I;m starting to notice this as well. Not saying it's bad (I'm a tolerant Catholic ^^), but it's really becoming more and more noticable the longer this thread stays alive.
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God vs Science
- Thread starter Fuzznip
- Start date
I am actually a "Southern Baptist", and I believe evolution is totally plausible. The majority of my family would think me a total heathan if I ever told them this. :/ The idea that Earth and the cosmos are a mere thousands of years old is totally bogus. Personally, when the Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth in "seven days", I don't interpret the unit of "day" as our own twenty-four hours. God's "day" is certainly not twenty-four hours. To say that because Earth's rotation around the sun takes that amount of time is also a little silly, because God apparently created Mars, whose year is certainly longer.
I still have faith, and I don't find atheists or gays or Muslims detestable, or even wrong for that matter. Evolution is proven. Those that deny it seem blinded by the interpretation of the Bible, as even the Book failed to specify God's methods of "creating" the life on Earth.
Hell, my grandfather thinks even carbon dating is falsified and "satanic"..
I still have faith, and I don't find atheists or gays or Muslims detestable, or even wrong for that matter. Evolution is proven. Those that deny it seem blinded by the interpretation of the Bible, as even the Book failed to specify God's methods of "creating" the life on Earth.
Hell, my grandfather thinks even carbon dating is falsified and "satanic"..
heh, i live in georgia. all my friends happen to be southern baptists. i remember in class once a teacher was showing us a video on the big bang theory, and the next day there was a huge sign on the board: "BIG BANG NEVER HAPPENED! IF YOU BELIEVE IN GOD YOU KNOW THE TRUTH!". the way i view things is that there is a "god" as you would call it up there-imo someone had to create everything that existed. i don't believe a word of the bible though, and am an evolutionist.
if my friends ever found out i didn't believe what they did, i'd have no more friends. i remember distinctly the last time i talked to someone about religion. "well, if the earth is 10,000 years old, how did carbon dating show materials dating back millions upon millions of years into the past?" "god put them there to test our faith, to see if we really believed in him"
so yea, i have a very, very biased view of religion vs science.
if my friends ever found out i didn't believe what they did, i'd have no more friends. i remember distinctly the last time i talked to someone about religion. "well, if the earth is 10,000 years old, how did carbon dating show materials dating back millions upon millions of years into the past?" "god put them there to test our faith, to see if we really believed in him"
so yea, i have a very, very biased view of religion vs science.
These sorts of things make god look like an ass.
Caliph overtook Jerusalem waay before the Crusades even started. Then ANOTHER Muslim group overtook and started treating Christians really bad. Also, its ok that you are doing a research paper that doesn't mean YOUR sources are right and mine are wrong.
Also tell me. If Christians were so good and perfect, why did they sack Constantinople? You cannot justify the crusades, as they pretty much killed off millions, had no real purpose other than pride of their religion, and solved nothing in the end. Just because "Jerusalem was taken by the Muslims," doesn't mean Christians have to come in and liberate the shit out of it.
Well to be fair, the sacking of Constantinople was really just Christians attacking other Christians.
This is absolutely wrong.
All moral systems must be
1: easily condensed into simple axioms "do not steal, do not kill, do not rape, etc, etc, do treat people kindly, do help others to the best of one's ability, etc. ".
2: Must be 100% consistent - as in it is not morally permissible to violate even one of said axioms.
3: Timeless - the system and its principles must be as valid in 2009 BC as it is in 2009 AD.
With that said, desperation or other circumstances can mitigate the wrongness of the violation of said axiom (starvation causing one to steal would be an obvious example), but it wouldn't make it a moral act (and would likely be grounds of delivering compensation once you are not starving)
Any moral system that can easily "adapt to circumstances" isn't really one at all.
this is a bit tricky, though. for example, even though i agree with 'dont kill', which (again, hypothetically) was established four thousand years ago, i think it's unfair to extend it to the current abortion issue.
i agree that for the most part the basics should be consistent throughout the ages but they should be flexible enough to adapt to a volatile society. we certainly weren't perfect four thousand years ago, and we aren't perfect now, so why shouldn't our moral code change over time to reflect our 'progression'?
"Manifest Destiny is a term that was used to designate the belief that the United States was divinely ordained to expand across the North American continent."
Under these grounds Christians believed that they were not only destined to populate the entire continent, but also that they were morally obligated to do so.
Bold is just complete denial. Underlined is my mistake.
It doesn't matter whether or not the bible says these things are permissible. It's the fact that Christians can use the bible as medium to justify and even promote their immoral activities that makes Christianity responsible for these actions.
In other words, if a Christian makes a mistake in the name of the Christian god, the same god that christianity exists to worship, then the existence of christianity is responsible for any actions made in the name of its god, immoral actions included.
The rest I'll just say this:
You admitted that the last four crusades were started by Christians. Crusades, by definition, are 'holy wars'. It doesn't matter that the pope didn't start the last four crusades; it's the fact that these wars were started by any christian in the name of their religion that makes christianity responsible, no matter which christian starts it.
it's cool that you think all this, but you haven't given us any reason to agree with you. why should a moral code expressed in simple axioms be superior to one expressed in complex ones? just because you say so?
Competitive pokemon requires intelligence, logic, reasoning, etc. It seems like many people on these boards are fairly intelligent (lot of people do get high marks in that school thread) and have many of those traits.
Stuff like logic and reasoning tends to point one toward science, and less towards faith. Science is based on evidence, logic, reasoning, etc. while faith is just...blind.
My hypothesis.
Yes, but it must be said that this is a pragmatic concern. It better be that way because that's what people will understand. If everyone was able to quickly evaluate the long term consequences of an action, you would not need to axiomatize actions, you would only need to classify long term consequences as either good or bad, and define good and evil accordingly. In that situation, killing would only be immoral if it has bad long term consequences (which it typically would).
What about self-defense? War? Death penalty? These are all exceptions to "do not kill" (note: I would only agree to the first and to the second to the extent that it coincides with the first). How do you specify these exceptions and how do you make sure you aren't missing any of the exceptions that might be needed?
That doesn't make much sense. Society can change a lot in a hundred years, let alone millennia. A moral rule such as "don't eat pork" because it is unsanitary stops being pertinent when eating pork stops being unsanitary. If, in the future, humans became part machine and that it was possible to "back up" brains like any other data, "killing" would not be nearly as bad as it is now, thus shifting the moral boundaries. If, in the future, every good could be infinitely reproduced at a whim like digital goods, it would not make much sense for anyone to steal anything and theft would probably cease being immoral. Morality is relative to people (because it benefits them) and thus it has to adapt to changes in people (changes in what benefits them).
It has to adapt to circumstances. If what benefited people a thousand years ago is not qualitatively similar to what benefits people now, it is obvious that morality needs to adapt, or it stops doing what it's supposed to do.
Yes it does matter whether or not the Bible condones it. You can't blame Christianity for the bad things that Christians do. The Bible says you shouldn't kill and if we followed it the Spanish Inquistion wouldn't of happened and we wouldn't kill religious minorities.
No it's not. It's called accepting responsibility for your actions. The Bible isn't an inherent evil, it's just one out of a million mythologies that exist, but that does NOT excuse the people abusing it for their own ends. The second thing is that following the Bible does not make you an inherently good person always.
If not for Christianity, there would be no Christians.
Besides, after the Bible says "Thou shalt not kill" It has a heap of stories about people killing each other like David and Goliath.
As mentioned in this story, the only thing religion has to back up its beliefs is faith. It has given absolutely no proof about God's potential existence, and arguing about it is pointless, because it's impossible to prove something no one has ever seen, heard, touched, tasted or smelled. One might argue that it's impossible to prove that God does not exist, and I have two answers to that. One, it is impossible to prove the nonexistence of a being alimented by faith, by belief, because no scientific element is in play, therefore it is impossible to argue about this rationally. Two, plenty of contradictions were provided against the idea of a godly presence. How would you explain different gods? Polytheism? Contradictions all over the Bible (I could spend a long, long time on the Bible)? In the end, all the story tells is that God is a symbol for the ideology of good. But then what is good? The 9/11 events were done for religion, for what was thought is good. Adolf Hitler did not have bad intentions when trying to 'purify' the planet, he wanted the well-being of the 'ultimate race', and merely considered the other humans as animals, maybe worse. It was his (arguably fucked up) point of view, just like Christians have their (arguably fucked up) point of view about some old guy who lives in the sky and who no one has ever seen.
Point is, science vs. religion arguments are pointless and a definite answer will most likely never be found, as those two are complete opposites, the first demanding concrete, observable evidence, and the second about desires and beliefs.
Point is, science vs. religion arguments are pointless and a definite answer will most likely never be found, as those two are complete opposites, the first demanding concrete, observable evidence, and the second about desires and beliefs.
That makes a lot of sense. I agree
and to claes...Thanks for pointing that out. It's been too long since I heard something like that.
On the Crusades:
I am pretty sure that just about every nation and religion, if powerful enough to do so, has done some pretty terrible things. Christianity has, Islam has. Israel is illegally settling its citizens in the west Bank. I don't really get the point of constantly dredging up the past, everybody was not so nice at some point.
I am pretty sure that just about every nation and religion, if powerful enough to do so, has done some pretty terrible things. Christianity has, Islam has. Israel is illegally settling its citizens in the west Bank. I don't really get the point of constantly dredging up the past, everybody was not so nice at some point.
Because one cannot develop a coherent moral theory if you start including various exceptions, or loopholes, etc, or the principles you adhere to are prone to be different for different situations. Like "don't kill people who aren't threatening you" suddenly becomes "don't kill people who aren't threatening you, except when...". That's the kind of thing that automatically dooms a moral system.
I really doubt such a system could be logically consistent, or actually present itself as a moral system. I suppose it's been done before with, say, the Indian Caste system, but even that was never that explicit about who would belong to each group (for all we know, the castes could simply describe people who got to their positions on relative merit without any state/religious coercion involved, but developed otherwise because of the leaders exerting their power to the detriment of others).
I meant "do not kill other than in self-defense". My mistake; I usually assume "do not kill" defaults to that. In any case, self-defense is always moral assuming the threat is legitimate, offensive war is absolutely illegitimate (though it gets sticky when we get into intervening in order to defend others), and the death penalty is not moral because it is retributive, not self-defensive.
That's not a moral rule though; that's a societal preference. Morality generally regulates relationships between humans.
This would only eliminate half the issue with killing - while it would not permanently destroy someone (and this assumes that all brains are backed up), it would still be an act of aggression and thus immoral, similar to how punching someone without cause is immoral even though it generally doesn't kill anyone.
The greatest concession I can give to pragmatism is that morality benefits humans because human nature (whatever you believe human nature is derived from) is generally fixed and unchanging, and thus morality must be generally fixed and unchanging. Also, I find that "moral laws" that condone slavery and oppression are actually violations of fundamental morality, instead of moral systems proper.
Correct, but I would prefer to say that the concept of theft would cease to exist, as theft by definition must deprive someone else of a good. If one cannot deprive someone of a good, then one cannot steal from them.