Science most certainly helps answer many of the most important questions, simply because it allows us to figure out what works and what doesn’t and what the results of our actions are and will be. And others it has solved partially or completely, so we don’t really think of them as “the most important questions in life” anymore.
And regardless of whether or not science can answer a question, that doesn’t mean religion can. Religion is intellectually sterile, incapable of providing meaningful answers to anything.
:rolleyes: The answer to that question is “if you don’t, you’ll be imprisoned and possibly executed by your own side”. And of course it can be repeated; it has been repeated thousands of times since the invention of machine guns.
Some of the finest thinkers in history have tried to do that.
While they didn’t succeed, you should really take it on yourself to read their stuff. At the very least, most don’t make the same simple mistakes in logic you’ve been making. And many had a healthy respect for finding the physical principles the universe runs on.
A few off the top of my head: Blaise Pascal, St Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Newton (actually, he’s kind of weird, but interesting to read, anyway), Rene Descartes, and Spinoza.
Missed this on review.
This isn’t an experiment and you haven’t explained the purpose.
I’m doubling down on the suggestion to read old philosophers. This is hardly new territory you’re treading.
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An example would be trying to decide whether you should charge up the hill into machine gun fire with fellow marines or just lay back and watch for a while. If you lay back and watch maybe the enemy will run out of bullets and then you can walk up the hill.
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Why would we need to reproduce this ‘experiment’?? We have mountains of historical data about such things. Some people charge the hill. Others go up cautiously. Still others refuse to go up at all.
What does this prove? Absolutely nothing concerning God or the gods, and something about human nature.
Um, simply have a war and record the results? Again, what do you think you are proving here?
True. What I’m saying is that with the most important questions of life, science is useless because it isn’t possible to experiment. For instance, if you ran up the hill and got killed with the rest of marines. Nobody benefits.
You can’t then go backwards in time and wait to see if laying back and waiting would have produced better results.
I haven’t attempted to answer this because I don’t like the word empirical because it is too limiting. Religious people have more senses than the typical empiricist.
Actually, I’ll agree with this. Science isn’t going to tell me whether getting married to my old college sweetie would be a good idea or not. Science isn’t going to help me decide if I need to call the cops if I see something scary on the street. Science isn’t going to change my mind regarding various personal preferences and tastes. I don’t know how I can use science to justify my liberal beliefs, or my love for my sister, or whether to accept a job offer.
And science isn’t going to tell me whether or not there is a God, especially if he is defined in such a way as to elude any possible investigation. He’s invisible, see, and intangible, and exists outside of time and space, and is all-powerful and all-knowing, but doesn’t behave as if he were all-powerful and all-knowing…
Lots of things are simply not amenable to scientific investigation. Religious things are specifically constructed as to be impossible to examine rationally.
At least I can take the job for a while and see if I like it. God doesn’t even offer me that much!
Well, I’m not going to attempt to speak for other religious people. But for me I rely a lot on intuition and revelation. God reveals himself to me, as I get older, He reveals His path for me.
Happy for you then. Again, this all seems pretty pointless. You’re view about whether or not everything was a big accident is obviously colored by the fact that God talks to you and has revealed his path to you. Pretty much a slam dunk in that case on your part I’d say as to whether or not life, the universe and everything was all an accident or due to an intelligent super being, wouldn’t you say? The rest of us simply have to look at the evidence we see, since I presume that like me, God ain’t talking to them either…
True, that’s why I try to limit science to it’s proper role. Also, I assume that in some manner, God reveals himself to some of the other people that go to church also.
The rest of us simply have to look at the evidence we see, since I presume that like me, God ain’t talking to them either…