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It is testable, one does not need science, one just needs the to be filled with the Holy Spirit...
Except that this is not the kind of testability under discussion. This thread is about falsifiability. It is about saying if X is true then Y and Z will never be the case and if Y or Z are proven true then X is false.
What you are talking about is deciding in advance that X is true and then seeking confirmation of X. Entirely different thing. If that is all you have for truth claims then at least you are honest about it.
It is about saying if X is true then Y and Z will never be the case and if Y or Z are proven true then X is false.
science is limited (very, very limited) in what it can measure and prove
science can only measure and prove that which is superficial
if a person is content to stay only within the very narrow range and scope of that with is superficial then science is a useful tool for that
when someone is ready to explore beyond that which is superficial, then there are other tools and bodies of knowledge for that, and yes reliable subject matter experts. if a person never explores beyond science then their world remains very shallow and superficial
i will ask you again: can science prove or measure love, respect, courage, dignity, integrity, honor, joy, happiness, peace, friendship, inspiration, encouragement, kindness. If science can not measure or prove these, then how do we know they are real?
nature and science are fascinating and interesting for sure. they are however superficial. to delve deeper and go beyond and behind and above nature is an even broader, more expansive, more fascinating realm and terrain to explore.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 01-31-2016 at 02:52 PM..
science is limited (very, very limited) in what it can measure and prove
science can only measure and prove that which is superficial
if a person is content to stay only within the very narrow range and scope of that with is superficial then science is a useful tool for that
when someone is ready to explore beyond that which is superficial, then there are other tools and bodies of knowledge for that.
if a person never explores beyond science then their world remains very superficial
Science is limited to what can be determined with reasonable certainty to be real in shared reality. If you consider what is real to be superficial then you are taking the position of the ascetic who considers material reality to be in some sense irrelevant if not an outright locus of evil.
I do realize that science is silent on certain things. For things that it doesn't even attempt to speak to such as morality, ethics, evaluating human motivations and the subjective workings of the human mind, then we must turn to philosophy in all its branches ranging from mathematics to epistemology to psychology. I am not suggesting that theology is entirely useless and could not be considered part of philosophy ... although even there I don't see it as particularly rigorous in that it does not conform to the rules of logic that philosophy gives us, either, over and above theology's distaste for a decent evidentiary standard.
Theology prefers instead to rationalize predetermined dogma rather than investigating ... well, what would it investigate exactly? It can't really examine god because god isn't examinable. It can't really examine morality because morality turns out to be subjective (even in the view of some brands of theology). The most it can do is speak to human yearning for meaning, purpose and stability, and we already have various ways of studying the human condition (anthropology, sociology) and mind (psychology) so it still seems superfluous to me. All it investigates is holy books and the theory of how to decode them. It doesn't engage with actual reality.
I am simply looking here for the value in theology. What does it provide that nothing else can?
God can be proved through Jesus Only after One accepts Lord Jesus Christ and Lord and Saviour by repentance devotion and prayer ....... Where proving the religion of Jesus to people who will not believe only can come through the gifts of the Holy spirit through Christians which is the hand of the creator God ................. As God will not show himself personally to the unrepentant people as He resist faithlessness .............................. See people like Einstein , Marx, Freud, and maybe Adler these people did not Know Jesus Christ and failed to have the spirit of truth through Jesus Christ , except Adler which Mortimer Adler had some Christ devotion , where as Alfred Adler also failed to have Jesus Christ spirit of truth on his life ,...................... so people without Jesus Christ Spirit of truth are in darkness and would be blind with the world
1) Humans and the universe were created in their present form approximately 6-10 thousand years ago.
I was going to say this is not falsifiable but actually if you say the universe was created < 10K years ago then you are saying that if evidence can be produced that it is much older then it would be disproven. And you're right; even though there is no YEC paper that I'm aware of that is (1) scholarly and (2) has the guts to list proof of a very old earth as something that would falsify YEC hypotheses, it's quite clearly implicit that you can't have a demonstrably old earth and YEC still be true.
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Originally Posted by Freak80
2) A global flood occurred some time after that, which killed all animal life save one human family and any animals that could fit on a large wooden boat.
Again, no formal falsifiability predictions, but strongly implicit that we should be able to see actual evidence of a flood and should be able to demonstrate how a wooden boat of the stated dimensions could have carried "two of every kind" of animal. Another fail.
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Originally Posted by Freak80
3) About 2000 years ago, Jesus rose bodily into the sky and will remain there until the last judgement.
I can't see anything falsifiable here. There is a lot of evidence pointing away from it but absent a time machine we can't really prove this Jesus character didn't return to life and fly up into heaven after he died. Which leaves this in the realm of unscientific and unsubstantiatable assertions.
I disagree that the resurrection has been falsified by science because it isn't falsifiable. There are of course arguments from logic against it. For example, it is the fallacy of special pleading to suggest that while people are never observed to come to life after they truly are dead and buried for 3 days, somehow Jesus was an exception. The resurrection and ascension are extraordinary positive truth claims which require extraordinary proof and in fact have not a bit of evidence in their favor and quite a bit of evidence against them. But that doesn't mean the resurrection and ascension are, separately or together, falsifiable scientific hypotheses. They are simply claims of miraculous events ensconced safely in the distant past behind the obscuring mists of time, based on conflicting anonymous non-eyewitness accounts written well after the alleged events and totally uncorroborated by any alternative secular sources with no skin in the game.
God can be proved through Jesus Only after One accepts Lord Jesus Christ...
No, this is not proof, it is assent to dogma.
Let me give you an example. Suppose I produce a book that says the Great God Og causes the sun to shine and your heart to beat, if only you will "accept" that Og exists and does those things. Now so long as you're alive and the sun doesn't run out of nuclear fuel, everything about your existence confirms Og to you and you never saw this Great Truth until you believed in Og and surrendered to him. But guess what, that's not proof, it is confirmation bias. All it "proves" is that you believe a particular thing.
And in fact, sure enough, a Muslim would say the existence of Allah and the knowledge that Muhammed is his Prophet can only be seen once one accepts Allah to be god and Muhammed to be his prophet. And every other religion has the same plea in some form or other: if you will just believe then you will have the "proof".
Science is limited to what can be determined with reasonable certainty to be real in shared reality. If you consider what is real to be superficial then you are taking the position of the ascetic who considers material reality to be in some sense irrelevant if not an outright locus of evil.
those are your words and views, not mine.
please do not put words in my mouth
Physical reality is not irrelevant; and it is not evil. It is just very basic. If we never see beyond physical reality our life remains shallow and superficial.
if all we ever learned was the ABCs we would know the ABCs which is a basic task. But it gets more interesting when we can read and write poetry, stories, articles. Then we see this gives us power and influence to impact others, so we have further decisions to make about writing and reading that which is uplifting, or that which degrades and harms.
in this analogy, physical reality is the ABCs, and science can name and classify and sort and measure and catalog all the fonts and type styles and vowels and consonants in all the languages. but it's still just the ABCs. basic. small. limited. superficial. A valid starting point. Not the destination.
It is through exploring what is behind and beyond physical reality and how we interact with it, that gives us greater insight, growth, expansion, and wisdom.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 01-31-2016 at 04:13 PM..
I am simply looking here for the value in theology. What does it provide that nothing else can?
a responsive interactive relationship with the Divine
a framework to explore the terrain of the spirit
nourishment for the soul
direct access to the wisdom of your own soul
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 01-31-2016 at 04:19 PM..
No they are not. They are the views of asceticism which I am describing.
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Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
please do not put words in my mouth
You will be happy to know that I did no such thing. I likened your views to asceticism which regards the material world as irrelevant, evil, or, as you have it, superficial, lower, base -- as opposed to a supposed "higher" reality. If you are not comfortable saying that reality is irrelevant then I take your word for it, but I disagree that it is not pretty darn important, in fact, terribly important, and does not deserve diminutive adjectives.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
in this analogy, physical reality is the ABCs, and science can name and classify and sort and measure and catalog all the fonts and type styles and vowels and consonants in all the languages. but it's still just the ABCs. basic. small. limited. superficial. A valid starting point. Not the destination.
It is through exploring what is behind and beyond physical reality and how we interact with it, that gives us greater insight, growth, expansion, and wisdom.
If you think that science only can explain a few basic things and that its predictive and explanatory power is truly that trivial, then you do not understand science.
But look, let's see if your hypothesis of something "behind and beyond" reality, is falsifiable.
We should start with a definition of "reality", I'd think:
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1. the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.
2. the state or quality of having existence or substance.
By definition, reality is all that exists or has substance. To say that there is something "behind and beyond" all that exists is inherently nonsensical.
Furthermore, and correct me if I'm wrong, I suspect that you will assert that this conveniently "hidden reality" is supernatural. As such, it would have to be inaccessible to our perceptual equipment and therefore anything you say about it is your assertion supported by precisely nothing.
It seems to me that there is nothing falsifiable (or even determinable) about this alternate reality of yours.
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