Science & Religion

[tonyrey]

Of course not!

Then why did you state that all the people I’ve ever met who make moral decisions have bodies - as if the body is essential?.. Are there no spiritual beings who make moral decisions?

 

[tonyrey]

Of course not.

*Then why did you state that there is insufficient evidence to answer the question of whether you have a guardian angel?
*

 

[StAnastasia]

So is it your position that the Roman Church’s theology of the Second Coming is in error?

(The Church does say that an individual’s judgment is “instantaneous,” so to speak, in that it occurs at the moment of – or extremely soon after – that individual’s death. But the Church, through Tradition, calls that The Particular Judgment. Conceivably that person’s “eternity” could start ‘instantaneously’ if that meant either Heaven or Hell for that person; however, it is generally assumed that most individuals will undergo the temporal purgation, called Purgatory, of course, which by definition is not eternal.)

The theological relationship between time and eternity is interesting. A lot of people mistakenly assume that eternity is merely a projection of time to infinity. This is to confuse the dimension of time with something that is definitionally timeless.

The universe has been expanding for 13.7 billion years, and the evidence is that its rate of expansion is increasing. This means that it will continue to expand until it dies an entropic heat death tens of billions of years in the future. Locally, we know that our sun has enough hydrogen to burn for another five billion years, although plant and animal life will last only another 500 million years, until the sun’s increasing luminosity (as it converts hydrogen to helium) will increase the solar winds, stripping away our atmosphere.

Theologically, it could be argued that the “second coming” will be when the last member of *Homo sapiens *dies, and the spiritual history of life on earth effectively comes to an end. But that would only be the second coming on Earth. If rational and spiritually responsive life has evolved elsewhere in the universe, those species of moral beings would not necessarily experience their second coming at the same time.

StAnastasia

 

[StAnastasia]

Then why did you state that all the people I’ve ever met who make moral decisions have bodies - as if the body is essential?.. Are there no spiritual beings who make moral decisions?

The body is essential for everyone I know. If angels exist, I don’t know whether they make moral decisions. Isn’t their will supposed to be perfectly conformed with the Good?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Anastasia

**If angels exist, I don’t know whether they make moral decisions. Isn’t their will supposed to be perfectly conformed with the Good? **

If angels exist?

 

[StAnastasia]

Are your beliefs restricted to that for which there is scientific evidence?

No, but I carefully distinguish questions that take scientific answers and questions that rake religious answers. D. J. Grothe says it better:

“So the fact that science is compatible with religion turns out to be a comforting red herring. The less comfortable wet fish slapped around the face is that how easily science and religion can rub on together depends very much on what kind of religion we’re talking about. If it is a kind that seeks to explain the hows of the universe, or ends up doing so by stealth, then it is competing with science. In such contests science always wins, hands down, and the only way out is to claim a priority for faith over evidence, or the Bible over the lab. If it is of a kind that doesn’t attempt to explain the hows of the universe, then it has to be very careful not to make any claims that end up doing just that. Only then can the science v religion debate move on, free from the illusion that it rests on one question with one answer.”

apps.facebook.com/theguardian/commentisfree/belief/2011/oct/14/religion-truce-science-universe?fb_ref=U-x3_opmJJjFi94i72IvtKNo-CFCONX01FRS-32j24XXX%2CU-3G6SOLzsT_kg4rOKIaHVKx-CFCONX01FRS-32j24XXX&fb_source=home_multiline&fb_action_types=news.reads

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Anastasia

In such contests science always wins, hands down, and the only way out is to claim a priority for faith over evidence, or the Bible over the lab.

This is obviously not true. Einstein believed the universe was infinite and eternal. The Big Bang theory, originated by a Catholic priest, George Le Maitre, proved him to be wrong. Einstein continued to believe his own error until the lab proof came along to prove Le Maitre was onto something. The Big Bang theory is consistent with the Bible account of Creation. “Let there be light,” first stated three thousand years ago in Genesis.

Carl Sagan in Cosmos, 1980 A.D.

“Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened – the Big Bang, the event that began our universe…. In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased…. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then as now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum – from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated.”

 

[rinnie]

How about when Science goes against the word of God?

How now a woman can become a man or vice-versa. But did science really play God and change a women or man into the opposite sex?

Nope!! Can’t. DNA will still reveal what God has created not man.

Whats even worse is the people who have this done are considered to be Mentally Insane. Now what. You take a person who has enough mental issues, then you turn them into the opposite sex. Makes real good sense huh.

 

[levinas12]

Incente, I think you’re right. “Soul” doesn’t act like a substance, so much as like a quality. It’s not as if there are a bunch of souls floating around, sometimes attached to bodies and sometimes not. Up to fifty percent of conceptions end up being flushed out of the mother’s body – often long before she even realizes she was pregnant – because the genetics of the conception is so screwed up they are what geneticists call “incompatible with life.” Does this mean that fifty percent of human “souls” were never attached to a body, that they never made a moral decision, and that they enter into eternity without ever having lived a human moral life? It’s an interesting conundrum.

It is an interesting conundrum!

I think that the person can continue without his/her body. But this may require a special, i.e., miraculous, intervention by God.

But I’m not sure about this. Thomists have presented good philosophical arguments to the contrary - that a person is naturally immortal even without a body. Thomists would add that a person in a bodyless state is not complete.

I think Aristotle himself would not have signed on to this position - mainly because he did not have a proper understanding of “person”.

A person is not a “what” but a “who” not explainable in terms of species and genus. Or, to put it another way, Aristotelian “matter” and “form” cannot account for a person.

n.b. a person “happens” with conception - so, yes, even if the process after conception is aborted, the person is “there” and goes to the next life - and, I don’t know how, I believe that person is given an opportunity to make a choice about his/her eternal destiny.

 

[SGWessells]

By using our intangible power of reason. If you didn’t have an intangible mind you wouldn’t even know tangible things exist!

If reason is intangible, how come its use activates certain areas of the brain? How does something not made of matter cause material neurotransmitters to move?

Since God is Love He commands what is good and everything He created is good because without love life is valueless. Unless of course you reject love as a meaningless term which merely portrays a pathetic impersonal pursuit of purposeless permutations of particles!

Why do you think God is the only source of meaning and love in the universe? You are imagining attitudes you think I must have because you can’t understand how someone who believes as you imagine I believe could have them. But I assure you that I love my wife just as much now, if not more, as I did when I was a Christian. Sorry if that fact does not fit into the tidy categories of your universe, but it’s true nonetheless.

 

[SGWessells]

Charlemagne II wrote: “The same problem exists in biology. It will never be possible to prove how abiogenesis happened. We know it did happen, but science will never be able to prove that it happened as a random combination of atoms and molecules. Those who say life was intelligently designed simply have the upper hand. Life looks like it was intelligently designed. It does not look at all as though it came about by sheer accident.”

How would you know? “Looks like” hardly qualifies as rigorous scientific analysis. There is a natural mountain formation in New Hampshire, featured on that state’s quarter, which looks vaguely like a human profile. I suppose that is evidence enough for you to conclude that somebody must have carved it, and to rank it with Mt. Rushmore.
Furthermore, evolution is not a process that happens solely “by sheer accident.” Natural selection is strictly lawful and operates by an absolute law: adapt or die. Genetic mutations can happen by accident, but they still have to survive afterward. What happens is that change is both gradual and incremental, which means each change does not start from scratch, but builds on what has changed before, just as a builder building a house does not tear down on Tuesday what he built on Monday and start from scratch, but adds to it until, over time, the whole house is built. In this way, over millions of years, structures which seem so complex and interdependent that they seem designed have nevertheless evolved with no blueprint, teleological predetermined plan, or final cause. We know this because we can trace in their morphological and genetic history the evolutionary steps which led to their current features, which often, for that reason, show imperfections and inefficiencies which a competent designer god would have avoided. Read Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker for copious examples.

 

[SGWessells]

*Then why did you state that there is insufficient evidence to answer the question of whether you have a guardian angel?
*

You are confusing two separate issues here (a common feature of your posts). There is the issue of whether we have guardian angels, which, since angels are by definition incorporeal, science can provide no evidence for. Then there is the issue to which StAnastasia was acrually responding, which is whether St A believes only what there is sufficient scientific evidence for, which is a far wider field than the guardian angel issue, and has nothing to do with it. The answer to one issue cannot affect the other.

By the way, thank you, StAnastasia, for your consistently thoughtful and sensible posts, which are a breath of fresh air on this thread. I sometimes feel like I’m reading one of those debates among the characters on the Big Bang Theory TV show, where they argue about whether Green Lantern could beat the Flash, or how Superman cleans his uniform.

 

[tonyrey]

            *By using our intangible power of reason. If you didn't have an intangible mind you wouldn't even know tangible things exist!*

I don’t claim to understand the nature of ultimate reality but the hypothesis that reasoning is the product of neuronal impulses is self-destructive. It amounts to believing that neuronal impulses understand and explain themselves…

Since God is Love He commands what is good and everything He created is good because without love life is valueless. Unless of course you reject love as a meaningless term which merely portrays a pathetic impersonal pursuit of purposeless permutations of particles!

                             Why do you think God is the only source of meaning and love in the  universe? You are imagining attitudes you think I must have because you  can't understand how someone who believes as you imagine I believe  could have them. But I assure you that I love my wife just as much now,  if not more, as I did when I was a Christian. Sorry if that fact does  not fit into the tidy categories of your universe, but it's true  nonetheless.

The fact that you state that you love your wife implies that you believe in the reality of love. Do you believe it is made of matter and causes material neurotransmitters to move?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

SGW
**
We know this because we can trace in their morphological and genetic history the evolutionary steps which led to their current features, which often, for that reason, show imperfections and inefficiencies which a competent designer god would have avoided. **

Well yes, of course, if you were God, you could have done a better job!

The fact of the matter is that there is no law of nature that says we have to exist. According to evolution, we might not have ever existed except for fortuitous combinations of atoms and molecules. Then again, I suppose if you found a watch on the ground and examined its works, you would say it only appears to be designed. It actually came together by a fortuitous combination of atoms and molecules … and the evolutionary law of the survival of the fittest atoms and molecules best combined to produce a watch.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

SGW

**By the way, thank you, StAnastasia, for your consistently thoughtful and sensible posts, which are a breath of fresh air on this thread. I sometimes feel like I’m reading one of those debates among the characters on the Big Bang Theory TV show, where they argue about whether Green Lantern could beat the Flash, or how Superman cleans his uniform. **

Is showing contempt for other difficult for you, or does it just come naturally?

 

[StAnastasia]

It is an interesting conundrum! I think that the person can continue without his/her body. But this may require a special, i.e., miraculous, intervention by God.

It would require a constant miracle. Without ears, eyes, nose, mouth and skin there would be no hearing, sight, smell, taste or touch. And without neurons to carry those sensations to a brain, and without a brain to process them, there could no experiencing of the world. Without a brain and neuron connections there could be no consciousness as we know it. God could of course sustain a person in existence, but not in any way that even remotely resembles ordinary physical experience, unless is were a parlor trick, a perfect simulacrum.

 

[StAnastasia]

By the way, thank you, StAnastasia, for your consistently thoughtful and sensible posts, which are a breath of fresh air on this thread. I sometimes feel like I’m reading one of those debates among the characters on the Big Bang Theory TV show, where they argue about whether Green Lantern could beat the Flash, or how Superman cleans his uniform.

Thank you, SGWessells!

 

[inocente]

inocente

Some cosmologists are questioning the first split second of the big bang as it introduces infinities, and infinities are anathema. Getting rid of them means replacing the singularity with something bigger, which implies a time before the big bang, hidden from us by the big bang. Lemaître himself thought this was a possibility. Which brings it home that the standard model is still provisional.

Evasive to say the least. “Some cosmologists” and “a possibility” are proof of nothing.

Le Maitre certainly was not an atheist, since he was a Catholic priest, and believed in the Creation.

Sheesh, I was just passing on some info. Call Lemaître evasive if you want, here’s what he wrote:

We may speak of this event as of a beginning. I do not say a creation. Physically it is a beginning in the sense that if something happened before, it has no observable influence on the behavior of our universe, as any feature of matter before this beginning has been completely lost by the extreme contraction at the theoretical zero. Any preexistence of the universe has a metaphysical character. Physically, everything happens as if the theoretical zero was really a beginning. The question if it was really a beginning or rather a creation, something started from nothing, is a philosophical question which cannot be settled by physical or astronomical considerations.

 

[inocente]

inocente
**
Whichever comic book says you can coerce Baptists by telling them what they should believe, it lies, throw it out.**

I very much agree with this. The hallmark of virtually all Protestantism is that you can believe whatever you like. No need for one flock and one shepherd.

Not a great argument to make on CAF, where Catholics visibly disagree daily on anything and everything (which to me is good and healthy anyway).

 

[inocente]

Since I have answered and you’ve ignored my answers - like many of my other statements - it is not surprising you’re so eager to cop out! Name-calling is a common excuse - but you’re fooling no one but yourself…

I asked you to please explain something and if you did I sure can’t find it. Here’s my question again:

Why? Are you proposing that God, and souls, are made of a supernatural thinking substance? Don’t pass this one by pretty please, I want to know the theory here as it’s totally alien to everything I was taught as a Baptist.

Here’s your first cop out, as you call it:

Considering that God created everything it is hardly likely! Are you proposing that God and souls are not supernatural?

What is your concept of God?

And your second:

Orthodox Baptists believe that there are three Persons who know and love one another - and that we are made in their image and likeness (certainly not because of our physical resemblance!)

Along the way, I can’t spot your response to You’s question either.

Never mind though, my mistake to assume discussion is about people telling each other their ideas and opinions.