Trust science ?

[Areopagite]

Yet most of these, I am sure, believe in big bang, standard evolution, old universe/earth, no global flood, heliocentrism, polygenism, and so on. Most of them, I am also sure, accept most of the conclusions of modern higher biblical criticism. It’s because faith is not now making issue with these things. Yet it once did, at least with most of them. The key is how the relationship of faith with reason is understood.

Of course, I would not claim that the faith ever made issue with them. Rather, it was various people with the faith who made issue with them. Just as you can never say “Well, science says …” but rather you must say “People who study science (i.e. scientists) say …” etc.

Now there are two ways of understanding that faith does not conflict with reason. The first simply “defines” any alleged truth of reason conflicting with faith as contrary to reason. Obviously this is the “no true Scotsman” fallacy which makes “no conflict between faith and reason” a meaningless tautology.

What the Church says is that “Faith and Reason cannot contradict each other and both be true.” Now if it “turns out” that faith and reason do conflict, then faith must be discarded and reason upheld. Now, since Catholics believe the faith to be true and reason to true, hence it would be right for them to say faith and reason do not contradict each other. This is in contrast to what Muslims and some Protestants claim. They say that faith and reason can both be true and yet contradict each other.

Now, if you witness an event, would you not say that any alleged truth of reason which contradicts what you saw be contrary to reason? What would you say to that?

The second gives reason some autonomy and makes the claim that the tools of reason, properly applied but without an a priori commitment to faith, will not result in the conclusion of something contrary to faith. This now makes faith falsifiable by reason and thus subject to its methodologies to be able to deny the claim of falsification.

Would you claim the same thing about an event you witnessed? Is it ever reasonable for you to distrust things you see, and hence make them falsifiable by reason, etc.?

The scientific method simply means the inductive method of reasoning in which inferences are made from observations.

Right, but what did you mean by “science” when you said, “Faith is subject to science and the scientific method, not the other way around, regardless of what Aquinas may have said.” Are you talking about a particular branch of science or the broader Aristotelian definition?

No doubt they did not, but the problem is that the Church Fathers all believed in geocentrism, young earth, global flood, monogenism, etc., as being of faith.

Interesting assertions. I’ve heard Catholic theologians deny this. I’m not quite sure how you would know this either. A lot of the Church Fathers didn’t even bring up these topics. Also, pretty much all these things are not unique to the faith but of pagan origin too. So, is it really part of the faith, or were they trendy scientific theories in the ancient world, something that the Church doesn’t really intrinsically have a stand on (because they deal with science and not the faith)? I’m not sure. Perhaps you have a point. But I’m not certain yet that you do.

 

[Areopagite]

Ah, but here’s the rub. Protestants and Muslims claim that as well. How do you know you’ve really got that “divinely infused” knowledge and are not mistaken? Is that supposedly divinely infused as well? And then how do you know that? You end up in an infinite regress. So at some point you are forced to go to ordinary means of gaining knowledge. And because truths of faith, being contingent (not logically necessary) can’t be deduced from first principles they must be inferred.

Well, I can ask similar unanswerable questions that pertain only to the natural level. How do you know your thoughts really pertain to reality at all? How do you know everything’s not just an illusion? How do you know you were at a certain place an hour ago because maybe you’re memory has been tampered with? You can’t answer these questions. However you have intuitions about the truths of these things (a natural faith about these things). Likewise, with supernatural faith, you just know. Sure, you could say that such a claim is conveniently against attack, but so is the claim, “I just know that my thoughts pertain to reality” (I hope you agree with that, otherwise you can’t know anything … not even ordinary means of knowledge).

Also, I would say Muslims can be proven wrong because they contradict rational principles (thinking that God can go against logic and whatnot). Some Protestants think that too. But there are some Protestants no doubt that cannot be disproven in this way. With such reasonable Protestants, the apologetical battle rests more with Biblical interpretation and Church History (a more dubious method admittedly but legitimate nonetheless).

Now, I can answer your question in various other angles, but it would take a long time. So, if you can, specify your objection here.

But for faith to not contradict reason it does have to exist if you do not wish to use the “no true Scotsman” approach. And therefore apologetics must use inferential/inductive methodologies.

Well, obviously apologetics must exist if you are talking about defending the faith against objections to it. But for faith to be faith, one does not necessarily have to defend it against attacks (though it certainly helps in several ways obviously).

If one did not have this magical knowledge you spoke of earlier, one should be able to infer the truth of Christianity from the evidence. Otherwise, faith would contradict reason.

Can you define “evidence.” I just want to make sure we’re on the same page.

Also, let’s say you witness an event. If another person (who did not see the event) can find no evidence of the event, it doesn’t mean the truth of the event (that you experienced) contradicts reason. Likewise, if one does not have the “magical knowledge” of faith, it doesn’t imply that he can infer the truth of it from evidence. There is nothing unreasonable about that.

But now, you see, evidence against Christianity can be brought into the picture. If faith cannot contradict reason, and reason, using inductive methodology, would infer Christianity to be likely false, then one should renounce Christianity. Would you agree?

Nope. I addressed this before when I said this:

if your friend was being charged for murder, and you were with him at the time of the murder (and saw that he was nowhere near the crime scene), and yet there was evidence (and even a lot of evidence … fingerprints and all) that he did commit the crime (enough that everyone is convinced that he did do it), would it be reasonable for you to side with the evidence and not your personal experience? No, you should side with what you know and not what any evidence says. Nonetheless, it would reasonable for you to try and find evidence to support your position and try to explain away the incriminating evidence. Right?

 

[Areopagite]

Well, surely you must be aware of some of the problems with Scripture; for instance, the discrepancy in when the census took place. Now of course you can always add this and that ad hoc assertion to “save” inerrancy of Scripture just like you can add eccentrics and epicycles to “save” geocentrism. But the real question is, would a reasonable person, without an a priori commitment to Scriptural inerrancy, conclude an error had occurred? Clearly the answer is yes. Why do you think modern Scriptural scholarship is so wedded to literary forms, form and redaction criticism, and the like?

Once again, if you witnessed an event, and yet the evidence later on seems to contradict what you claim to have seen, are you reasonable to go along with what the evidence suggests? Are you to deny the evidence? Are discrepancies in Scripture really something to lose one’s faith over, especially if the archeology may find an answer later on that makes it all make sense (as is what happens very often). It’s a constantly shifting battle in archeology with regard to Biblical events. They were pretty sure Pontius Pilate never existed, but then eventually archeology found something that proved he did. The claims of historians and archeologists must be taken with a grain of salt. Definitely not too much reason why one should surrender one’s faith to such a fallible earthly magisterium of historians and archeologists.

As for Papal Infallibility, the very same Vatican I council where it was defined also maintained that miracles could be proved, and that these would prove Christianity:

1. If anyone says that all miracles are impossible, and that therefore all reports of them, even those contained in Sacred Scripture, are to be set aside as fables or myths; or that miracles can never be known with certainty, nor can the divine origin of the Christian religion be proved from them: let him be anathema.

Once again, I believe he’s addressing Christians alone. If you are a Christian (i.e. if you have the faith … the divine knowledge of these things), you are obligated to believe that miracles can happen and that at least some miracles did certainly happen, and that the divine origin of Christianity, in particular, must be held as certain and miraculous.

And how have they received that knowledge? And how is it known that knowledge is infused?

God gives them the knowledge directly. He does so whenever He wants, provided we are receptive to it. The knowledge can exist in us in varying levels of completeness and clarity, of course. One can receive some faith even if one is not baptized (correct me if I’m wrong, theologians). However, at the very minimum, one receives faith at baptism. In ordinary cases, the faith given at baptism is very seminal and in its most underdeveloped form. Also, if one is an adult getting baptized, the adult must have some faith prior to the baptism (once again, correct me if I’m wrong, theologians).

This knowledge is known to be infused for various reasons. One reason, I suppose, is because the objects of this knowledge cannot be known by human means. For example, human reason cannot know that Jesus is God. There is no ordinary human means to ascertain the truth of that.

In this case you have more compelling evidence than the circumstantial evidence available. So naturally you come to a different conclusion.

Well, for you, obviously, yes. That’s my point. For everyone else, on the other hand, no. There could be evidence to suggest you weren’t even there … making you appear to not be a witness to it at all. There could be overwhelming evidence against your testimony … and hypothetically there could be false witnesses contradicting you. Obviously, you will agree that such things happen … that a true witness could be discounted because of other evidence that either discredits him or his testimony. Right?

It’s still one based on observation.

And of course the crux of the matter is this: does divine faith hold the same amount of warrant as sense observation? Can one prove this either way? Is not divine faith a kind of seeing (and analogically, a kind of observation)? I of course would say yes.

You have an infinite regress problem when it comes to justifying this knowledge as legitimate.

Well, you should have no problem with infinite regresses.

In any case, what are you talking about?

 

[donsnow]

All you say is true, so whatcha gunna do?

I advise against talking about Science as though it were doing the speaking. It doesn’t speak. Those telling of what “Science says” are NOT Science and cannot be trusted any more than merely someone saying “God says”.

The ONLY thing that Science has ever said is, “we tried this, using this equipment in this fashion, and got this result.” End of story. Science makes NO conclusions.

So still, "whatcha gunna do?

You have only 3 options that I can see;

1. It isn’t a solvable situation (God doesn’t want it fixed)
2. The CC doesn’t want to fix it
3. The CC hasn’t prayed properly so as to know how to fix it.

Seeing that (2) and (3) are not acceptable to a devout Catholic, that only leaves (1). So to a devout Catholic it isn’t something to complain about because obviously God wants it this way.

But in my case, this leaves me still wondering (I am not a devout Catholic …yet anyway). I can clearly see a real solution and thus I can’t believe that God doesn’t want it fixed any more than “if God wanted Man to fly, He would have given him wings”. But that would mean that the CC must either not want to fix it or doesn’t pray properly.

Although I believe I know how the CC could truly fix the situation, I do not believe that I know how to tell the CC anything of what they do not already believe. My inability to be heard (and anyone else’s) is related to the CC not understanding how to pray. Praying is “listening even to the most meek of voices”. The CC has a history of not listening.

But I’m not trying to bash the CC. I am just pointing out that the situation is one where you must accept that God doesn’t want it fixed, or that the CC will not act for which ever reason. Thus you complaining about the problem puts **you **in a bind. It seems that you “should” either accept it as a God (and thus good) thing, or question the veracity of the CC.

So whatcha gunna do?

Hi, James -

I’m a gonna do what I been doing for almost three decades now: protect my faith and defend the faith of the church and other believers. Just recently, I’ve added a daily rosary to keep me going. While the world’s going to hell in a handbasket I try to pull out some of the poor souls I come across in life, if they want help. God is in His heaven and all is well.
The things Ed wrote of and that you mentioned were all prophesied throughout the OT and NT. All this worldview is nothing new. God can use it all to His and His kingdom’s greater good.
Sometimes, I view the disconcerting events that come along as a test of faith. That helps.
I enjoy a good hope in God.
I nourish what love I have, for it to grow to love Him above all things, heart and soul. And, to love other people. Love the sinner, hate the sin.

BTW, it helps to say the Acts of Faith, Hope and Charity at the beginning of my day, each day. It helps drown out all the devil’s propaganda in education, science and etc.

Basically, it’s don’t judge God, the Church nor condemn your fellow man; do what you can; and leave the rest to God. What else is there to do?

God is love,
Don

 

[donsnow]

Greetings, NowAgnostic -

I stopped reading your first post on this thread (#8 post) at the second paragraph, in response to Ed’s comment we should determine who we trust. Why?

Because personal motive has everything to do with anything that people do. So also does institutional motive. That you claim it doesn’t…well…maybe you haven’t been to the schools that I’ve been to.

God is love,
Don

 

[donsnow]

OK, I’ve read all the posts, now…even all of NowAgnostic’s posts.

I’d like to point out that “science” without faith broke loose before and during WWII. That’s how the Nazi’s got to burning, poisoning and shooting all those Jews, Gypsies and Slavs in the death camps; that’s how Stalin slaughtered more than 11,000,000 Russians to purge the Communist Party. I’m here to say that Reason apart from faith has committed more atrocities and killed more people than all the religions in history.
So, it works better for me when my reasoning is handmaiden to my faith.
I stay out of trouble, that way.

Oh? Science didn’t have anything to do with that? It was people doing it in the name of science? Well, other scientists let them do it, so scientists share the blame. I’d say it’s best to let scientists subdue malevolent science and let the church to comment on religion.

God is love,
Don

 

[Leela]

OK, I’ve read all the posts, now…even all of NowAgnostic’s posts.

I’d like to point out that “science” without faith broke loose before and during WWII. That’s how the Nazi’s got to burning, poisoning and shooting all those Jews, Gypsies and Slavs in the death camps; that’s how Stalin slaughtered more than 11,000,000 Russians to purge the Communist Party. I’m here to say that Reason apart from faith has committed more atrocities and killed more people than all the religions in history.
So, it works better for me when my reasoning is handmaiden to my faith.
I stay out of trouble, that way.

Oh? Science didn’t have anything to do with that? It was people doing it in the name of science? Well, other scientists let them do it, so scientists share the blame. I’d say it’s best to let scientists subdue malevolent science and let the church to comment on religion.

God is love,
Don

Is it really your contention that the problem with the Nazis was that they were just too rational or scientific?

It seems to me that the problem with Nazism is not that it was nonreligious (a debatable point to say the least) or scientific but that it was too much like a religion in its personality cult and its political, racial, and nationalistic dogma run amok. I don’t think any society has ever suffered for being too rational. Do you really want to set faith as opposed to reason?

Best,
Leela

 

[edwest2]

Is it really your contention that the problem with the Nazis was that they were just too rational or scientific?

It seems to me that the problem with Nazism is not that it was nonreligious (a debatable point to say the least) or scientific but that it was too much like a religion in its personality cult and its political, racial, and nationalistic dogma run amok. I don’t think any society has ever suffered for being too rational. Do you really want to set faith as opposed to reason?

Best,
Leela

The Nazi State system was pragmatic. Hitler spoke of God in a positive light in his speeches. German soldiers had Gott mit Uns (God with Us) on their belt buckles. One anti-Russian propaganda poster used by the Germans showed an image of Christ on the Cross with a note that the Russians (Bolsheviks) rejected Christ.

However, the Party was only concerned about loyalty to the State, and political power. The racial laws included scientific looking charts that showed the untermensch (lesser men) as having certain identifying physical features that proved their inferiority to the superior Aryan race. I watched a brief newsreel that showed a German scientist measuring the head of a seated ‘inferior person’ to prove the point.

Nazi science received massive support from the State. Scientists were regarded as special. I have read numerous reports showing German scientific superiority in almost all fields. Hundreds of reports were issued by thousands of Allied intelligence personnel that followed the troops in from the Normandy beaches. I ask all those who consider rationality and scientific progress to be some sort of utopian combination to remember the following:

The first operational ballistic missile was German.
The first operational cruise missile was German.
The first operational jet fighter was German.
The first operational jet bomber was German.
The nerve gases, tabun, sarin and soman, were developed by the Germans.
Infrared equipment had been mounted on tanks, halftracks and rifles by the end of the war.
Rockets with intercontinental range had been built.

And hundreds of German scientists ended up working for the Allies, nazi and non-nazi.

Has any society suffered from being too rational? It certainly did. And what was missing? As the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said: Guided missiles were in the hands of misguided men.

And finally, let’s look at the “Godless Communism” that threatened the world for so many years. I spent the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s with the constant awareness that Russian ICBMs could be coming at any time. The Russians who launched the first satellite, Sputnik. They took their German spoils of war and did what the US did with their’s.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Leela]

The Nazi State system was pragmatic. Hitler spoke of God in a positive light in his speeches. German soldiers had Gott mit Uns (God with Us) on their belt buckles. One anti-Russian propaganda poster used by the Germans showed an image of Christ on the Cross with a note that the Russians (Bolsheviks) rejected Christ.

However, the Party was only concerned about loyalty to the State, and political power. The racial laws included scientific looking charts that showed the untermensch (lesser men) as having certain identifying physical features that proved their inferiority to the superior Aryan race. I watched a brief newsreel that showed a German scientist measuring the head of a seated ‘inferior person’ to prove the point.

Nazi science received massive support from the State. Scientists were regarded as special. I have read numerous reports showing German scientific superiority in almost all fields. Hundreds of reports were issued by thousands of Allied intelligence personnel that followed the troops in from the Normandy beaches. I ask all those who consider rationality and scientific progress to be some sort of utopian combination to remember the following:

The first operational ballistic missile was German.
The first operational cruise missile was German.
The first operational jet fighter was German.
The first operational jet bomber was German.
The nerve gases, tabun, sarin and soman, were developed by the Germans.
Infrared equipment had been mounted on tanks, halftracks and rifles by the end of the war.
Rockets with intercontinental range had been built.

And hundreds of German scientists ended up working for the Allies, nazi and non-nazi.

Has any society suffered from being too rational? It certainly did. And what was missing? As the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said: Guided missiles were in the hands of misguided men.

And finally, let’s look at the “Godless Communism” that threatened the world for so many years. I spent the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s with the constant awareness that Russian ICBMs could be coming at any time. The Russians who launched the first satellite, Sputnik. They took their German spoils of war and did what the US did with their’s.

Peace,
Ed

…if only the Nazis had been more irrational…

Is that what you are saying??? I’m blown away by this. You actually think that the problem was that they were too rational? I don’t even know how to address what you are saying. You cannot be serious. (Has the whole thread been like this?)

 

[edwest2]

…if only the Nazis had been more irrational…

Is that what you are saying??? I’m blown away by this. You actually think that the problem was that they were too rational? I don’t even know how to address what you are saying. You cannot be serious. (Has the whole thread been like this?)

They were so rational that they were brought to the United States, England, France and Russia to go to work building an aerospace/defense program for each. Over 250,000 patents were seized as reparations. Entire factories and other pieces of equipment were crated and shipped to those countries. Literally tons of engineering drawings were removed. Millions of pages from captured documents were microfilmed.

Scientists are only human beings. There is nothing to be blown away about. This is a perfect example of what happens when the leadership of a country leads their people and uses their talents in the wrong direction. What would you do if you were a scientist and your country asked you to build some terrible weapon to defend you and your countrymen?

Peace,
Ed

 

[Leela]

They were so rational that they were brought to the United States, England, France and Russia to go to work building an aerospace/defense program for each. Over 250,000 patents were seized as reparations. Entire factories and other pieces of equipment were crated and shipped to those countries. Literally tons of engineering drawings were removed. Millions of pages from captured documents were microfilmed.

Scientists are only human beings. There is nothing to be blown away about. This is a perfect example of what happens when the leadership of a country leads their people and uses their talents in the wrong direction…

The above makes much more sense than your claim that the Nazis were too rational. We agree that people can use science for evil purposes, but science, as a noun, in the broadest sense of the term is just a body of kowledge. It is the set of propositions that we have good reason to believe and the most educated among have reached consensus on. All such knowledge is accepted as provisionally true but can be updated when new evidence and arguments become available. As an activity, science is simply problem solving. Such knowledge and the activity of problem solving is not implicitly good or evil, but the attempt to prevent solving problems or creating new knowledge is evil. That is actually what the Nazis were about.Here’s a list of books that were burned under the Nazi regime:

library.arizona.edu/exhibits/burnedbooks/documents.htm

Including:

• Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Haeckel).
• All writings that ridicule, belittle or besmirch the Christian religion and its institution, faith in God, or other things that are holy to the healthy sentiments of the Volk.

 

[donsnow]

Is it really your contention that the problem with the Nazis was that they were just too rational or scientific?

It seems to me that the problem with Nazism is not that it was nonreligious (a debatable point to say the least) or scientific but that it was too much like a religion in its personality cult and its political, racial, and nationalistic dogma run amok. I don’t think any society has ever suffered for being too rational. Do you really want to set faith as opposed to reason?

Best,
Leela

Good morning, Leela -

Thank you, for your response.

Well, let me preface my answer that there’s not only such a thing as rationalizations, but also such a thing as too much of a good thing. So, yes, the German Nazis and the Soviet Communists were “too rational”. Science run amok.

I’ll agree that Nazism was too much like a religion, no doubt of it. I think that our present Euro-American civilization is suffering from rationalization run amok or, “too much” rationality.
No, I do not want to set faith against reason; I say the two go hand in hand. Let me give you an example. In my emotional but faithful youth, Satan had led me to consider killing a man. He showed me all the reasons to kill that man. I agreed. I set out to kill him. My guardian angel, a thing of faith, stopped me. Faith said, “Thou shalt no kill.”
I had every reason to kill that man, but God said “No.” That man lives, because I believed and believe in God and His Commandments. Reason needs the anchor of faith, hope and charity so that there’s not too much of the good thing called reason.

Can you pick up, on what I’m trying to say?

 

[Ismael]

As a scientist myself, I belive science is a relible tool to investigate the physical (and ONLY the physical) reality.

What we CANNOT trust:

• The media reporting science new ( like popular science magazines, Discovery Channel, etc.) since they are often biased and do not report the facts accurately.
• Scientists who go beyond their field: an example is Dawkins. He’s a great biologist but a lousy theologian, ignorant of scriptures and history and a lousy philosopher.
  As long as Dawkins sticks to biology, he’s great, when he goes beyond his field of knowledge he makes an *** of himnself (like in ‘The God’s Delusion’).

 

[Leela]

As a scientist myself, I belive science is a relible tool to investigate the physical (and ONLY the physical) reality.

There are certainly questions that science will have little if anything to say about.

What we CANNOT trust:

• The media reporting science new ( like popular science magazines, Discovery Channel, etc.) since they are often biased and do not report the facts accurately.
• Scientists who go beyond their field: an example is Dawkins. He’s a great biologist but a lousy theologian, ignorant of scriptures and history and a lousy philosopher.
  As long as Dawkins sticks to biology, he’s great, when he goes beyond his field of knowledge he makes an *** of himnself (like in ‘The God’s Delusion’).

What did Dawkins say that was bad philosophy or theology?

 

[Leela]

I’ll agree that Nazism was too much like a religion, no doubt of it. I think that our present Euro-American civilization is suffering from rationalization run amok or, “too much” rationality.
No, I do not want to set faith against reason; I say the two go hand in hand. Let me give you an example. In my emotional but faithful youth, Satan had led me to consider killing a man. He showed me all the reasons to kill that man. I agreed. I set out to kill him. My guardian angel, a thing of faith, stopped me. Faith said, “Thou shalt no kill.”
I had every reason to kill that man, but God said “No.” That man lives, because I believed and believe in God and His Commandments. Reason needs the anchor of faith, hope and charity so that there’s not too much of the good thing called reason.

Can you pick up, on what I’m trying to say?

Yeah, I get it. You would be doing all sports of terrible things if you didn’t believe in God. But there are a lot of people who are able to avoid murder without religion and some people who are very religious and commit murders in the name of their religions, so I don’t think that the problem with Hitler was that he wasn’t religious enough. Being religious is no gaurantee that someone will behave well, not being religious is no gaurantee that someone will behave badly. (I have seen no evidence to suggest that moral behavior and belief in God are at all related, bu that is a topic for another thread.)

The problem was also not that he was too rational. In fact, he was an extremely irrational person with meglomaniacal delusions and was obsessed with the occult. Hitler is far from an example of what it is like when people become too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs rather than relying on intuition and faith.

You are also confusing “rationalization” and being rational. Being rational is just trying to have good reasons for your beliefs. “Rationalizing” is trying to come up with reasons to justify bad behavior and disguise your true motives.

Best,
Leela

 

[edwest2]

The above makes much more sense than your claim that the Nazis were too rational. We agree that people can use science for evil purposes, but science, as a noun, in the broadest sense of the term is just a body of kowledge. It is the set of propositions that we have good reason to believe and the most educated among have reached consensus on. All such knowledge is accepted as provisionally true but can be updated when new evidence and arguments become available. As an activity, science is simply problem solving. Such knowledge and the activity of problem solving is not implicitly good or evil, but the attempt to prevent solving problems or creating new knowledge is evil. That is actually what the Nazis were about.Here’s a list of books that were burned under the Nazi regime:

library.arizona.edu/exhibits/burnedbooks/documents.htm

Including:

• Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Haeckel).
• All writings that ridicule, belittle or besmirch the Christian religion and its institution, faith in God, or other things that are holy to the healthy sentiments of the Volk.

Baloney. Science is done by human beings. OK? They are funded by outside groups and governments so they can buy expensive equipment. This expensive equipment and the minds of the scientists must be put to practical ends or they get no money. No results? No more money.

Who cares how many books were burned? Hundreds of these scientists were brought to the United States after the war. It didn’t matter what they did when they were working for the Hitler government. Nazi or non–nazi, they were brought in and, in most cases, simply changed employers.

You seem to have this distorted view of what you call “solving problems.” The atomic bomb was designed to solve a military problem. So was nerve gas. And they created a lot of new knowledge. Do you see that there is nothing “neutral” about any of this?

Peace,
Ed

 

[Leela]

Baloney. Science is done by human beings. OK? They are funded by outside groups and governments so they can buy expensive equipment. This expensive equipment and the minds of the scientists must be put to practical ends or they get no money. No results? No more money.

Who cares how many books were burned? Hundreds of these scientists were brought to the United States after the war. It didn’t matter what they did when they were working for the Hitler government. Nazi or non–nazi, they were brought in and, in most cases, simply changed employers.

You seem to have this distorted view of what you call “solving problems.” The atomic bomb was designed to solve a military problem. So was nerve gas. And they created a lot of new knowledge. Do you see that there is nothing “neutral” about any of this?

I do see science as “neutral.” It is a tool that can be used for good or evil. Are you saying that science has an evil nature?

 

[edwest2]

I do see science as “neutral.” It is a tool that can be used for good or evil. Are you saying that science has an evil nature?

I am saying that each human being has a fatal flaw. What I’d like you to consider is how problem solving is done and how knowledge is gained. In 1950, the US Government published a two volume set titled German Aviation Medicine. One of the authors used unwilling test subjects to collect ‘useful data’ during the war. He was one of those German scientists brought here after the war.

Every scientist is a human being. One day, in my example, the man above worked for the Hitler government, a short time later, he was working for the United States. It didn’t seem to matter that some of his test subjects died, he had ‘good data’ that we needed. Data that would save us time and money.

As a scientist, would you order American troops to march toward an area shortly after an atom bomb was set off to get ‘good data’? This happened in the 1950s. Today, the surviving Atomic Veterans are trying to get compensation for illnesses caused by their exposure to radiation and fallout.

Science is not some neutral thing done without intention. Intent is at the heart of everything we do. There is a reason a scientist embarks on solving a problem, an intention. Today, science is a business. Some research centers spend a lot of time simply getting funded. You could be the most brilliant scientist on earth, but no funding and no science gets done.

Peace,
Ed

 

[donsnow]

Yeah, I get it. You would be doing all sports of terrible things if you didn’t believe in God. But there are a lot of people who are able to avoid murder without religion and some people who are very religious and commit murders in the name of their religions, so I don’t think that the problem with Hitler was that he wasn’t religious enough. Being religious is no gaurantee that someone will behave well, not being religious is no gaurantee that someone will behave badly. (I have seen no evidence to suggest that moral behavior and belief in God are at all related, bu that is a topic for another thread.)

The problem was also not that he was too rational. In fact, he was an extremely irrational person with meglomaniacal delusions and was obsessed with the occult. Hitler is far from an example of what it is like when people become too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs rather than relying on intuition and faith.

You are also confusing “rationalization” and being rational. Being rational is just trying to have good reasons for your beliefs. “Rationalizing” is trying to come up with reasons to justify bad behavior and disguise your true motives.

Best,
Leela

Good Post, Leela -

I agree about bad religious people and good non-religious people. However, I do think that our moral codes can be traced back to God giving the Ten Commandment to Moses, in person, on Mt. Sinai. Sure there were stellae erected in Sumeria by Hammurabi and in India by that prince, with moral codes on them. But, those stellae were for those respective people in those respective places at those respective times. OTOH, the Ten Commandments were/are/ will be for all people in all places until the end of time. So, the Judaic/Christian morals trace back to Moses and God meeting in person, not to Hammurabi or that Indian prince, nor any other stellae erected anywhere else at any time.

Well, Hitler and his Nazis also had many books of pseudo-science to justify the belief in Aryran racial superiority. That was reason run amok.

No, ma’am, I know what rationalization means. And, I meant just what you said happened in Nazi Germany hand in hand with Nazi Political Correctness (PC) and in Soviet Russia with Soviet Communism PC. And, PC is alive and well today in the Euro-American politics and science. When science and politics meet, there is corruption of science, reason and objectivity. That’s why PC cannot serve as a just cultural opinion. Our PC today puts our science and politics in the same jeopardy now as the German and Russian people before and during WWII. Just as their PC science and politics led them into WWII, so may ours lead us into WWIII. That’s why it’s best we follow Jesus Christ.

 

[Leela]

I agree about bad religious people and good non-religious people. However, I do think that our moral codes can be traced back to God giving the Ten Commandment to Moses, in person, on Mt. Sinai. Sure there were stellae erected in Sumeria by Hammurabi and in India by that prince, with moral codes on them. But, those stellae were for those respective people in those respective places at those respective times. OTOH, the Ten Commandments were/are/ will be for all people in all places until the end of time. So, the Judaic/Christian morals trace back to Moses and God meeting in person, not to Hammurabi or that Indian prince, nor any other stellae erected anywhere else at any time.

Pretty much every culture independtly came up with some articulation of the ethics of reciprocity. Morality is the not the property of the Church.

For exmaple:
“Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do.” The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, 109 - 110 Translated by R.B. Parkinson. The original dates to 1970 to 1640 BCE and may be the earliest version of the Epic of Reciprocity ever written.

religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm

This “Golden Rule” is a completely rational approach to morality. If I do to others what I say I don’t want done to me, why would anyone take me seriously? I don’t need to believe any religious dogma to understand that.

Well, Hitler and his Nazis also had many books of pseudo-science to justify the belief in Aryran racial superiority. That was reason run amok.

Aryan racial superiority is an example of people being too reasonable???

No, racism is completely irrational.

No, ma’am, I know what rationalization means. And, I meant just what you said happened in Nazi Germany hand in hand with Nazi Political Correctness (PC) and in Soviet Russia with Soviet Communism PC. And, PC is alive and well today in the Euro-American politics and science. When science and politics meet, there is corruption of science, reason and objectivity. That’s why PC cannot serve as a just cultural opinion. Our PC today puts our science and politics in the same jeopardy now as the German and Russian people before and during WWII. Just as their PC science and politics led them into WWII, so may ours lead us into WWIII. That’s why it’s best we follow Jesus Christ.

You lost me here. I don’t know what PC language has to do with any of this. Are you referring to such attempts to humanize people’s view of one another such as not calling people with Downs “retards” or native Americans “red skins”? Surely not.

Best,
Leela