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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Sun, 5 Sep 1999 00:18:51 GMT
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Viewed:
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1559 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> Sproaticus wrote:
> > (This wording took me a day to figure out. If I'm going to have Larry • spend
> > his time countering what I say, I'd better say something good. ;-)
> Flattery will get you anything, big fella. :-)
Hold that thought...
> The fact that nobel Laureate Crick is a good scientist with knowledge of
> biology and chemistry means that I am web-of-trusted to him when he
> speaks of DNA and its characteristics, but NOT when he speaks of the
> existence of god as being personally revealed to him to his satisfaction
> but not in a way that is independently verifiable. (that's an example, I
> am unaware of his opinion on the matter, as I am of most people's
> opinions unless they bring it up)
I'm probably getting in over my head here, as I am not as well-read on this
subject as I probably should be, but are the Founding Fathers within your web
of trust? Several of them are reputed to be very religious men. Even if you
consult their writings for purely political reasons, weren't a lot of their
decisions affected by their faith? Do you discount the Christian
(teachings and philosophy, not rumblings of a fanatical horde) aspects of
their advice?
(Now donning abestos suit... :-)
> Religion is
> irrelevant to the here and now, except and to the extent that it
> influences the behaviours of its adherents, it makes no useful
> predictions in and of itself.
Until all the atheists are proven wrong, of course. ;-) This is, arguably,
the third most frustrating thing about discussing religion; that the proof
doesn't come until it's too late to argue about it.
But seriously, religion is very important to the here and now, precisely
because it affects behaviors. Would you, by dramatic example, send a peace
negotiator to the Middle East who has no understanding of Islam and Judaism?
Later in your message you bring up how members of my church are instructed to
keep at least 72 hours' worth of food, water, and living supplies. There
always comes a time when these are needed; for layoffs, for moving, for
economic depression, for fundamentalist voodoo terrorist attack, whatever.
Sure, it's along the lines of the answers you'd get from the Delphi, but it's
a very practical prediction.
> Creationism has been pretty thorougly discredited as a valid and
> verifiable scientific explanation for the origin of species. So it only
> has validity as a thing to take on faith. And thus it's not a valid
> subject for a science class. The number of people that take a thing on
> faith is not relevant to its actual truth or falsehood. It properly
> belongs in an epistemology or comparative religion class.
Or also in, say, a humanities or world literature or possibly even ethics
class, which your typical high school would sadly also neglect to carry. Just
adds to the enormous bias of our education system...
(Re: Creationism -- what I can't figure out is why there are so many people
dead-set on the creationism end. I personally can't see how God could have
come up with so many different forms of life without using evolution or
something very much like it.)
> PS - two points on Mormonism. I find it a fascinating sect. Never has
> there been such a wide disparity between the writings of a sect (The
> book of Mormon is pretty nutty) and the sect itself.
I'm curious: please describe "nutty". (Not offended; I think parts of the
Bible, especially Revelations, gets fairly goofy.)
> Which leads me to my second point. Were someone to force me to be
> christian (a ludicrous thought experiment, but ...) but gave me a choice
> of sect, I'd either choose Mormon (for the hard working aspects) or
> Methodist (who seem to be the most tolerant).
What was that you just said about flattery? :-,
Cheers,
- jsproat
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