So-called “believers” are always looking for some great truth to help impose their particular brand of institutionalized superstition on others. But at the same time, they readily profess and encourage the need for believers to believe on faith alone. Evidence is never needed, and indeed, it is discouraged. You can’t have it both ways. Either admit it’s all based on faith only , or else start producing some evidence - or at least encouraging and supporting the search for evidence wherever it leads. That’s what science does. That’s what philosophy does. Stop telling others that religion cannot be questioned.
With respect Reason, you may have reason, but you don’t have the facts to back up your reason. You have simply excepted the polemics of people like Richard Dawkins and have written off religions without actually investigating them that deeply (despite your claim in another post to having once been Catholic). For example, the Catholic Church does not believe that faith need stand on its own. There is certainly nothing wrong with using reason, or indeed external evidence to bolster one’s faith. With Faith though, one does have to accept that not every question is going to be answered in this life.
What most Western Religions do rest on though is revealed truth. Christianity, Judiaism and Islam all believe that their teachings were revealed to man by God. Its a basic article of their faith that the basic existence of that revelation can’t be questioned. Even then, there are many rational members of these faiths who would be willing to be proved wrong if the evidence was presented to them. But, the standard of proof is naturally set very high.
The whole reaction in this thread is typical of religious people. Wake up from your self-imposed nightmare. An intelligent person has no need of imaginary gods in order to live a respectful, moral life. Who gives us the morals? Even if there was some kind of god-being doing so, causing the “natural law”, why would he/she care one fig’s leaf about people worshiping or believing in him/her?
I agree that an intelligent person has no need of imaginary gods, but we are pretty sure that God isn’t imaginary.
If morality/natural law actually exists, and is not merely a human construct, then there has to be a source of that “natural law”. Further, who defines what are great morals? If God does not exist, then morality is based on utilitarian standards. I am good because if I am not, I will be punished. The problem with utilitarianism is that it breaks down when rises above the power of others to punish him. If Bill Gates is selfish, who are we to say he is wrong?
Further, modern science tells us that the Universe and everything in it had a distinct beginning. It seems hard for me to believe that it just emerged from nothing. Yes there is super string theory, but frankly that is no more testable than the God Hypothesis (and likely will remain untestable for the forseeable future).
But religions never are able to yield to enlightenment. Inevitably, fundamentalism brings them back to be mired in outdated thinking, and this is why all religions have a limited lifespan. At some point, they are all replaced by something new which is more suited to where human civilization has progressed to that point, because they cannot stand the test of time. It might take 2000 years or so, but it’s inevitable. Past history shows this.
Obviously enlightenment is in the eye of the beholder. Lenin would have claimed that those who did not embrace Marxist ideology were unenlightened and that the “enlightened” Marxists were perfectly justified in killing the “unenlightened”.
Regarding past history showing the limited lifespan of religion… I have to point out that some “modern” religions have origins that stretch back to the beginning of history. The Earliest forms of Judiaism are at least 3200 years old (from around the time of the Exodus) and maybe 3500 years old. Hindu beliefs can trace their origins back to the depts of pre-history. Despite your claims to the contrary, the big religions show no sign of going anywhere soon.
Morality based not on fear of a vengeful god, but one based on our shared love of humankind and the universe we live in. Now there’s a radical idea. I think I’ve heard this before. It may have been said by someone about 2000 years ago, before religious people horribly garbled it by trying to make it fit with their preconceived mystical ideas (in a time of ignorance when only spirits, gods and demons could account for things happening to people). It’s time to grow up now.
I will grant that some people have always twisted religion to meet their own preconceived notions of how things should be. Then again, there has also been people willing to the same thing with science). However, we also need to remember that there is a distinction between a God that loves us and one that is overly permissive of our actions. Alot of people who Reject the Church believe the second one should be the first one.
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Bill
They tested the DNA found in the ossuary they believe may be Jesus’s and compared it to the one they think may be Mary Magdaline’s.