Faith and science

[Jedidiah]

There are other uses.

It may have lots of uses, but the question I have is to it's meaningfulness. You just can't make such a definition of man or god in any meaningful way. You can use it once you make it, but you are in your own little world, not the real one.

[Hail Mary]

(Subtle cognitive shift there, have you ever seen "Tank Girl"?)

I thought it was going to be cool, but I caught a few minutes of it one day and it looked pretty boring. Its kind of a cult hit, but I guess I didn't get it in the short time I watched it.

I take it as a given that a sufficiently advanced intelligence could fool me into believing anything it wanted me to believe. And there's not thing one I could do about it, so why bother trying? Better to suck up and see if the SAI or god or whatever you want to call it is willing to drop some fresh veggies in my stew. If it wants to poison me, I'm toast anyway.

Being human, I've argued before, means accepting both human abilities and inabilities. Direct communication between natural and extranatural realms is a perquisite of gods. The inability to do so is part of what makes us human. While a god could probably mimic all of my abilities, mimicing my inabilities doesn't seem possible. On the other hand, I can't even mimic a god's abilities, and I have no reason to believe any human can.

Well, I don't believe that we can tell God what is or what isn't possible. I'm trying not to be argumentative, but if I state this in terms of my beliefs, then God can do anything. God can become a man, he can mimic inabilities, or even assume inabilities. Who am I to tell God what he can't do?

As a Taoist, I see what's beyond the horizon as naturally indescribable and accept those limitations. As a christian, you see what's beyond the horizon as taking on a describable personality. That's a pretty profound difference. My Tao involves pushing the horizon back, not jumping over it completely.

I don't really see the difference. As a Christian, I see God's creation as part seen and part unseen. I accept the unseen as indescribable.

[lao tzu]

Hi, Ripper,

I thought it was going to be cool, but I caught a few minutes of it one day and it looked pretty boring. Its kind of a cult hit, but I guess I didn't get it in the short time I watched it.

The Rippers followed something of a peace through strength motif, eschewing weapons for innate abilities, ironically genetically designed into them. Anyway ...

Well, I don't believe that we can tell God what is or what isn't possible. I'm trying not to be argumentative, but if I state this in terms of my beliefs, then God can do anything. God can become a man, he can mimic inabilities, or even assume inabilities. Who am I to tell God what he can't do?

There are certain inabilities inherent in being human, and I'd argue the inability to rationalize beyond a contradiction is probably one of them. God can't uncreate himself and remain a creator god discernible by human rational processes, for instance.

(And you thought I was going to bring in created stones too big for a creator to lift, didn't you? Ha!)

Who are you to tell a god what he can't do? Well, why not? If you want an answer from someone who knows more than you do, it certainly seems justified to me that you ask it be placed in terms you can understand. An answer that doesn't make sense isn't an answer, independent of its truth.

"Why are you telling us things we can't understand?" asked a fourth grader of the taoist one day. She didn't disbelieve me. She was just pointing out that I was speaking over her head. It wasn't her fault I'd decided to do a couple months of substitute teaching in the Chicago public schools and it wasn't my fault I hadn't dealt with any fourth graders in years.

I don't really see the difference. As a Christian, I see God's creation as part seen and part unseen. I accept the unseen as indescribable.

*breaks to create new OP*

Thank you, Ripper. To me, this is intimately related to what aspects of god are describable. And with that, let's break off to address the theme in a separate thread.

The Attributes of Humans and Gods

[Sparko]

Moderated By: Sparko

I moved this thread to General Theistics because a few nontheists were involved in this thread (fool, zarathrustra) and "comparative religions" is for theists only.

Those that are nontheist, please be careful in the future and check the stickies in each forum before posting in a thread. Usually you would be moderated and your posts removed from posting in a theist only area, but since I caught this late and you guys were already so involved, I just moved it.

***If you wish to take issue with this notice DO NOT do so in this thread.***
Contact the forum moderator or an administrator in Private Message or email instead. If you feel you must publically complain or whine, please take it to the Psychotherapy Room unless told otherwise.

[gtoktruth]

Greetings, TWeb,

What do you do when faced with physical evidence that contradicts your spiritual faith? Is it ever okay to believe something in your heart that can be proven untrue in your head?

What's the minimum intellectual requirement to be called a christian? Can a congenital idiot be saved?

Most of the world today accepts that humans arose from another species and still they find a way to love their kids, but half of American christianity thinks evolution somehow makes us less than human. What's up with that?

I PMed these questions to a few TWebbers and received a reply from Jedidiah in anticipation of this discussion.



I actually feel, in spiritual matters, that faith can trump reality on occasion. In the purely physical realm, we are confined to observable truths, but it's possible to take these observations and, through faith, create an alternate spiritual reality. There are such things, in spiritual matters, as self-fulfilling prophecies. Of course, I wouldn't recommend using that principle on a malfunctioning electrical outlet.

Perhaps in no other feature does faith show a universal applicability that surpasses science than in the relative requirements of intellect. From the Jainists who walk barefoot to avoid inadvertently killing an insect to christians such as Jedidiah above who find a common humanity in those afflicted with mental deficiencies from birth, faith allows us to discern a spirit that reaches beyond mundane measures.

I would ask my fellow TWebbers, and especially TWebbers in the community of faith, how they treat the divide between faith and physics, between spirituality and chemistry, between love and calculation.

As ever, Jesse

I hope to revive this thread, although I started another elsewhere (natural science) with a hope to get some defintions clearer.

But, here, we are a step closer to some practical issues, what scripture calls "the substance of things hoped for."

The last question, which I will address first (!), asks how we treat the divide between faith and physics. Briefly, I use physics evidence to confirm spiritual predictions. Spiritually, I am advised to fear a God who, after destroying the body, might throw my soul into a hell, which has certain properties. Then physics (broad sense) tells me that black holes exist, and that I probably have a 21 gram soul, made, I suppose, of something like dark matter, also shown to (probably) exist. In other words, physics tells me that I might well worry about having a soul with weight that could fall into a black hole, unpleasently. Then it would experience pretty much what the spiritual model predicts. This increases my faith that some god with knowledge of all this was advising humans long before we were at a place to learn about it on our own.

But what about scientific discoveries that contradict spiritual postulates? Well, overall, I am madder than H*** about the impotence of spiritual thinking as presently understood. Something ain't right! This is not the way it is supposed to be! If there is spiritual "truth" that is true, the world ought to be a saner place! So, I am ready to revise my "faith" in my present spiritual understanding, and am glad when science presents data that challenges my current understanding. When geology presented data that there was a lot going on over 6000 years ago, I had to reconsider my faith that the bible, which had been confirmed true for contacting God, was also true as an historical record. And, thank science, I found that God Himself, and the bible itself, discount the bible as a good source of truth. I eventually got it, that calling the bible the "word of God" was a really, really bad idea!

"OMG, so THAT'S what we're doing wrong!" I said. And it was! As soon as I repented, I started "Shaping History By Prayer and Fasting" much more effectively! Faith comes by hearing, not reading!

So, how about it, Jesse. Is this the sort of answer you were looking for?

[aegis]

I think this discussion touches on several areas and wonder which area one should focus the discussion on:


1. Faith and reasoning:
Is faith reasonable? What happen if your faith seems to contradict something that you think is "real" or "true"?
Can we know everything by human reason alone? Are there limitations to human reason? What about the role of revelation?

2. Faith and science
What is the relationship between faith and science? When we think of science, do we mean the tools of observation of this physical universe? Or do we presuppose a metaphysical naturalism? ( i.e. there is no supernatural realm, there is no God, and science exclude the supernatural side of things. ) Also do we accept scientism or not? ( that only science and science alone can lead us to knowledge)

3. So when you say that if faith 'contradicts' something you know from science, do you mean that at our current understanding of science and our current understanding of faith, there are some contradiction that we do not fully understand?
Do you mean that a person can be raised from the dead? Is that a contradiction in 'science"? What if that actually happened? Do we change our scientific theory or do we consider that as a realm of supernaturalism that is outside the scope of science?


All in all, I do not see a contradiction, but a harmony and that only a theistic world-view can explain all the evidences and the discrepanies that we see in life.


best regards

Aegis

[Nemo]

Faith and Science,

Faith and Science "2 ends of the same stick arguing who is the top and who is the bottom"
Faith is the thing Science cannot discern...yet
Science is the thing it can

[Nemo]

Faith and Science,

Faith and Science "2 ends of the same stick arguing who is the top and who is the bottom"
Faith is the thing Science cannot discern...yet
Science is discernment of a previous faith