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And the claims of theism often give us the chance to do just that.
For example when creationists come out and assert that certain biological mechanisms are "iireducuble" and could not be formed through evolution - this spurs many scintists on to look at the issue - study it - compile the data - and make the proofs.
When some people - those who do not just believe in a symbolic / spritual modification - think their brand of wafer-biscuit turns into the body of a long dead jewish carpenter if you say latin at it - we can perform double blind controlled experiments on before and after versions of these pieces of flattened bread and show there is no apperant difference.
The Eucharist was never meant to be taken literally and no one does. It is spiritually the "body and blood of Christ". Literalism is a modern heresy.
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Quite often it is the ridiculous nonsense claims of theism that spur some scientists on to apply science to the issue and find the real answers to the issues at hand.
And when theists make claims that are sound, the scientific thing to do is shrug and go do something else, not say "well that's stupid!" as many "scientific minded" anti-theists do. For example, people say "God is a metaphor for that which transcends our day to day existence. God is the ultimate archetype for our higher levels of thought (the super-ego)". The scientific thing to do is shrug and say "well that isn't a claim about nature, so I can't comment as a scientist." But the Dawkin's Witnesses stand up and say "well that's stupid! God is a big guy in the sky or you're an atheist! And no one should believe something just because they read it in a book and I have a book written by Richard Dawkins that proves it."
It is not the place of science to speak on matter outside of science, just as it is not the place of religion to speak on matters of science. Dr. Stephen Gould, himself agnostic, called this "none overlapping magisteria."
I find it funny that so many of the anti-theists who attack fundamentalists for inserting religion into science themselves seek to insert science into all religions, even when religion doesn't comment on science.
But why stop at religion? Why not insert science into rock ballads too? I can see Dawkins critiquing Axel Rose now:
"I am sorry, but the idea that 'she has eyes of the bluest skies and if they are going to rain and I hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain' is ridiculous. Scientifically we know that eyes are a different shade of blue than the sky ever is.
"Furthermore, the title and chorus 'Sweet Child of Mine' is clearly a call for legitimizing pedophilia. As a scientist, I most point out how irrational this line of thought is."
So, you are saying "but that song isn't meant to be science and used metaphors to make its point"? Well, now you know exactly what I say when I hear someone use science to attack religious Mythology and scripture.
Well, now you know exactly what I say when I hear someone use science to attack religious Mythology and scripture.
Yes, you have made this clear to anyone reading your posts. You do not like it. You think it is boring. You prefer the endless irresolution of philosophical debate. You do not want to know if a myth is untrue on the basis of factual impossibility.
And for some strange reason you seem to think that others here should admire you for this.
The Eucharist was never meant to be taken literally and no one does. It is spiritually the "body and blood of Christ". Literalism is a modern heresy.
(emphasis mine)
Just wanted to point out that this is not quite (well, not at all) true. Transubstantiation, cosubstantiation, and a host of other terms all point to this idea, and are present in the largest part of Christian traditions, for a very long time. Historically, it was not until the Reformation that you see many departing from the idea of a literal transubstantiation.
Actually most of the more modern variations on Christianity that teach biblical literalism are the ones that reject the doctrine of transubstantiation, or other similar positions.
Science scares many theists. Not all, but many.
Science shows that some of the stories in the Bible, ie flood, garden of eden, tower of babel etc to be impossible/inaccurate etc SO this threatens those who cling to the Bible as "100% true word of god etc"....
Consider this, if science shows the earth was not created as the Bible says, rather a byproduct of universal evolution, then a Biblian would have to confront the fact that the Bible might be wrong. And if it is wrong about one thing, then it may be incorrect about other things as well. (Actually, being fiction and allegory, it is, but that is not the point) The mere idea that one part of it is "wrong" threatens the whole, in the Biblians mind. The Biblian must decide, in his polarized thinking , whether or not to deny the facts or accept the fallibility. I know of no Biblians who choose the latter.
Scientists and Rationalists will cling only to what they can measure and prove. Theories will exist only when there is some rationality and logic behind it. THIS IS an example of science vs religion. The Conflict will remain as long as humans need something to debate.
Yes, you have made this clear to anyone reading your posts. You do not like it. You think it is boring. You prefer the endless irresolution of philosophical debate.
Oh, and science is SOOOO resolvable
They will probably still be arguing about what happened to the Neanderthals even after we evolve into the next phase of human evolution.
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You do not want to know if a myth is untrue on the basis of factual impossibility.
"Untrue" in what sense? Literally true? No, I never believed that. Is the meaning true? Yes. Again, just because no girl has eyes "as the bluest skies" does that mean Axel Rose was singing about nothing when he sang "Sweet Child of Mine?"
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And for some strange reason you seem to think that others here should admire you for this.
:Open Palm, Insert Face:
I don't care what people think, as long as they acknowledge the arguments. For example I saw a video with a former Soviet Citizen yelling at a Trotskyite and screaming at him that he was an idiot because communism was evil and Stalin killed his grand father. Was he an idiot for disagreeing with the Trotskyite in communism? No. Was he an idiot for completely ignoring the fact that Trotsky and his followers were enemies of Stalin? Yes.
So, when debating religion, it does you know service when you are debating an ignostic, allegorist mystic (like myself) by saying what the fundamentalists believe. I can't stand fundies either, and believe all religious Myths, including my own, are not literally true. And?....
Just wanted to point out that this is not quite (well, not at all) true. Transubstantiation, cosubstantiation, and a host of other terms all point to this idea, and are present in the largest part of Christian traditions, for a very long time. Historically, it was not until the Reformation that you see many departing from the idea of a literal transubstantiation.
Actually most of the more modern variations on Christianity that teach biblical literalism are the ones that reject the doctrine of transubstantiation, or other similar positions.
Transubstantiation is not literally turning something into flesh and blood, but it means "divine presence."
Obviously it is. For example, the Bible myth would have us believe that Earth is 6000 years old. Science has established that this is incorrect. Do you still subscribe to the myth? Without science, how would you know with certainty that it was false? Via philosophical reasoning?
Any attempt at philosophy will have to cope with the discoveries of science if it wishes to be accurate.
And your inclusion of an emoticon once more reveals that you have this oddball notion that we are interested in your emotional reactions to the world.
I know that I am not. If others are, they are welcome to say so.
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:Open Palm, Insert Face:
I don't care what people think, as long as they acknowledge the arguments.
Another difference between us. If someone thinks something which I regard as deeply stupid, that person loses x amount of respect in my eyes. That person "acknowledging" that someone else has different point of view hardly ameliorates the actual problem, which is that this person is guilty of bad think.
And again with the emoticons....are you some sort of hysteric?
Transubstantiation is not literally turning something into flesh and blood, but it means "divine presence."
Now you are just being deliberately obtuse. Your first link substantiates that transubstantiation, as held by the Catholic Church, is doctrine that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. This has been Catholic doctrine for almost a thousand years. It also proves my second point, that relatively modern Biblical literalists (CARM for example) do not believe this, and believe the Catholic interpretation is wrong.
My point was not about what you believe. My point was that the doctrine of the Catholic church, and other groups like various Orthodox traditions, do believe this today, and have for a very long time.
You ought to read the link I posted, it is far more informative than the evangelical apologetics site you found.
If I am punched in the face, I feel something...and yet when I was on a medication I felt like spiders were crawling all over me, but they were not. I have felt pain in dreams as many have. Can science prove that you are not dreaming right now? Can science prove that the world exists and that we are not just stuck in a computer simulation? 3,000 years later and the questions of solipsism have yet to be answered.
The medication altered the neurons functions, giving you a sense of spiders crawling on you.
No science can not prove that we are not a computer simulation.
What the hell does that matter? I live in the reality that I know of.
Knowing otherwise affects nothing.
So, if religion is based on lies, then that means that Buddhism is lying about life containing suffering. Buddhism is a religion and hence, it too must be lying and therefore life must contain no suffering.
Suffering exists without religion.
What does buddhism or any religion have to do with suffering like I said? You make it seem as if relgion created the emotion of suffering.
Lmao. You're so childish in your thinking.
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One of the primary tenets of the religion of Wicca is that we should worship/revere the natural world because we were born from it. For Wicca to be "lying" would mean we are not born from the natural world.
Again. Using religion to answer a question.
The dictionary doesn't use the words it's defining within a definition.
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Science presupposes positivism, and to question positivism is to question science itself. Science never questions its methods, but only its results.
It does question it's methods.
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Please see above and tell me who is "ignorant"
You. And everyone in here can see it.
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No one can explain if the external world exist or not. No one has ever proven that the world is real and not just a dream. And philosophy provides answers, but they are different answers. An existentialist approaches things differently than a positivist. Science is based on a philosophical school of thought (positivism) and hence science is philosophy.
"The world is just a dream" is so stupid and useless to even think about like I said.
We all live in this reality, doesn't matter if we're a simulation or a dream.
It's not going to affect our current reality.
The Eucharist was never meant to be taken literally and no one does.
Speak for yourself. Just because YOU do not take it literally that does not mean many people do not. I have in fact identified three groups of people: Those who think it is just symbolism only, those who think it really does change but only in a spiritual undetectable way, and those that think a literal physical change does occur.
The first group are saying essentially nothing at all. So they are innocuous really.
The second group are doing what appears to me to be akin to pulling an invisible rabbit out of a hat. Everyone watching the trick can see nothing has actually happened but the "magician" protests there really is a rabbit there that he really did make appear by magic... and just because we can not detect it that does not mean it really is not there. Charlatanism of the most ridiculous degree yet practised by catholics everywhere.
The third group really do exist and in enough numbers that I actually did a scientific study of this bread product. Obtaining many samples "before" and "after" they were "changed" by a man in a dress reciting latin incantations over them. I found literally no difference between the two groups of product.
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Originally Posted by victorianpunk
And when theists make claims that are sound, the scientific thing to do is shrug and go do something else, not say "well that's stupid!" as many "scientific minded" anti-theists do. For example, people say "God is a metaphor for that which transcends our day to day existence. God is the ultimate archetype for our higher levels of thought (the super-ego)". The scientific thing to do is shrug and say "well that isn't a claim about nature, so I can't comment as a scientist." But the Dawkin's Witnesses stand up and say "well that's stupid! God is a big guy in the sky or you're an atheist! And no one should believe something just because they read it in a book and I have a book written by Richard Dawkins that proves it."
I recognise little of what you say here and am not sure of whom you speak. Science is, as you point out, only applicable to claims about reality. If you want to make one thing symbolic of another that's fine with me. If you want to create metaphors, then so is that. Much great literature and art would be dead if humans did not have this faculty. We are a species that personifies things around us and that ability leads us to great art and beauty and literature and more. I am all for it.
The issue many like me have with religion is when people take that one step more and start to think that these personifications are actually real, they exist in reality and, worse, their demands, wishes, plans and moralities are something we as a species should be pandering to or modelling ourselves on. It is those people we resist and debate against, not the people banding around artsty-fartsy symbolism and metaphor. I have nothing against such people and never have had.
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Originally Posted by victorianpunk
It is not the place of science to speak on matter outside of science, just as it is not the place of religion to speak on matters of science.
A perfectly laudable idea in theory but alas the theory does not often match the reality. The play ground of religion is all too often our ignorance. Where there is something we do not know... a question we have not answered yet.... people insert their "God of the gaps" there and act like this is evidence or substantiation for the actual existence of their currently preferred deity of choice.
As science fills in those gaps the play ground of religion really is eroded and pushed back. This is not "Non overlapping magisteria" rather a direct war where there is a one directional taking of land by one group off the other. Simply ask yourself the question: Is there any question for which once religion had the best answer but now science provides the best one? The answer is yes, many times over. Is there however any questions that science once had the best answer for but which now the best answer comes from religion? I have yet to think of a single one.
The theory is pretty and all happy slappy. But the reality is the two realms of discourse are in direct and on going conflict.
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Originally Posted by victorianpunk
But why stop at religion? Why not insert science into rock ballads too?
We already are. The eye of science has recently turned to art and using our knowledge of biology and evolution to understand exactly why art is beautiful to us, interesting to us, and why it compels us the way it does. Of course the very idea science should turn its eyes to such things is horrific to some people and they rail against it... but it is happening, it is not stopping and we are finding very interesting results from it. Everything from visual art to metaphor is now in the purview of science and we use our study of the brain to understand why we enjoy such things... and our enjoyment of such things is in turn used in our studies of the brain.
Like it or not this is happening and those who dislike it are welcome to do it but I advise they bear in mind there is not a single thing short of waging bloody holy jihad on us that will prevent us from doing so.
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