People don't need that aspect to be faithful. Faith, and it's proxy Religion, doesn't have to account for our minute details. I consider that science's realm. IMO, the desire to empirically prove religion is a huge cultural red herring. There's a lot of emphasis on this in order to legitimize and validate, but it's no coincidence that our society's evolution has moved from pagan worship and sacrifice, to capricious Gods and deities and finally onto the ideal that God is an embodiment of absolute love. Part of this is the desire to "reason" out the truth, yet the truth can be paradoxically lost when we try to quantify or break it down into simpler concepts and models. Maybe our Puritianical roots has an offshoot in "Puritanical" atheism...the hard and rigid sacrifice for what is right and true. That's a pretty strong charge there. Do you find nothing admirable for a soldier who dies for his country, his brothers or for freedom? Reason/logic is nice, but without emotion and trust, we can end up cold and heartless. Besides, it's almost impossible to segregate emotion in the average person even if they try.
Blind faith not being something I admire and a soldier fighting/dying for something he has reason to believe in (his friends for who they are, his country for its ideals, etc) are not really an equal comparison, or a fair one, for that matter. If he chooses to fight or die for something that has no basis for support, then that is his choice, but I don't admire that reasoning or course of action. Cold and heartless doesn't have much to do with this conversation, it is about fact vs. fiction. Give me facts and my cold, heartless self will fall in love with you, baby.
I find this to be a shifting goalpost. I'm not the kind of person who would read a bible, find one flaw, and automatically assume the entire rest of the thing was untrue or pure hogwash in terms of moral teachings. BUT. When you basically break it down, I am not given much reason to believe that the rules set forth from any of the schools of faith we know today are right about morality by any other reason than coincidence... much like the hands of a broken clock being right part of the time. Discussing morality is such a chasing-your-own-tail exercise, ugh
While I think morality isn't absolute, we don't have to be purely relativistic either. We have the luxury of written knowledge and experience, and the more info there is, the we're able to place bets on a "roulette wheel" of morality. My intent wasn't to bring up morality, but morality is a factor in a religion's attempt at personal meaning. The Bible was written from a different phases and times in human history. It's messages shouldn't be fundamentally rigid and applicable especially when context and meaning can be lost over time/culture/translation. But as a collection of experiences and metaphor, it can totally change people. Other religions that lasted have similar results. Morality is waved around as punishment and enforcement because other tenets in a religion such as continuous compassion and unending sacrifice towards others are difficult/inconvenient for many people to follow. Plus, religions worldwide can be considered a way of life and a worldview. If someone has a simplified worldview, then they could have a simplistic view of their religion (or an ideology) or religion in general. If morality is sole the basis for belief, then I wouldn't disagree with the arguments that it's used for control and to control. Concepts like freedom or liberty are very equal and fair comparisons to a person's faith. A good example would be transplanting "American freedom" to Iraq or freshly fallen Soviet Union. There was this naive assumption that a purely capitalistic system of Shock Therapy would be a universal truth, as if their Invisible Hand would pick up rubble and rebuild broken cities without guidance and active involvement. It's one small example that our country's institutions are purely driven by faith in our system and in our values, and how it's difficult to translate those values onto other cultures. Another would be a peaceful transfer of power between presidents. So is our freedom a matter of blind faith, or something more universal? Would an Afghani's idea freedom be similar to ours? Like religion, ideals of freedom and liberty had to be built up culturally and intellectually over time. Ancestors had to live it and pass down their experience in order for the current generation to be where it is now. Some stumbled, and some regressed. For those who enjoy freedom the most, the concept can be very real to them, even if it seems like a matter of blind faith. Most of us accept it implicitly...definitely those who support brutish and poorly planned wars to "bring it to them." I didn't approach this debate as a matter of "fact vs. fiction". It's not a cop out or a shifting goalpost, but rather a matter of perspective. I don't think it's the facts that drive our lives. It can be enlightening and reaffirming, but the relations we have with others and our approach to the unknown isn't always determined by facts. That fiction could be considered faith. For believers, they take that interpersonal faith one more step. This isn't meant to be a pass for 5,000 yr. old Earthers or "code breakers" who think the world will end on 2011-2012. It's just my argument that faith is an immensely powerful concept that an idealistically rational mindset would ignore yet could possibly accept in a different form.
No, it isn't a fair comparison. Soldier has reason (cause) to believe his friends are worth saving (good, honest people that he loves... or whatever reason he chooses based on evidence from his past experiences).... soldier has reason to believe his country/freedom is worth fighting for (also based on past experiences within said country or with those ideals which makes him believe it is worth the sacrifice). That is the exact opposite of blind faith. Soldier has evidence, reason, and cause. Blind faith action does not. An example of blind faith would be soldier killing someone simply because someone told him to without having any prior reason to trust the person who told him to do so, or any probable reason to need/want to kill that person.
-It’s not merely a question of technology. Such a test would take millions of years. It would take tens of thousands of generations of people to carry out the test even if we had the technology, and that makes it effectively impossible. Evolutionists don’t deny this either. They just say that there are other ways to prove it, and I agree, but the same logic applies to engineered earth theories and creation. -From the standpoint of a non-creation engineered earth, there’s nothing to say that we couldn’t one day find out who the builders were. Just as humans are now contemplating the possibility of terraforming Mars it is logically quite possible that a much more advanced and longer lived spices of beings engineered earth. If can see the day when we’ll likely be able to do this to another planet, then we have to also consider that the same thing could have happened to us. -And from the standpoint of creation, there’s nothing to say that you won’t one day, possibly though a very different route, come to be convinced that God exists. From there you may decide that the Bible is his book and that it is accurate, and that what it says is consistent with the historical record. This is a different sort of proof, of course, but it’s a proof nonetheless. Widespread belief in a thing is definitely good evidence, but not conclusive evidence, that it’s true. There are many examples of First Nations peoples believing that certain plants have certain healing powers, for example, and of the all-knowing European interlopers dismissing these beliefs out of hand ... only to find out later that there was in fact a lot of truth and wisdom in those beliefs. It is folly, and unscientific, to believe that one knows all there is to know on a subject, and to dismiss out of hand beliefs which had been acquired through centuries of experience. And I further submit to you that it illogical, and unscientific, to believe that there could not possibly be any life form out there that is greater than we are. I’m not sure I understand your question. The issue of the competing theories on the origin of life is in large part the topic of this thread, is it not? If you want an example of one thing that faiths clearly do better than the theory of evolution I would say that they explain the meaning of life much better.
People can volunteer to join the military to take part in a greater cause. Even in your examples, it's his beliefs that drive him. Past experiences can contribute authenticity, but it's faith that confirms it. Some people receive their religion from family. Others join a religion based on past experiences. Given your reasoning in parenthesis, would the faith still be blind if a religious person commits acts in relation to his personal history in addiction to what his community provides and accepts? How does your argument differ from an atheist who stands upon convictions that he believes is right? Soldiers are told to follow orders without asking questions, and they can do bad things to win objectives. You're seeing "[no] prior reason to trust the person who told them" because your perspective is that God doesn't exist, but it's known that people have genuinely claimed that God has saved/influenced their lives.
I may well be unnecessarily complicating my position, but I'd certainly defend that point. I might also add a qualifier at the tend and say that there "is truth in it" rather than simply it's true. Many stories in the various Holy Books are not literal, inducing the origin stories, and they need to be looked into rather than read at face value out of context.
Not blind faith. If I throw an apple up in the air and it comes back down, I have reason to believe it will happen again based on evidence. When I say faith, I literally mean belief without prior cause. To believe with prior cause doesn't take that, it is a systematic judgment based on reason/logic with evidence supporting it.
To Invisible Fan and DonnyMost: I came much closer to faith when a Jesuit said to me that the most worthy projects are those that take more than a lifetime. It is a very humanist statement, to me at least, and it speaks to / requires a faith that the human endeavor is something of great value, unto itself, beyond any one person's life. I believe that.
Madmax - You knew this thread would take this direction when you started it, and now that it has, you have chosen to stop participating in it? What was your goal here?
This is a bit of tangent but those experiments never lead to creating microorganisms but amino acids and other complex organic chemicals that form the basis of life as we know it. Also later findings regarding the early Earth indicate that those conditions weren't likely present and there are probably other ways that amino acids were first formed. I haven't studied any of this in detail but I think we are a ways from determing how the first cell might've formed but there is plenty of indication regarding how it might've happened. Prions are self-replicating proteins and crystals given proper conditions also self-replicate so we know that self-replication an happen in what we consider non-living systems. There is still a jump to figuring out how we get to what we consider life, self-replicating and metabolizing systems but we have an understanding of the parts.
The earth is flat The sun revolves around the earth How much truth is in either of those two statements that were believed by practically every person at some point?
True Evolution is based upon inductive reasoning from the given set of facts that are currently available to us. I've pointed this out before but a lot of science is based upon inductive reasoning, for instance Continental Drift since no human was alive when the supercontinent of Pangea existed, yet we don't see those theories critized in the same regard. For instance people don't talk about micro-Continental Drift as in earthquakes observable by humans or macro-Continental Drift in terms of supercontinents. Just because a lot of people believe in dieties isn't proof of creation. It is only proof of that people believe in dieties. You could inductively reason that if that many people believe it something supernatural must exist but without corroborating evidence there isn't much to go on there. Anyway to this specific thread even Dr. Tour says that Creationism cannot be scientifically supported. While he might not buy Evolution he certainly doesn't buy Creation. I'm willing to say that faith hasn't struck out on creation but its pretty much been stuck fouling off balls. As I've said before in these debates the problem with a supernatural creation is that it can't be proved scientifically. Its certainly possible that there is something supernatural at work in creation and speciation but there isn't a way empiracally prove that other than the circular argument: Complexity is only created by intelligence. Things are complex so there must be an intelligence. That is an unfalsifiable statement.
His goal was simple. To highlight that people can be men of science and faith at the same time. Because, as we all know, people are free to believe whatever the hell they want with as little, or much, evidence as possible. Just because a scientist believes in a personal god, however, doesn't make it any more or less plausible of a theory... as it still stands alone as an assumption which cannot be proved or disproved.. thus rendering it moot. I think Max was misguided in his assertion that people assume you cannot believe in a faith/god etc and be a man of science. That is not the case at all, and I rarely see anyone saying so. What people do say, however, is that science is the antithesis of faith, which is absolutely correct. They are not mutually exclusive, however. I also find that people who seem to be so defensive about creationism would do themselves an incredible favor to research some of the frontier science going on with regard to the universe and the origins of life. Amazing stuff that gives awesome new perspective.
Of course and Dr. Dawkins is subject to the same peer review that Dr. Tour is. In regard to both of their work I would say it matters less to Dr. Tour since his work doesn't directly deal with issues where his faith view matters but while Dr. Dawkins does. I am more intellectually curious about Dr. Tour's views but in the case of Dawkins yes you could say that his work, especially the impetus to do it, is colored by his anti-religious views. At that point though you have to look at it and say does it meet the standards of the scientific method? I think so far it has. FYI personally I don't agree with Dawkins' views regarding religion and find them to be narrow and absolutist but there isn't anything about his science that I think is wrong.
I think y'all are arguing about two different things but also things that aren't really in conflict. I don't see any problem with saying that as humans we have a belief in things that cannot be quantified empiracally while at the same time we accept empiracal evidence. While I don't think you can substitute religion for science in terms of explaining material existence you can't substitute science for religion to debate the existence of a soul or higher purpose to our existence. Somethings are scientific questions and something are not.
I'm not sure that is an argument though for a supernatural agency. Native people knew such things largely because they had been there for a long time and most likely through a process of trial and error had figured out which plants did what and ended up codifying it as religious practice since that was the way they passed on knowledge. At the sametime though you could look at examples where religious belief has led to the persistence of practices that actually were harmful such as beliefs that having sex with a virgin will cure various diseases, one of the practices that has contributed to the spread of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Certainly, and scientifically there is plenty of evidence to say that other forms of life exist out in the Universe and given the age of the Universe it is likely such life forms are more advanced than we are. That is a stretch to jump to the conclusion that they played a role in our creation or development.
