Does science prove gods existence?

[Winterwolf00]

All truth is Catholic truth, Winterwolf.

So whenever you profess things that are true, you are being consonant with Catholicism.

So when you say: science doesn’t have all the answers–which, it appears you are now professing–you are being very…

Catholic!

Really.

So you are telling me that you don’t use faith whenever you fly in an aircraft? You examine the evidence before each and every flight? You ask the airline for their flight crew’s records? You check to see if the pilot actually graduated with a passing grade from her flight school?

I am 100% certain that you don’t do that. Wouldn’t do that.

Thus, you rely on faith to give you the answer: it is safe to fly on this flight.

(Please don’t disappoint me by punting with the lamest of lame excuses: “I’ve never flown in an aircraft before.” This is not about flying. It’s simply an example of how you use faith in your life. Not evidence. Not science.)

All truth is Catholic truth

What supreme arrogance.
And once again you have to twist the meaning of the word faith to suit your needs.

You can’t ever make your point with honesty can you?

 

[PRmerger]

What supreme arrogance.
And once again you have to twist the meaning of the word faith to suit your needs.

Can you explain what was twisted?

Give the correct statement, and then how it was twisted.

An example would be:

Poster A says: I love orange juice!
Poster B says: You just professed that you hate milk!

Poster A would say: you twisted my words because I never said that I hate milk. Loving orange juice doesn’t necessarily mean that one hates milk.

So, what was it that you said, that I twisted when I said that all truth is Catholic truth?

 

[Al_Moritz]

Yes actually I do, that might be inconvenient for you to admit but I do in fact.

Perhaps you do now understand the scientific methodology, but you clearly didn’t before, as I had to point out in my post on thread page 15 below.

 

[inocente]

Sorry, inocente, but a claim to “know” Jesus, even when it’s made by the 99.999999%, is insufficient, as far as I am concerned. I have met many who make that claim but leave with the impression that who they claim they have come to know and who they truly know are not the same. More like they have had a psychological epiphany and confuse that with Jesus himself. I don’t think “knowing” Jesus is always such an emotion-laden experience and to depend upon it as the key feature of one’s religious life is an error. Sometimes, he comes in firms we would rather not concede are Jesus -

That’s really sad. Try saying it to your priest. Ask him if he agrees that only emotionless intellectuals can reliably claim to know Jesus. Ask him if he agrees that Jesus is dead and can only be found on paper. Ask him if he agrees faith is only a bunch of fuzzy feelings.

It is an irony that you dismiss ghosts and demons at the click of a camera because you think they cannot be experienced, but subscribe wholeheartedly to a non-detectable “experience” of Jesus as your gold-standard for religious life. Why the double standard? Why not apply the click test to the “experience” of Jesus?

Probably all Baptists dismiss ghosts on the basis that the bible talks of judgment day and until then you’re dead, dust to dust. So we ain’t afraid of no ghosts, they don’t exist.

One of the causes of the Reformation was the perception that magic had taken over, and we don’t hold with consecrating ground, holy water, blessing objects or any of that. But Jesus promises us his Advocate, the Holy Spirit. That’s a promise.

You can, if you must, believe that the Spirit is a set of thought patterns you have acquired from reading books, but scripture, and I think the Church too, speaks of him as a living person, not a dead theory.

You see, inocente, your position involves special pleading - you poo poo ghosts and demons because they make you feel unsafe, but are okay with Jesus experiences because they make you feel safe.

Isn’t that just a bit silly? Are you frightened of all the things you don’t believe in? You must be a nervous wreck. You don’t believe there’s a Tyrannosaurus in the closet but somehow it frightens you. < sigh >

My journey towards Jesus did not end at tangible experiences, because the only tangible one I’ll accept is called the beatific vision. I want to truly “know” him, love him and serve him, not merely have emotion laden experiences with reference to him. In the meantime, I view those experiences as oblique glimpses - not the “whole enchilada” - glimpses which were meant to be taken in stride and not represent the end of the journey. In other words, been there and moved on. Now I travel in faith and with Wisdom by my side, not moored to experiences.

Perhaps if I met a ghost, and the ghost changed my life, then I might accept your attempt to put faith in Christ on the same level as any of the invented things, from alien abductions to ancestor spirits, in which various people would have us believe. But I suppose if works for you, fine, but just be a bit careful of making others stumble by judging their faith on the basis of IQ alone while ignoring other forms of intelligence which you dismiss as in some manner “emotion laden”.

 

[Al_Moritz]

And no, your conclusion,

"As such thoughts pertaining to actions or events which would contradict the laws of nature (do you know ALL of them, by the way?) would be impossible, "

does not follow.

Hee Zen,

Your phrase " thoughts pertaining to actions or events which would contradict the laws of nature " should be more accurately formulated as:

" thoughts pertaining to imagined actions or events which would contradict the laws of nature"

 

[Winterwolf00]

Can you explain what was twisted?

Give the correct statement, and then how it was twisted.

An example would be:

Poster A says: I love orange juice!
Poster B says: You just professed that you hate milk!

Poster A would say: you twisted my words because I never said that I hate milk. Loving orange juice doesn’t necessarily mean that one hates milk.

So, what was it that you said, that I twisted when I said that all truth is Catholic truth?

You are claiming that ‘faith’ is believing anything that you are not 100% certain of.
Seeing as that pretty much includes EVERYTHING you’ve rendered the very word meaningless.

 

[Winterwolf00]

I know it’s off-topic but could someone direct me to where I can put in a signature?

 

[Al_Moritz]

All truth is Catholic truth, Winterwolf.

Actually, I’d rather say that all truth is God’s truth, since He made the universe. Sure, He formulated the truth about Himself most fully through the Catholic Church, but it is a stretch to claim that the laws of nature, for example, are “Catholic truth”. Either way, I find it inappropriate to formulate things as such in a discussion, regardless if you call them God’s truth or Catholic truth.

So I have to agree in some sense with Winterwolf on this one.

 

[PRmerger]

Actually, I’d rather say that all truth is God’s truth, since He made the universe. Sure, He formulated the truth about Himself most fully through the Catholic Church, but it is a stretch to claim that the laws of nature, for example, are “Catholic truth”. Either way, I find it inappropriate to formulate things as such in a discussion, regardless if you call them God’s truth or Catholic truth.

So I have to agree in some sense with Winterwolf on this one.

There is certainly room to disagree on this.

However, I go with the great, witty and trenchant writings of Fr. Dwight Longenecker on this one:

All truth is Catholic truth, and to find that truth in unfamiliar expressions of the Catholic faith, in other Christian groups and in other religions does not undermine one’s Catholic religion, but strengthens it.
When I see what is good, beautiful and true in other believers, it helps me to re-discover that truth, beauty and goodness within the Catholic faith and to widen my own Catholic experience to embrace that goodness, too.

Read more: ncregister.com/daily-news/the-death-of-dialogue/#ixzz3JikU1NSp

 

[Al_Moritz]

There is certainly room to disagree on this.

However, I go with the great, witty and trenchant writings of Fr. Dwight Longenecker on this one:

All truth is Catholic truth, and to find that truth in unfamiliar expressions of the Catholic faith, in other Christian groups and in other religions does not undermine one’s Catholic religion, but strengthens it.
When I see what is good, beautiful and true in other believers, it helps me to re-discover that truth, beauty and goodness within the Catholic faith and to widen my own Catholic experience to embrace that goodness, too.

Read more: ncregister.com/daily-news/the-death-of-dialogue/#ixzz3JikU1NSp

That’s all nice and well, but it is still counterproductive and a turn-off to formulate things as such in a discussion where precisely the question of Gods’s existence and thus also the validity of the Catholic faith is debated.

And by the way, the quoted text clearly alludes to religious truths, not all truths. The laws of nature, for example, are not religious truths, but simply facts about God’s creation.

 

[Peter_Plato]

What supreme arrogance.

No more supreme, I suppose, than declaring it to be “supreme arrogance” without knowing for certain whether the claim was true.

If it turns out to be true, then the “supreme arrogance” is all yours, no?

The problem is in assuming omniscience by the act of feigning ignorance.

You seem to have a habit of declaring things about others in the same instant that you exemplify what it is that you declare.

 

[inocente]

Let’s be clear here.

What you mean by a “leap of faith” is the initial step in an inward journey. A recognition, by whatever instigation, that the external world is not all there is. In fact that the interior world is a much richer, much more rewarding “place” where the meanings of things - as opposed to the mere factual representations of objects - is to be found.

Not really. A leap of faith is just making a decision without objective proof or evidence. When you’ve finished all your research and something still appears inconsistent or questionable, then you have two basic strategies: stalk around it hoping to acquire some killer piece of data, or go with your gut.

Neither strategy is guaranteed - you can die of indecision or you can be burned. But given we have a limited time on this planet, waiting around forever is not an option.

Taking a leap of faith, aka going with your gut, is about trusting your instinct or intuition. We all do it all the time, atheist and theist, because our intuitive mind is lightning fast compared with our plodding conscious mind.

Intuition can be caught out, which is why in evolutionary terms we have a conscious mind as well, but trying to rely on conscious thought alone, and never trusting our gut, is irrational (and dangerous - when a truck is heading at you, you don’t have time to hypothesize).

Trust is even more important to group tasks. Marines in battle take leaps of faith all the time. That’s kind of what being a Marine is, having faith your buddies won’t let you down and you won’t let them down.

Semper fidelis. Honor. Courage. Commitment. You can’t have them spending all day computing options. You’re can’t have them because you’ll be dead first.

As for whether the external world is all there is, we experience life as human beings. The last century was big on physics, and we, as children of our time, tend to think everything is resolvable to physics. The next century will be big on neuroscience and psychology, we are learning all kinds of interesting things about ourselves, and our grandchildren will think our project to reduce reality to physics was a bit like believing in ghosts and demons. A bit out there.

Or that’s what my gut tells me, on faith.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I don’t understand the question.

You claimed we have no compelling reason for being sure that moral truths exist. If true, then we have no compelling reason to live by or be obligated to moral truths.

The obligation we have to live by moral truths is directly proportional to the reason we have for believing them to be true.

If moral principles are merely conditional, like: If I want to survive, I should let others survive (social contract,) then my obligation to that principle is only conditional. When I no longer wish to survive, I am free to stop others from surviving.

My point is that moral principles are not conditional, at all. They are imperative, obligatory and unconditional. They don’t depend upon one’s consent to them like a social contract, but are binding on all moral agents simply because they are moral agents. It comes with the territory of being a moral agent.

We are human beings, ergo we are bound to live as human beings - which includes all the rules regarding what it means to be a human being (moral agency, included.)

We are human moral agents, therefore we are to live as human moral agents.

“Well, no, I want to be a dog,” is irrational.

Being “free” to redefine what it means to be human moral agent, is, likewise, irrational.

Hence, “I want to be able to determine who I kill and who I don’t kill based upon dictionary definitions,” is also irrational and, therefore, also “inhuman” because it essentially denies what it means to be human and replaces that with a contrived replacement.

“I want to kill unborn children, therefore I will redefine “human” to exclude them,” is irrational AND immoral.

 

[inocente]

That puts you on Team Catholic, inocente.

You are very Catholic when you profess that.

I’m having Hoisin duck with egg fried rice for supper. No doubt you’ll claim that’s very Catholic too.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Not really. A leap of faith is just making a decision without objective proof or evidence.

This is the new atheist definition.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Trust is even more important to group tasks. Marines in battle take leaps of faith all the time. That’s kind of what being a Marine is, having faith your buddies won’t let you down and you won’t let them down.

But not BECAUSE you have “no objective reason” to do so. Trust didn’t just develop in a vacuum based on “no reason” nor on purely arbitrary and irrational “whatevers.”

This notion that faith is irrational is, frankly, quite strange and repugnant to me.

In fact, it is straight out of Peter Boghossian’s A Manual For Creating Atheists.

PR, you will agree, right?

Not very Catholic, at all.

 

[PRmerger]

I’m having Hoisin duck with egg fried rice for supper. No doubt you’ll claim that’s very Catholic too.

It’s not your place to tell me what I will claim is Catholic.

Now, I will say that if it’s actually true that you are having Hoisin duck with egg fried rice for supper (and I have no reason to doubt this), then you are being very Catholic when you profess that here.

 

[Ben_Quincy]

Warning:

Discuss the topic, not each other.

 

[PRmerger]

But not BECAUSE you have “no objective reason” to do so. Trust didn’t just develop in a vacuum based on “no reason” nor on purely arbitrary and irrational “whatevers.”

This notion that faith is irrational is, frankly, quite strange and repugnant to me.

In fact, it is straight out of Peter Boghossian’s A Manual For Creating Atheists.

PR, you will agree, right?

Indeed.

Not very Catholic, at all.

 

[Hee_Zen]

I did not simply say that “thoughts would be determined by the laws of nature”. Under the naturalistic view thoughts would be determined by the laws of nature acting in our brain as we formulate the thoughts, our evolutionary history, our environment and our mental development. This a more specified version of my statement “Yet under naturalism every thought, just like everything else, is physically determined”.

SSDD. If my thoughts WOULD be determined by the laws of physics - either directly or indirectly then physically impossible thoughts would be impossible.

It is obvious that the electrons and chemicals in the brain conform to the laws of nature, but that has nothing to do with the thoughts themselves. Just like the electric state of the AND and OR gates in a computer cannot act contrary to the laws of physics, but those gates have nothing to do with what the program does. But I already explained this and you still don’t get it. Your loss, not mine.