This is why I refuse to accept the LGBT+ community (verse, Brahma)
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Isn't that akin to how early man explained what he couldn't understand?
That is how things were attributed until the religious autocracy persecuted early practitioners of science who were seeking how things worked. The schism has persisted ever since but it has taken on the unwarranted and unjustified perspective that the names science ascribes to HOW things work somehow preclude the attribution to God.
Knowing how they work does NOT identify what they are nor the source of their existence. The assignment of the unknown source to God is generic and not particularly religious.
People attribute what they do not understand to the workings of "God" because they have an innate need to have an answer. I am perfectly happy, however, to accept that the answer is not knowable with our current knowledge and abilities to analyze. I don't need to attribute anything to God to be happpy.
Knowing how they work does NOT identify what they are nor the source of their existence. The assignment of the unknown source to God is generic and not particularly religious.
Actually it does. The source of the natural forces is the natural universe. We have no need to assign anything to even a generic version of God. That is for theists to do if they wish, but not necessary for those simply taking the forces of nature to be ...well...forces of nature, natural aspects of the universe.
That is how things were attributed until the religious autocracy persecuted early practitioners of science who were seeking how things worked. The schism has persisted ever since but it has taken on the unwarranted and unjustified perspective that the names science ascribes to HOW things work somehow preclude the attribution to God.
There is nothing unwarranted or unjustified in attributing nature to nature only. What is unwarranted is insisting that we must call natural forces by religious terminology because theists want it done this way.
Actually it does. The source of the natural forces is the natural universe. We have no need to assign anything to even a generic version of God. That is for theists to do if they wish, but not necessary for those simply taking the forces of nature to be ...well...forces of nature, natural aspects of the universe.
How do you KNOW (as opposed to assuming) that what you call the natural universe is NOT God?
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Originally Posted by NatesDude
There is nothing unwarranted or unjustified in attributing nature to nature only. What is unwarranted is insisting that we must call natural forces by religious terminology because theists want it done this way.
What is the warrant or justification for rejecting what has been the SOURCE attribution prior to the emergence of science and the ability to discern HOW things work. What about the HOW in any way confers knowledge about the SOURCE???
How do you KNOW (as opposed to assuming) that what you call the natural universe is NOT God?
We dont have to know it is not God to choose to call by what we do know it is. We do know it is nature, so we call it nature. We dont know it is God, so we have no reason to call it God.
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What is the warrant or justification for rejecting what has been the SOURCE attribution prior to the emergence of science and the ability to discern HOW things work. What about the HOW in any way confers knowledge about the SOURCE???
Because early attribution to gods was based on the belief that some non understandable supernatural forces were at work. We now know that things like the weather, earthquakes, the seasons, the rising and setting of the sun are not the result of supernatural beings , but simply natural forces that we learned to explain at work. So the supernatural references to these forces was justifiably dropped once we understood it was not the supernatural at work.
For "scarcely worthy of a response" you go on and devote some time and effort to provide what I think is a pretty good response, which I read carefully and with interest. All you explain makes perfect sense in the context of the Christian perspective. The more fundamentalist Christian anyway, but not all. I have also considered that perspective with interest and quite carefully over a good many decades now. Surely you can appreciate that all you explain only makes sense if considered from that perspective, but for all who are not Christian, you don't make near as much sense as you assume.
For someone who is not Christian, I don't expect my description of the Christian perspective to make any sense at all - except perhaps from the perspective of rationality and internal logic.
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Always strikes me as more than humorous when anyone claims to know "God's plan," unless here too the bias is so strong that the Bible is assumed to be reflective of God's plan rather than just more human speculation about such a thing. Also to dismiss the other holy books that others revere in exactly the same way. All that aside, it is something of an "obsession with sexual immorality." True, and the obsession is a bit peculiar from just about any other more objective perspective as well.
For me, it isn't a matter of morality or God's plan or that it is "icky" for heterosexuals. It's simply not for you or anyone else to pass judgment as if you are a god. "Live and let live," please, and leave the rest to whatever judgement will come (or not come) in the end. You and the countless other Christians who have been getting it wrong since passing judgement on witches, practitioners of black magic and "sinners" going back to the dark ages need to step down from that pedestal already. You are a mere mortal, and as such highly inclined toward confusion, error and wrong-thinking like all too many of our predecessors going back many centuries. Simply read our history along these lines and it becomes clear that one of the biggest mistakes we have made is to judge and punish as if we are gods. In the process committing incredible acts of injustice and violence that no just god can tolerate!
Repeat after me..., you are not God. You are not God. You know not what God knows or thinks...
If we are Christians, we can know God's plan as Christianity understands it. Otherwise, there would no point in being a Christian. We would be in a constant state of confusion.
Christianity teaches that God created two, and only two, genders: male and female. They join together and become one flesh. There is a male role and a female role. Divorce is prohibited. Sexual immorality is condemned. We know what God thinks from his Word, his explicit commands, his Incarnation and the witness of his Holy Spirit. There is no great mystery, no need to guess at God's plan.
What you describe as a "strong bias" toward the Bible is simply what it means to be a Christian. It isn't a bias. It's what we believe God has revealed.
If Christianity is false and Hinduism or atheism is true, then obviously I am mistaken and don't know God or his plan. For reasons I've previously described, I've made a commitment to Christianity as being ontologically true. Within that context, I do know God's plan.
If you think there is no divine plan, or the divine plan cannot be known, that's your context. I simply disagree with you. You assume some position of ostensible intellectual superiority that is unwarranted and frankly ludicrous. You have no more warrant to tell me what to "repeat" than I have to tell you.
If an atheist, Buddhist or Hindu wants to celebrate LGBT practices, it's of no consequence to me. As a Christian, I know these practices are abhorrent to, and contrary to the plan of, the God of Christianity.
Sure, lot's of ostensible Christians have a different view. I believe in most cases they are flatly wrong and have succumbed to the modern false notion of "tolerance is everything" Christianity. In other cases, I don't believe their ostensible Christianity is Christianity at all.
Actually it does. The source of the natural forces is the natural universe. We have no need to assign anything to even a generic version of God. That is for theists to do if they wish, but not necessary for those simply taking the forces of nature to be ...well...forces of nature, natural aspects of the universe.
The source of the natural forces is the natural universe? The source of all the parts of a car is the car?
Physicists speculate about multiverses and even weirder explanations precisely because the source isn't obvious, precisely because the sort of thinking to which you seem to be wedded isn't reconcilable with the findings of quantum mechanics.
The source is the central issue, which you seem to fail to grasp. Pretty much no one still clings to a steady state universe, which seems to be what you are suggesting.
There may be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of the universe, but there isn't one on the table that has achieved anything resembling a scientific consensus. At least some Nobel laureates accept God as the likely source.
If you were merely talking about the scientific investigation of the natural order, what you say would make sense. As mathematician John Lennox has pointed out, it should make no difference if scientific investigation of the natural order is conducted with a strong atheistic bias or a strong theistic bias; the results should be the same.
For someone who is not Christian, I don't expect my description of the Christian perspective to make any sense at all - except perhaps from the perspective of rationality and internal logic.
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So are you saying that you would be too dumb to understand Buddhism? Or Hinduism? Or Islam?
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We are on a very similar page, if not the same page, LearnMe.
