I know what you’re getting at and I do agree, but in the interests of pedantic fairness computer facial recognition of emotional states is getting pretty darned good… and it’s based on SCIENCE! Well, statistics based on database matching… but SCIENCE! nonetheless.

Galileo stated well : “Religion tells us how to go to heaven not how the heavens go.”

The Bible is NOT a science textbook and shouldn’t be used as such.

It is however meant to be a guide to faith, personal and community relations with God and between you and me and our “neighbours” -meaning all other people.

Sceince is great at explaining and describing some things – the spectral type of a star or characteristics of a comet but less good at calculating and less useful in valuing others – such as the expression on the face of a child viewing that star or comet or better yet the emotions stirred by that experience.

Science isn’t a religion. Religion isn’t a science. Both along with art and politics are aspects of our lives and how we choose to balance them is up to us.

“If we base our thinking on something more rational, WHY would an atheist bother appealing to some invisible being that he knows doesn’t exist? Irrational thinking brought on by extreme duress, perhaps, but can we really hold that against him? Not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.”

Guilty? Bit of a value judgement there, mate.

‘Innocent’ equaling atheist and ‘guilty’ equaling believer in God is an assertion or statement that reflects rather badly on you and your prejudice some might possibly say. What penalty would you applyas sentence for those convicted of ..well having convictions different to your own? Lets not forget sometimes intolerance goes both ways and atheists too can be intolerant and closed-minded.

As to the question of :

“If we base our thinking on something more rational, WHY would an atheist bother appealing to some invisible being that he knows doesn’t exist?”

Perhaps its not a matter of KNOWING God doesnt exist but thinking or considering it to be so.

Perhaps the athiest might _doubt_ God’s existence but have some faint HOPE (or perhaps fear) of it. When put tothe test perhaps theathuiest may pary in hope ratehr than expectation and be answered despite their previously held belief or proclaimed “knowledge” …

I don’t claim to know, I claim unceratinty and maybe that admissionof what we don’t know butcould hope for inour dakest times is something, however vague and unscientific… ?

As for ‘xtian’; never heard of that one. If the person here using it meant ‘Christian’ then why not simply say it or is the word itself too offensive to the sensitivity of that person?

:-p

I’m a deist, as I’ve never been shy to admit, and this is half the reason why. Either a tinkerer clockwork-orange God is malevolent and enjoys people’s suffering, or He has a self-image problem and creates toys to say nice things about Him. Clemens had a good rebuttal to this…

“If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks. He would not stoop to ask for any man’s compliments, praises, flatteries; and He would be far above exacting them. I would have Him as self-respecting as the better sort of man in these regards.” (Scroll about halfway down to the bottom)

“A majority of Polk County School Board members say they support teaching intelligent design in addition to evolution in public schools.” They also oppose the proposed Florida State science education standards that specify teaching godless evolution!

Florida education and intellect hard at work!

Cordially,
Rick O’Keefe
Center for Inquiry Tampa
(formerly Center for Inquiry-Florida)

rokeefe@CenterForInquiry.net

The Center for Inquiry is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization
encouraging evidence-based inquiry into science,
pseudoscience, medicine and health, religion, ethics,
and society. Through education, research, publishing,
and social services, CFI seeks to present affirmative
alternatives based on scientific naturalism.

The “God can’t be good and all powerful” argument is a powerful one.

The basic argument is:

1. Christians claim God is omnipotent and loving.
2. An omnipotent and loving god would create a perfect universe.
3. The universe is not perfect, suffering and pain exist.
4. Because the universe is not perfect, God cannot exist.

#2 is what I disagree with, invalidating #3 and #4.

It’s interesting that the Bible never claims that creation is perfect, but “very good”.

So why would an omnipotent and loving God want a creation where pain and suffering can exist? Even more, God had to know how it would turn out. What was his purpose?

God’s first purpose is to glorify himself. Mankind’s free will is a way to bring more Glory to God. We can choose to love him, or not. The Bible teaches that the greatest commandment is to love God, then your neighbor.

I’d recommend reading “The Problem of Pain” by C.S. Lewis if you want to have a really great Christian Thinker argue this point. I’m more along the lines of a poor Christian dunce when it comes to arguing points of theology.

Posted by Mike R.on 23 Nov 2007 at 10:30 pm:

Some other quotes from my link are:

“it appears that Genesis 1 is not intended to be read “literally,” at least in the popular usage where it usually means “concretely” or strictly and without the possibility of metaphor, hyperbole, or symbol. This does not mean Genesis 1 is not true. It does, however, mean that its truth claims are of a different nature.”

And in the conclusion, this:

“On this reading the twenty-four hour periods, or more accurately dawn-to-dusk days, probably reflect the notion of the customary daily periods of work. Yahweh is the builder, and each day he speaks and thus by divine fiat builds or fills a discrete part of his realm. Consequently, the injunction to keep Sabbath is less intent on imitating six literal twenty-four-hour days of creation than it is a summons for Israel to live out her creation story—structured as it is in the nature of the case by six days with a seventh to rest—and so to declare herself to be Yahweh’s “son,” imitating him in continuing his creation work of bringing order with the ultimate goal of Sabbath rest.”

… So I hold to my position that Genesis does not teach that God created the universe in six days about 6,000 years ago.

Thank you for your reply. I have no idea if you will ever see this, but here goes:

I did, in fact, read those two quotes before I posted, but deemed them apologetic in nature (in other words, I quickly dismissed them after thinking about them for a bit). That is why I stuck with the pertinent quote that I found wherein the author concedes that “six twenty-four hour days are in view.”

My mistake was that I should have realized that THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IS AN APOLOGETIC RATIONALIZATION IN SUPPORT OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION! It even goes so far as to denigrate “Darwinism.”

I’m such a dummy! Seriously.

That is the article’s entire point. This is my stupid mistake. So in a sense, Wayne is right, I was quote mining. But not in the intentional, deceptive way he hopes or has faith I was. I was inadvertently quote mining. But quote mining nevertheless.

My mistake was to commit the mistake I was accusing you of: namely, of not reading (recognizing) the whole article (for what it was).

This is called irony. And you have won the argument.

I see now more clearly what this writer (at your link ) was/is trying to do. In my opinion, he is trying to have it both ways. It is a classic strategy of Christian apologetics. He is trying to reconcile what is otherwise a very concise, straightforward late Iron Age story of creation (even though it is actually two creation stories written during different centuries, but I digress) with no hint of metaphor or symbolism… with what he knows about 21st century science — namely, that the world could not have been created in six literal twenty-four hour days.

Notice that we never seriously question whether the Babylonians or Assyrians or Egyptians truly believed their creation myths or if they thought it was a metaphor. I think the reason Christians such as this gentleman (and yourself) view clearly incorrect passages of the Bible as metaphor or symbolism is precisely because Judiasm (and by association, Christianity) was the lottery winner of ancient Middle Eastern religions — a stroke of serindipidy that it survives to this day to be re-evaluated and re-interpreted by modern minds.

As a Christian, the author of your linked-to article, has absolute faith that the Bible is the word of God so it must be conveying some kind — any kind of truth… therefore his argument is that, yes, Genesis speaks of six twenty-four hour days… but it was only symbolic! to serve the later and more important purpose of establishing the Sabbath tradition that later crops up in Exodus.

Riiiiiighhhht.

Of course, this is a slippery slope. Deciding what was “meant” as metaphor and what was “meant” as literal in a multi-thousand year-old document that has anonymous authorship and only rarely lines up with external contemporaneous sources and the archaeological record. Is Adam a metaphor or literal? Was he a real person who committed a real sin that we inherited through heredity that Christ was sent to atone for? If the story of Adam is just a metaphor, then why did Jesus have to be tortured and killed? If it’s literal, isn’t God the one who is responible for the whole mess?

Did Paul believe that Adam was a metaphor? Did Jesus?

I’m sure there’s an apologetic somewhere that explains this. There always is.

Such as the value of a human being as a moral agent, the value of individuality and free thought versus communal action and conformity, the rule of law, Western liberalism in general, so on and so forth. These concepts are intrinsically philosophical in nature and thus inherently unfalsifiable, but it’s a rare person with a ‘scientific worldview’ that doesn’t support the ideals of Western liberalism and posit them freely.

I severely doubt at this time that natural materialism, as good at it is in explaining natural phenomena, will develop into a ‘science of philosophy’ where any concept that can be thought can be subject to mathematical proof. This is my concern with science becoming a ‘world-view’ ideology rather than a methodology for explaining the world around us; at the current point in time, such scientism is insufficient for describing not only the world around us but the world inside our brain and thus dangerously limiting.

One could and probably will make the reasonable argument that a God-concept is not the same as an abstract ideal of action and value, such as the tenets of Western liberalism. My counterargument is that once people remove their Gods from being natural active agents (in no case can anyone say “Goddidit” as God doesn’t do), and instead make them only metaphysical concepts from which to derive philosophical positions, then the God-concept is itself an abstract ideal that does not conflict with naturalistic explanation of the universe around us. Certainly, one may as well not believe, but at that point one may as well not believe in the various freedoms many have come to assume to be ‘natural’ and ‘truths’ assumed ‘self-evident’ through repetition cementing them as such in our cultural consciousness.

Yes, I understand that is your faith-based position, but is it true? It seems like this philosophy is a way to avoid the collision between science and religion. Further, every time a theists find something in science that they don’t like, they avoid attributing it to God or create some excuse. Why did God make malaria, mosquitoes, ticks, leprosy, venomous snakes, scorpions, the black plague, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc etc? Of course, we’re not supposed to learn that God created those things and just threw them in to make his “reality TV show” called “Earth” more interesting. No, we’re supposed to interpret them in a way that preserves God’s benevolence – which is ridiculous and one-sided way to look at things. I think if science teaches us anything about God, it’s that He’s an absent landlord who simply doesn’t care, or maybe He simply doesn’t exist.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0492.html

So while promises of a glorious Heaven obviously provide some sort of comfort to people, in practical terms, it doesn’t actually make much difference, which is odd really, given that compared with an eternity of bliss in Heaven, our lives are brutal, full of pain and suffering, and infinitesimally short.

You can bet your bottom dollar that Christians will be right up there are the front of the line when the first real life-extending treatment is introduced.

Religions get their start from the spiritual/mystical experience of one person, who has been to the edge of darkness and found,,,something,,,which is then blathered all over the place. Anyone who has ever had such an experience can testify to the power and immediacy of it. It gets accepted by the ordinary human because those so affected are often extraordinary in some impressive way. Among Muslims, there is the conviction that the Suras of the Quran are the most perfect poetry ever and must therefore be the literal word of Allah. They also believe that Mohammed stopped a meteor in flight, which is the rock contained in the Great mosque in Mecca. My friend Saib Al Ghamdi said that the rock sat upon a slab of granit and was presumed to still be “floating” slightly above it, but when I asked if they ever checked to see if it was really suspended he said,” That would be an abrogation of faith”.

We are not the only animal that appreciates death. Elephants have been observed apparently mourning the passing of one of their number. I wonder if they have a conception of a god and an afterlife???

Fear of personal extinction derives from the evolutionary drive to survive. Nearly four billion years of such selection will not be denied. There is one thing to consider about immortality however,,,it might get REALLY,REALLY boring,,,

Gary 7

The Bible teaches that God reveals himself through his creation. Science helps us understand the creation. We can know God better through a better understanding of science.

There is a whole lot of difference between proposing a flood caused a mineral deposit and there being a Biblical ‘Global Flood’