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Cecilianus
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Catholic theologians do - and when they don’t, the Church often gets displeased (as in the case of Teilhard de Chardin, whose pseudo-mysticism was neither scientific nor orthodox).
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Cecilianus
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It is our reality. The physical world is a reality which Catholics and atheists share and which can be studied together by means of science. Science is not an “atheist interpretation of reality” as you seem to be suggesting.
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Fran65
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An excellent point and one that is often missed!
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Cecilianus
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God is someone you enter into a personal relationship with, not a proposition you find “evidence” for. That is the starting-point for religious belief. We believe in God because we have come to know Him (and like all proper names, even fictional ones, “God” should be capitalized - otherwise it looks like what you are rejecting is not God but rather a species of substances called “god”, which may be true for Greek polytheism but not for Christianity).
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Fran65
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CD,
You say that there is no evidence for the non physical, but there is no evidence that there is only the physical. Does this mean then that you take the position of ‘don’t know’?
If this is the case then you can hardly expect to argue against the existence of God as it remains a ‘don’t know’ for you. The best you can say is that you haven’t found or been given evidence that convinces you.
I’ve never eaten crocodile meat, therefore I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone else either what it tastes like or whether it’s good to eat. In the same way, you can’t presume to tell someone with faith that God doesn’t exist. It appears that you haven’t had that experience yet or haven’t recognised or accepted it.
You say that there is no evidence for the non physical, but there is no evidence that there is only the physical. Does this mean then that you take the position of ‘don’t know’?
If this is the case then you can hardly expect to argue against the existence of God as it remains a ‘don’t know’ for you. The best you can say is that you haven’t found or been given evidence that convinces you.
I’ve never eaten crocodile meat, therefore I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone else either what it tastes like or whether it’s good to eat. In the same way, you can’t presume to tell someone with faith that God doesn’t exist. It appears that you haven’t had that experience yet or haven’t recognised or accepted it.
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Cecilianus
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Whether you can grasp it or not is irrelevant. It’s true, and you can’t reject scientific facts just because you don’t understand them. Science is not philosophy; it is an authoritative discipline that gives us real knowledge. Our model of the Big Bang - an event which we know happened - tells us that primordial black holes were emitted. Gamma-ray astronomers are now looking for them, for empirical verification.
Miracles like the ones you describe did not involve physical intervention in the actual mechanics of space and time. Peoples and nations for whom the miracle was not intended did not see the sun stand still; how they happened I can’t explain. (Nor should I be able to - they were miracles.) However, Our Lord does seem to like celestial fireworks.
The Incarnation we do believe, because it was revealed to us. The Big Bang we discovered; it’s not a matter of belief except for non-scientists who have to just take scientists’ word for it. Our opinions regarding both the Big Bang and the Incarnation are true and certain, and therefore they both deserve the name knowledge.
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Cecilianus
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When I said “evidence” I meant quantifiable, scientific evidence. My “evidence” for God is the miracle of Lanciano (which is an event that cannot be explained by science - but which can’t go so far as to positively prove God, either), the poetry of Wordsworth, Rachmaninov’s concerti, and my walks through the woods and the time I spend in the wilderness.
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Cecilianus
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Because I believed in God to begin with. I didn’t “discover” God as the explanation to why the Big Bang happened.
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Cecilianus
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Actually, we did get to where we are now by thinking that God created everything. Open atheism was unheard of until the 18th century.Ok, grab a beer because it’s wall of text rant time.
Honestly, I really don’t care what diety or lack of that anyone believes in. My real issue is when said religion interferes with the progression and advancement of mankind. I came to this realization earlier in the year. It actually took quite a while for me to figure out just what exactly my beef with religion was and then it hit me. I will admit that watching that video helped me further organize my thoughts on the subject though. It wasn’t that people actually believed in some sort of diety. It’s that many of those people do their best to invalidate the progress we’ve made as a society to this point. The second we allow religious “theories” into the scientific arena, then we’ve failed in our quest for knowledge and further understanding of the universe around us.
Case in point…evolution. Over the past several decades there have been many efforts to try and teach creationism in schools as an alternate “scientific” theory. This is extremely dangerous. The creationist movement after failing to get it through the courts, most recently in Dover, changed tactics. Since the law shut them down they wanted to let the students decide and they’ve been arguing it ever since. Again, this is dangerous. If someone wants something validated as being a good scientific theory it has to get passed others in that field of science. I guess in this case it would fall under biology since there’s no scientific body that covers God. It was shot down immediately as being complete non-sense. So then what happens? They attack the scientists as being “unfair” and accused them of being afraid, unwilling to talk about it and then even go so far as to say that they know evolution is false but just won’t admit it.
This is nothing short of fear mongering and demonizing those that blocked them from getting creationism to be recognized as a valid scientific theory. Since that didn’t work then we come back to letting the student decide. So if some of the smartest people on the planet shoot you down the solution is to go for those that don’t even have a basic basic BASIC education yet and let THEM decide what’s valid or not, over what some of the smartest people on the planet have to say? I don’t freaking think so…
The vast majority of people that I know (some of them my very own family members) that believe in creationism over the hard evidence of evolution don’t even know the basics of biology and they won’t even go do the research on it. This is my biggest frustration. People argue against something they don’t even understand or even tried to understand. I have yet to meet a single proponent of creationsim that has ever tried to understand how evolution works.
If a creationist comes to me with evidence for their argument I immediately go out and try to find some way to verify what they’ve said. I’m neither a biologist or a religious person so many times I have to go out and look things up to see if it’s true or not. Every single time, IF they can even tell me where to look up their evidence (many times it’s just what they heard in church) I find that quotes/evidence have been cherry picked for half-truths, misinterpreted or twisted to fit their needs.
Now, alot of people might ask exactly why it’s dangerous to teach this sort of thing as scientific theory, what’s the harm right? Well first of all, the idea of creationism doesn’t do anything to advance the quality of life for anyone. When God is inserted into an unknown then people stop looking for the answer.
Creationists are quick to spit in the face of a evolution which is the first building block of biology. Biology has allowed we as a people to live longer, have clean water, grow more food to feed our population, create medicine to treat and cure disease, lower infant death rates and dramatically increase our lifespans just to name a few things that is the MOUNTAIN of achievements that we have made through the study biology and evolution. So now instead dieing at the ripe old age of 30 and spending our whole lives trying to gather enough food to survive the next winter, we can spend all our time bashing the VERY SAME THING that allows us to live our lives like we do. I’m not sure if this has just somehow escaped the religious community that believes in this sort of thing or if they’re purposely distributing misinformation for their own desires and goals. I’m inclined to think the latter.
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Religious belief CANNOT be allowed to pass as scientific knowledge. I don’t give a rats *** what religions it is whether it’s catholic, muslim, jew, whatever. If that happens then the machine of society stops. We didn’t get to where we are now by thinking that God created everything. If we encourage that kind of thinking then we as a society re-enter the dark ages. That scares the hell out of me.
But your conception of religion seems to be a generalization of Protestant fundamentalism. Unfortunately those sort of fundamentalists are some of the loudest and most vocal people in America, and I can’t believe the damage they’ve done. Protestant fundamentalism is not true Christianity; it is a heresy of Catholicism. Catholicism has always respected the rights of science - in fact, science is really a project that the Catholic Church got started, in the persons of Roger Bacon, Grosseteste, Copernicus, the 50+ Jesuit astronomers, etc. Your objections as you noted aren’t targeting Catholics; I don’t know if there is a fundamentalist forum like this one to hold that debate in:shrug:, though you’d be wasting your time there because they won’t accept the validity of science to begin with, but you can’t generalize your distaste for an aberrant form of religion to extend to true religion. The only Catholics who are fundamentalists were influenced by Protestant fundamentalists.
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Fran65
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Hi Cecilianus,
I was actually referring to ‘Charles Darwin’ as CD. It’s my fault for using an abbreviation. The distinction that you make between the two types of evidence is one that I recognise and support.
Your post regarding the distinction between Protestant fundamentalism and Catholicism is most welcome and will need to be repeated often (very often!) in the future!
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tonyrey
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If you have not made any claims what do your statements consist of? No affirmations at all? To deny another person’s claim is true is to make a counterclaim. i.e. that the other person’s claim is false. A plausible counterclaim has to be based on evidence…
No one claims that anything supernatural going on in our brain. The vast majority of people on this planet believe the brain is not an adequate explanation of a person’s beliefs, thoughts, emotions, values, decisions and aspirations. They may be mistaken but the onus is on you to explain why they are mistaken and how all this activity is produced by the brain.
No one denies that the brain is only physical!
What you mean is that you believe the brain fully explains human activity. Why do you makes you **believe, **or how do you know, there is zero evidence to suggest otherwise? Do you have privileged insight into the nature of reality?
If you cannot give any reason for your belief that there is zero evidence it is obviously irrational.I can equally well say there is zero evidence that the brain **fully **explains a person’s activity. How would you prove I am mistaken?
I can give reasons why the self, qualia, consciousness and free will are evidence that the mind is not the activity of the brain. What are the reasons for your view that the mind is just the activity of the brain?
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j1akey
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How about I meet you half-way.
Yes when many early discoveries were made, just about everyone believed in God in one way or another. But people like newton didn’t invoke god to explain how gravity worked. When you invoke God to explain something you don’t advance the understanding of whatever it is you’re trying to figure out. That’s what I was trying to get at.Well I have to admit I never heard of creationism being a Protestant thing since I hear about it from people that belong to all sorts of denominations so I guess that’s another thing I can go do some research on. Either way there are many people on these forums that do agree embrace creationism to the point that they want it to replace science which is why I go on about it here. Either way I think religious fundamentalism is bad regardless of what religion it actually comes from.
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murphjos
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I believe we have a simple misuderstaning of semantics (because I have agreed with almost every thing else you typed on this thread). I only meant suggest that all Catholics believe that God deliberately created man and the entire universe. This is creationism in the broader sense I did not mean to suggest the Church teaches that God literally formed Adam from clay or that the world is 4000 years old.
I also did not mean that there is any monstrous deception in creation at all. I will try to restate my thought more clearly.
God created the 4 dimensional universe from outside of those 4 dimensions. Start and finish of our time lines cannot be the same for Him. If the details of this small speck of a planet during the last few thousand year are of special importance to Him then he may have formed the universe (time and space) with this small part in mind. This in no way contradicts the observations and theories we have about the universe that we experience in linear time.
If we imagine God setting up the conditions for the Big Bang and then sitting back and watching it unfold we make the mistake of putting God in linear time. At the “moment” of creation, all that is, all that was and all that may be came into being. That fits with what scientist observe and predict and what Christians believe. I find this line of reasoning comforting when pondering the Trinity. Jesus walked as man 2000 years ago but was present at the creation.
I am at the edge of what I can understand and express here so forgive me if it is unclear or suggests any heresy.
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Cecilianus
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Oh. I was hoping that was what you meant. Mea culpa!
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Cecilianus
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Provided that the thing you’re trying to explain is a physical, material phenomenon, I would agree with you completely. I don’t think that belief in God (the Jewish God) began as an explanation for anything; I’m uncertain as to whether belief in pagan deities (small-g gods) began as explanations to explain physical phenomena or whether they began in wonder (in a sense of the numinous) and a similar sense of the numinous in nature led to the link between nature and the gods. Either way, mechanics simply has “no need of that hypothesis”, as Laplace said. Laplace was an example of a faithful Catholic (at least judging from his pious death) who didn’t reduce God to a “god of the gaps”.How about I meet you half-way.
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tonyrey
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I’m not suggesting anything of the kind. You missed the point that he believes physical reality to be the sole reality…
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WillieWonka
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OK. It’s a personal opinion based on your belief in god.
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Charles_Darwin
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“God is someone you enter into a personal relationship with” the mind is very good at playing tricks, what make you any different different form those the believe they have a personal relationship with different gods?
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Charles_Darwin
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The state of knowledge is “unknown”. The state of belief is “unproven”. So i reject your claim.
Do you believe in everything you can’t disprove?
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WillieWonka
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I have failed for years to disprove unicorns, but will never give up. But, until I do disprove them, I will firmly believe in them.
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