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Caligastia
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quote:
Originally posted by Ethelred
Believing the ludicrous because there is a modicum of good ideas hiding in it is you in a nutshell. Urantia is definitly nuts. I know you don't agree but I really can't understand why you accept something that is so seriously wrong on so many things. |
Its "wrong" according to current scientific theories. Until they change of course.
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Smart people can be idiots. The term is not limited to IQ. |
So you think anyone who is misguided is an idiot?
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That is because that is what you do. I don't see a lot of value in accepting things that are verifiably wrong. I looked at the books. Both your Urantia and Rogan's Bible. I find them both wanting in terms of reality. |
Verifiably wrong according to current scientific theory, well we know how reliable that is.
quote:
Now if you want to debate this stuff thats fine by me Caligastia. I like debate. I didn't make any personal attacks on anyone in this thread and even in other threads where I have it has almost always been in direct responce to someone attacking me(I did just call someone a pirate). If you want to discuss the ideas please do so. Attacking me as a person is not going to make Urantia suddenly sensible. |
Im not attacking you Ethelred, I just thought Rogan Josh made an accurate observation regarding your edherance to the scientific gospel. Do you deny that you tend to disregard anything that contradicts current scientific theory?
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Caligastia
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quote:
Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
It depends on your definition of "science". I happen to believe that science WILL have all the answers. |
So you think nothing can exist outside the material realm. How can you be so sure?
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Not because I believe that scientists are omniscient, but because I regard the process of obtaining verifiable answers as inherently "scientific" in nature. If an answer is "unscientific", that means it's pure, untestable speculation: you'll never know if it's an "answer" at all. |
"scientific" answers are also largely speculative. quote:
Similarly, nothing "supernatural" will ever be discovered: if it exists, it's natural. |
In a way you are right, but in another way you are wrong. You are right that nothing "supernatural" will ever be discovered by humans because only material things are "scientifically" verifiable by us. You are wrong when you say that nothing exists outside of what we percieve as "natural".
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If anyone ever demonstrates that (for instance) some people are telepathic, then there will be some sort of mechanism for that: something that can, at least in principle, be investigated. |
Again you are assuming that humans are capable of discovering all possible levels of reality while still on the material plane.
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Caligastia
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quote:
Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
Caligastia:
If there is something "beyond the material realm", why do you think it can't be investigated scientifically? |
Because I believe that as mortals we cannot experience higher spiritual levels while we still have material bodies.
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Modern science has gone far beyond "the material realm" anyhow. In fact, Einstein's discovery of mass-energy equivalence made the old notion of "the material realm" obsolete, and there's some very weird and far-out stuff in quantum mechanics. |
I still consider energy etc that can be measured by humans as "material".
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But science involves making speculations and testing them, discarding groundless speculations and generally working to refine speculations into something more concrete.
If you don't do that, you have nothing but speculation, with no clue about what to keep and what should be discarded as bunk. |
Thats the great thing about science. It can tell us a lot about the material level, and frees us from superstition. The problem is when people think that science can explain everything, and that the latest theory is gospel truth. Spiritual realities are the common experience of many, but there is no science that can explain it.
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...Which reminds me of a radio interview I heard once. Someone who ran an "alternative medicine" clinic was asked a simple question: which remedies have been discarded by the "alternative medicine" movement because they didn't work? Apparently the answer was "none": the notion of testing the effectiveness of alternative medicines was something the practitioners had never considered doing.
This is what makes them "unscientific". If they worked by means of "forces beyond the material realm", then verifying this would be science. And confirmation would lead on to an intense scientific research effort into the nature of this "realm" and the principles governing it. |
True, and this is one of the reasons scientific methods are so valuable.
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Rogan Josh
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quote:
Originally posted by TheStinger
Science at least is attempting to explain everything it may never get there but it will try.
Religion OTH just says God says so and no further explanation is neccessary |
I think this is the crux of the whole problem. Science does not attempt to explain everything. It builds predictive models which seek to explain physical reality beased apon certain assumptions.
For example, in building our models we assume that the laws of physics are fixed and not ramdomly fluctuating. In that way, by observing experimental data from the past we can predict experimental data in the future. But this may not be true. It appears to be true in that the models we have built have been spectacularly predictive, but who knows...
For that matter, they are only predictive in a statistical sense for very simple things. I would argue that you cannot, in principle, predict for sure what I will eat tomorrow. You may make a statistical prediction, but that is all.
And this is entirely on just a physical basis - I have argued before on these pages how the concept of 'free-will' must be thrown away entirely if everything could be explained by physics.
On another level, the entire point of fundamental physics research is to eventually describe the universe in as economical a way as possible. This might be, for example, an equation or a statement of symmetry (such as conformal symmetry) which then uniquely leads to the universe we see around us.
At that point, the obvious question is 'why this symmetry (or equation) and not some other?'. This is a question which 'science' will never be able to fully answer.
As much as I love science and respect its findings and spend my days trying to understand it, I think it is very shortsighted to say that science can or will be able to explain everything.
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Ethelred
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quote:
Originally posted by Saint Marcus
Then why does over 50% believe the events in the Book of Revelation will come true? Hardly any mainline christian, christian or protestant, feels that way. At least here, might be different in mainline American churches. |
In the US Southern Baptist IS mainline so it shouldn't be surprising that a lot of Americans think Revelations is real prophecy. Take a look on this thread and see how many inteligent people believe that stuff. That it was pretty likely referring to the extinct Roman Empire is something they simply refuse to accept.
There is a lot of that involved in believing in the Bible. No matter how clear or obscure it is believers insist it is without error (in some cases without error in a no longer existing original version) and blame the interpretation (or the present version despite its being all we have to go on) when the predictions are found wanting.
The original language version of the Old Testament IS available. Its in the Torah.
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Ethelred
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quote:
Originally posted by Caligastia
Its "wrong" according to current scientific theories. Until they change of course. |
Mesons are not suddenly going to discovered to hold the nucleus together. So Uranitia will remain wrong forever. Show that part to Rogan, see what he thinks about it.
Maybe the part about Inspector Six Digit Number as well. That one is funny.
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So you think anyone who is misguided is an idiot? |
They made the decision to believe nonsense themselves. Same as you do. As I allready said 'idiot' is not just about IQ in general usage. If you want you can replace it with foolish.
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Verifiably wrong according to current scientific theory, well we know how reliable that is. |
Apparently at least one of us doesn't. Its extremely reliable on many things. Quantum mechanics may not be perfect but so far the Universe we live in behaves just as if it extremely accurate. The Universe definitly does not fit the one in Urantian and only by being exceedingly loose can you force fit Genesis to fit the Universe either.
Science is far more reliable than the writings of ancient men or the recordings of sleep talkers.
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Im not attacking you Ethelred, I just thought Rogan Josh made an accurate observation regarding your edherance to the scientific gospel. Do you deny that you tend to disregard anything that contradicts current scientific theory? |
Rogan mistated my position so he and you were wrong.
Now in that present version you are right. I see abslolutely no reason to accept something that goes against both theory and physical evidence. Current scientific theory is not suddenly going to show that humans first showed up as a single man in Eden a mere 6000 or so years ago. Nor is the meson ever going to be found to hold the nucleus together.
Just why should I start accepting things that can be and have been checked and found wanting? Why should I accept the writings of ancient men over modern science. Why should I accept a sleep talker over real evidence?
Both you and Rogan believe because you believe. I am not going to believe in the unverifiable, especially when it is verifiably wrong. This is in no way a some sort of defect.
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Ethelred
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quote:
Originally posted by Thucydides
Not according to where the word came from. Idiot is a classification of people of below average IQ's, along with Moron, Imbicile, and a couple of others that were ported over from the french classification scheme of intelligence and later became derogative terms used to insult someone's intelligence in english.
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As I said the term is not limited to that meaning in its general usage. In general use its often a synomym for foolish. Former Secretary of the Interior James Watt was a bloody fool. I will continue to refer to him as an idiot or a fool as the general usage for either fits him exceedingly well. Considering that two different mileniums have come and gone without a Second Coming I think either term fits the believers of that nonsense at least when act as if they are right as James Watt did.
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Caligastia
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*sigh*
You're like an evangelical Ethelred. Your faith in man's science is unshakable. I feel its pointless even discussing anything with you, especially when you feel its necessary to insult me.
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Rogan Josh
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quote:
Originally posted by Ethelred
They made the decision to believe nonsense themselves. Same as you do. As I allready said 'idiot' is not just about IQ in general usage. If you want you can replace it with foolish.
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Would you say that it is 'foolish' to believe something to be true which you do not understand or have never seen first hand evidence for?
If yes, then: do you believe the Standard Model of particle physics to be true? Do you believe Quantum Mechanics to be true? Do you believe string theory to be true?
If no, why do you call these people foolish?
quote:
Science is far more reliable than the writings of ancient men or the recordings of sleep talkers.
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Now this depends on what you define to be science and who the 'ancient men' were. I agree that my own papers are more reliable than the writings of 'ancient men' ( ) but I have seen a hell of a lot of 'science' which is complete rubbish. And I am not meaning cranks here - some of the authors of such drivel are well respected scientists who are at well respected universities. Indeed, there are some experiments whose published results neither I nor many of the physicists I talk to believe. Their results are a lot less believable than anything in the bible.....
quote:
Rogan mistated my position so he and you were wrong.
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Could you remind me which statement miss-stated your position?
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Just why should I start accepting things that can be and have been checked and found wanting?
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I agree with this statement. If something is testable, then test it and see who is right. But, as I have already pointed out, there are a lot of untestable statements out there. Just because they are untestable does not make them wrong.
quote:
Both you and Rogan believe because you believe. I am not going to believe in the unverifiable, especially when it is verifiably wrong. This is in no way a some sort of defect. |
Do you believe that I exist? Can you prove it without making any assumptions? If an angel came to you tonight and declared God to be real, would you believe him, or would you try and find some other explanation? What would it take to make you believe?
Whether or not your disbelief is a defect is a matter of opinion. I believe it is, and I believe you miss out on a lot by adhering to such a policy..... 
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:21
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I'm not going to bother to read this whole thread. I got the drift about "small minds" from an Ethelred post.
ER, you sound just like Ventura. Do you like to be in that company?
But on the whole, very religious people fleeing persecution in Europe formed America, in part. These tended to be Protestants, who, of course, read and take literally the bible from the days of Martin Luther.
Other Americans are from Ireland. These Americans wear their Catholicism as a badge of honor in their anti-British hatred. That hatred has never been stronger than in recent years.
A large number of Americans are from Catholic Eastern Europe, Cuba or Mexico. These people are very religious as a whole.
Continental Europeans and many Americans from all spheres are not religious at all. Some are even anti-religious. But these tend to be a minority, but a well-educated and vocal minority.
Whether religion is valid or not, it provides a social function in the United States. Churches are centers for people to meet and cooperate together.
Whether there is a God or not is unknowable. Those who affirm either polar position without evidence are equally relying on “faith.”
People who criticize religion, or for that matter, atheists, are bigots who should, in my opinion, bet condemned as such. We in the US tolerate those who have a different view on this issue than our own. Tolerance is the key to a civil society of multiple religions.
I repeat, and loudly, that those who criticized the religious as weak or simple-minded, or those who criticize the atheists for being inherently evil, are equally wrong and bigoted. On these issues, freedom of choice and respect for others is what is to be preferred.
So, Saint Marcus, you are a bigot, obviously. But so is CNN.
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Thucydides
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Screw you guys, I'm going home.
Jan 1970
time: 05:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Ned
Whether there is a God or not is unknowable. Those who affirm either polar position without evidence are equally relying on “faith.”
People who criticize religion, or for that matter, atheists, are bigots who should, in my opinion, bet condemned as such. We in the US tolerate those who have a different view on this issue than our own. Tolerance is the key to a civil society of multiple religions.
I repeat, and loudly, that those who criticized the religious as weak or simple-minded, or those who criticize the atheists for being inherently evil, are equally wrong and bigoted. On these issues, freedom of choice and respect for others is what is to be preferred.
So, Saint Marcus, you are a bigot, obviously. But so is CNN. |
So atheists are only people who criticize religious people as being weak or simple-minded? Or are you being bigoted yourself of people who don't happen to believe in God? Either way, I fail to see how you can without bigotry call every atheist or person who criticizes religion a bigot
As for to the existence of a (Jeudo-Christian) God being unknowable. Of course it is, because Christian have failed to provide a testable hypothesis. Even the existence of neutrinos, massless particles with no charge, is testable by science. Until the time that Christians can come with something that can be tested and when tested shows in their favour, the default position is the same with religion as for any other untestable hypothesis, a negative. There's no faith required for someone to take such a position.
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MosesPresley
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quote:
Originally posted by Boshko
A lot of it has to do with the success of European countries to centralize and set up national churches (even Spain and France, since the French had Gallicism and the Spainish were always into being "more Catholic than the Pope"). The European countries generally had a real cultural epicenter and a fairly unified culture which allowed these national churches to dominate fairly well, at least among the elite. In the cases where there was a large minority church that survived it was generally among a small minority culture (like the Welsh going Methodist and the Western Norwegians going Pietist as a result of which western norway is easily still the most religoius part of the country).
When these national churches went into institutional decline they never were replaced by a new vigorous sect, so when people got around to revolting against the national church they generally went with a secular doctrine when the national churches had generally (with England being the major exception) kept religion fairly monopolized. This is especially the case as the welfare state started to grow and thus take away the church's traditional place in poor relief and education (much earlier than in the US when we didn't have much of a welfare state until the New Deal and education remained locally enough controlled that there was a lot of blatant religion in public schools into quite recently, something that didn't happen in europe where education was far more centralized and secular). And finally since the European churches were generally much more monoplistic, centralized, and powerful than any of the US's thousands of small sects (with the exception of the Southern Baptists in large swaths of the south) lead to a reaction in the form of political anti-clericalism which never really existed in the US since religion wa so fractured.
In the US's case having a lot of immigrants from fringe religions (puritans, disproportionate amounts of pietists from germanic countries etc.) the most important difference in the case of the US was the frontier. It was big, damn big. Big enough to make any kind of centralization impossible until very recently. This mean that while there were a number of attempts to establish religious monopolies (especially in New England) they generally failed miserably since they never could extend their reach into the frontier effectively. This lead to lots of fairly independent churches poping up all along the frontier and kept religion in the US a lot more dynamic and vibrant. Equally important is that US culture became FAR less centralized than European culture, not only do you have the dozens of immigrant groups with their own religions but you had lots of regional cultures each with one (or more) predominant religion. This meant that religion was something that was YOURS something that brought together your community and backed you up and provided support, not some vast hierarchy controlled by the rich and which was in bed with the government that was taxing your ass off (in many cases to pay the clergy) and being generally annoying.
Another result of the frontier on american culture was that it was damn hard to set up much in the way of government on the frontier (much less a welfare state) and it was hard to set up much of a civil society that would give people an alternative to church for socialization etc. Thus there really wasn't much out there besides the church to provide social glue so christianity sunk its roots deep. Similar sorts of things happened on the Russian frontier in Siberia with various forms of Old Belief.
Finally the American Revolution had a lot to do with America becomming much more religious than Europe. Contrary to bull **** Christian propaganda the Founding Fathers were EXTREMALLY secular and so was the bulk of the American elite (with the south being something of and exception), while at the same time the European elites were religous (although often pretty cyncial about it or just holding too it because they though it made a good opiate for the masses). So when the common people got around to rebelling against the elite, some secular doctrine (especially socialism) looked damn good in Europe while the vigrant Great Awakening american popular christianity made a pretty decent vehicle of revolting against the Deist merchantocracy of the coast... |
Finally someone answered the the post's topic. Thank you. It was informative.
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MosesPresley
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quote:
Originally posted by joseph1944
If I remember right one of the several thing that has to happen is rebuilding Solomon Temple for the third time. There is a small problem with that right now, because I believed the Dome of the Rock is now located on the same site as Solomon temple was. If I'm wrong I'm sure one of you will correct it. |
You are correct. That is one of the key signs. This is one of the reasons of why US fundamentalist christians support Israel so strongly. They want that third temple built and usher in the return of their Christ.
It would be an interesting experiment if this was allowed, then we could settle this part of the debate forever.
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MosesPresley
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quote:
Originally posted by Caligastia
So you think science has the power to explain everything? Interesting. |
Science is a method or tool for understanding the physical nature of the universe and like any tool it can't do all jobs, but it is the best tool we have. Science has no method for studying the metaphysical.
The reason I state this is that these attempted dialectics of science vs. religion are doomed to failure. You both may be playing football, but you are in different arenas.
metaphysics
metaphysics (mèt´e-fîz´îks) noun
Abbr. met., metaph.
1.(used with a sing. verb). Philosophy. The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
2.(used with a pl. verb). The theoretical or first principles of a particular discipline: the metaphysics of law.
3.(used with a sing. verb). A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.
4.(used with a sing. verb). Excessively subtle or recondite reasoning.
[Pl. of Middle English methaphisik, from Medieval Latin metaphysica, from Medieval Greek (ta) metaphusika, Greek (Ta) meta (ta) phusika, (the things) after the physics, the title of Aristotle's treatise on first principles (so called because it followed his work on physics) : meta, after. See meta- + phusika, physics. See physics.
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22-08-2002 15:48
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