This is the modern view - for lots of people, at least. But if you are sitting 250 years ago with no idea at all of how the world formed and the universe worked, why not take the explanation of what you firmly believe as an inspired book as the starting point?
While the Copernican revolution was disruptive to a lot of church teachings, geocentrism really isn’t an explicit teaching of the Bible.
If you believed that the Bible was divine, taking the Bible story as the null hypothesis really wasn’t all that unreasonable. Things got interesting when the null hypothesis got falsified.
Except if they feel lead by the Holy Spirit to use science to do that.
To me science is a toy, much like one might give a child a telescope, spectroscope, metal detector or rock tumbler, that is how I feel the angels view our science that they have given us to play with. For the real stuff we need their help and their highly advanced technology that appears as magic to us.
And that is the issue here, you are trying to use educational toys meant for God’s children’s development to prove something that God never intended it to be used for.
You don’t know that. The OT was written as if God is self-evident, with the ancient stories of God directly intervening given as fact. In that context they don’t discuss faith, because it is not necessary when dealing with an omnipresent God. What people who were not priests actually thought is a different matter.
There is no God and Jesus is his son. Got it. One Creationist argument is that Jesus mentioned the Flood and Adam and Eve as if they were real, and Jesus was divine, so if they were not Jesus was lying which is impossible.
The proper scientific term is a bit rough, and has unfortunate non-academic connotations: it is “nonsense.” A modern catch-phrase is “not even wrong.”
If science can’t study something…it must ignore it. It is of no interest.
Note that this can apply to factual, material, real-world things too. For many years, there simply was no progress made on the double-refraction of Iceland Spar Crystal. It was a mystery. But, after centuries, somebody figured out polarized light, and the mystery was solved. It was believed for a long time that the chemical make-up of the stars could never be known (unless we actually went out there and brought a chunk back.) But spectography came about, and now we do know.
It seems to be hubristic to declare that the spiritual world is not explorable “by definition,” as this pre-empts the idea of any further advances and discoveries. Who the hell knows? Maybe we’ll invent a “ghost camera” or an “angel radar” some day. Or…maybe ghosts and angels simply do not exist.
All those who believe in it have to do is to show us conditions where the appearance of a ghost is reproducible (even if it takes a while.)
That’s one of the (many) things that bugged me about the sequel to Ghostbusters. If that had really happened, every scientist and her brother would be applying for grants to study it.
Well, Darwin was only studying to become a clergyman because he had dropped out of medical school (basically because witnessing an operation as carried out before the age of anesthetics freaked him out). He was a conventional believer, but he had no great enthusiasm to join the church. (Making them into Church of England clergymen was basically how the English upper classes of the time provided for their younger sons if they did not appear to be much use at anything else.)
The voyage of the Beagle was not intended to prove anything. The purpose of the voyage was to chart the waters around South America, and Darwin went along because the captain wanted someone of his own social class and educational level along to keep him company (and Darwin volunteered for the job partly because he wanted to put off actually becoming a clergyman for as long as possible).
It is true, though, that at the start of the voyage, and, indeed, throughout it, and for some time after, Darwin shared the view (almost universal amongst naturalists of the time) that the study of Natural History could be expected to reveal more and more evidence of God’s intelligent design of living things, and that his own study of Natural History was at least partly motivated (or justified, anyway) by this belief.
Perfectly true, although it might be better to substitute “logic” for “science” – see Natural theology.
From A History of Western Philosophy (1945), by Bertrand Russell, Chapter XIX, “Rousseau”:
Religion starts with the answer - “God did it” - Science starts with the question “prove it”.
[QUOTE=1 Thessalonians 5:21]
Test everything. Hold on to the good.
[/QUOTE]
If ‘Christians’ would follow their own teachings, they would realize that very simple instruction applies to the very ‘teachings’ they are taught - validate - if its true, it will hold up to that validation - if it will not, then it should be tossed aside.
Funny thing is - that they actually use this concept with Thomas - “prove that you are who you say you are, show me the holes” - now, of course, in that story, it was proven to Thomas - but why are we, today, supposed to take that story as valid if no proof is available?
This does not mean that they cannot have ‘faith’ in thier ‘god’ or believe that there is value to the “christian philosophy”, but they would soon realize that the religions of the world have but one thing in common - keeping people “praying” and not “thinking”.
Or with the unofficial motto of Missouri: “Show Me.”
Religion says, “Glory to God.”
Science says: “Wow… Do that again. Slowly. May I? Hm… Hey, looky! Rainbows!”
I’m not really prepared to get into Isis, Hinduism, the life of Darwin, ghosts, or whether religion is a scam to accrue followers. So, I’ll just make some general remarks.
Practice of Christianity is contingent on faith, and this faith cannot be replaced by scientific inquiry, because a) faith is an irreducible part of the religion, b) such inquiry is not the purpose of the Bible, and c) such inquiry does not support the literal truth of the Bible, and efforts to skirt around this with pseudoscience are harmful to all concerned.
It is easy to evaluate Christianity from a scientific perspective and find it wanting. To be a true Christian is to believe anyway, based on irrational spiritual truths.
Thanks for your input, all.
exactly -
Not afraid to question “why” it is - unwilling to accept the answer that it “just is” - we may not ever find all the answers - but I would rather spend my life with the ability to ask the question(s) than not.
A scientific inquiry does not support a literal understanding of the Bible, but it should support a literal understanding of the Bible if the Bible wasn’t mostly fabricated mythology.
If you’re applying faith to history (and you know, archaeology is a science), then what is stopping someone using ‘faith’ to believe in any version of history they wish? Well, clearly nothing is stopping people, that’s why we have holocaust deniers.
It really does seem to take unusually extreme effort to sustain this cognitive dissonance.
Some aspects of the Bible, yes, would be supported and yet are not.
As you say, nothing is. That’s the nature of faith.
I’m sure, and this no doubt fuels much of pseudoscience I mentioned, an attempt to resolve the dissonance into a singular belief.
This is only needed, however, if one is unduly focused on the literal truth of the religion, rather than its spiritual teachings.
The most beautiful aspect of blind faith is that it gives you the strength to believe anything in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
The most horrible aspect of blind faith is that it gives you the strength to believe anything in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
For most, the only reason they buy into the “spiritual teachings” is due to being taught that those teaching have some basis in literal truth.
“Christianity” (as a religion) would not survive if it were not for the threat of Hell and the Promise of Heaven, based on the “LITERAL truth” that Jesus was resurrected and/or done all the “miracles” that he was given credit for doing.
No doubt. But my church has better irrational spriritual truths.
Well said.
By “literal truth”, I meant more the idea that casting doubt on Genesis discredits Christ’s teachings. It needn’t.
It may well.
Which is simply another way of saying 'believe anything you want as long as you do so on faith alone."
Faith: Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
There is simply no debate between evidence and faith. As long as believers accept that, they can make-up anything they want. But said beliefs and nothing equal the same thing. Don’t like it? Sorry. It’s a very simple truth.
So, you get to pick and choose out of that “Holy Book” what to believe and what not to, what’s literal and whats figurative - since damn near everyone does that now, what’s to make your ‘choices’ better than any others?
While Christ’s “teachings” in places have much merit, those that have the most are not unique to him - those that are more unique (his return, his resurection) are demonstrably false or, at the least, unverifiable.
Casting doubt on Genesis - casts doubt on the veracity of the work itself, since the ‘whole’ is purported to be “GODS WORD”. If “GODS WORD” cannot be taken at face value - what good is any of it as “GODS WORD” ?
Look, all of you, Jesus of Nazareth (or maybe 'twas that whirling bastard Saint Paul, or even Father Abraham who should’ve died at birth, makes no practical difference now) committed the most horrible, evil, pernicious spiritual crime in all of human history: He made a virtue of faith! And faith, sir-or-madam, is no virtue. Faith is a vice, and a damned wicked one, too!