It is not for nothing that the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the bishops’ conference slammed the movie as “morally offensive.” But we are pleased to note that the atheists still use our religion as the model, and still portray God as male. There is hope for them yet. [my emphasis]
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't. - Mark Twain
A US couple who prayed rather than seeking medical attention for their dying daughter have been sentenced to six months in jail.
Dale and Leilani Neumann, of Wisconsin, could have received up to 25 years in prison over the 2008 death of Madeline Neumann, who was known as Kara.
The judge told the Neumanns this would give them time to "think about Kara and what God wants you to learn from this".
He added that they were "very good people, raising their family, who made a bad decision, a reckless decision".
He added: "God probably works through other people, some of them doctors."
A Million Dollars of Micro Finance
One million dollars is a lot of money, especially for entrepreneurs around the world turning to microfinance institutions for loans. One million is the amount lent to these entrepreneurs by the team Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious (AASFSHNR) at Kiva.com. Through Kiva, anyone can lend $25 or more to an entrepreneur looking for assistance. When a borrower repays, the money becomes available to re-lend.
AASFSHNR, just over 1 year old, is the first group to reach $1,000,000. Despite the modest goal of $50k in four months, 10 days after creation AASFSHNR hit $10,000. As the loans were paid back, or new money was lent, the group total climbed faster and faster.
AASFSHNR is a fantastic example of the generosity of atheists and others who fit into the group’s theme. We don’t always agree when posting on the team forum, but we do work hard to fund loans. In addition to our group’s milestone, Kiva is fast approaching an even more impressive moment. Collectively, Kiva lenders have lent nearly $100 million around the world. I invite everyone to Kiva. While you are at it, you’re welcome to visit us heathens. [by Heather Huntley]
Thousands of people dying from earthquakes can't be called 'god's punishment', why is it that a person being saved from under the rubble days later is almost invariable called a miracle? And, also why should God be credited for good act of a human being saving a fellow human being from under the rubble, while God being spared for the calamity that was brought up on the people?
Natural disasters happen and an omnipotent God lets them happen, for those of us who believe in God. It's not about God saying that we won't let nature take its course. Those of us who do have a religious faith, we equally, I think, are committed to science but, like Christopher says, we all look for patterns. We look for patterns in our daily lives. We look for patterns in our histories. We look for patterns in the world and, yes, some villages might be called blessed. Well, if they didn't lose anyone, they wouldn't call themselves cursed. And so what - how do they see themselves?
Well, I think, by definition, if you believe in God, you would have to say that at the very least God allows this thing to happen because to say otherwise would be to presuppose that God lacks the power to stop it, which - I don't know of any religious traditions, certainly no monotheistic religious tradition that would say that. I do want to say something that I definitely agree with in what Christopher said, and that is that this sort of very simple dichotomised thinking about natural disasters - that they are punishment or reward and this is the prism through which we view them - I mean, this has to be some of the most rudimentary, unsophisticated thinking that religious people and, frankly, irreligious people, who perpetuate it even via criticism, have ever produced. I think it's a ridiculous assertion and I've not really encountered a serious religious thinker, as opposed to one who is too busy playing forms of identity politics or some other kind of rabble rousing - persecuting some rabble-rousing religiosity, who would argue that. The simple fact is that things happen in life that are, in our subjective experiences, grotesque and other things that are wonderful and our judgments, immediately, about whether they're grotesque and wonderful are, in a sense, beside the point. The question, I think, for religious people who are actually serious about being religious people and with all the introspection that that implies, is what do you do about it and what do you do with it? It's possible that by surviving the earthquake and moving on to behave in all sorts of ways, that you cast yourself into some kind of eternal destruction in religious terms. That's entirely possible, in which case you probably would have been better off to have been killed in the earthquake. It's entirely possible that by gathering all sorts of riches in life and having an easy life, that you are similarly deforming your character as a person, so I think the key question is not so much what is God doing - although that's a perfectly legitimate question - field of inquiry. But I think the more important question for people, particularly religious people, is: who am I in response to this? What am I doing? Each of these is a test, whether you're in the good side or the bad side of it, and what do you do with it? And I'm more interested in that, frankly.
Frank Brennan: Well, let's take it. I mean, people like (indistinct) have argued very strongly and persuasively, like yourself Christopher, that empowerment of women is the key to the development of peoples. Now, why don't we just drop the bagging and smearing and saying, all right, anyone who is out there, let's judge them by their fruits? Whether they're atheists or whether they're Catholics or whatever, let's drop the bagging and smearing. Let's say, right, we agree. What we've got to be working for is the empowerment of women. And there are people of religious dispositions who are passionately committed to that and, yes, there will be mistakes made in terms of policies and in terms of moral theories, but that's where I think, in a pluralist society like Australia, we can have the respectful dialogue and we can work those things through, as we do this evening.
Waleed Aly: I think there's a real call that needs to be made for some honesty here on the part of religious people. And that is that, yes, lots of religious people do lots of very good things and there was research published, I think, two years ago looking at generation Y Australians that found that those who were more religiously committed were more socially aware, they were more committed to the social good and all that sort of thing, and you can point to those studies and you can say, "That's wonderful." But, in a sense, I think you get caught in a reactionary argument, which is with all these people lining up saying, "Look how horrible religion is," you get a religious response that says, "No. No. No. No. We're good. Look at these charities," turning a blind eye to not only some of the points that Christopher raises, but also the fact that there are religious charities that do a lot of that religious work for their own ends that, in my judgment, are actually quite nefarious at times. Religions can be used as a cover and a pretext for violence and evil and all sorts of things. It can be instrumentalised in that way. It can also be instrumentalised in the opposite way. And so I kind of echo what Father Frank Brennan has said here and that is that if you actually look to the substance of what people are doing, rather than asking the first question, is this a religious organisation or is this not, and then trying to make some judgment about their conduct and their motives on the basis of that, then I think you get further down the track of making some kind of assessment. I think we get caught in these petty games about, well, you know, are religious people good or bad. Just get on with being good or being bad and let people make up their own mind.
I would approach the issue of gay marriage, distinguishing two things. One, people of a religious disposition may have a view about what they call the sacramentality of marriage. I would see that as a separate question from the civil institution of marriage. Now, in terms of the civil institution of marriage, I think one of the welcome developments in Australia is we've got to the stage of saying that discrimination against people on the grounds of their sexuality should be wiped out completely and that we're a better society for that being the case. In terms of the next step, whether or not in civil law there should be a recognition of the bond between two men or two women as being the same as marriage as it's presently understood, the real issue, I think, is whether or not that decision is best made by our elected politicians or whether it's made by our elected judges. And I think at the moment, in Australia, the view has been that that should be a decision of our elected politicians. My own view is, moving around the country, I think that younger Australians, they don't see it as a problem. It's not an issue. I think for a lot of older Australians it's still an issue and, guess what, a lot of them happen to be married. So in terms of a free and democratic society, for those who are civilly married, then we've got to bring them with us as we look at any change on that issue.
When stories are written down and become scripture they cease to evolve. They are stuck with the state of knowledge at the time they were written down. Why is it that something written down years ago is "THE Word of God." Why aren't the amazing new understandings about our universe our world and ourselves, evolution, DNA and genetics, science, incorported into our current religious text and discussions. There are two kinds of revelation. Private inspiration and Public. Revelation in the sense of what we come to know, feel, experience, believe. Generally there is no way to establish the truth or falsity of the private revelation. Public revelation (including science) is argued and tested, verified and adjusted in open and public ways. Dowd talks about Day Language and Night Language concepts. Night language is subjectively real, but not necessarily objectively real. Night language is communicated by way of metaphors, poetry and vibrant images. Our focus is on "what does it mean." Night language is personally and culturally meaningful, it nourishes us with images of emotional truth. Day language is used in discussing what is factual and measurably true. Day language is used for Public revelation. I ask, why can't we use both in talking about the universe.
Personally, I think this pair (Dowd and Barlow) are serious fence-sitters. They seem to want to have the best of both worlds - belief in some form of metaphysical, mythical creationist (or at least creationist-like) creature and also a belief that science is fact. I say belief in science for that's what I think they have.
Science is fact - believe in it if you want or don't - neither will change the facts. Religion is belief, pure and simple - there's no facts, no proof, no reality associated with religion per se.
So, you wonder "Why aren't the amazing new understandings about our universe our world and ourselves, evolution, DNA and genetics, science, incorported into our current religious text and discussions." Well, because facts undermine religion. If The Bible (or any other particular religious tome) is THE word of god, then how can it be changed by man? (And yes, you are right that THE word of god is accepted to be what was written down eventually after many rounds of Chinese Whispers, and which is likely rather different to what would have been written down a few hundred or thousandf years earlier.) By having an "ages old" religion accept the scientific facts of the way the universe was created, the way life, once created, evolves and so on would totally undermine its insistence on a beard in the sky, a cosmic creator, or some other form of intelligently designed universe.
The two simply don't mix.
So, the plain, simple reason we can't use both of the languages you wish when talking about the universe is that one (science) is factual and the other (religion) is fairy tales that have no use aside from being interesting stories about how uninformed people viewed what was around them. We can use one (religion) to say "this is what people believed before the facts were made apparent, even though those religions KNEW they were right because some book told them that it was right" and the other (science) to say "this is how the universe is - yes, we know this will change over time as we learn more and more about the universe, but what we're talking are proven, observable, explainable facts and phenomena".
The two can't be used on an equal basis.
Assume there is a god that created the universe. Then, god either:
1) created the universe and the laws thereof, and now stands back observing, but not interfering with, his creation (aka "deism")
2) created the universe and now actively manages his creation (aka "theism")
#1 is no different than a universe without god, at least as far as we are concerned, since the universe obeys rules that we can suss out. Supernatural events are simply natural events we don't understand, but which we have the power to understand, since they obey laws that we can understand.
#2 is the viewpoint that most religions take, however it can be shown (http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/god5.htm, previously featured in this forum IIRC) that god does not answer our prayers, and therefore, such a god is relegated to either managing his creation according to laws (reducing this god to the same god in #1) or to managing his creation in a random/arbitrary, not-adhering-to-any-laws, kind of way.
If we assume that god is random, then that leads to the conclusion that the universe is unintelligible. Since that is not what we see around us (that is, we appear to be able to make sense of and build consistent models of the universe around us), we can conclude that god is not random or arbitrary.
So, the best we can hope to do is attempt to understand the universe, and if we are to attempt that, then we have to assume that the universe is understandable. Any reference to god is unnecessary, since the universe acts according to laws we can discover and understand (or is basically random and unintelligible, which we reject). Allow me to rephrase that: Even if there is a god, even if he created the earth and all the plants and animals thereon, evolution is _still_ the current state-of-the-art in understanding the origin of species.
The ultimate conclusion is: learning about creationism in the context of biology makes no sense.
Our universal craving for a belief system does not make a 'convincing argument for a higher power.' It simply confirms our universal fear of the unknown and unknowable. - hrmitcrb (a user in the Pirate Bay)
Nothing comes from nothing,
Nothing ever could.
Andy Knoll, a professor of biology at Harvard and author of Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Life, notes:If we try to summarize by just saying what, at the end of the day, we do know about the deep history of life on Earth, about its origin, about its formative stages that gave rise to the biology we see around us today, I think we have to admit that we’re looking through a glass darkly here. We don’t know how life started on this planet. We don’t know exactly when it started, we don’t know under what circumstances.
1. The principle of special relativity ensures that forces such as electromagnetism have an invariable effect regardless of whether they act at right angles to a system’s direction of travel. This enables genetic codes to work and planets to hold together when rotating.
2. Quantum laws prevent electrons from spiraling into atomic nuclei.
3. Electromagnetism has one-force strength, which enables multiple key processes to take place: it allows stars to burn steadily for billions of years; it enables carbon synthesis in stars; it ensures that leptons do not replace quarks, which would have made atoms impossible; it is responsible for protons not decaying too fast or repelling each other too strongly, which would have made chemistry impossible. How is it possible for the same one-force strength to satisfy so many different requirements, when it seems that different strengths would be required for each one of these processes?
by Antony FlewThe first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature.
The objections to religion are of two sorts - intellectual and moral. The intellectual objection is that there is no reason to suppose any religion true; the moral objection is that religious precepts date from a time when men were more cruel than they are and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the moral conscience of the age would otherwise outgrow. - Bertrand Russell
Religion, the word itself scares most people silly. It is a word that speaks of irrational belief, naïve commitment and pathetic escapism. - Mendel Jacobson
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. - Bertrand Russell
I put it to you that we have not yet, as a race, proven ourselves actually intelligent.
Not until we have solved basic poverty (that is to say that everyone has enough to eat, shelter, and a means of improvement), eradicated racism, and put superstition/religion in it's place (the past). Then at least we'll be able to start thinking we're actually an intelligent species. - Chris Means [a comment on the Kiva site]
My conclusion is that there is no reason to believe any of the dogmas of traditional theology and, further, that there is no reason to wish that they were true. Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free to work out his own destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the opportunity. -- "Is There a God?" commissioned by, but never published in, Illustrated Magazine (1952: repr. The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Volume 11: Last Philosophical Testament, 1943-68, ed. John G Slater and Peter Köllner (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 543-48, quoted from S T Joshi, Atheism: A Reader
I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by almost all adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest social importance and far more likely to benefit the world than Christianity or any other system of organized beliefs. -- "Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?" (1954)
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. -- Unpopular Essays, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" (1950), p. 149, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others. -- quoted, in part, from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations
The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment. This is the way opinions are held in science, as opposed to the way in which they are held in theology. -- Unpopular Essays, "Philosophy and Politics" (1950), p. 149, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief
The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. -- "Christian Ethics" from Marriage and Morals (1950), quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief
Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.-- Unpopular Essays, "Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind" (1950), p. 149, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. -- source unknown
William James used to preach "the will to believe". For my part, I should wish to preach "the will to doubt". What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite. -- source unknown
Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time. -- "Is There a God?" commissioned by, but never published in, Illustrated Magazine (1952: repr. The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Volume 11: Last Philosophical Testament, 1943-68, ed. John G Slater and Peter Köllner (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 543-48, quoted from S T Joshi, Atheism: A Reader
That is the idea -- that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called Ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion. -- "Why I Am Not A Christian," Little Blue Book No. 1372 edited by E Haldeman-Julius.
The whole conception of a God is a conception derived from the ancient oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men.... We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. -- "Why I Am Not A Christian," Little Blue Book No. 1372 edited by E Haldeman-Julius.
My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.-- "Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?"
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor all their own. -- What I Believe
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.... This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. -- "What I Have Lived For," the prologue to his Autobiography, vol. I p. 4
My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter. -- childhood diary, quoted from Against the Faith by Jim Herrick
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite. -- Skeptical Essays (1928)
Are you never afraid of God's judgment in denying him? "Most certainly not. I also deny Zeus and Jupiter and Odin and Brahma, but this causes me no qualms. I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence."-- "What Is an Agnostic?"
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing.-- source unknown
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.-- The History of Western Philosophy, quoted from Lee Eisler, ed, The Quotable Bertrand Russell
Jesus's sacrifice wasn't really a sacrifice at all. He didn't lose anything really. He suffered a finite amount of pain for a finite amount of time. He didn't actually die, He simply resumed the existance He had before He was physically born. He just went back to being God. How is that a sacrifice? It is an absurd concept for an omnipotent and omniscient Lawgiver to go through the wasted motions of sacrificing Himself to Himself in order for Him to forgive those who do not live up to the impossible standards that He invented.
The (claimed)punishment imposed by God for the unsaved, is eternal torment in Hell. There is no justice in inflicting any form of eternal punishment for any possible finite crime. Even Hitler or Dahmer, as vile as were their actions, are not deserving of such punishment. Their actions certainly would warrant punishment far beyond the normal scope, but no act justly warrants eternal torture. - Chuck
[Christians] may THINK that it is moral or kind for someone to step in and take another's punishment, whether that be a fine or imprisonment. However - and being a lawyer and legal academic has the advantage of me being able to say this with both knowledge and authority - it would not be legal and it would not in fact be just.
Punishments have a number of purposes but these are aimed at the criminal, not the victim. The clearest example of this is that the money paid in the form of a fine does not go to the victim but to the state. In legal systems where victims of crimes are sometimes compensated with money from a state fund, this money is only indirectly paid for by fines (taxes go into the fund also) and thus refutes rather than supports your argument. - The Legal Theorist
Christian Theocratic Justice:
God is the absolute master of the universe. He answers to no higher authority, and His term in office is infinite. He wrote all the laws by which to govern Man, He decides who has broken these laws, and what consequences they shall suffer. As a result of the very first infraction, God has deemed all men worthy of the highest punishment.
While God is inextricably bound to His own legal system, fortunately, in His infinite wisdom, He has found a loophole. In order to absolve Man of the debt that God arbitrarily decided is owed to Him, God must make Himself a son. This Son of God (who is also God) must be put on Earth and tortured to death by the aforementioned criminal humans, thereby paying the fine owed by these humans back to Him (God).
Did you follow all that? God must allow His Son (who is also Himself) to be brutally executed by humans (with His guidance), so that humans can be forgiven (by Himself) for the crimes that He says they committed. - Prester John
The issue of Christianity is you have to sell damnation and people being horrible by their nature before you can sell them salvation. - Wait What
God is offering to save us from a situation that He ultimately caused. After all, if I am a born sinner because of what two human beings did thousands of years, why I am punished for that?
It's like God is the obsessed teen boy in that movie Endless Love, who starts a fire just so he can "save" Brook Shields and her family. - Rufus
He knew ahead of time what would happen to most of humanity, yet he proceeded with the set up (putting the "fallen angels" on earth where he knew that one of them would deceive adam and eve in the first place), yet he still went ahead with it.
If he'd tossed those "fallen angels" into the lake of fire in the first place, this mess may not have happened.- Reynold
Your God punished the entire human race--all of "creation," really-- because two people ate something He told them not to. Your God decreed that all human beings (except for Adam and Eve) should inherit a sin curse and in essence be born guilty of sin, and all because two people ate something He told them not to.
The default condition of the human race is guilty, and this is at God's command (according to your religion, of course). So no, I'm not very impressed with God's so-called sacrifice. Maybe if He hadn't ordered us to be born under a sin curse in the first place, then He wouldn't have needed to sacrifice anybody? - captain howdy
You guys missed some key plot lines in the story. Adam was told that if he ate from the tree he would what?? Burn in hell for eternity? No. He would die. So Adam, and all his descendants were cursed to die when Adam disobeyed God and ate anyway. Jesus came along and died in our place. Now most folks when they die, they are stuck for eternity in hell. Jesus on the other hand, because He is God, was able to raise Himself from the dead after three days. The death penalty for sin is paid. Those who put their trust in Jesus get new life in Him, and the assurance of resurrecting as He did. - EJ & MJ
The fundamental problem with Mr. [Ray] Comfort's attempted analogy is that he has misrepresented the nature of civil law. He has suggested that violations of civil law can result in imprisonment, when in fact civil torts do not allow for the imposition of such a punishment. He has also suggested that the intervention of a third party could prevent the imprisonment of an individual who has been convicted of a legal violation, yet no aspect of United States law allows for such intervention. This suggests that Mr. Comfort's attempted analogy relies either upon a lack of understanding of civil and criminal law or wilful ignoring of fundamental aspects of it. If Mr. Comfort is wilfully ignoring fundamental aspects of a legal system, then his analogies are inherently dishonest, and thus he should not be considered a credible source of information. If Mr. Comfort is simply such a poor researcher that he is unaware of the aspects of law that he has failed to address in his analogy, then there is little reason to believe that he has adequately studied the subjects that he is addressing and thus he should not be considered a credible source of information. - Dimensio
[about Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit] So, if the penalty for sin is death, then why do most people end up stuck in hell for eternity? That goes way, way beyond the threatened punishment, does it not? On this argument, would not the punishment for unrepentant sinners be that they would never be resurrected at all, to glory or to hellfire -- that atheists, at least, would get exactly what they expect out of death (i.e. an end to existence)?
On the other hand, if the penalty for sin is death, and Christ took that penalty for those who repent and believe, then why do even the most saintly and faithful Christians die anyway? Yes, they'll be resurrected (if you're right), but then, if you're right, everyone will be resurrected; some just will deeply regret the fact. - Steven J.
"I can't" isn't a reason to give up, it's a reason to try harder - unknown
Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. - C.S. Lewis
The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.” - Benjamin Franklin
Being unable to reason is not a positive character trait outside religion - Dewey Henize
Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong? - Jane Austen
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
Reason is the slow and torturous method by which those who do not know the truth discover it - Blaise Pascal
Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but - more frequently than not - struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God - Martin Luther
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. - Anais Nin
Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.- Buddha
There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings. - Dorothy Thompson
Religions are many and diverse, but reason and goodness are one. - Elbert Hubbard
Reason guides our attempt to understand the world about us. Both reason and compassion guide our efforts to apply that knowledge ethically, to understand other people, and have ethical relationships with other people. - Molleen Matsumura
Three quarters of the American population literally believe in religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the devil, in resurrection, in God doing this and that -- it's astonishing. These numbers aren't duplicated anywhere else in the industrial world. You'd have to maybe go to mosques in Iran or do a poll among old ladies in Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American population.- Noam Chomsky
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.- Thomas Jefferson
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.- Thomas Jefferson
"If someone was to tell me that last week he died, and I'd read about it in the papers and actually seen him dead, and I was surprised to see him again in the street, I wouldn't be that impressed. It wouldn't prove anything about the truth of his doctrines. It would not prove he was the son of God or entitle him to forgive me my sins." - Christopher Hitchens
If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse. - Woody Allen
Science is quite often wrong, but it is also self correcting. That is whenever new information proves something was wrong, then if it can be altered slightly to fit that new information it is. If it can't then the old idea is scrapped and a new one is presented that takes into account why the old idea seemed correct and why the new idea describes the data better. Science is not rigid nor written in stone, that is an advantage. - BeamStalk
Darwin only had the anatomical knowledge of his day to work with. Modern research may have proved him wrong about the appendix, but after all that is what modern science is all about. It's about testing and proving old hypothesese right or wrong and its done all the time. That is SCIENCE. - Happy Humanist
Too bad Christian's cannot correct the parts of the Bible that are wrong, they are locked in to a system that is ridgid, unchanging and uncaring. There may be some comfort in that, but there is no truth or honesty. -Wait What
Who says science is never wrong? Science is superior to religious dogma because scientists check their own and each others work to find the errors and correct them, while religious fundamentalists refuse to question anything in their holy books. - Lord Runolfr
I assume you are contrasting the alterable nature of science with the supposed un-alterable nature of your religion or your Bible. In either case, it could be shown that both your religion as well as your Bible and/or the accepted interpretation of that Bible, are quite subject to alteration, and quite subject to being thought “wrong” by the next generation of believers. Ironically, when detractors bring up such examples as Christians’ of the 16th century use of the Bible as justification of slavery, or the founder of Protestantism’s use of the bible to support racism against Jews, a common Christian response is to proclaim that no human is perfect, and therefore no human is above the occasional mistake (what one might call “falsehood”). I ask, which of these two scenarios sounds more like someone claiming to possess a license for recurrent falsehood? - Jay
Scientific journals reject articles from creationists for the same reason they reject articles about Flat Earth theory. - B. Pierce
Suppose I am going to write a fiction. I am incorporating a number of history facts into my story. Does it make my story real and true? - Albert Ip
Many things bothered me about the stories of Jesus, because the four Gospels didn't exactly compare and that became a problem for me, because if they were all divinely inspired by The Son of God, they would all be identical, and totally truthful. But they weren't identical - or, as it turns out, truthful. Some stories didn't match, some things simply didn't make sense. They were 'non-sequiturs' - quotations out of context. Questions that were answered with answers that didn't fit the questions - but fit the Christian doctrine. - Dirk Vanden
This exploration shows a multitude of correspondences between the methods of natural science and features of Scripture. From the results, we conclude that –
• it is not only wrong to claim that natural science and Scripture conflict, with respect to methods or routes to knowing,
• it is also right to declare, in the positive sense, that Scripture endorses methods of natural
science.
:In his analysis of the relationships between science and religion, Einstein identified three different concepts of God that correspond approximately to three different stages of the evolution of religious thought. The first concept of God was developed before human beings were conscious of the laws regulating the causal connections between natural phenomena. Therefore they invented anthropomorphic supernatural beings who controlled the course of events and were responsible for natural phenomena. The main motive for this conception of God was fear: the “fear of hunger, wild beast, sickness, death” (Ideas and Opinions, 39). Thus Einstein spoke of a “religion of fear” (40), in which people followed traditional rituals in the hope of gaining the benevolence of God.
Einstein called the second concept of God “the social or moral conception of God” (Ideas and Opinions, 40) because social and moral concerns are the main source of religious practice. God is the father who protects, rewards, comforts, and punishes his children and guarantees the immortality of the human soul. An important task of this kind of religion, which is typical in modern times, is to justify the adoption of specific views of morality and to provide the context for advocating social justice.
Both the religion of fear and the moral and social conception of God are ingredients, in varying degrees, in all historical religions. Primitive religions are mostly, but not exclusively, based on fear, and contemporary religions are primarily based on moral and social concerns, though fear is also a motive force. In these contexts, a special caste—the priests—occupies the important position mediating between God and the people. The priests, who are instrumental in stabilizing the ritual of religion, are usually linked with political rulers and privileged classes, are in control of education, and guide people in their social behavior, crystallizing the division of society into classes.
In these two types of religious thought God is conceived of as an anthropomorphic being. Einstein identified this concept of a personal God as the main source of conflict between science and religion, because this concept of God conflicts with the main aim of science, that is, to establish unrestricted laws, which do not admit exceptions, governing the reciprocal connections of objects. These laws, which Einstein identified with causal laws, exclude the possibility of supernatural intervention: God cannot interfere with natural events. It is true, said Einstein, that science cannot definitely refute the conception of a personal God, because domains exist in which science has not been able to determine general laws. However, if religion restricts itself to these domains to protect itself from science, it will lose its influence on human society. Thus “teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests” (Ideas and Opinions, 52). Only thus it is possible to prevent a conflict between science and religion. A religious man is a man who has liberated himself from “selfish desires” (48) and is preoccupied with “superpersonal value” (ibid., 48), independent of any conception of a divine being.
Einstein called the third stage of religious thought the “cosmic religious feeling” (Ideas and Opinions, 41). God is not conceived of as an anthropomorphic being; in a sense, the only function of God is to guarantee the regularity of the universe. Among the forerunners of the cosmic conception of God, Einstein cited some books of the Bible (the Psalms of David, Prophets), Buddha, Democritus, Spinoza, and St. Francis of Assisi. No religious practice corresponds to this conception of God because it is futile to try to secure God’s benevolence. God does not interfere with natural laws, does not make miracles, does not reward human beings, does not punish them. This mature conception of God has its main source in the scientific contemplation of nature, which discloses the exact regularity of the causal laws of nature and thus renders inconceivable the conception of a God interfering with nature in order to reward and punish his creatures.
I am told that Submission is too aggressive a film. Its criticism of Islam is aparently too painful for Muslims to bear. Tell me, how much more painful is it to be these women, trapped in that cage? — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and live. There is nothing more; I want nothing more. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
"If everything has a prior cause, then God must have had a prior cause. If God does not require a prior cause, then neither does the universe! The religious folks are trying to have their cake and eat it; you can't propose a universal rule but then allow an exception which breaks the rule." - unknown
To have an invisible friend at the age of eight is charming and not a cause for concern. To have an invisible friend in adulthood is however a cause for concern and could be considered psychotic. So how exactly does giving them the name of a deity change that opinion? - Phil Slattery
