Senate Is there a conflict between Religion and Science?

That's right. I took a course in Koine Greek; I'm no scholar, but with a good Koine/English dictionary and lots of time and patience, I can make sense out of it. It was the first course at Lutheran seminary, just like Anakinsfan said.

 

Paul's letters were written before the Gospel of Mark. I think it is reasonable to assume that he was writing to literate people and that they wrote back to him. It's also likely that other people were having correspondence concerning Jesus. It would be pretty weird if Paul were the only person in the whole world interested in discussing Jesus.

Just because we don't have every single document that was produced 2000 years ago doesn't mean there weren't any.

 

You certainly can't rule it out, but if you are going to invoke common sense as your source then you must accept that in the ancient world where only a very small minority could read and write then the easiest and most effective way to spread Christ's word was via campfire stories and orations. In fact it makes even more common sense that the stories themselves became embellished once they were in circulation as it was the intention of Christ's followers to find converts and those converts were found at the grassroot level, farmers, peasants and sheep herders. As can be evidenced today by playing 'chinese whispers' the transmission of stories from campfire to campfire, told by those who intended the stories to have an impact, is an inherently unreliable method of ensuring consistency and accuracy. Common sense dictates that the stories would most likely change over a period of months let alone a period of decades (even two decades). It wasn't until much later that Christ's story gained enough interest to attract the attention of the elites and the scholars and by that time it is highly, highly unlikely that the stories which were eventually documented actually bore any resemblance to the events which they purport to depict.

Of course this is only relevant from an historical methodological perspective. From a theological perspective, you can just say that the stories and their documentation were all inspired by God and God ensured it was all kept accurate and so it is all 100% accurate and true.

 

Well, there's two possibilities:

1) God impregnated Mary just as the Gospels claim.

2) Mary was either raped by, or had consensual sex out of wedlock with, an actual man, was impregnated, and lied about it to cover her shame.

Of the two possibilities, which do you think is the more likely to have occured? As long as you're being honest with yourself, the answer should be obvious.

You seem so certain.

How do you know that the Gospel of Luke "speaks the plain truth" about anything, especially something as farfetched as the Immaculate Conception?

 

Why should I tell you when you'll just shoot me down like so many others have? You're not going to change your mind no matter what I say, so why should I let myself get drawn into debate with you like I, regrettably, did with timmoishere and anakinfansince1983? My every attempt to explain the truth of God's Word has gotten me mocked and belittled; no one even pays any attention to what I say. No, I'm done. Sneer and laugh all you want, but I'm not arguing any more. It's not worth trying to debate with hard heads.

I know where I stand; I believe that the God who created this world loves me enough that He sent His Son to die on the cross so that I would not have to pay the ultimate penalty for my sins. By the blood of the sinless Lamb who died and was resurrected three days later, I am free from the bondage of sin and instead have become a member of God's kingdom. One day I will stand before Him, face to face, and answer to Him for what I have done in my life. I hope that He will say to me, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter now into the joy of the Lord."

This is my testimony, and no matter what skeptics say, it is the truth.

 

You're quite wrong there. If you have convincing and unbiased evidence, any reasonable person will change his or her mind. So what convincing and unbiased evidence do you have that shows that what is written in Luke is true?

 

I don't see why it's so difficult. All I'm asking for is the exact same sort of evidence that I would need to be convinced of anything. Want me to believe you won the lottery? Show me the ticket. Want me to believe you just bought a car? Show it to me. Want me to believe an alien landed in your back yard? I'd like to meet this alien. Want me to believe that a god created the world? Show me proof.

This is not a difficult concept. And since you seem so convinced that your god is real, you must have some proof. I don't know why you are so unwilling to show it.

 

Skywalker8921, there is a very big difference between explaining God's Word and claiming that it is Truth. The explaining bit is always interesting and I'm sure you will find that most people here are interested in that discussion. The truth part is where you have difficulty because there is no real evidence to support any 'truth' claims. You believe it is true and so that is why you can be described as a person "of faith". That is essentially what religious faith is, it is a belief in something which does not necessarily have objective, empirical and reliable evidence to support it. The bible itself is no basis for any "truth" claims because the bible is historically a very unreliable document. You would do better if you just stuck to explaining the God's Word rather than trying to prove it is the Truth.

 

Does the fact that it is so easy to do so tell you nothing?

You know, I used to believe as fervently as you do, and these people are wearing kid gloves compared to the ones who I was foolish enough to debate these very same points with, so kindly stop playing the victim when your arguments lack any real substance whatsoever. It's disingenuous, and we're not buying it.

I'm actually grateful for the intellectual reaming that they gave me, though, because it made me realize that I wasn't being honest with myself, and, therefore, I wasn't being honest with anyone else, either. Today, one could accurately say that it would take a miracle (that's right - a miracle) for me to believe in any of it now. The fact that it can't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny is just too damning. At this point in human history, the time has come for believers to put up or shut up.

Given the wealth of information at one's fingertips these days, people are just not going to be convinced by self-contradictory myths, wishful thinking, warm fuzzies and threats of eternal damnation unless they've been systematically brainwashed from childhood, and even that won't always work (as it ultimately didn't for me), because it is human nature to always question everything.

On the contrary, the evidence (or lack thereof), not to mention the common sense brought about by intellectual honesty, would seem to indicate that everything that you believe in is a lie.

 

We Christians will not follow blindly along with what the world teaches, nor we will stop teaching about the Good News. You will learn that we will not simply roll over and give up, never, and if you can't be civil without resorting to a barely veiled insult, then you are nothing more than a fool.

 

And yet you follow blindly along with what the Bible teaches. Hypocrisy much?

 

If you say that in a Winston Churchill voice, it's much better.

 

Furthermore, no one is asking you to follow blindly what the world teaches. That would be ridiculous. What we're asking for is for you to question, to analyze, to think, and don't follow along like a sheep.

And if you get so offended by folks who scrutinize your beliefs, then maybe it's time you started to scrutinize them for yourself.

 

Oh, I don't doubt it. Teaching people to ignore reality, to rely on their emotions and wishful thinking and to believe unsubstantiated claims - no matter how outrageous they may be - has been the trade-craft of hucksters, charlatans and politicians throughout history.

Whether you're aware of it or not, perpetuating what is most likely the biggest hoax in the history of Western civilization is an act of evil.

I'm not trying to insult you; I'm merely being as truthful with you as I am able to.

 

I'm sorry, but that isn't what you seem to be asking.

Why can I say that? Because you seem to be under the assumption that anyone who disagrees with you hasn't questioned, analyzed, or thought about their beliefs.

I don't follow my religion blindly. I have looked at it in depth, analyzing arguments both for and against it. I have examined it from every angle I can, and I am constantly looking for new perspectives on it.

And yet, I still believe. Why? Because I have looked at the evidence, tested it for myself, and I have come to my own conclusion that it is true. Can I prove it to someone else? No, I can't, but I don't have to. I don't need you or anyone else to agree with me in order to validate my own beliefs. I am convinced to my own satisfaction, and that is enough for me.

You are free to believe or not as you will. But you cannot simply assume that those who disagree with you are "following along like sheep". There are quite a few sincerely religious people out there who have examined things critically and come to conclusions completely opposite to yours.

 

See, there's a huge logical flaw in your assessment, Kimball. Your tests have proven it for you, but not for everyone. If something is true, then it can be tested by all, so that all can see the results. What you're actually doing is what's known as confirmation bias. An unbiased test shows no evidence that Christianity's supernatural claims are true.

That being said, I would like to know what sort of tests you performed and whether they can be replicated.

 

Kimball_Kinnison: Did you have a religious upbringing?

 

Subjective truth can be, and often is, vastly more significant than the objective. It's here you're getting into the realm of psychology, so long looked-down-upon by supposedly "objective" science because it dares to trespass into the subjective realms that constitute the mind. Psychology's models of how the mind works, often heavily influenced by biology's observations on how the brain works, have changed repeatedly and sometimes rapidly over the decades; if you think the mind or consciousness is nothing but the result of pure Pavlovian conditioning you're roughly a hundred years out of date on current models, both biologically and psychologically.

Getting back to the supposed superiority of the objective, though: consider love. By its very nature it is entirely subjective. You cannot know you are in love by any objective measure. That statement applies to any number of states of being if not indeed consciousness at large, which Dawkins et. al. still haven't managed to pin down and say "Here's where it all comes from" inside the grey portion of meat inside our skulls. It is no answer to tie love (speaking here of eros rather than agape or platonic) to an objective principle that it depends purely on a biological imperative driven solely by an unconscious need to propagate the species: were that so, stable homosexual relationships or indeed stable heterosexual but infertile relationships would not exist. Love cannot be measured by an objective standard, but that does not make it any less true.

The reason that's so is because love is at least partially the province of mythos - the term the ancient Greeks had for the type of knowledge that could not be derived in words. The Wachowskis put it very crudely when they had the Oracle say it: "Nobody can tell you you're in love, you just know it. Balls to bones." That very roughly encapsulates a branch of knowledge known to philosophy literally since the days of Socrates himself. That type of knowledge simply cannot be expressed to another person in words; it is knowing without saying. It is this type of knowledge you are speaking of when you deal with the concept of nirvana, or enlightenment. It is not something that logos, the term the ancient Greeks again had for the reasoned method of knowing something, can assess, any more than -- as I've said before -- it is significant to assert that Weeping Woman cannot be a woman because it does not accord with human physiology. To do so misses the point entirely -- because science's province is how, not why. The two words are often mixed together, but they are not the same thing. And it's only when you do mix them together that you run into problems like we're seeing here.

Put it this way, the original Socratic method -- used as something of a torture device in education these days -- was actually an attempt to induce mythos in the people having the conversation. Both listeners had tremendous respect for each other's views. Socrates' method was the same in each case: he would make a proposition, such as "It is just to punish for stealing", but would then challenge assumption after assumption that underlay that proposition until both parties had literally reached a point where language itself failed them. It was at that verge of understanding that mythos began to loom large, because it amounted to knowledge without words.

This is not to say I agree with Biblical literalism or the seriously screwed-up picture of God that's been prevalent in Christianity for the past few centuries. But saying objective truth, the how of our existence, overrides the why, the subjective, is just as erroneous. Once again: when you ask someone to prove provide evidence for the existence of God, define what you term "exist" and what you term "God" first, because the terms are not self-descriptive or as simple as they first appear, and you need to recognise the limitations of language in that context before setting out.

 

There is no evidence that will be seen as scientific proof to anyone who doesn't have faith. Faith is not proof, it is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. As long as you close your mind to faith, you won't understand. Opening your mind to faith is a scary thing the first time you do it, but there is nothing more rewarding.

 

So all faith really boils down to is wishful thinking. I don't see how anybody can live by something so nebulous.

 

If you are also putting meaning, purpose, why into the basket of merely wishful thinking, then I agree it's not something to live by. But the vast majority of people on this planet don't so place it in that basket, and they don't do so because it's looking at existence only through logos and without mythos. It is literally looking at the world with one eye.

 

Not quite. The "you're wrong if you disagree" is indeed where both religion and science fall over. But I know I'm in love with my wife, and you are completely and entirely wrong if you disagree.