Science and Faith

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Postby Kalium » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:18 pm

Shazzy wrote:Fair enough. Many religious people feel the same way about atheists, though. They're not trying to nuke the Gentiles, but they think an atheistic viewpoint is less than true.

Acutally, most religious types seem to think atheists are evil incarnate.

Which is kinda funny, really, but they wouldn't get it.
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Postby requiett » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:24 pm

Alright, this topic is a little too Nietzsche for me. Clearly "God is dead" just automatically has to be applied where reason is concerned around here. It's ironically the most unreasonable assumption I've ever dealt with.
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Postby badmartialarts » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:26 pm

Albert Einstein wrote:I do not think that it is necessarily the case that science and religion are natural opposites. In fact, I think that there is a very close connection between the two. Further, I think that science without religion is lame and, conversely, that religion without science is blind. Both are important and should work hand-in-hand.


Guess I had to throw my hat back in before breakfast. I'll answer quotes with quotes if I can think of them.

Requiett wrote:So if faith offers a little haven for the miserable masses to continue with their daily lives, why not let them have it?


Surely you aren't advocating Nietzsche's own arguement AGAINST religion as an arguement FOR religion? "Religion is the opiate of the masses" is exactly why so much trouble happens with these Rwars. And I think we are arguing dangerously in another direction. The topic for this is "Science and Religion" and we are also arguing science vs. faith in God or some higher power. Faith and religion go hand in hand but there are many faithful people who lack a clear religion (it's also argueable that there are many religious people with a distinct lack of faith).

Depending on your semantics moral relativism is just as much a religion as Catholocism, with it's diehard advocates as well as it's fringe elements, spin-off cults, and general no real opinion population who show up for the heck of it.

Kalium wrote:Read your Bible recently? It's not exactly nice to the fairer sex, to say the least.


It's also not particularly tolerant of unbelievers, yet I haven't picked up any stones. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure I've sinned a bit in my day, so I don't get to cast them. Yet there are female role models in the Torah/Bible/maybe even the Qu'ran(haven't read it to know, but I know they hold the tenets of the Bible and the Torah). Esther? Ruth? Deborah? Racheal? Lydia? Sarah? Dinah? I could go on but I'd actually go have to get my Bible.

I'm gonna double-post...
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Postby Otohiko » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:28 pm

requiett wrote:Alright, this topic is a little too Nietzsche for me. Clearly "God is dead" just automatically has to be applied where reason is concerned around here. It's ironically the most unreasonable assumption I've ever dealt with.


Lovely. You haven't really read Nietzsche, have you?

Why the hell do people never give the full quote?

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:God is dead, for it is we [i.e. the humanity] who killed him


Don't mess with me on Nietzsche, dude.
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Postby Shazzy » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:31 pm

Kalium wrote:Yes, actually, I do. I know that it's possible for them to improve their means, because it's been done. There is no reason to and every reason not to try to make them content with their measly lot.


Religion is not about opiate for the masses. Religion is about opiate for everyone who existed and exists and will exist. No matter how fortunate someone is, they are partially unhappy/without purpose/confused/lost/lacking meaning. (If you want to argue that you are an exception to this, fine, we'll exclude you.) God makes up the difference in that gaping hole in "reality." I can't speak for requiett, but I'd argue religion isn't about making someone content with their measly lot. It's about having an eternal perspective on your entire life regardless of status. If you say, "this is my life, I've got to make it count," it's easy to also say, "screw as many people as I want, I've only got a hundred years to live and no one to hold me accountable for it if I don't get caught." Eternal accountability is the best antithesis of selfishness and cruelty.
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Postby badmartialarts » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:33 pm

Alright, now after saying all that.

I dislike prosleytization. Which is funny because I'm a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and I know my contributions to the church have gone in part to missionaries. That's not to say I don't believe in evangelism, or spreading the word of God about to whoever will hear. But I don't think you can or should be allowed to force a personal choice like faith and religion onto anyone else, and especially not the masses. Strangely enough, much like the Founding Fathers did, who were all devout memebers of various religious groups yet who were able to get together and make a more or less decent nation. Faith and science to me are two sides of a coin. I look at the world, and I see the complexity of the equations that only approximate how it's governed, and all I can do is be awed. Then I flip the coin over, and I pray to God, giving thanks to Him that I have a mind to apprciate His work.

You know, this is the most spiritual I've been in a while. I haven't been in church in a while...but as the Bible says, "Whenever two or moree people are gathered in My name, there is my church." Thanks for the sermon, everyone. I'll drop a donation in...uhm...a few months when it comes due again. :)
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Postby badmartialarts » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:34 pm

triple post

It WAS Science and Faith. dur dur dur. :)
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Postby requiett » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:34 pm

I was using the masses example as a cynical reaction, because it seemed as though religion were something as beneath them as a common laborer.
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Postby Kalium » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:35 pm

badmartialarts wrote:
Kalium wrote:Read your Bible recently? It's not exactly nice to the fairer sex, to say the least.


It's also not particularly tolerant of unbelievers, yet I haven't picked up any stones. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure I've sinned a bit in my day, so I don't get to cast them. Yet there are female role models in the Torah/Bible/maybe even the Qu'ran(haven't read it to know, but I know they hold the tenets of the Bible and the Torah). Esther? Ruth? Deborah? Racheal? Lydia? Sarah? Dinah? I could go on but I'd actually go have to get my Bible.

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...

Most of the females have subordinate roles, and I'm fairly sure that Esther isn't in the Torah. She came later. Most of them matter either in what they did to get married or what they did for their husbands. Deborah is probably the only really good exception to that.
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Postby Kalium » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:39 pm

Shazzy wrote:If you say, "this is my life, I've got to make it count," it's easy to also say, "screw as many people as I want, I've only got a hundred years to live and no one to hold me accountable for it if I don't get caught." Eternal accountability is the best antithesis of selfishness and cruelty.

A secular justice system does pretty well, you know. Life in jail packs a much larger punch without the whole afterlife thing when you die.
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Postby Otohiko » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:42 pm

On Nietzsche's, and my own, stance from an authority on Nietzsche's work that I respect:

When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the beyond" - in nothingness - then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct - henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the "meaning" of life… Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one's self about the common welfare, and try to serve it? Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the "straight path." – “One thing only is necessary"… That every man, because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf - it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. […]The "salvation of the soul" - in plain English: "the world revolves around me." … […] To allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble humanity ever perpetrated.

Hardly the words of a nihilist - but the words of someone suffering from growing bitterness and aggressiveness for seing false idols taking over and killing anything in the world and human life that make it a worthwhile place for Nietzsche to live in - and stand up for it. A nihilist does not defend the world and does not try to imporve it - he rejects it. Nietzsche defended, and his "superman" (Übermensch) is the man that has left the traditional religious conceptions that he and me are criticising behind. He simply is beyond such coneptions of man and life and meanings. Not more and not less Nietzsche's superman is meaning.

The term nevertheless was open for multiple distortions, perversions and abuses.


I think I'll stop there for now...
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Postby requiett » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:42 pm

Kalium wrote:
Shazzy wrote:If you say, "this is my life, I've got to make it count," it's easy to also say, "screw as many people as I want, I've only got a hundred years to live and no one to hold me accountable for it if I don't get caught." Eternal accountability is the best antithesis of selfishness and cruelty.

A secular justice system does pretty well, you know. Life in jail packs a much larger punch without the whole afterlife thing when you die.

Enron aside, how many of the vast majority of corrupt businessmen and dictators have spent their lives in jail?
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Postby Kalium » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:46 pm

requiett wrote:Enron aside, how many of the vast majority of corrupt businessmen and dictators have spent their lives in jail?

A lot of them don't live that long.
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Postby requiett » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:50 pm

Otohiko wrote:On Nietzsche's, and my own, stance from an authority on Nietzsche's work that I respect:

When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the beyond" - in nothingness - then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct - henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the "meaning" of life… Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one's self about the common welfare, and try to serve it? Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the "straight path." – “One thing only is necessary"… That every man, because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf - it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. […]The "salvation of the soul" - in plain English: "the world revolves around me." … […] To allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble humanity ever perpetrated.

Hardly the words of a nihilist - but the words of someone suffering from growing bitterness and aggressiveness for seing false idols taking over and killing anything in the world and human life that make it a worthwhile place for Nietzsche to live in - and stand up for it. A nihilist does not defend the world and does not try to imporve it - he rejects it. Nietzsche defended, and his "superman" (Übermensch) is the man that has left the traditional religious conceptions that he and me are criticising behind. He simply is beyond such coneptions of man and life and meanings. Not more and not less Nietzsche's superman is meaning.

The term nevertheless was open for multiple distortions, perversions and abuses.


I think I'll stop there for now...

I have great respect for Nietzsche. I just think his works have been as perverted as the Bible itself in the name of intolerance.
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Postby Otohiko » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:54 pm

This is true and has been my point all along (about Nietzsche). Good you've noted!
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