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30 Jul 2006, 12:01 pm

MrMark:
Yeah, I was saying Religion is about Faith. But you make an excellent point. I have always liked Buddism as compared to some of the other Religions

Spacemonkey:
you are right about the different meanings of Faith. Maybe we should make a new word to clarify. Also, is your name a reference to Fight Club?



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30 Jul 2006, 1:15 pm

I always try to substitute the word fidelity, and think of how a man should be "faithful" to his wife.
Faith in the sense of blindly accepting dogma, could more accurately be called ignorance, since one is ignoring evidence to the contrary. It's all semantics I suppose.

I have studied Buddhism extensively and it really opened my eyes to what Christianity could be, and what I think it once was.

An yes it is a reference to fightclub. Thank you for noticing!


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Last edited by spacemonkey on 30 Jul 2006, 3:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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30 Jul 2006, 2:22 pm

Huzzah! Fight Club rules!

I'd challenge you to guess what my name is a reference to... but its not anything interesting like that. So I won't waste your time.



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30 Jul 2006, 9:14 pm

spacemonkey wrote:
Yeah, the problem is that science and religion emerged from the same realm of human culture.


What do you mean by this??

I see a fundamental difference between science and religion. Science is a cumulative body of knowlege. All scientific statements are at all times subject to verification or rejection. Once a religion forms, it rarely changes, furthermore, the statements religion makes are usually constructs that are non-testable.


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30 Jul 2006, 10:35 pm

Scrapheap wrote:
spacemonkey wrote:
Yeah, the problem is that science and religion emerged from the same realm of human culture.


What do you mean by this??
I see a fundamental difference between science and religion.


What I mean is that the thing that makes us human is this wonderful imagination, or what some would call consciousness. We began asking questions about the world around us, and came up with various theories. The earliest of these theories, were mostly what we would think of as religion. These have evolved of course, it is just a very slow process. But think of the way cultures move from animistic religions, pantheism, on up to monotheism, and even atheism.

The big difference with science, is that it has this built in self critical function. Once this developed, the two began to part ways, and the gap has been growing since then.

Educated people especially scientists, who have seen some of the errors of various religous teachings, tend to focus on these aspects and ignore the accumulated wisdom that religions still hold. It is important to remember that the methods of science are limiting, and other avenues of exploration may be necessary to develop an accurate understanding of this world.

It is possible I think, to know and yet not be able to prove something.


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30 Jul 2006, 11:44 pm

spacemonkey wrote:
Scrapheap wrote:
spacemonkey wrote:
Yeah, the problem is that science and religion emerged from the same realm of human culture.


What do you mean by this??
I see a fundamental difference between science and religion.


Quote:
What I mean is that the thing that makes us human is this wonderful imagination, or what some would call consciousness. We began asking questions about the world around us, and came up with various theories. The earliest of these theories, were mostly what we would think of as religion. These have evolved of course, it is just a very slow process. But think of the way cultures move from animistic religions, pantheism, on up to monotheism, and even atheism.


I think this is a bit of an oversimplification, but I see what you're getting at. I would'nt consider monotheism as an evolutionary step forward. :roll:

Quote:
The big difference with science, is that it has this built in self critical function. Once this developed, the two began to part ways, and the gap has been growing since then.


This is'nt the only difference. Science always concerns itself with empirical evidence. Religion often is'nt concerned with matters that are provable or disprovable.

Quote:
Educated people especially scientists, who have seen some of the errors of various religous teachings, tend to focus on these aspects and ignore the accumulated wisdom that religions still hold. It is important to remember that the methods of science are limiting, and other avenues of exploration may be necessary to develop an accurate understanding of this world.

It is possible I think, to know and yet not be able to prove something.


External verification is the best way to test knowlege. Without anything to compare our experiences with, how can we ever know anything is true?? Science provides us with a degree of likelyhood of truth.


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31 Jul 2006, 10:38 am

Scrapheap wrote:

I think this is a bit of an oversimplification, but I see what you're getting at. I would'nt consider monotheism as an evolutionary step forward. :roll:


Well, rather than an "evolutionary step forward" think of it as the refinement of a hypothesis.
The idea that there is one god or one cause or that the universe is a unified whole, is an improvement over the belief that there are many gods who battling for power.

Quote:
This is'nt the only difference. Science always concerns itself with empirical evidence. Religion often is'nt concerned with matters that are provable or disprovable.


Well empirical evidence is part of this self-critical function in my opinion.
As you point out below, "external verification is the best way to test knowledge."

Quote:
External verification is the best way to test knowlege. Without anything to compare our experiences with, how can we ever know anything is true?? Science provides us with a degree of likelyhood of truth.


As I said, there are things that I know, but could never prove.
I am not one to take things on blind faith though, it's just that if it isn't experienced in the physical world, but only in my mind and heart, then how would I ever go about testing it or gathering empirical evidence. Some things a person just has to experience for themselves.

By the way, I thoroughly enjoy this, I don't get to talk to people about this stuff nearly enough.


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01 Aug 2006, 12:42 am

spacemonkey wrote:
Well, rather than an "evolutionary step forward" think of it as the refinement of a hypothesis.
The idea that there is one god or one cause or that the universe is a unified whole, is an improvement over the belief that there are many gods who battling for power.


So long as we're talking about the Old Testament god who was equal parts good and evil, I can see your point. A Yin & Yang aproach makes the most sense. The gods of the Greeks were milti-dimentional and flawed just like humans. This is what made them good mythology. When you look at the world, you often see many competeing interests trying to dominate.


Quote:
As I said, there are things that I know, but could never prove.
I am not one to take things on blind faith though, it's just that if it isn't experienced in the physical world, but only in my mind and heart, then how would I ever go about testing it or gathering empirical evidence. Some things a person just has to experience for themselves.

By the way, I thoroughly enjoy this, I don't get to talk to people about this stuff nearly enough.

The problem with personal experience is developing a methodology to eliminate confirmation bias. I'm not sure how you can do that with personal experience. :nerdy:


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ladakh
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01 Aug 2006, 2:08 pm

How does one find truth if not through the use of truthful methods like science?



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07 Aug 2006, 11:16 am

For # 1 no god did not create it For # 2 scientist's :|


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20 Aug 2006, 11:52 pm

I think evolution is god's plan. But i still think he's a crapper.


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01 Sep 2006, 7:25 pm

Roman wrote:
I haven't read previous topic, so I will act as if it is a first post on a subject (although I would LOVE someone to direct me to previous post) .....

I wondered sometimes too about it -- it is a very good way of having creation and evolution work together by claiming that God created evolution.

By the way, I also have an answer how can God create Adam and Eve and AT THE SAME TIME have humans evolve from Apes. Namely, the answer is pre-adamic ppl. God is UNIVERSAL creator of course. He just created bacteria that evolved through all the intermediate stages throuhg apes to people, like science tell you. And then he didn't like the ppl that he got by evolution so he then cerated by hand Adam and Eve.

I have heard that there were archeological findings that found some completely NEW gene comming up 6000 years ago, right when the creation of Adam and Eve was supposed to happen.

That would also explain old earth/ young earth. The answer is earth is old, its just Adam and Eve are young.

Ironically, I first heard this theory when I was reading on Christian Identity teaching. They claim blacks are pre-Adamic ppl. Interestingly, science shows us that the older civilizations were black. But then again I am not racist or anything, I am simply borrowing good ideas from wherever I can find them and give credit where it is due.

Whatever race they were, I think the existance of pre-Adamic people is basically PROVEN in the fact that when Cain was expelled he was worried whether or not strangers would kill him.

And by the way, it is also interesting that God told Cain he casts him out from "the earth" while obviuosly Cain did remain on earth. So this just shows that when Bible makes universal claims it isn't really meant to be taken as *universal*. In fact, flood wasn't over the whole earth eitehr, since we have some mysterious group called Kenites (descendants of Cain) popping up long after the flood. So if Cain wasn't cast from the ENTIRE earth and neither flood covered ALL the earth, may be Adam and Eve were only first humans in a neighborhood:)

Actually I thikn that if you read Genesis 1 really closely then on some day BEFORE creating Adam and Eve he also described creating of men. It is interesting in Gen 1:26-30 God created man and given him dominion over everythign. Then in Gen2:5 it says there were NO men. And in Gen 2:7 he created Adam

I think there are two ways of thinking about it

1)May be he is talking about PART of the earth, like I was talking earlier

2)May be he destroyed the previous civilization in a flood for its sins

3)May be combination of both

Actually I also heard some ppl speculate that may be there were civilizations between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2 that were also destroyed for their sins. But that one I am really not sure because to me it seems bible is quite clear that nothing existed at that period of time. Actually I feel like "let there be light" is what happened during the big bang because physics tells us that light existed first, and only long after did the elementary particles coem into being when the universe was cool enough to sustain them. So yah I don't think any civilizations existed in Gen 1:1 to Gen 1:2 interval. But what I DO think is that a lot of stuff might have happened in the rest of Gen 1, and that Gen 1 might have lasted for millenia.
So there was humans on this earth before god created adam and eve? well that makes no sence, since i thought ALL humans came from adam and eve. and ive read enough of the book of genesis to know it blatently ripped off much older writings from the sumerians.



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02 Sep 2006, 3:14 am

Roman wrote:
Ironically, I first heard this theory when I was reading on Christian Identity teaching. They claim blacks are pre-Adamic ppl. Interestingly, science shows us that the older civilizations were black. But then again I am not racist or anything, I am simply borrowing good ideas from wherever I can find them and give credit where it is due.


I can't say one way or another if you're a racist, but Christian Identity teaching definately is racist, among other things.....


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02 Sep 2006, 3:16 am

Roman wrote:
Ironically, I first heard this theory when I was reading on Christian Identity teaching. They claim blacks are pre-Adamic ppl. Interestingly, science shows us that the older civilizations were black. But then again I am not racist or anything, I am simply borrowing good ideas from wherever I can find them and give credit where it is due.


I can't say one way or another if you're a racist, but Christian Identity teaching definately is racist, among other things.....


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