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If religious people agree to keep their faith out of our schools and our politics, we won't send scientists into their houses of worship to apply deductive reasoning to their faith.
Sound reasonable?
Yeah I didn't think so.
I know a very devout scientist who says that God is in the details. He will recite laws of physics and biology in context so they make sense to explain why there is a god. His god forgives you if you don't believe in Him, He's big enough to handle it and understands. I love listening to this man speak. He loves the consistencies in what he sees. There is too much order in his mind for anything to have been created randomly.
ReplyDeleteUm, Yea, Right.....Whatever! Anyway, happy easter to you too!
DeleteYou're right, it doesn't sound reasonable. For one thing, a reasonable person would not lump all people of faith together as a group that is trying to force their ideas on others. For another, many theists are clearly aware that they base their beliefs on SOME empirical evidence, but eventually they make Kierkegaard's "Leap of Faith".
ReplyDeleteI presume that you have used the scientific model to prove to yourself that there is no possibility of a higher power. Why don't you share your research with us? I'll bet that agnostics would especially appreciate your being able to clear any doubt from their minds regarding the existence of God.
The burden of proof is not on the person saying God does not exist. Just like the burden of proof is not on the person saying Bigfoot, the Tooth Fairy, or the Loch Ness Monster don't exist.
DeleteSo you're saying that you CANNOT prove something you unequivocally assert to be fact? The burden of proof argument is rubbish. If you're claiming something is fact you should be able to prove it. If you can't prove it, then you're simply "believing" it to be true, and arrogantly looking down your nose at the beliefs of others. If I'm wrong, please clear it up for me.
DeleteWonderful graphic, Gryphen. Thank you for posting it.
ReplyDeleteGreat Graphic. Here is a very thoughtful piece.
ReplyDeletehttp://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/07/robert-fulford-easter-is-an-important-time-even-for-non-believers/
So scientists by definition are atheists? Wow.
ReplyDeleteNo. Just the vast majority of them.
DeleteReally? I honestly don't know. Are there facts behind that assertion? Please post links.
DeleteSo believing that everything we have today came from a big bang isn't magical thinking either? Nobody really knows how the world was created; whatever theory you cling to requires a leap of faith. It doesn't bother me that you cling to your magical thinking. Why does it bother you so much, Gryphen, that I cling to mine?
ReplyDeletePeople who use their Christianity to disenfranchise others, further their own perversions, or promote hate are not Christians. People who use their faith to terrorize others or to push a political agenda are not Christians. Being a true Christian means helping others, showing compassion, and being a good person even when no one else is watching. Those are all good qualities and what make us human. No they aren't exclusive to Christians. And yes many of us are scientists. Many of us do not take the Bible literally; we merely try to follow Jesus's example of how to treat others. Hence we call ourselves "Christian." It isn't correct to paint everyone in a group with the same brush.
Excellent post.
DeleteWhile The Big Bang is a theory, it was developed surrounding other logical theories about what's known about the universe and it's behaviour through research.
DeleteAnd how do you even know which is right? There are many religions in this world and the one that is so big now is one that came from a source not originating with the people, but with those people they declare an enemy. There are religions older than Christianity...
I have a bunch of scientists sitting in church with me every week, some of the smartest people I have ever known. They are also some of the best human beings I have ever known, and they walk Christ's talk to the best of their humanly-flawed abilities.
ReplyDeleteThey would feel sorry that you feel so much angst over this. They would totally agree with you about keeping religion out of public education and government, however.
Like I have said before, judging a religion based on loud mouthed television idiots and a few prominent politicians is just not accurate. It's not the whole picture. There are many progressive churches in this nation, churches that completely understand the principle of Separation of Church and State, Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion (or belief, so Atheism is in there too).
If your favorite Atheist website with all the clever graphics wants to use a narrow, bigoted view, I guess that's up to them. It doesn't make their work fair, and I'd like to think they would care about that. I just don't think they do. They just want to feel they are "right". Empirical reasoning is their religion. Not bad yet really when you think about it, so incredibly literal and confining.
Imagination and creativity can be left out of that box. I'd like to think those are substantive things. Inventions and scientific thought often come from being willing to consider the unknown. Any scientist would tell you that, though perhaps not the Atheist ones :-).
Jesse, you are aware that it was Sir Francis Bacon who is credited for establishing the scientific method of inquiry based on experimentation and inductive reasoning? Bacon rejected atheism as being the result of insufficient depth of philosophical thought.
ReplyDeleteI realize this is a blog and cannot go into much, if any, depth. For you personally, the truce that you call for seems to show that you really haven't done your homework on a subject you feel so strongly about. There are scholars who devote their careers to the subject. Many books and papers examine the implications of the interactions between Greek reasoning and Biblical thought for the development of modern science. For many people, this is not a war, nor even a fight, but rather a fascinating area of inquiry. As with all philosophy, there are no definitive answers. It's all about what one learns on the journey.
Perhaps you might begin reading about Copernicus, Bacon, Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Descartes, Pascal. Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Mendel, Kelvin, Max Planck, Einstein and others an considering the ways in which science and religion informed each other in their thought processes.
I should say I have no religion. I was not raised in one. I do know the Bible quite well - as a text. How can one understand the intellectual sources of Western philosophy by concentrating on Greece and ignoring Jerusalem?
BTW, like many other true Christians, I believe strongly in separation of church and state. I don't say "under God" when I say the pledge of allegiance. I also don't believe ANYONE should shove their religion in someone's face unless invited. It is a personal journey. Again, don't paint us all with the same brush, and I promise to not paint all atheists with the smae brush. We are all individuals and deserve respect until proven otherwise.
ReplyDeleteAs a scientist I applaud any way to keep religion out of my lab. As a person of faith, I applaud any way to live a life of kindness, goodness, generosity, and love. As a woman, I applaud keeping both politics and religion out of my body. Faith and Science are not opposite, They are Not incompatible, they're not even in the same building.
ReplyDeleteReligion is faith. It gives some people comfort but explains nothing. The scientific method is the path toward a better future.
ReplyDeleteoh reeeaallly? Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-science; in fact my degree is Bachelor of Science. However, to broadly say that the scientific method is the path toward a better future is pretty disingenuous. There are many examples of science not producing something worthwhile. Fracking anyone? Genetic engineered seeds that produce their own insecticide which we then ingest from the produce because it can't be washed away is another example. In fact, Monsanto and Dow Chemicals would both be great examples of the scientific method giving humanity a crappy outcome.
DeleteWakeUp @ 12:35
DeleteI want to see your faith based 'engineering'.
How does that work? Do you pray a lot? Will God make it all better? You amaze me. You obviously have no idea what the scientific method is about. And you say you have a degree in science. Oh lord! None of it 'sunk' in.
"Faith based engineering?" What the hell is that? I think you just shot off into the stratosphere on that tangent. You obviously speak in broad generalizations and do not have the capability to address specifics.
DeleteAilsa Ap 7,8:59 has a point and I agree. Were it not for the deep intellectual thought of religious scientists, both religion and science would have been stuck in the dark unknown. I am not saying an atheist is wrong. I am saying that the unknown and belief in discovery are crucial to discovery itself. I understand that each individual brings their own life experiences to the discussion but each "man's" life and thoughts should consider constantly and continue searching the unknown ...that is the point of science and also the point of religion. There is no conflict between the two once we continue intellectually past our own comfortable mental preferences or specific "good or bad" experiences in life. These color our path. Both Science and religion should allow production of a thinking and responsible person. They do not always, it depends on the humans involved. Our individual experiences should not cripple our journey but aid in our own and others individual and forward growth. Science and religion both stimulate thought toward a goal of discovery... a belief in the unknown through a discipline of discovery.
ReplyDeleteI agree that a mind that follows one with out intellectual exploration of the other is is stuck in mental poverty such as the evangelical religious right demigods and their "cults"; and, this is as equal a danger to others as a "mad" scientist might be. The long cure of bigotry and oppression is continued education and intellectual curiosity as the answer to better community, better science, better religion.
Short term Gryphen, thanks for exposing the sociopaths of the human species and alerting to the political danger of the their immorality under the guise of religious permission and domination.
Amen to your shout out to Gryph.
DeleteI know too that he will expose/has exposed the sociopaths of the human species, alerting us to the political danger of the their immorality under the guise of science, or mother grizzlyhood or whatever is used to manipulate and dominate.
Gryphen wrote that the "vast majority" of scientists are atheists, and was asked for a link to support the assertion. This is what I found:
ReplyDelete2009 Pew Research Poll of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science yielded these results: 41% of scientists do not believe in a God of any kind; 33% believe in God; 18% believe in some sort of higher power/spirit; 7% had no opinion or refused to answer.
The list of highly-accomplished scientists who believe in God is very long, as several posters have noted today and in the past. I've commented about a few of them myself.
I think Gryphen likes to stir the pot with occasional science vs. religion posts, just for variety.
The conflict theory of the two fields is fairly recent, and was initially deliberately manufactured by a couple of authors, one of whom was specifically commissioned for the task. I forget their names, but anyone sufficiently curious could look them up.
The source of the conflict theory of science and religion nagged at me until I found what I was looking for. Lawrence Principle, Professor of the History of Science and Technology at Johns Hopkins U, has lectured and written on the topic.
ReplyDeleteDr. Principle has identified John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, writing in 1874 and 1896 respectively, as the originators of the notion that science and religion are inherently in opposition to one another. Draper wrote at the behest of a publisher of scientific books. White wrote in defense of his establishment of Cornell as the first American university without a religious affiliation.
In his lecture series on science and religion, Principe makes the case that the conflict theory is baseless, ahistorical, counterproductive, and has essentially just succeeded in giving ammunition to two very different groups.
One group includes a variety of extremist or fundamentalist groups who may oppose everything scientific, such as the teaching of evolution, immunizations against disease, acceptance of global warming, blood transfusions, or even medical treatment of any kind.
The other group which has been indirectly inspired by the mind-set of Draper and White includes some of the New Atheists. Carl Sagan was panned for repeating some of White's errors, which he apparently didn't think to question because Cornell was his alma mater.
I appreciate reading the comments of Otto Katz and other posters with scientific education. I was an English teacher and took only enough science courses to satisfy core curriculum requirements. Now I'm trying to compensate for that short-coming by listening to scientific lectures from The Great Courses. This series by Dr. Principe was an eye-opener for me.
Thank you Anon at 7:53, WakeUpAmerica and Otto Katz for speaking so eloquently.
ReplyDeleteReligion and science are not mutually exclusive. Church and state should remain separated for the good of both religion and the state, and if religions are to be taught in school, they should be taught as theology while evolution is taught in science.
Believers and non-believers need to be respectful of each other's views. Gryphen, I don't mind in the least that you are an atheist, but you seem continually troubled by the fact that some of us are Christians with no wish to change.
I hope that is a misperception, and that we are in agreement that it's just the hypocrites among us and those who persist in trying to codify religion and change views that are of no consequence to others and that the holders of those beliefs do not wish to have changed that are the problem.
Every time you post something negative about people of faith (besides pointing out hypocrisy or people behaving badly) I wonder what fundamentalist idiot did to piss you off.
ReplyDeleteI would like to comment on a couple of things. For one thing, you stated in a comment that the vast majority of scientists are atheists. You didn't provide any evidence to that and the other commenter that did show that actually a majority believe in some higher power (33% believe in God, 18% in a higher power).
But you also seemed to imply that the reason scientists are atheists is because of their scientific background. That is a logical fallacy. Correlation does not equal causation. I got that pounded into my head in the various stats classes I have taken.
I also think that you are painting people of faith with too broad a brush. I am a Christian. I have been for as long as a I remember. But that doesn't mean I reject science or don't try to understand why the world works. My younger sibling has Cystic Fibrosis, a recessive genetic condition. Contrary to your graphic we don't say that God gave her CF. We know that she has CF because both my parents are carriers for the disease. We all believe in evolution and science. We don't think that being gay is a sin or that women shouldn't have safe and legal access to reproductive care, including abortion.
Yes, there are people like Sarah Palin who want to shove their view of faith down every one else's throat. But that isn't all Christians. Most of the ones I know agree with you that religion needs to be kept out of schools and public policy.
And I have to wonder if you think that President Obama, as a man of faith, is on the right or left side of your graphic.