucking sense. Morality can easily be explained by science for one (see Brain) and for a second what the fuck?
How can anyone truly follow religion, while rules that are clearly established with straightforward punishments are broken daily? Just a thought. Although, I'm not an athiest.
I asked my Christian friend about this, and he said that even he did not consider the Bible his source of morality, because the Bible had not existed in its current state for all of human history. Because humans had been created and been with the Christian god from the beginning, they would have an innate idea of morality. Thus, his belief would be that his morality results from something separate from the Bible, I guess. The Bible for him exists as a means to clarify and codify, and also as a source of inspiration and hope.
So now I see where we have been on the wrong foot. I've never argued for the divine authority of the Bible as the sole source of Christian morality. In fact, I've always argued around this point: that one can maintain one's intellectual integrity and still have faith, because faith takes over where the limits of reason leave off. Most probably, different individuals regard the Bible differently. Nonetheless, just this one example proves that faith and reason can coexist.
There is an extent to everyone's knowledge. The question is what you do when you reach it (whether you admit that you don't know or whether you claim to believe something arbitrary instead).
So? There is only fact in so far as an experiment can be repeated. It's called the scientific method. In fact, there isn't anything such as a 100% fact - there is just such a thing as such a high probability of it being true that dismissing it as anything less than fact is a gross neglect of the circumstances. If my eyes see something else than other people, it either means I am hallucinating or that person is seeing something else (or maybe our eyes work differently and react differently to light scattering etc etc). Senses are somewhat reliable, not completely. Senses can be fooled.
Why? It's not close to the optimal solution of anything at all. It makes waaaaaay less sense than atheism or humanism or a ton of other things. Religion is not common-sensical at all.
Yes, it is, from an evolutionary standpoint, because weaker organisms with a compelling morality that many adhere to stand a bigger chance of survival in social groups. The only reason to adhere to anything consciously (I am assuming humans make conscious decisions as opposed to bacteria) is because it promotes your survival. Those are the traits that survive. Morality serves no other purpose. There is no more absolute good and evil than you can prove that two and two equals six in a decimal system.