Faith in God is a denial that humans can grow up...

I looked at the thread that was cross posted from the science forum with blatant dismay. Its a profound statement to say that humans can never understand something. Many people in the past have predicted that people learned all they can learn, discovered all that we can discover, and they were proven wrong, time and again.

Humans have great potential, but we act, far too often as if we are living in the basement of our father's house, and he doesn't even exist. As the roof is in disrepair, the bills piling up, we claim he will come back to make things right, and refuse to leave the basement. Is this how we are to act? To rely on a being who's existence can't even be proven?

Faith is a powerful thing, as many say, faith can sustain us, but that's all it can do, it keeps us in stasis, waiting for the moment of redemption or salvation. Yet is this what we want our lives to be defined by? I say no, I want to leave my children a better, more wondrous world than the one I live in today. I want them to live longer, healthier lives than my generation may ever reach. I want them to reach beyond the potential and limits we set for ourselves today.

Are we perfect beings? No, we are human, we stumble, we fall, and we make mistakes, but we also learn from those mistakes, and we catch ourselves when we fall. We need to understand one thing, throughout all of human history, we stood on our own two feet, as individuals, and as a species. Isaac Newton said he stood on the shoulder of giants, but those giants were humans, just like him, just like us. Our potential as a species should never be arbitrarily limited by ourselves.

We handicap ourselves, we take the machete and cut ourselves off right at the feet, and then we wonder why we can't reach even the lowest branches of the tree to grasp some apples. We are human, we have done something no other species on this planet as done, we are building civilization. We are now, finally, learning what that actually means, its not the tall buildings, the busy roads, no, its learning that we are all family, all of us whipping around on the 3rd rock from the Sun, insignificant on the cosmic scale, but important to each other.

The meaning of existence, the definition we have for ourselves should not be something we believe came from ancient superstitions or beliefs, beliefs that we are the center of the universe, the pinnacle of creation. No, we need a definition for ourselves that is more basic, one that comes from within, rather that handed to us from without. Look to the stars in wonder, yes, but realize that we aren't alone, for at the very least, we have each other, do we need anything more than that?

:yourock:

In the episode One Day, One Room, from an exchange between House and a rape victim, Eve:

House: If you believe in eternity, then life is irrelevant. The same way a bug is irrelevant in comparison to the universe.
Eve: If you don't believe in eternity, then what you do here is irrelevant.
House: Your actions here are all that matters.
Eve: Then nothing matters. There's no ultimate consequence. I couldn't live like that.

I'm struggling with that exchange from both sides. If House is right, then what we do here on Earth, now, is all that matters. If Eve is right, then nothing matters. One day I'm on House's side, the rational side. The next day I'm on Eve's side, the irrational side.

Ugh.

But I like what you wrote. It makes absolute perfect sense. We can all do things, learn things, and achieve things without divine intervention.

On the scale of the universe there is only an imperceptible difference between us and a bug.

Of course there are some implications of quantum physics that suggest that the universe would not exist but for the fact that there is an intelligence to observe it.

http://quantumenigma.com/

we are also irrelevant to a rock near a pond, I don't see many people agonizing over asking whether we are relevant to the rock. No, we do have relevance, to each other, and that's more important than our relevance to the universe.

We may or may not be relevant, our opinion isn't going to make any difference to the reality either way so I don't worry about it.

the thing is that we don't experience ourselves, most of the time. Our children do. Our actions today are what matter, they are the only thing that matter, because they cause consequences in the future, for both ourselves and others. Our goal in life, if its to be anything, is to make sure our good actions outweigh the bad in influencing the world.

One of the most common positions in Christianity is that of "salvation by faith." The idea is that anyone can be forgive for anything at any point in their lives. If her rapist, on his deathbed, reflects on his life, repents and asks Jesus' forgiveness for raping her, he goes to heaven. Where is her ultimate consequence now?

Christianity: Pardoning rapists while condemning philanthropists for over 1500 years!

"Eve: Then nothing matters. There's no ultimate consequence."

Only a true statement if the only kind of consequences that matter are "ultimate" ones.

The impact of my actions on how my children will grow up and live their lives may not be an "ultimate" consequence, but it fucking well matters because I say it does. And I'm the only one who determines if something matters to me.

like God.

do not want to become like God, rather they want to have God take care of them on some level.

nt

who clog up the boards with intellectual self-importance and irrelevant blather. We just can't bring ourselves to fawn over them and call them some kind of wonderful...

You wrote, "I looked at the thread that was cross posted from the science forum with blatant dismay. Its a profound statement to say that humans can never understand something."

It's profound but true. Are you dismayed because it's true?

Stephen Hawking said, "Some people will be very disappointed if there is not an ultimate theory, that can be formulated as a finite number of principles.I used to belong to that camp, but I have changed my mind. I'm now glad that our search for understanding will never come to an end, and that we will always have the challenge of new discovery.wIthout it, we would stagnate. Goedels theorem ensured there would always be a job for mathematicians.I think M theory will do the same for physicists. I'm sure Dirac would have approved."

because people use the concept of "humans may never know the answer" to mean "THERE'S A GOD!" Which is silly, at best.

as far as we are aware of, we have not reached the limits of human understanding, also, there is a distinct difference between the tone of that thread and the quote you have there, see, Steven Hawking doesn't want us to stop learning, whereas too many people seem to think its better to just give up and declare it God, or some such nonesense.

No it is not. You can argue we can never undertand *everything*, simply due to there being too much for any one single person to absorb on their own... but I challenge you to demonstrate one single "something" that you can establish is impossible for a human to understand.

is a powerful statement.

Stupid Newton. His faith kept him from contributing anything to the advance of humanity.

or laws of optics, no, he used his reason, and knowledge OUTSIDE the Bible and religion to fuel his curiosity. He thought he was honoring a God who was the great engineer, but still used laws of physics in the universe. This is in marked contrast with how Christianity viewed God at the time.

He was able to have faith and to lead humanity to tremendous advances. So, it doesn't look like his faith was any great obstacle to moving humanity forward.

There seems to be a conflict between belief and reason in each person, in many cases, we simply ignore the dichotomy. For example, in our behavior, I know plenty of Catholics who use contraception because they know the church is full of shit, yet they still go, every Sunday, even though they may bang their boyfriends/girlfriends on every other day of the week, using condoms, the pill, etc. Most of them don't recognize the contradiction until you point it out to them. Same can be said for many things humans do.

Is it any different with scientific inquiry? Newton did not pray for insight into how gravity works, he didn't wait for revealed knowledge on optics, he performed experiments or did calculations to figure these things out.

The point is you don't know; and you have no basis for your claim.

but in no way does it ever legitimize the obstacles. For example, I know many people who lead perfectly normal lives in spite of the fact that they have varying forms of cancer. Their success in no way changes the fact that cancer is an obstacle and a burden to be overcome, and that is not some great motivator.

Why don't we start with the Church's longstanding rivalry with scientists over hundreds of years. Tell me again, how long did it take the Church to apologize to Galileo or to finally accept the idea of evolution?

Aside from that obvious evidence, there is also Newton's own words and deeds. Newton wrote more on the subject of religion and theology than he did on the subject of science. One quite telling quote of his regarding both science and religion is this:What could Newton have accomplished if he hadn't been afraid of the implications of his own findings? What further works could he have performed, what further breakthroughs could he have given us, if he hadn't written so much with specific regard to religion and theology?

I'll end with this: Any religion that claims divine or revealed knowledge of our physical world is opposed to scientific research, because scientific research brings with it the inherent possibility of being wrong, and of course, divine or revealed knowledge can never BE wrong...

and if you want to forcefully ignore the history of the Church's position against religion, you can feel free, but don't expect me or anyone else to take you seriously when you spout off about how religion is no barrier to scientific progress.

"So, it doesn't look like his faith was any great obstacle to moving humanity forward."
That is a claim. You are claiming that Newton's faith was NOT an obstacle. I'm fairly certain that it WAS an obstacle that he overcame, and the history of the Church certainly corresponds with that hypothesis. If you have proof that Newton's faith was NOT an obstacle that he overcame, then by all means feel free to post it.

Certainly not true. Newton had faith and he stands as a counter-example - he moved humanity forward. QED.

Faith did not keep him in stasis. Case closed.

The point you are refusing to see is that it was not Newton's faith which allowed him to make his scientific contributions to this world, but rather his ability to put aside that faith and in many ways become a heretic.

Faith acted as his cage. The fact that he broke out is no testament to faith, but only to the man himself.

It certainly worked for the Church...

...and the belief that one has to in order to contribute to science is utter nonsense.

Just because he died still believing in God and intelligent design doesn't mean he didn't overcome the obstacle(s) that his faith provided in order to make his contribution to science.

Faith and science cannot be reconciled. One requires a lack of evidence, while the other requires evidence.

....disproves your assertion that "faith and science cannot be reconciled".

But, since you won't believe it when I say it, I'll let them speak:

Your existence doesn't disprove a thing, since you have failed in reconciling any true scientific endeavors with any faith. Those who attempt to do so always find ways of distorting or destroying one or the other.

As to your quotes from Nobel Laureates, they prove only that far too many of us are succeptible to the god of the gaps. Furthermore, I would challenge you to look into the lives of some of these men, and you'll find that my earlier assertion in this post stands firm. When confronted with scientific evidence, those with faith either must change their faith (as many have done), or they must reject the evidence. This is why so many past scientists and thinkers have travelled the road from Christianity to simple Creator-Deism, and why so many so-called "Creation Scientists" are so incredibly and provably full of shit.

The questions that should be asked are these: Why have so many great thinkers travelled the road from Christianity or other faiths to simple Deism? Why did they stop there?

I have simple answers:
A. Evidence.
B. Fear of the unknown.

His theological views were fairly in line with what we know as today as Intelligent Design.



Of course, his Arianism was, and still isn't, considered to be orthodox but more heterodox by some, and heresy by others, but that doesn't detract from the fact that he was a deeply religious man.

He also believed in a somewhat personal God, and one who intervenes in the Universe, unlike the distant God of the Deists of his time.

Newton saw the continued rise of instabilities in local systems and simply assumed that one day God would have to intervene to set things right. It is the ultimate god of the gaps assumption.

His theories on motion are lauded for what they are, a step forward in understanding gravity and measuring the movement of planets and other bodies of similar scale. This has no relation on his religious or superstitious beliefs, NO RELATION.

He lived well before Darwin, well before humans were even attempting to scientifically estimate the age of the Earth.

In the last book of The Chronicles of Narnia, called The Last Battle (quite an original title, I know,) the oldest girl Susan is excluded from "Aslan's Country" (read: the Christian heaven) for some not very well-articulated reasons (JK Rowling, Philip Pullman, and Neil Gaiman have all weighed in with their own interpretations.) Whatever the reason for her being left out in the cold, I don't imagine she was intended to be so indefinitely - an apologist like Lewis, I'm sure, couldn't resist the fairy tale of a good old-fashioned deathbed conversion. What was striking to me about the whole affair was the shocking brevity with which the matter is treated - of the seven survivors who knew her, only three see fit to remark on her absence. The other four can't even be arsed. Of the three who do mention her (two of which were her siblings,) the tone is universally condemnatory. They clearly agree with Aslan that she doesn't deserve eternal happiness in God's kingdom. The attitude seems to be "good riddance to bad rubbish." Even as a child I recall being shocked by the callousness of it all.

The point is not that humans can never understand X but that humans can never understand EVERYTHING.

A basic concept here is that the finite cannot contain the infinite.

So to say that the first sentence above is false, you have to argue that humans are not finite or that the totality of everything forever is finite.

It's not only faith, let alone a specific faith, that accepts limitations on human (or any species) knowledge.


Of course, it should not need to be said that just because I accept that humans cannot understand everything in and about the universe, I certainly do not accept that this somehow means something must exist which does understand everything.

We need to get over the "me" aspect of our existence to see reality.

But we won't. Only a fraction of a percent of the folks who walked this earth have had this gift bestowed upon them .... and most of what they tried to tell us about it was twisted and stolen to sell religions.