I think you could have picked a better example than this, because:
The Bible doesn’t literally state that bread and wine will transform into flesh and blood - transubstantiation is a doctrine of the church based on inference, not literalism.
Since 1551, Church doctrine has been that although the substance (essential nature) of the bread and wine is transformed, the species (outward appearance) is not.
Neuroscience says hi.
Evolutionary biology has some nice things to say about tribal structures.
Dietricians are a thing.
Let’s assume you’re right - so? Guidance but no answers is better than no guidance and worthless answers. There is no metric for determining the value of any answer to any such question offered by religion. You don’t just win by default, you know.
God forbid. Whenever religion tries to say how things should be, we get a gigantic clusterfuck, because they then claim that it should be that way because of their god, and it’s almost never really philosophically justified.
So… How 'bout that Old Testament? 
Here is something you need, need, need to understand:
Religion does not win by default.
In fact, nothing “wins by default”. If you can’t justify your answers, there’s no bloody point!
Well, I was kinda hoping the OP would come back. Probably in vain.
Also notice that JohnClay’s posting style shows that as your level of christian fundamentalism increases, your ability to determine good sources decreases. 
The answer is that the positive correlation between religiosity and education has more to do with financial factors than anything else.
Scientists are much less likely to be religious than the general public. Even if the religious are more educated on average, they aren’t using it to do science.
Why should it end anything? To think it should is to misunderstand the point of the thread. The post you quoted is simply arguing against straw men in the thread and is mostly either only indirectly related to the OP or wrong.
You are wrong. Really. Your idea of religion does not match the Christianity practiced by most Americans.
Of course “what should be” is more dangerous. It’s the important question, and it is one that science does not answer.
Yes, “Christian” is a fuzzy term. Because the people who apply it to themselves have an extremely diverse set of beliefs. Are you going to ask every Christian to fill out a form for you to decide if they can keep using the term?
If you want to be more concrete, be specific. Say “people who believe Jesus is the Son of God” (or “interpret the Bible literally” or “believe in transubstantiation”, etc) if that is who you’re really talking about.
How do you fact-check any answer to the question “why does the universe follow comprehensible laws”?
The basic philosophical question is, if science cannot approach a question, do we not try to answer it, or do we take non-scientific approaches to it?
“Why” vs “how” is a syntactical difference, not a classification distinction.
A false dilemma. If your thoughts match a religion, then use it, if not then don’t.
“It just happened” may be correct, but it is not a scientific answer.
It’s certainly true that no answer works for everyone, but some answers do work for some people.
Whether “guidance without an answer” is better than “no guidance with worthless answers” is a subjective value. And you’ve excluded a middle “guidance with unverifiable answers”.
There is a metric: one’s own thoughts and choices about things.
You’ve slipped into the fallacy that science and religion must be in opposition. Both can win.
Then they’re doing it wrong. Anyone who uses religion to justify harm is as wrong as anyone else who does harm.
It’s a great collection of mythos, laws, oral histories, and morality stories.
Again, there’s no reason both science and religion can’t win.
Requiring justification is a subjective value. You may highly value justification, but others may not value it as much.
Depends on who gives the answer and what the answer is.
Then why not trust my thoughts and leave religion out of it altogether? Again-What can religion answer for me that I can’t already answer myself with just as much(if not more) authority?
Why are scientists more likely to not be people of faith? Because the louder people of faith have chased them away.
Do scientists return to their faith if they can find an outlet? Yes, in my experience (sorry - anecdotal, not empirical data here). I am a member of a Presbyterian community near a research campus. We have plenty of faculty in our congregation, and many more who attend occasionally. The conversations at membership classes usually start with “I left my church because the pulpit was at odds with my knowledge. I was excited to find a place where there is no conflict.”
I honestly cannot believe you’re serious. Define for me, then, Christianity, without referring to anything that Christians consider to be “what is” or once was.
Just because someone defines themselves as a Christian, it doesn’t make it so. If you want to redefine Christianity as something compatible with science that doesn’t deal with “what is”, fine, but you’ve got the vast majority of the world to fight.
Let me add a second challenge. Find me a Christian that doesn’t believe anything that contradicts science, and explain to me what makes them a Christian. OK, I know you’re not going to do that. But do you really think it’s possible?
And religion simply makes up lies about it, which is much worse. Especially given that the “answers” coming from religion tend to be heavily laden with bigotry and malice.
“Making up falsehoods” isn’t an approach, it’s just making up nonsense. And making up things is the only way that religion can answer anything. As demonstrated by how relentlessly wrong religion has been about any claims it makes that can actually be checked. Why should anyone think it suddenly gets more reliable when making claims about things that can’t be checked? Religion “answers” questions by making up baseless claims that have no connection to reality.
Which is why you can’t disprove my argument by bringing up all the times religion made a claim that turned out to be true - religion is almost relentlessly wrong. Being wrong is historically one of its central features, to such an extent that much of religion has been pushed into making only claims that are so vague and detached from the real world that they have no relevance to it.
If the evidence and logic say that the universe “just happened” then that is indeed the scientific answer.
No, they can’t; they are innately hostile to each other. Science has already largely destroyed religion among the scientifically educated; oh, there are still plenty of scientifically educated religious people in terms of numbers, but the religion they believe in is just a shrunken tattered remnant of what it once was. A collection of claims carefully designed to be beyond the present ability of science to check, because whenever science and religion touch one or the other is destroyed. And since science actually works and provides such an advantage, it tends to win in the end.
The history of science and religion is one of religion being systematically burned away by contact with science until only a burnt out husk remains among the educated believers; who steadfastly pretend that their tiny remnant is all that religion ever really was anyway. And meanwhile the scientifically uneducated believers who actually take the bulk of what religion says seriously outright deny the validity of science, since they at least recognize the threat science is to what they believe.
Um… Yeah, you know what, I’m gonna bow out here, because if it’s not obvious that no answers are the same as worthless answers, and that unverifiable answers are effectively the same as worthless answers in this context, then it’s officially become to sophistic for my tastes. Have fun.
He backed his post up with several cites. You backed up your post with “is not, is not!”
I said scientists are more likely to be non-believers. I didn’t say that no scientists are Christians! It is a bit like saying that adults are more likely to be able to speak than infants are… even though some adults are unable to speak.
No a scientist is a biologist or a physicist or something like that.
I’m not saying science is bad… I’m asking why scientists are more likely to be non-Christians… saying that some scientists are Christians doesn’t explain why a large proportion of the rest aren’t Christian.
Yes, and you’ve gotten numerous answers from various people (myself included) throughout the thread. Addressing any number of those would be nice.
I’m an agnostic and since no Christians seemed to be responding I was finding quotes and verses that might be relevant to this topic…
Acceptance that some questions are illogical, irrelevant, or simply don’t have answers.
This is the first time I’ve ever heard anything other than that atheism is more prevalent among American scientists than in the general population.
Apologies, but I can’t find that. I only found one instance of the word “professor”. I don’t know why something entitled “Introduction to the Economics of Religion” would deal “specifically with religiosity of science professors as compared to others”, anyway.
Looking at one of references in the essay, the study tells us that 39.3% of those survey from American Men and Women of Science claimed to believe in a personal God. 45.3% do not believe in a personal god and 14.5% expressed “doubt or agnosticism”.
Moving up to the higher ranks of the National Academy of Sciences we find a 7% belief in a personal god with 72.2% doubting and 20.8% agnostic.
A higher percentage of Americans believe in creationism than American scientists believe in a personal god.
I’m not sure where your conclusions are coming from.
:smack:
Even there might be some “strawmen” in there you could have still answered the question…
Scientists would be less likely to be fundamentalist Christians or Christian in general than the general population.
I said “people who are very intelligent and supposedly objective” and “supposedly seek the truth objectively”… you’re the one creating the strawman saying that they’re not creatures of “pure” logic and rationality.
The Bible seems to give the impression that the universe was created in six days and things like the stars and the moon were created explicitly by God. On the other hand according to mainstream science the universe is billions of years old and the stars formed by themselves. Maybe liberal Christians can’t see any conflicts but they exist for fundamentalist Christians.
I’m saying that scientists are more likely to be non-believers… i.e. some scientists are still Christian… I’m not lumping all scientists together.
I thought my focus was narrow! I mean my initial question is quite short.
So if you’re a Christian are you going to answer my question and perhaps comment on my ideas (that maybe the devil is responsible)?
Just because studying dentistry and medicine involves science it doesn’t mean they are “scientists”.
“A scientist, in a broad sense, is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method”
I don’t think those dentists, etc, are necessarily going to use the scientific method…
I said that scientists are more likely to be non-believers. I didn’t say educated people in general are more likely to be non-believers.