<p>That is a huge lie. You think that all of science was funded by atheists? Reality check – the idea of a totally atheistic state is total bunk for most of history. Religion funded science, and philosophers from almost EVERY major religion have considered science incredibly important. Consider Hildegaard von Bingen, who is literally one of the most awesome people who has ever lived.</p>
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<p>Wrong – only fundamentalist Christianity.</p>
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<p>Wrong – only fundamentalist Christianity.</p>
<p>Fundamentalist = literal interpreter of the Bible, BTW.</p>
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<p>You are obviously incapable of an internally consistent post, because here you have stated that science has not proven or disproven the soul. So science by immediate consequence does NOT contradict religion.</p>
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<p>By construction, the designer always IS. Before we were, God IS.</p>
<p>“That is a huge lie. You think that all of science was funded by atheists? Reality check – the idea of a totally atheistic state is total bunk for most of history.”</p>
<p>Are you familiar with the inquisition? Galileio? Yes, these are indeed extreme examples and there have been great religious figures involved in science, but its also false to say that there is NO CONFLICT.</p>
<p>“Wrong – only fundamentalist Christianity.”</p>
<p>You can’t cherrypick what you want to believe in. Some you interpret literally some you don’t. That, my friend, is true inconsistency. Accepting some part of the bible while rejecting Leviticus is intellectual cowardice. Is there a manual, some sort of pre-bible reading instruction, that tells which passage to follow word to word and which to twist to fit the prevalent world view?</p>
<p>“By construction, the designer always IS. Before we were, God IS.”</p>
<p>And here you part ways with reason, and become one with blind faith. This isn’t even a logical argument.</p>
<p>“You are obviously incapable of an internally consistent post”</p>
<p>How you are so adept at finding consistency (or lack of it) in my post but see no imperfection in the Bible is baffling? Perhaps you ought to read it again with the same level of skepticism that you read my post.</p>
<p>You misunderstand history if you say that. Those cases were not Christianity vs. Science, but Those in Power vs. new ideas. That always has and always will be the case, where the Powers that Be in the academic world try to suppress new ideas.</p>
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<p>There’s a lot of debate on that, but it’s true that it’s mostly the “fundamentalists” (read: people who believe the bible is true). I’m one of those, but not so much because of faith as because I’m not satisfied with the evidence, considering the considerable flaws of the methods used.</p>
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<p>And evolution is a bunch of nonsense. Again, if there were valid evidence for it I’d accept it. I’ve thus far assumed Genesis to be largely literal, but god didn’t tell me that, that’s just my guess based on the evidence I see.</p>
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<p>How should science be expected to find proof of the soul? If it exists, it’s not something that can be isolated and put in a test tube.</p>
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<p>The ark account is quite reasonable, is you consider its size and the fact that far fewer species than those present today would need to be on the ark. For example, all the varieties of dog and wolf we see today likely descended from just one or two species.</p>
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<p>Except that a theory of the universe without a god is insoluble. You encounter exactly the same difficulty attempting to explain what caused the Big Bang, and what caused that, etc. Except that you have limited yourself to causes that are themself bound by the natural laws of the universe… And you still can’t explain where those laws came from! Both god and no god are logically impossible. Our only option is then to assume there is something we do not know about the universe, and then try to determine by observation which theory best explains the state of things today.</p>
<p>Yes, there is. It’s called the rest of the bible. Any work stops making sense when you pick out single sections and fail to consider the whole. That is what a LOT of christian sects have done over the centuries, not to mention nonbelievers.</p>
<p>You mean Galileo? I’m supposed to be convinced on the basis of ONE incident when you can’t even spell the NAME of the person involved?</p>
<p>He was one situation, and, as already mentioned, it was not solely a religious issue. He is the exception, not the rule.</p>
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<p>It’s not intellectual cowardice at all. Your refusal to understand the implications of different beliefs system is just your ignorance imposing limits on your thinking. Many Christian denominations also accept divine revelation and a metaphorical nature to SOME elements of the Bible (and a historical context as well). So taking Jesus’ words in a more literal than Genesis is not problematic at all, at least in the intellectual sense.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, all of this is irrelevant because there is a larger issue here – NOT ALL CHRISTIANS BELIEVE IN A LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF GENESIS. It’s bolded so you don’t lose sight of why your statement was asinine.</p>
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<p>Irrelevant. All that matters is that it is not inconsistent with science.</p>
<p>Actually, he wasn’t the exception, he was an example of the rule. But not the rule gedion is thinking. He was an example of the rule that those currently holding intellectual power over others will lie, suppress facts, and indoctrinate the population in order to maintain that power.</p>
<p>Wrong. As you have already been informed, this is a view supported nowhere in the Bible. Rather, extremists have extrapolated and made it seem to the non-Christian community as if this is the only communicable truth found in the ancient texts.</p>
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<p>Again, false. Evolution actually strengthens the argument of creation or intelligent design, as it would have been more than reasonable for an all-powerful being to create all organisms, which then evolved into the multiplicity of life forms we have today.</p>
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<p>Give it a rest here, please. Science hasn’t disproved the soul’s existence either. Furthermore, such a statement means to say that various scientific theories, like evolution, can be considered false because they have not been validated beyond even the smallest doubt.</p>
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<p>Oh, really? What an astute observation.</p>
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<p>Let me get this straight. Because the inclusion of God in any system of thought when viewing the universe is more complex than exclusion, it is not worth the time nor the effort to consider it?</p>
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<p>What’s illogical? The fact that he is adhering to the actual tenets of intelligent design, which you elided from your scattered explanations and equivocations?</p>
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<p>The conflict created is from the inherent tendency within humans to forcefully construe facts to their fictions. It does not arise out of a genuine clash between the basic actualities in either science or religion.</p>
<p>Science wins on the basis of reasoning and logic. Religion uses blind faith and tells people to accept exactly what they are told without question. Who are we to believe everything the Bible says? It may be inspired by God, but it is written by people just as mistake-prone as any of us. It says “Love your neighbor, hate your enemy” in one spot and “love your neighbor AND your enemy” in another. So HOW do you follow what the Bible says then??</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, I believe in God. I’m a Catholic, but I think of myself as more of an agnostic who likes the Catholic ceremonies and the (general) messages the Church preaches. But I hate that in any religion, we are supposed to follow specific rules set down by a bunch of fallible people. It’s one thing to follow the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule, which are general rules that leave room for our own interpretation. But all of the specific laws, like not being able to eat meat on Friday (started in the middle ages by a bribe in order to promote the fishing industry)? Are they REALLY necessary?</p>
<p>So I support science. Science does not try to be 100% perfect, but it tries to make a claim with as much confidence as possible and reject false claims instead. Science brings proof and evidence and logic and does not use circular reasoning (aka “God exists because the world was created by God”).</p>
<p>But when it comes to creationism vs. evolution, I am staunchly in favor of evolution. I think that it is just plain ignorant to be an extremist creationist. Just because the Bible says that the world was created 6,000 years ago and everything today is exactly the same as it was then, doesn’t mean it’s true, since the Bible isn’t always the correct answer (back to the “hate your enemy” vs. “love your enemy” contradiction). There are dozens of experiments and studies that all make perfect sense that support evolution.</p>
<p>By looking at the whole, instead of little quotes.</p>
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<p>No, they aren’t. And there is no biblical basis for them.</p>
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<p>I agree. Circular reasoning is flawed when used by Christians and Atheists.</p>
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<p>Such as? Creation/Evolution isn’t a religious issue for me, but scientifically I am epicly unconvinced that all organisms evolved from random molecules. Virtually all the evidence I am aware of points towards a world created with a massively diverse gene pool, that has since been subdivided by Natural Selection. Evolution goes downwards, not upwards.</p>
<p>It really depends on the values/belief system that you’re looking through.</p>
<p>If you value materialism and natural well-being then science may be more important for you, because it produces useful technology.</p>
<p>However if you value contentness and purpose in life then religion is more important.</p>
<p>For me, my personal relationship with Jesus is more important.</p>
<p>And 2Chill, why do you consider reasoning to be more important than faith? What’s the point of reasoning if you might not even believe what you reason out?</p>
<p>How does religion still prevail in the 21st century? That is what boggles me.</p>
<p>And to reply to someone who posted earlier (3rd page, I believe), yes, I do wholeheartedly believe that society can function in an orderly and moral fashion without religion. We already do, to a large extent in many places (e.g. Europe).</p>
<p>Regarding evolution and God: evolution could very well be the way God developed the species. Evolution is the process of change, while creation is process of going from non existence to existence. They’re two different things</p>
<p>Regarding age of the earth: Perhaps that is in God time. Time is the 4th dimension. What if there were a fifth dimension in which God resided, or perhaps God could intersect with our universe’s timeline at infinitely many points (this would also grant him omniscience). This plane on which God theoretically resides in may have a time scale very different from an earthly one. </p>
<p>That is one argument I have heard at least. I do not know if physics would permit it, but it seems reasonable. All in all, God is a belief, something that can not be proved objectively. All we can do is determine if God may exist, not ascertain whether he does or not. God is a belief, and as such, can not be proven or disproven with science.</p>
<p>PS: If talking about religion in general, consider the Arabs, who greatly advanced science and math in the 12-13th centuries, all while being devoutly religious. This ended with the rampage of the much more irreligious Mongols. Religion and science can coexist, they don’t always do so perfectly or even at all, but there is nothing inherent (I believe) in one that prohibits belief in the other.</p>
<p>^ There are several postulations, both as rigorously defined descriptions and just curious possibilities, of the existence of multiple time dimensions, mostly based on M-Theory and its associated supersymmetry. However, they’re very tentative and border on the philosophical or metaphysical. The ideas are also not as similar to conventional understandings of time as one would initially hope for. One of the more recent ideas is described in what was authored 2T-physics.</p>
<p>Omniscience can be scientifically explained. Hypothetically speaking, if a being were to know the quantum wave functions of all particles in the universe, then that being would be omniscient, as those probability waves will become as deterministic as those formulae found in classical physics. That would call into question the concept of free-will, however, not to mention the fact that the process of determination is much more complicated than it sounds.</p>
<p>And religious figures certainly did bring a lot to the table in terms of knowledge and thought. St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas are synonymous with philosophy and theology. The Big Bang Theory was initially proposed by a Belgian priest. Not to mention the countless other figures of countless other religions who have made far more contributions to science than the average militant atheist. Similar to the countless other atheists and agnostics who have mulled over the fundamentals of religion far more rigorously than many fundamentalists.</p>
<p>That’s true. It is possible, going by the bible alone, for evolution to be true. However, it isn’t supported by the evidence we observe in the real world. Also, the biblical account makes more sense when interpreted in terms of created diversity devolving over a fairly short time than in terms of created chaos evolving over 6 billion years. I prefer when possible to take the simple explanation, and only switch to complex metaphorical interpretation when there is a very good reason to do so.</p>
<p>I don’t believe in determinism. I believe that beings in the order (or orders) of god, angels, and human souls are not bound by natural laws of cause and effect. They are also able to interact with the natural world (in the case of humans, through the animal Homo Sapiens) thus allowing actual choice to take place. That’s the difference between a person and a computer: a person can actually choose between two options, while the seeming choice of the computer is actually determined by the previous state of its molecules. What side of that equation animals are on is impossible for us to determine without being an animal.</p>
<p>Dear me, even the Christian posters don’t agree on some matters. One interprets literally the other twists.</p>
<p>Baelor, I dare you to again tell me where you get the guideline to interpret some of it literally the rest metaphorically? I doubt you will find any, instead you’ll yet again try to distract from the main issue by pointing out misspellings- a very poor tatic. And by the way calling secular Europe, probably the most advanced region of the world, and the cradle of Western civilization not moral or orderly is arrogant and another sign of your willingness to eschew reason to promote your religion.</p>
<p>@MosbyMarion Thank you. You’re honesty about interpreting the Bible literally was refreshing and a far clearer explanation than the Baelor’s mixture of vague explanations and subtle insults. Concerning your skepticism of radioactive dating, I think if there is any imperfection with this method the error will probably be a couple of thousand years, which still isn’t enough to close the gap between 6 billion years and 6 thousand years. I would also like to ask you why you believe in the Christian God and not Allah or Thor or Zeus? Don’t you think that different faiths are primarily products of culture rather than the existence of a particular God? Arab countries believe in Allah, western countries and their colonies believe in the Christian God, all with the same fervor…</p>