Know your audience

[AtmaWeapon]

Logical debate on matters of faith is a fallacy. It is a basic fact of logic that should be covered early in any logic book.

A religion, informally, is

a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe

(source)

I am going to avoid the word "scientist" to refer to those who place faith in science rather than religion, as in many cases the fanatical take this belief far enough they are willing to violate the principles of science to support their claims. I don't know what to call them but for now I'll just use the phrase "supporters of x theory".

By this definition, we see that science is itself a religion in which one must place faith. Science does insist upon finding provable and repeatable proof behind that which it believes, but in many cases it accepts evidence that is not necessarily as sound as others.

For example, the theories of creation of the universe in both Chrisitanity and the big bang theory are strikingly similar. For simplicity, I will use the term "creation" and its variants in both its creationism sense (spontaneous generation) and the evolutionary sense (existence of a new species through mutation). Both propose the universe was created from some fundamental pieces, and that only via a specific order of events could life be created. Both have a flaw in their logic that requires the believer to make a leap of faith.

For the creationist, one must believe in the existence of God. For the big bang supporter, one must resolve the origin of the matter that caused the big bang.

We have not found evidence to support or deny the existence of a diety. We have not found evidence to explain the origin of the initial matter that fueled the big bang. However, many people place their faith in these theories because, in their eyes, there is enough evidence to overpower the lack of logical, rational evidence.

I understand the fear of indoctrination that athiests hold; as a child I was strongly warned I would be subjected to athiest indoctrination while in college. But understand that science is not a subject that interests the common man to the degree it interests the scientist. Does it matter to my life if I think plants operate by magic or if I understand how the cellular respiration for plants is done? Is the origin of the universe useful to my quest for adequate income to sustain my life?

Please do not discredit all of Christianity because some are content with the knowledge man has already obtained. I am a Christian and I fully support the endeavors of science, even into fields that could possibly discredit my religion. For if I am wrong in my choice of faith, surely I would like to be informed. Keep in mind that many of the world's first scientists were monks. Also keep in mind that at the times when scientists were persecuted for ideas that radically threatened religious beliefs, the clergy held as much (if not more) power than the governments that ruled them.

The enemy is not any system of belief; the enemy is the lust for power that leads men to attack anything that shakes their views of life. The terrorist groups that attack us have very different views of Islamic faith than the majority of the Muslim world. The Westboro Baptist Church stands in favor of views that are radically perpendicular to Baptist doctrine. Galileo was not persecuted by the church alone, but also by defenders of Aristotle's geocentrism. I would be willing to support the idea that in all cases where a religious entity persecuted and crushed a scientific theory, the religious entity had at the very least equal authority to the government of the environment.

No religion is guiltless. In any environment where men gain power based on subscription to a belief, there will be harsh opposition to a new belief that threatens the position of those in power. You'd do well to examine the path you tread, Beldaran. Perhaps the man with the closed mind is you?

I'll close with an interesting observation by a brilliant man, Albert Einstein:

science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind ...a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist.

He believed that science and religion were markedly different yet had complex relationships that were inseperable, and I believe this is the most enlightened stance to take on the whole "religion vs. religion" debate we see here.

[Modus Ponens]

All that stuff he said

But...but...

Okay, I agree with you. Religion in and of itself--belief in a higher power, or what will happen after death, or who resurrected whom--is not the problem, and surely Kroto knew that and would acknowledge it. It's people of any persuasion that ignore evidence that stands in the way of progress. I'm sure we can all agree on that?

[Beldaran]

If you are religious, you believe in magic. This precludes you from being a scientist and means your mind is damaged.

Science is not a religion, science and religion are completely incompatible, and people who are religious are suffering from a degenerative self replicating mental virus.

I don't hate religion with a personal prejudice. I feel about religion the way a doctor feels about typhoid fever or malaria. It is a disorder of the mind and I don't like the symptoms it causes society to exhibit, namely intolerance and technological backwardsness.

You are entitled to think whatever you like, but you are not entitled to believe in magical wizards and ancient prophecies and pretend you are a scientist. You forfeit the right to any stance of intellectual legitimacy. You will never be a rational person as long as you believe in magic and any attempt to convince yourself or others is just a symptom of the virus you carry.

[phattonez]

Religion is not magic. How can you call this a disease? How can you say that you are not a bigot when you are calling religious people sick?

Hypocrite, bigot, ignorant, and I don't know what else I can use.

[The_Amaster]

Now now boys, let's not call names. I agree that the guy at your collage was out of line, but you're just at the opposite extreme.

And now, in accordance with my role as the Devil's advocate, I must ask...

Fine, if science isn't a religion, but based on solid evidence, show me how the big bang came about. For that matter, I'm very interested in the origin of life. No theories, now, I want solid scientific proof.

[AtmaWeapon]

If you are religious, you believe in magic. This precludes you from being a scientist and means your mind is damaged.

Science is not a religion, science and religion are completely incompatible, and people who are religious are suffering from a degenerative self replicating mental virus.

I don't hate religion with a personal prejudice. I feel about religion the way a doctor feels about typhoid fever or malaria. It is a disorder of the mind and I don't like the symptoms it causes society to exhibit, namely intolerance and technological backwardsness.

You are entitled to think whatever you like, but you are not entitled to believe in magical wizards and ancient prophecies and pretend you are a scientist. You forfeit the right to any stance of intellectual legitimacy. You will never be a rational person as long as you believe in magic and any attempt to convince yourself or others is just a symptom of the virus you carry.

OK good then in my view you are defective and not likely to change.

I was going to pull out phenomenon which science accepts but cannot explain such as gravity, but honestly there's a fundamental difference between what I turn to science to explain and what I turn to religion to explain.

SCIENCE
Let's take ghosts for a fun example that the knee-jerk debater will have a presupposition of my opinion on. "Ghosts are demons or angels and the result of witchcraft"... maybe some Christians believe that but honestly I don't think it's a phenomenon that we should look to religion to solve for us. There's notable research to indicate several natural phenomenon, such as infrasound and heightened electromagnetic activity, that tends to trigger the perception of ghosts in people. There's lots of research to indicate that the brain transmits waves (I'm going to call them brainwaves even though that's really b-movie and I imagine there's probably a scientific term for it) and though I can't seem to quickly locate a source I'm certain I've heard of experiments that seem to suggest individuals in close proximity tend to have brainwaves "in tune" with each other, which suggests the brain can perhaps receive and interact with certain types of wave energy.

Despite all the research into fun science things, there is no proven scientific explanation for ghosts today. Perhaps they are demons and angels. Even if they are, they interact with our physical world and thus there should be a way to detect the presence of a ghost. If the phenomenon is studied enough, perhaps we could create an environment where we could repeatably create a ghost and at this time we will be able to do away with the ghost myths.

I believe there is no reason to say "God made ghosts" and halt research into them entirely. I do believe it's possible they represent some link to the afterlife and therefore too much probing could be dangerous, but I don't think it's probable. Science is clear in its opinion of the afterlife. My doctrine is clear that the afterlife is inaccessible to the living and vice versa. For thousands of years people have reported the existence of ghosts, and it'd be nice if we could have a special on the discovery channel where in several locations they are able to create a phenomenon that looks like a ghost and displays some of the supernatural characteristics that have been reported of them.

Of course, I'm not going to do the research, I'm content to chalk ghosts up to "unknown phenomenon, possibly supernatural in origin" and let scientists that are actually interested in devoting their lives to that study do the hard work. (Actually as of now "supernatural" is appropriate for ghosts since we have no laws in place that explain the phenomenon, but I'm sure you understand I mean it in the "spiritual or magical" sense.)

My point here is that ghosts are an obviously natural phenomenon, and attempting to attribute them to God simply because science has not found the appropriate way to measure them yet is kind of silly. One day someone will make a breakthrough and we will understand them.

Religion
Every day things happen to people. People get sick, people die, people are healed, people have accidents, people have good fortune. Every event in the universe is tied to other events in a complex way (butterfly effect lol). While I don't necessarily subscribe fully to the butterfly effect, I do believe that the universe is deterministic. If you were to capture all of the events of the universe from the start to a particular moment, then start a new universe and make exactly the same decisions, I feel like you'd end up with a universe in the exact same state.

However, noting the state of every event that affects another event is an intractable problem. Suppose I flip a coin. The outcome is affected by the initial velocity of the coin, its mass, its center of mass, the presence of wind, my distance from the center of the Earth, the air pressure, whether it encounters any airborne particles such as dust, and numerous other variables. These variables are all influenced by further variables; eventually we can expand the problem to that of the interaction between billions of particles over the course of a nearly infinite number of decisions.

Because the ability to predict the outcome of an event is so difficult, humans developed the concept of fate to explain why certain events happen. I attribute fate to God because of my religion. A 'scientist' by your definition attributes fate to the inevitable outcome of every event that preceded the event under observation.

I hate the word 'never' based on how many times something that a famous man stated would never happen has been surpassed in my field of science, but I would be willing to put forth the statement that science will never be able to reliably predict the fate of a human. Such matters are the realm of religion and 'magic', which presumably has as much capability to influence fate as does science.

Beldaran, the biggest bigot in this discussion at the moment is you. You put forth the claim that even someone who embraces and encourages scientific study is flawed for attributing fate to the supernatural. You value the concept that people should be able to determine their beliefs free of persecution or threat of force. Yet you simultaneously believe that if someone doesn't believe what you believe, they are wrong and not worthy of being equal.

You, sir, have a mind closed far tighter than this Southern Baptist.

[Dechipher]

Oh, and at this point, shouldn't this be moved to "Think Tank"?

I knew someone would say this, and I think that's a terrible decision. This topic is generating discussion. Putting it in Think Tank would only take it away from the mainstream posters eye (GD) and slowly the conversation would deteriorate.

Scientific fact is not a democracy. An idea does not carry more or less weight based on the number of deluded people who accept it as holy truth. Do you believe Thor is the god of thunder? Do you believe in Zues? I thought not. Just because hundreds of thousands of people believe in a magical wizard who created the universe does not give it any scientific merit whatsoever.

How can a billion people be wrong? Because people are fucking idiots that's how.

I don't believe that a magical unicorn named Steve created the earth. This does not require "faith" on my part. I don't believe it because it's a compeltely random, unsupported notion. Christianity is not disprovable, true... and that is part of it's lunacy. The number of non-disproval notions possible is infinite, and therefore Christianity has a mathematical probability that approaches zero.

The fact that so many people believe in a higher beings lends more weight to it and special consideration should be taken into account. I'm not necessarily referring to biblical events and the like (especially the old Testament. Any book as old as the Bible has to be extraordinarily inaccurate.) However, I am merely referencing the existence of a higher being. When so many people 'feel' the presence of something, regardless of whether it is what they think it is or not, you must lend that some credibility. Without ever experiencing that yourself you can't downplay it, because that's incredibly narrow-minded.

You are arguing against specific beliefs of religion, namely Christianity, rather than the idea of a higher being. This is why I feel that atheism is flawed. No matter how hard you try, you can never prove that a higher being does not exist. There is absolutely nothing you can do to prove that. Therefore no intelligent, thinking person can say "There is no God" and have any credibility. You can believe that all you want, but that doesn't make it true. Just like with religion.

[Beldaran]

Decipher: Even more people "feel" that luck is a completely real entity that has specialized behavior and they put stock in how "lucky" they feel. Probability models have shown luck to be nothing but a construct of ignorant minds. God is no different.

People tend to behave irrationally. You are arguing that if enough people exhibit the same irrational behavior, then it is legitimate and has factual basis. This is INSANE.

[Dechipher]

I don't believe legitimacy was part of my response. I just said, you can't blithely disregard people's feelings, stating that they are complete morons. People don't "feel" about luck, they think about it. I may think that this brings me luck or that does. I don't have feelings about it, or emotionally respond to it anymore than I would any other facet of my life. However, with religion people do feel so much more, which is part of the problem. They go off how they feel and that leads to friction and all that good stuff. You can't just blindly write off any religious person as a complete moron.

That kid you spoke of in your first post is just as narrow-minded as you are.

[phattonez]

Decipher: Even more people "feel" that luck is a completely real entity that has specialized behavior and they put stock in how "lucky" they feel. Probability models have shown luck to be nothing but a construct of ignorant minds. God is no different.

People tend to behave irrationally. You are arguing that if enough people exhibit the same irrational behavior, then it is legitimate and has factual basis. This is INSANE.

Then why does the scientific community believe in global warming? It cannot be proved, they believe that it is fact through general consensus.

Also, since science tends to believe in the rational and explainable, then why does it believe in paradoxes, which is neither rational nor explainable.