Science & Religion

[StAnastasia]

But why does the atheist choose the assumption of atheism?

Why does the theist choose the theistic assumption? I imagine it has to do among other things with family upbringing. Many of the atheists I know were raised as atheists, or with no discernible pattern of believe in anything great than the empirical. I am a theist, and a Catholic, because I was raised so. Of course, there are theists who become atheists, and atheists who become theists, such as the pastor of our church (he heard God calling him in the trenches of Viet Nam).

 

[tonyrey]

Of course she does! Everyone has a metaphysic; you cannot think and not have one. Read E. A. Burtt’s Metaphysical Foundations of Modern science.

Bravo! I never thought you’re a sceptic.

 

[StAnastasia]

Bravo! I never thought you’re a sceptic.

I’m a pat-time skeptic, as I’m sure you are. I’m skeptical of the claims of homeopathic healing, magic, witchcraft, voodoo, water-dousing, etc. I’m not skeptical about God, Jesus, and the Church.

 

[StAnastasia]

I’m a pat-time skeptic, as I’m sure you are. I’m skeptical of the claims of homeopathic healing, magic, witchcraft, voodoo, water-dousing, etc. I’m not skeptical about God, Jesus, and the Church.

Sorry - part-time!

 

[tonyrey]

I’m a pat-time skeptic, as I’m sure you are. I’m skeptical of the claims of homeopathic healing, magic, witchcraft, voodoo, water-dousing, etc. I’m not skeptical about God, Jesus, and the Church.

Having had success with Arnica for pain relief I believe homeopathy isn’t entirely nonsense. I did draw the line when some one suggested arsenic as a remedy…

 

[StAnastasia]

Having had success with Arnica for pain relief I believe homeopathy isn’t entirely nonsense. I did draw the line when some one suggested arsenic as a remedy…

tonrey, I used to use “Airborne” on airplane flights, until I saw too many exposes on it. But some people still swear by it. I think a healthy dose of skepticism is fine, as long as it does not become disabling or – if you are a theist – conducive to complete loss of faith.

 

[StAnastasia]

Having had success with Arnica for pain relief I believe homeopathy isn’t entirely nonsense. I did draw the line when some one suggested arsenic as a remedy…

Arsenic would be a remedy of sorts.

 

[inocente]

My reply was, is and always will be:

“Considering that God created everything it is hardly likely!”

CCC 42 God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God–“the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable”–with our human representations. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God.

CCC 43 Admittedly, in speaking about God like this, our language is using human modes of expression; nevertheless it really does attain to God himself, though unable to express him in his infinite simplicity. Likewise, we must recall that “between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude”; and that “concerning God, we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how other beings stand in relation to him.”

It doesn’t make sense to refer to God as “a supernatural thinking substance” because God created everything and everyone, nature and supernature, substance and accidents, thinkers, thoughts and the objects of thought. Our definitions cannot apply to the Infinite because to define is to limit and the Infinite is unlimited. How can imperfect beings presume to categorise the Perfect One? The closest descriptions of the Supreme Being are to be found in the Old Testament: “He Who Is” and the New Testament: “God is Love”…

Ah, thanks, with you now.

Except it seems to contradict what you said originally, that if the soul has to be associated with a body to think, it would suggest God couldn’t think:-

Or even if we do the soul is unable to think without a body - which suggests that God is incapable of thought!

 

[Ahimsa]

Except it seems to contradict what you said originally, that if the soul has to be associated with a body to think, it would suggest God couldn’t think:-

Perhaps the cosmos is God’s ‘body’?

 

[buffalo]

Perhaps the cosmos is God’s ‘body’?

Wouldn’t that be pantheism?

 

[Ahimsa]

Wouldn’t that be pantheism?

Pantheism would say that God is the cosmos, which is different from saying that the cosmos is God’s body. In a similar way in which your head, arms, legs, etc., are your body, but you are not identical to your body, likewise the cosmos might be God’s body, without the cosmos being identical to God.

 

[tonyrey]

*My reply was, is and always will be:

it is hardly likely!"

CCC 42 God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God–“the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable”–with our human representations. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God.

CCC 43 Admittedly, in speaking about God like this, our language is using human modes of expression; nevertheless it really does attain to God himself, though unable to express him in his infinite simplicity. Likewise, we must recall that “between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude”; and that “concerning God, we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how other beings stand in relation to him.”

It doesn’t make sense to refer to God as “a supernatural thinking substance” because God created everything and everyone, nature and supernature, substance and accidents, thinkers, thoughts and the objects of thought. Our definitions cannot apply to the Infinite because to define is to limit and the Infinite is unlimited. How can imperfect beings presume to categorise the Perfect One? The closest descriptions of the Supreme Being are to be found in the Old Testament: “He Who Is” and the New Testament: “God is Love”… Ah, thanks, with you now.

Except it seems to contradict what you said originally, that if the soul has to be associated with a body to think, it would suggest God couldn’t think:- Or even if we do the soul is unable to think without a body - which suggests that God is incapable of thought!

                                                                                                                                                        [

](http://forums.catholic-questions.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=8474912)Given that God is omnipotent He is **capable **of everything - including thinking… That doesn’t mean He actually thinks. He doesn’t have to because He is omniscient.

 

[SGWessells]

We now know natural selection is a conservative process not a creative one. The fossil record shows abrupt appearance, stasis with limited variation within.

Even if that were true, which it isn’t (see Donald Prothero’s book on Fossils), it wouldn’t make Genesis any closer to compatibility with science.

 

[tonyrey]

tonrey, I used to use “Airborne” on airplane flights, until I saw too many exposes on it. But some people still swear by it.

It hasn’t stood the test of time like homeopathy. Not that I subscribe to the theory but I go by personal experience. I was sceptical until I discovered that Arnica makes a difference.

I think a healthy dose of skepticism is fine, as long as it does not become disabling or – if you are a theist – conducive to complete loss of faith.

I agree with the proviso that science is not the deciding factor. The teaching of Jesus overrides every other consideration. When scientists claim we are biological machines whose behaviour is determined by physical causes they are plainly misguided.

 

[SGWessells]

Pantheism would say that God is the cosmos, which is different from saying that the cosmos is God’s body. In a similar way in which your head, arms, legs, etc., are your body, but you are not identical to your body, likewise the cosmos might be God’s body, without the cosmos being identical to God.

Christian orthodoxy holds that God is spirit, therefore has no material body at all (or didn’t before the Incarnation). It also teaches that God is distinct and separate from the creation, though present everywhere in it.

 

[SGWessells]

Charlemagne II wrote: “But why does the atheist choose the assumption of atheism?”

There are many reasons, but the books I have read by former Christian evangelists turned atheist (John Loftus and Don Barker) say (and describe in detail) that they gradually found the Christian God unbelievable in the face of all the contradictory evidence. In my personal experience, I was raised Episcopalian but, after exploring many religious paths, including all the major branches of Christianity except Greek Orthodox, am currently agnostic (not atheist), yet disbelieving in the Christian God concept, essentially because I cannot reconcile the contradiction between the primitive Biblical picture of God (and its internal contradictions) and the inherited attributes of Greek philosophy attributed to him, nor reconcile with scientific knowledge the creative initiative and continuing supervision of life by any god so defined.

 

[Ahimsa]

Christian orthodoxy holds that God is spirit, therefore has no material body at all (or didn’t before the Incarnation).

Since God the Son is equally God as God the Father, it makes perfect sense to say that God has a body – the Incarnation changed everything.

 

[levinas12]

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.

 

[SGWessells]

Since God the Son is equally God as God the Father, it makes perfect sense to say that God has a body – the Incarnation changed everything.

Yes, but that body is specifically that of a human male, about 33 years old, that has flesh and bones and can eat fish. Also pass through walls. It is not “the cosmos”, or even “the earth”.

 

[SGWessells]

“There is some kind of awareness (including personal memory) in that disembodied state. For example, saints (who do not have their bodies right now) can intercede for us. This means that they must somehow be aware of what’s going on down here.”

So although still only human, they can hear simultaneously and without ears hundreds of prayers at the same time, and keep each one separate in their minds while interceding, so they don’t get person A’s request sent to person B by mistake? Neat trick. No doubt you’ve read, as I have, copious ideas of how God somehow communicates these prayers to them (which would make them redundant) or they exist outside time, so they have eternity to answer a prayer that needs a reply in two seconds, or any number of other things that nobody knows anything about, but have no doubt that they are true.
That’s one of the problems with dogmas. People have to believe they are true, but since there is no evidence, nobody knows how they can be true; however the certainty about the dogma somehow gets transferred to the even more speculative methods people invent, which don’t even have Church authority to back them up. Thus each dogma builds up a sort of tissue of absurdity around it which, if one such elaboration gets popular enough, or is old enough, can evolve into dogma in its own right, and spawn its own progeny of imaginary explanations.
Wow. Supernatural selection !