Science as faith

[Duong_Nguyen]

donsnow:
I imagine, though, that you’re talking about something that can’t be observed, measured, or demonstrated at all. How, then, do you know it exists? I define “exists” to mean “manifesting in some way, such that it affects the world.” Anything that conforms to that definition must be observable or measurable in some way; anything that doesn’t manifest in a way that affects the world is indistinguishable from something that does not exist.

That’s an invalid definition for existence. What about the supposed dark matter? It is unobservable. Yet we hypothesize that it exists because we notice visible matter’s patterned gravitational behaviors.
Likewise, the faith can’t be measured, but we do observe the behaviors of people of faith. If science can assert for dark matter’s existence, why can’t we assert metaphysical realities exist as well?

donsnow:
In fact, I assert that accepting claims without evidence – which, as you’ve indicated above, is precisely what faith means – is generally a harmful thing for society.

I said that it lacks evidence that can be observed. It may have evidence beyond science. Like other ideas, science had to advance before it could get the correct picture. We went through at least 3 theories about the shape of the atom before we rested on what we have today. All I’m saying is just we are looking beyond what science is capable of today towards what it can prove in the future: the existence of metaphysical realities.

donsnow:
Religious terrorism, religiously-motivated child abuse, religiously-motivated discrimination, etc. are just the icing on the cake – there are plenty of positively harmful examples that result from ignoring evidence and believing in stuff you want to be true. And it’s the “moderate believers,” the people who aren’t hurting anyone directly and who think faith is just dandy, who provide cover to the folks who do the real damage.

That would be all well and good, except for the fact that the faithful want temporal power – i.e. power within my “sphere of inquiry.” They want to legislate their morality, they want to censor the opinions of others, and they want to take over the world by force in some cases.

When the religious stop wanting power in this world and instead stick to ruling the imaginary heavenly kingdom in their heads, then I’ll stop criticizing them so vocally. Until then, expect wild claims to be challenged.

Blaming us for all the world’s problems is pretty easy. I’ll counter with how eugenics led to some pretty crazy scientists leading racial purges and the like. Just look at Heinrich Himmler en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Himmler. Religion alone is not alone when it comes to having crazy people. Bottom line is crazy people will be crazy no matter if they use religion or science to back them up.

Also who says that science should be governing society? Where does science get its right whereas other ways of thinking do not?

 

[stenlis]

Edit: Sorry, submitted this by mistake…

 

[stenlis]

That’s an invalid definition for existence. What about the supposed dark matter? It is unobservable. Yet we hypothesize that it exists because we notice visible matter’s patterned gravitational behaviors.

You can either observe something directly, or indirectly - through effects that it has on things. Scientific observation does not necessary mean that we simply ‘look’ at things. You cannot ‘look’ at an atom - it is too small for even a single photon of visible light to bounce off of it! Yet we can observe the behavior of an atom by observing the effect it has on other things.

Dark matter is a similar thing. We see, that there is something in the universe, that has a gravitational effect on visible matter and light. We can estimate how much stuff is required to create the gravitational effect we observe, but we know very little else about it. We gave it a name - ‘the dark matter’ but nobody claims we know what it is - there is no theory about how it works, how it forms or how it’s organized.

Likewise, the faith can’t be measured, but we do observe the behaviors of people of faith. If science can assert for dark matter’s existence, why can’t we assert metaphysical realities exist as well?

We can observe the effects faith has on people, but that does not mean the contents of the faith are true. A person can believe he is Napoleon Bonaparte and you could certainly observe the effects of that belief on him.

 

[donsnow]

donsnow:Religious terrorism, religiously-motivated child abuse, religiously-motivated discrimination, etc. are just the icing on the cake – there are plenty of positively harmful examples that result from ignoring evidence and believing in stuff you want to be true. And it’s the “moderate believers,” the people who aren’t hurting anyone directly and who think faith is just dandy, who provide cover to the folks who do the real damage.

That would be all well and good, except for the fact that the faithful want temporal power – i.e. power within my “sphere of inquiry.” They want to legislate their morality, they want to censor the opinions of others, and they want to take over the world by force in some cases.

When the religious stop wanting power in this world and instead stick to ruling the imaginary heavenly kingdom in their heads, then I’ll stop criticizing them so vocally. Until then, expect wild claims to be challenged.

Hi, AntiTheist,

I let this go by, the other day. Now, I will address these accsations, which you have limited to religion.

First, terrorism. There’s political terrorism like extreme gays have done: defecating in NYC St. Patrick Cathedral and dressing only in jockstraps to picket the Fort Worth, TX newspaper Star Telegram; military terrorism like pillaging and destroying a village or launching rockets into Israeli kibbutzes, villages and towns; economic terrorism like the ACLU uses when they make people and towns defending themselves from the ACLU pay court costs, win or lose; the terrorism of science by the Nazis, Soviets and Japanese; and the police terrorism of breaking into a house and commiting domestic strip searches. You notice, I list science terrorism among all the other kinds, instead of offering only it as an example of all the different kinds of terrorism. There’s more acts of terrorism by the above establishments and other establishments, but those will do as starters.
So, why single out religion, when discussing terrorism? I’ve seen many continued posts by members on other threads, to include all the details of topic(s) in a post.

As far as child abuse, that again is smearing an entire religion for the acts of individual perverts in those establishments. If it’s OK to do that, we have the entire education system sexually abusing our children with Kevin Jenning’s pornographic movies and gay instructors of how to do perveted sex graphically demonstrating to 14 year olds at a meeting how to do perverted sex. Now, either both religion and state education sexually abuse children; or only individuals in both establishments sexually molest children.
Which way do you want it? The whole establishment for both religion and state mandated education are sex abusers? Or, that only individuals in any establishment are the sex abusers of our children? Your choice. Do let me know.

By rejecting anecdotal evidence, science ignores evidence to teach only part of biology. By ignoring legal evidence and moral evidence, science continues to commit abominations to this day (splicing human genes onto animals and splicing animal tissue into people with the disingenuous guise of saving lives. As many atrocities are commited to save lives as to kill people.

Moderate believers do damage by omission? I think polititcians world wide do more damage to people by infringing, abridging and otherwise denying people our God given rights and liberties than either religion or science moderate believers. Ordinary citizens, by allowing tortures and imprisonment or execution of fellow citizens in an oppressive regime do more damage than any moderate religious believer. Faith may damage, but lack of faith destroys.

Yes, the faithful want temporal power, in a government of the people, for the people and by the people. There’s nothing wrong with that. The US of A became the most powerful nation in the world as a Christian nation. Now that we’re undoing the Christian part of our nation, we are sliding down to less powerful. Yes, German Nazism was a pagan religion. That’s blaming all religion because of the effects of the lesser religions. Again, blaming the whole, because of the parts. Should we blame all godless people, because some are like you? Or, just contend with you? Hmmmmm?
Furthermore, the secular people want to wield worldly power in Christianity and Judaism, which are way and away out of the secular sphere. Why should the world have power over any religion? As it stands, the God of Israel and Christendom does still wield power over this whole planet through every, yes every, government on the planet. He also wields power over every planet and moon in this Solar System; over every solar system in creation, etc. You can blind yourself to His existence, buy you’ll nay be limiting His power: you but mock His love for His creation and all the creatures in it, including you.

Go ahead, continue to challenge life, the universe and everything in them. Some of us will continue to comment on your challenges, for awhile.

 

[Duong_Nguyen]

We can observe the effects faith has on people, but that does not mean the contents of the faith are true. A person can believe he is Napoleon Bonaparte and you could certainly observe the effects of that belief on him.

I used the analogy of dark matter because has the same relationship as the existence of metaphysical realities and people’s behaviors. Dark matter’s supposed effects are observable but no one can prove its existence.You can’t say that gravitational effects to be more valid evidence than social behavior.

What makes Napoleon Napoleon? If Napoleon lost a limb or a physical feature would he still be the same person? Of course, his identity is a metaphysical object. How can you say that a metaphysical object cannot transcend physical limitations like bodies? Again how do you measure and observe something like a personality? Your analogy already assumes it, yet you deny its existence.

 

[AntiTheist]

Blaming us for all the world’s problems is pretty easy.

For the sake of clarity, I never claimed that faith is the only thing wrong with the world, nor did I claim that science should “govern” the world (what a stupid concept).

I claimed that faith is a bad thing. Which it is. I wouldn’t be sorry in the least if it vanished tomrorow.

Furthermore, when you say faith is bad, and I have shown that faith carried the concept of evolution without codifed evidence for 2,000 yrs and led paleontologist and archaeologists to find data confirming evolution, then evolution is bad. Because it came from the, you say, bad thing faith.

You really have a problem reading, don’t you? I was quite specific when I said that although we might attribute some kind of “faith” to the preservation of some ideas before actual evidence-based inquiry got off the ground quite recently, and although “faith” might have been a good and useful thing in the past, I’m saying that in today’s world, with the level of knowledge we have now and the kind of evidence-based inquiry we have now, accepting claims without evidence (i.e., faith) is a bad thing.

Duong Nguyen:

What about the supposed dark matter? It is unobservable. Yet we hypothesize that it exists

Right – that’s why we have to hypothesize that it exists. Because it’s not confirmed yet. The answer is right there in what you wrote.

Again, things that “exist” have to affect the world in some measurable way – if they don’t, they are indistinguishable from things that don’t exist.

I said that it lacks evidence that can be observed.

If something can’t be observed, it’s not evidence. If it can’t be observed, how do you know it even exists?

donsnow:

The US of A became the most powerful nation in the world as a Christian nation

The United States was never a Christian nation. The government of the United States is the only one in the world to specifically separate religion and the state; the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule are not enforced as law in the United States; the founding documents of the United States do not mention Christ; the Treaty of Tripoli explicitly says that the United States is not founded on the Christian religion in any way.

When you make such false statements, you can’t help but make yourself appear uneducated.

edwest:

“The desire for things to be the way we imagine.”?

To be clear, I meant misperceiving things according to our imaginations – that is, believing that there is a god because one wants there to be a god, or believing in a lucky rabbit’s foot because it makes life more exciting and fun.

The world doesn’t run on your feelings.

 

[donsnow]

You really have a problem reading, don’t you? I was quite specific when I said that although we might attribute some kind of “faith” to the preservation of some ideas before actual evidence-based inquiry got off the ground quite recently, and although “faith” might have been a good and useful thing in the past, I’m saying that in today’s world, with the level of knowledge we have now and the kind of evidence-based inquiry we have now, accepting claims without evidence (i.e., faith) is a bad thing.

donsnow: The United States was never a Christian nation. The government of the United States is the only one in the world to specifically separate religion and the state; the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule are not enforced as law in the United States; the founding documents of the United States do not mention Christ; the Treaty of Tripoli explicitly says that the United States is not founded on the Christian religion in any way.

When you make such false statements, you can’t help but make yourself appear uneducated.

I can read. I just don’t believe what you write. Now, with the repeat, I know you meant what you wrote. That time.
OK, you say that ‘…in today’s world…’ Let me show you what I read: world = this planet.
With that in mind, science has not advanced that far. I’d say that 50% of the world’s 7G people don’t benefit that much from science and don’t think that much about science, because they’re too busy finding water and food to put into their mouths and stomachs; and the ones who have accomplished that, among that 50%, are still too busy finding employment and keeping it, to think much about science in the second and third world countries. So, I presume that you refer to Euro-American science, then?

OK, you say that US of A not and never was a Christian country? No. 1, after we broke all those treaties with the Native Americans, what makes you think that the Treaty of Tripoli is any good? No. 2, the part of America I lived in during the 40’s and 50’s was and still is a Christian country. So was the rest of America then. I contradict you on this Because I lived through it. Just what do think the '60’s Sexual Revolution was against, anyway? Oh, yes, we were Christian and powerful because of it. I lived through it, I know. Now, with Anti-Christ’s rampant and ripping our Christian traditions out of the public realm, we are weaker, more in debt and Christians suffer mockery, going to jail and academic persecution. And, it’s going to get worse for us, and for all of America. Just like I wrote. What you claim doesn’t change the truth of what was and is. Where you been, anyway?