Subject:
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Re: God and the Devil and forgiveness (was Re: POV-RAY orange color)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 1 Sep 1999 17:47:47 GMT
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Reply-To:
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JSPROAT@spamcakeIO.COM
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Viewed:
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1780 times
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Christopher Weeks wrote:
> Sproaticus wrote:
> > Yah, well, we're basically having the same discussion as the whole Big Bang
> > thing.
> > Feh. This science is all the rage at Berkeley and Cambridge. But change
> > the vocabulary, and all of a sudden we're discussing religion.
> I can see how it might appear this way to a religious person not very
> well acquainted with science, but I disagree. That Q and those As are
> not science. Science is a process for seeking truth. Just like reading
> scripture and seeking His guidance. It's just that science has more
> quantifiable payoffs.
Quantifiable, depending upon your motives. If you're searching for the
chemical reasons behind nitrogen bonding, scripture won't help you a whole
bunch.
> If I don't know something, and I posit a hypothesis, and systematically
> attempt to disprove it, and can't, then I have contributed a little bit
> of support for that hypothesis. But when I then share my findings with
> a bunch of others who are interested in the questions I was exploring,
> and they try to disprove that hypothesis under both similar and
> different situations, and they all can't do it either, we consider it
> fairly strong support for that hypothesis. We have learned something
> that we can use to predict future systematic behavior.
Yes, but you still have to take quite a lot on faith. Barring *personal*
experimentation, how do you know that:
...chromosomes carry the stuff that tells your body how to build itself?
...Bernoulli's theorem of lift actually works?
...arsenic is toxic?
...American buffalo and Afican buffalo are not genetically related?
...chlorophyl is what makes green plants green?
...the sky is blue due to the blocking of red light by nitrogen and water
vapor?
...Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus are planets and not some other
celestial bodies?
...some diseases are caused by virii, some diseases are caused by bacteria,
and some diseases are caused by heavy metals?
...silicon averages four electrons in its outer electron shell?
...barometric pressure drops as your altitude increases?
...there are four fundamental physical forces?
...red blood cells carry oxygen?
...sugar is an organic compund?
...excess gamma rays will slowly rip your flesh apart?
...the 3 laws of thermodynamics are "you can't win", "you can't break even",
and "you can't even quit the game"?
...too much vitamin C is okay but too much iron will kill you?
We accept various scientific models which work well with these phenomena.
Few people, if any, have personally scientifically concluded all answers.
Ergo, few people, if any, are true scientists. We go on belief of what
other people tell us. Ergo, faith. It's all religion, with different
vocabulary.
The greatest gift science has given us is proof of the effectiveness of the
written record. Everything else, effectively, is hearsay.
> > But back to God. There will always be fundamental questions to which no one
> > can give an answer.
> Which questions are those?
Um, well, you know, (confer confer), things like: Why do we think? Why
does life exist? Why do some people hurt others, while some people help
others? Metaphysics stuff.
Science is okay for explaining "how", but really crappy at they "why" part.
> > What's wrong with answering, then, "Because God did
> > this" or "Because God allowed this"?
> As I see it, accepting a question as unanswerable causes you to not try
> to answer it.
Erm, so you stop in your quest when you get an answer? What happened to
trying to disprove it?
> We should try to answer everything. Accumulation
> of knowledge is all that differentiates us from the other animals and to
> reject that is to embrace being other (some would say less) than human.
This argument holds no water. By this definition of human, we're all living
(and blood-related to) large communities of organisms, some of whom are
human and some of whom are animal. My autistic brother looks like me, eats
like me, and speaks like me, and I can personally vouch that he's human.
Yet, while I'm a knowledge-retaining problem-solver (engineer) by training
and profession, he's no great accumulator of knowledge. So, by that
definition, he is an animal and I am a human. What a heap of absolute
Victorian bullshit.
Erm, exceuse me here, (step step) I'm off *that* soapbox now. :-,
> We will answer what was there before the BB, just like we answered "why
> do bird wings allow flight?"
That's assuming there was a BB for something to happen before. (1)
BTW, the bird flight answer is by no means flawless. We've been alternating
between the air-is-a-gas and the air-is-a-fluid models for centuries now.
Perhaps later, we'll come up with an even better model which explains bird
flight.
> > It really depends upon your motives, doesn't it? I'm not trying to explain
> > the nature of the universe or why we exist. All I want to know is what
> > awaits me, and what consequence my actions have. To this end, I ponder and
> > conclude seeing the truth in God. Everything else kinda falls into place.
> But rationalism (using science) answers those questions too. You (and
> many people) just don't like the answers.
Rationalism provides nice answers, true, as does skepticism, cynicism (yours
truly) and sarcasm. I like some of the answers science gives me. I like
some of the answers religion gives me. I like some of the answers cynicism
gives me. Is it tidy? Hell no! Is it important to be tidy? Not from what
science has shown us...
> Bad!
:-D I just had a momentary vision of Dana Carvey doing his Prez Bush
thing... "That's bhad. BHAD! Wouldn't be prudent. Cobra
stike...Haahhhh!"
Cheers,
- jsproat
1. What I want to know is what comes after the GG. :-P
--
Jeremy H. Sproat <jsproat@io.com> ~~~ http://www.io.com/~jsproat/
He stands...like some sort of...PAGAN GOD or DEPOSED TYRANT. Staring out
over the city he's sworn to...to stare out over... And it's evident...just
by looking at him...that he's got some PRETTY HEAVY THINGS ON HIS MIND.
- Ben Edlund, 1996
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