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How can religion exist after Darwin? Is it bound to die?
To my mind, for religionists of all stripe to maintain a faith in a creator God, we, yes we, I an a religionist, we have to throw out most of the science that we have worked hard for 2,000 to gain and learn.
Scientists are putting up and not needing to shut up in all fields of study.
Religionists are not putting up much of anything and yet we will not shut up. http://fora.tv/2009/11/17/Great_Issues_Forum_What_Is_Religion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZM3FXlLMug
It seems to me that there are many issues coming to a head where non believers are getting quite peeved with religionists. Even as a religionist, I cannot blame them.
More and more militant secular confrontations of religionists are in the offing as more and more of them get tires of being denigrated and told yhey are going to hell if they do not believe as believers do. I do not blame them as I have been told this quite often by those who do not like my personal beliefs in the Godhead. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/why-religion-should-be-co_b_775163.html
I recognize why religions exist. I can personally see some of the good that churches bring to community. http://www.canada.com/life/Religion+calms+anxiety+says+scientists/3236785/story.html
I do not like the way they teach of God though if it happens to be a literal reading or fundamental church.
It is my view that all literalists and fundamentals hurt all of us who are Religionists.
They all hurt their parent religions and everyone else who has a belief. They make all believers into laughing stocks and should rethink their position. There is a Godhead but not the God of talking animals, genocidal floods and retribution. Belief in fantasy and magic is evil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOqGhcwwE1s
I do not look forward to a full secular system but if trends continue and I think they will, my grand children will not be able to believe as they wish because of the damage and ill will that believers are presently creating.
People are getting brighter. Non believers that is.
Not believers. Most seem to not know why they are in religion and I would think that they are there just for the sake of tradition. Traditions that swiftly are showing that they belong to an older time and are dying. http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/10/03/2010-10-03_the_unbelieveable_truth_why_america_has_become_ a_nation_of_religious_knownothing.html
I believe that if religion is to stop backsliding, it must shed itself of literalists and fundamentals. Belief in magic and fantasy cannot survive in a world where minds are getting brighter. I D has had it’s day in court and until God steps into our time from His out of time position, according to many, then I fear that secularism will shortly win the war for the hearts and minds of the vast majority.
What do you think. The numbers look bad. Most secular morals are starting to show how evil the morals of most Gods are. The number of new literature is coming out against religions and the historicity of Jesus and Moses with back up from Gnostics, Hebrew and Jewish writings and discoveries.
Is there any way to reverse these trends without God actually making an appearance or is religion bound to continue to shrink and die?
Regards
DL
Ya know, Darwin didn't write his book for the religions of the world, he wrote it to help explain the science and the methodology of evolution. He went into great detail to explain his scientific methodology, made for some pretty dry reading at times too.
Here is a prophecy from 1943 from Lord Jesus , through prophet Maria Valtorta about science......``It is useless to speak of political power and of the world If anything you may attribute the name of human power to the first of human science to the second. While human power produces rebels and drags to perdition a countless number of followers. How many are lost through intellectual pride which makes them despise the faith, and how many kill their souls with the pride that separates them from God.. ...For though I will reap on the Last Day the harvest of the world already there is a reaper is amoung you it is the spirit of evil who mows you down and does not turn to you into ears of eternal grain but hay for the dwellings of satan...........You are concerned about increasing your human knowledge to the detriment of superhuman knowledge........ I do not condemn science in fact I am pleased that mankind should learned probe the knowledge which it has been accumulating so as to be more and able to understand Me and admire Me in My works..I have given you intelligence for this purpose but you must use it to see God in the law of the stars on the formation of flowers and in the conception of beings not use it to violate life or deny the Creator.......... Rationalism , Humanism, Philosophism, Naturalism, Classicism, Darwinism, you have schools and doctrines of all kind and you are concerned with all of them through the Truth is much perverted or eliminated in them It is only school of Christianity that you do not want to follow and examine closely...........Such resistance is natural after all If you examined your religious culture closely you would have to either follow the Law and you do not want to or openly confess that you want to trample upon the Law and again you do not want to , and so you do not want to become learned in supernatural Science....Even if your doctrines you create a fog which veils Knowledge and Truth They still exist because they come from Me who am eternal........Seek true Wisdom and you will understand Science as it should be understand Clear you souls of all the artificial superstructures and set up in them the true Faith Like Spires of a spiritual cathedral there show flowers in your soul Science, Wisdom, Intellect, and Fortitude, Humanity, and Temperance, because real scholars know not what is humanly knowable, They know also that most difficult of all things self-control with regard to the passions of the flesh and turning their lower parts into the pedestials for their souls to be raised and their spirits to be launched Heavenwards towards Me, who come and am in all things, and who love to be the true and Holy Master of My brothers and sisters``
As Wellington said: "If you believe that, you'll believe anything".
Darwin followed the science and I think in the beginning saw it as all part of God's work. The implications didn't strike him until later.
None of those scientists before the 19th century where darwin certainly seems to have been a bit of a bif question to the Bible saw their work as disproving God but that is where it has ended up.
Not disproving so much as making a God un-neccessary as Hawking said it. One can believe in a god but the Creation - story is questioned.
I see it as rather like the flat earth idea. That began with someone (1) having a rather unscientific pet theory which led him to believe that the earth could not be round and science was wrong. He became a real pest publicly challenging the round earth theory and coming up with some remarkably convincing results.
Simply because the earth was so big it was as hard to come up with any obvious and direct evidence of curvature (2) as to come up with a clear before yore werry eyes example of evolution of species.
Torn between a reluctance to give this fellow credibility and a need to discredit his non -science, the scientists took him on and did as good a job on his evidence as was done on Behe's irreducable complexity.
His response was masterly - he linked it with religious faith and Bible - literalism. 'Disagree with me and you disagree with the Bible!" It is THIS, not the Church, which resulted in the claim that the religion teaches that the earth is flat.
Long after the flat earth was pretty much dead and buried and atheist globeism was being taught in our schools. Good old America was founding a city (3) administration based on a Bible- based belief in a flat earth.
It was really only getting into space that nailed down the coffin of the flat earth. Even now there are a few nuts but they can be pretty mugh ignored.
Creationism and its white coat, ID is trickier because it was Bible- linked early on. It has the sort of money and exposure behind it that Flat earth never had and evidence for religion is pretty much tantamount to evidence for creationism. What is worse the Muslims have jumped on the Creationist bandwaggon.
Science - based evidence has a lot on its hands and there is no quick fix in sight like going back in time and doing a time lapse depiction of lungfish crawling out of the sea and NOT expiring, of course.
DNA is the nearest thing as it not only fitted the predictions but produced a lot of extra evidence of its own.
So did C14 dating but that is ignored, misrepresented and held up as Bible truth if it looks helpful just as DNA.
So, no quick fix and a huge lobby to counter. There's a lot can be done but it needs a popular face to sound science. A long, wll - reasoned explanation will be ignored but a slick video explaining the science with visual links to the evidence plus a few telling exposes of Creationists and Bible - literalist non -science, misrepresentation and fallacy would help no end. Is there there will and and the cash or does it all go into research while creationist cash goes onto propaganda?
If Darwinism and Hawking-ism too may one day see Religion off, that is not the main issue. The urgent need now is to ensure that the science is not bought off, muzzled or intimidated from making its voice heard.
(1) This was the brain-child of Robert Owen (1771-1858) who was led by socialist views into questioning the scientific orthodoxy. His original view that nothing should be accepted on trust, everything should be subject to proof, is laudable enough. unfortunately, he seems to have done what he accused scientific orthodoxy of doing; starting with a theory and adapting the facts to suit it, even to inventing entities for which there was no evidence and no need. He lectured and pamphleteered as Dr. Birley Phd' and later after changing his radical views to a defence of the Bible, as the anonymous 'Parallax'. he impressed his audiences by remarks such as (in reply to the evidence of the shadow of the earth on the moon) "What proof is there that it was the shadow of the earth at all?" If he did get worsted in debate, it was noted that he would sieze his hat and march out.
(2) Owen 'Parallax' offered £500 to any who could disprove him. It may be understood how difficult that was. His disciple, John Hamden, issued
such a challenge and an experiment agreed at Old bedford canal with Wallace (co -developer of evolution theory with Darwin), referees being appointed. Supposedly impartial, Hampden seems to have considered that he was bringing a second and his 'referee', William Carpenter was a card-carrying flat-earthist.
The experiment after a failure with marking poles which could not be distinguished let alone determined as showing a curve or not a second test with a marker hung from Old bedford bridge, and a pole set between the bridge and the sighting telescope. if the canal (and therefore, the earth) was curved, the pole mark should appear above the bridge mark. Checking the telescope, Wallace invited hampden to see for himself that the pole-marker was, indeed four or five feet higher than the bridge marker. The referee, carpenter stepped forward and claimed that the equal intervals between the telescope cross-hairs proved that the telescope, pole and bridge were in a straight line. Coulcher, Wallaces 'second' proved with diagrams that the experiment proved the canal curved but the evidence was rejected. The final verdict was published and the prize handed over. Hampden and carpenter issues a pamphlet claiming that he had won.
(3) Flat-earthism was shipped across the pond to America where Wilbur Voliva, having deposed the president (Scottish snake-oil seller John Dowie) of a religious city (Zion, Illinois) in the 20's after a financial meltdown and established a Theocratic police-state of which Bible-literalism, including a flat earth doctrine, was mandatory. The increasingly disaffected population eventually disempowerd him and his repeated failed end of the world pronouncements arounn the time of WW2.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 11-07-2010 at 07:06 AM..
Religion will remain. It is a subsystem of the modern differentiated society. Darwin, or what ever facet of science (also a subsystem of the social: not the social!), that he is a part of, is only a part of how a social system can reduce the complexity around it. Science can not give us the answer for an after life (everything not science is unscientific), that is religion's function. The after life (wether you believe in it or not, as what you think either way doesn't mean much for the social system, except as some local irritation to its structure when you run you mouth), is a complexity that the social system has to deal with. The other subsystems, such as science, military, political, family, economy, etc, have no structure for the reduction of the complexity of an after life, and the after life will always be a question, and if religion wains, well superstition, fetish, magic, and such will just return in a modern form; and you think religions looks stupid (none of these subsystem structures can be frozen, as knowledge is dialectical; idiot individuals and groups of the same contributing to these structures think that what they know now is the final answer-such as Darwin is the last word, such a view actually will stifle science and become a religious expression, eventually). Originally, religion or the political was the social; complexity developed to the point that these two systems or a combination of them (the priest/king, for example) could not reduce, and the requirement for the "professionalization" (military science or art, for example) and the break away of the other subsystems from these two were an evolutionary need for the social-your modern world depends upon this differentiation. Dorks think that some of these need to be eliminated-I guess if you want to be a cave man..
Since approx. 90% of all humans believe in God or some kind of higher power - I don't think faith itself is in any great jeopardy.
There (probably) was a time when 90% of all humans didn't brush their teeth either. Eventually, people become wiser, more educated, and more experienced and learned to make improvements or ditch processes that have never ever been known to accomplish anything (blood letting, carrying a rabbit's, horoscopes, praying, ground hog behavior).
[Insert heart tugging violin music here]
If we can convince one, just one brainwashed delusional person that god probably doesn't exist, it will all be worth it.
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