Science and Faith

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badmartialarts
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Post by badmartialarts » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:58 pm

Kalium wrote:Good thing nobody takes that bible thing literally then, hm? Especially the bits where it says one thing but means the opposite, or when it disagrees with other bits. Oh, wait a tick...
Lydia's a pretty good counterexample too, if I'm remembering right. But I don'tread the Bible literally. Otherwise I'd be actually eating Jesus Christ's flesh and drinking his blood at Communion, and that would just creep me out. By realizing that one section isn't literal, it opens the whole rest of the Bible to interpretation. I wish more of the hardline Protestants would realize that. (I don't include Catholics because they actually go for transubstantiation. Eww.)
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Arigatomina
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Post by Arigatomina » Sat Feb 17, 2007 11:19 pm

Shazzy wrote:Women are raped, abused, and oppressed all the time by non-religious men.
True, but excluding psycho/sociopaths who lack normal human emotions, those non-religious men know what they're doing is morally wrong. If they were religious men (christian bible-reading men) they would know that it's a man's duty to rule over his wife, his daughter, and any woman in his community who lacks a father or husband to keep her in line. As long as he owns her through marriage or fatherhood, he can do whatever he likes to her. He's expected to beat her regularly if that's what's necessary to keep her well behaved, and to rape her if she refuses to perform her duty as his wife. He's to do the same thing to his daughters to prepare them for marriage (not the rape, just the beating, since technically incest went out after the new testament was written).

If you look at the specific rules written by the stricter literalist churches, you'll see that they don't just condone treating women like cattle, they believe it's their moral duty in the service of god as men created in his image. When these men rape, abuse, and oppress women, they're not doing anything morally wrong. They're just being good christians.

That's the difference and it's a big one.
Believing in a God is not a direct correlation to female oppression.
That's true. But mimicking the "acceptable behavior" in the bible is in direct correlation to female oppression. It's especially bad in churches that base their morals entirely on the old testament. Times have changed in the US, but we still have church leaders telling their congregation that the literal interpretation of the bible is the only guide on which they should base every single action they take.

It's not faith in God that's to blame, he has nothing to do with how men interpret a single book written in his name and edited by so many people over the years that no one knows what it originally contained.

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requiett
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Post by requiett » Sun Feb 18, 2007 12:37 am

The only way to take the Bible literally is if you could read Hebrew and Greek.

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badmartialarts
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Post by badmartialarts » Sun Feb 18, 2007 1:13 am

Arigatomina wrote:It's especially bad in churches that base their morals entirely on the old testament. Times have changed in the US, but we still have church leaders telling their congregation that the literal interpretation of the bible is the only guide on which they should base every single action they take.
Not just Old Testament. Most of these so-called Christians also like to quote Paul's lines about women being subservient to men as men are subservient to God and the more famous "let your women be silent in church" verse. Without also reading the lines from Paul about how since a man and woman become 'as of one flesh' before God, that anything bad you do to your wife is as if you do it to yourself. Or that it is the man's duty to his wife to treat her well just as God treats man well, lest he be treated just as badly as he treated his wife. And the sections where he commends the female deacons of several churches. :/

Or even better, let me quote the founder of my faith, Martin Luther. "Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave." :)
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Kalium
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Post by Kalium » Sun Feb 18, 2007 12:42 pm

requiett wrote:The only way to take the Bible literally is if you could read Hebrew and Greek.
Aramaic, too. Regardless, it doesn't stop a lot of (idiotic) people from trying.

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Post by CHAMELEON_D_H » Sun Feb 18, 2007 1:09 pm

requiett wrote:The only way to take the Bible literally is if you could read Hebrew and Greek.
I can. Still doesn't make sense.
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Post by Fall_Child42 » Sun Feb 18, 2007 6:55 pm

First of all, let me say THANK YOU. This is what I like to see and read.

Second, I'm sorry for the lateness of my reply as i have only just found out and read this.

Third, If we are talking about Science V. Faith here I'm going to throw in my two cents, and possibly flip a switch and send the topic into a slightly new direction. The majority of opinions so far seem to say Religion, Faith, and Science are mutually exclusive. If one were to look at the root word of Religion "relegate" many things we accept as scientific fact, and process fall into the faith and religion category. For example, have a look at math. Math is based on series of axioms that have no particular way of proving that they exist.

Modern Economics, however, is the best possible example of faith science and religion mashed into one. Economics, considered a science in a general scholarly fields, is STILL based on John Smith's "invisible hand of the marketplace". (however I'm sure if Smith were to have a look at modern economics he would find many of the same problems he was complaining about in the first place) and Economists, seem to have put SO much faith in human inginuity that they firmly believe we can have a system of infinite consumption and constant growth.

I have, felt for quite a while now capitalism is the most pervasive religion of the modern age, because wether you believe in God or Jesus or Bhudda, etc. or Nothing at all, People from all over are bound by the faith in the all mighty marketplace.
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Post by Otohiko » Sun Feb 18, 2007 7:06 pm

Fall_Child42 wrote: I have, felt for quite a while now capitalism is the most pervasive religion of the modern age, because wether you believe in God or Jesus or Bhudda, etc. or Nothing at all, People from all over are bound by the faith in the all mighty marketplace.
I'm not :P

/socialist (seriously)
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Fall_Child42
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Post by Fall_Child42 » Sun Feb 18, 2007 7:26 pm

Otohiko wrote:
Fall_Child42 wrote: I have, felt for quite a while now capitalism is the most pervasive religion of the modern age, because wether you believe in God or Jesus or Bhudda, etc. or Nothing at all, People from all over are bound by the faith in the all mighty marketplace.
I'm not :P

/socialist (seriously)
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Post by Arigatomina » Sun Feb 18, 2007 8:54 pm

Fall_Child42 wrote: The majority of opinions so far seem to say Religion, Faith, and Science are mutually exclusive.
I think science should be kept separate from religion. Faith should go with any subject you actually believe to be real or true. I tend to call any faith that relies entirely on appologetics a religion. They pick a belief and then accept only things that support that belief. Science does this in it's early stages, but that hypothesis is subject to change if facts are found to disprove it. A religion simply disregards any facts that don't support the the original belief, putting it beyond debate and into the realm of "blind faith".

You can fly a religious man into space and show him that there is no ocean in the sky above our planet like the one described in literalist creationism. But he can dismiss that by saying the ocean is invisible, or only visible to believers of the literal interpretation of Genesis. Thus ends any attempt to argue, prove, or dissuade.

Science relies on faith, too. I believe my computer exists because I have faith that the things anyone in the world can see with their own eyes and touch are real things that actually exist and will continue to exist no matter what a religion might say to the contrary. I have faith in the existence of physical fossils that can be seen just by walking into the right museum, and I'll continue to have absolute faith no matter how many creationists deny the existence of those fossils - because I can see them with my own eyes and so can anyone else who cares to look. If someone were to prove that the fossil record was fabricated (like they originally claimed dinosaur fossils were hoaxes because dinosaurs weren't mentioned in the bible), I'll maintain my disbelief until the hoax is proven to me. Then I'll modify the "facts as I know them" and continue having faith in science.

It all boils down to proof. Theories rely on proof and if a hypothesis is disproven, it adjusts to fit the new facts as we know them. Religion doesn't adjust, it just branches out so everyone can believe whatever they want to believe and accept only the facts supporting that belief.

/economics

Just a quick comment on that. I see economics as cause and effect. Patterns visible to the casual observer. To me, it's no different from making a Naruto vid and predicting that some people will like it and some people will hate it. Depending on all the factors surrounding the video, you can narrow the prediction down until you're almost certain to know exactly what will happen before it happens. Economics are just as predictable. Both rely on the assumption that people don't make radical changes often, so the past patterns will continue to hold true. I don't think of that as having anything to do with religion. Faith, definitely, but not "blind faith". Those who have blind faith in "constant growth" are just bad historians who forget that the market has dropped and under the right circumstances it will drop again. I'd like to think the good economists know better.

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