Wedding Dresses

Especially protestant church schools but also Catholic ones, and Christian home schooling serve only the purpose of “protecting” children from a materialistic world of facts and exploration. Remember that to those, more right-wing churches, the purpose of life is ONLY to be “saved.” Facts and reality matters nothing, only the afterlife “in eternity.” All they got is fear of not making it to Heaven.

(Ironically, those people are focused very much on a material after-world. They see “Heaven” as an actual, physical place where they will walk around in their own bodies).

So in a sense, your experience with Christians may indeed mirror that sentiment. I know that I have rallied against that absolutist perversion of Scripture as a text book for decades.

In a previous post I talked about the WHAT/HOW vs the WHY and how when a fundamentalist uses the WHY sources to claim the WHAT, nonsense results. That’s why you end up with nonsense drivel from creationists and similar. Are they delusional, ignorant or outright lying? I feel they are a mixture of all three. Those are the “sullen” of the original entry. They are the ones who seek “Science” as proof for God, the ones whose Faith cannot tolerate Science. They need the physical manifestation of God. They’re like the Israelites building the Golden Calf. Especially creationism today resembles this. Creationism is the modern golden calf.

And yes, I often have a lot more in common with science than with the fundie Christians. I accept the Scientific Method and its results based on the Science; I am not inserting God anywhere (ie. the “God might have started evolution” and other such irrelevant insertions). Yet, I still have my Faith, a faith not based on science, nor on theistic paranoia. The New Testament is an instruction manual from God. Not God of proven existence, but rather God of Faith, the God presented through Jesus.

And yes, even that is problematic. The New Testament shows inconsistencies. Set up the parts attributed to Jesus and the parts attributed to Paul, f.ex. They don’t even look like the same message. **IF** you can get a fundamentalist to at all focus on the New Testament rather than some Old Testament fire-and-brimstone intrusive intolerance, then it is almost certain that they will be pushing Paul rather than Jesus. The Bible is a political document, after all. Generated through committees. Just like in Science, the source matters.

So I’m not surprised you have trouble reconcile Christian beliefs with reality. I have the same problem for some beliefs expressed as Christian.

Sorry if this is rambling.

Well put. Poetic even. Though I’ve been thinking about this stuff for years, I’m only writing about it now and this is my first foray into blog dialogue. Thanks for interacting with me. I’m seeing that what blogging lacks though, is the ability to fluidly skate across dense ideas and disarm loaded words. And beer.

Since you identified yourself as a Christian, I’d like to share an example of some of my thinking that speaks to the Christian world view.

One difference between theological thinking and scientific thinking lies in the questions that are asked. While science mainly asks, what is, theology can ask what could be, or could have been?

So, when I listen to Christians talk about ‘heaven’, their affection for it boils down to seeing themselves in a place where order is free and their are no felt effects of existing as dissipative structures. (This leads to my confronting them with, “sure, you want heaven as long as it’s free; but if you have to spend yourself to create such an order, you’d rather rely on a world view that justifies your inaction.”

Another aspect on this theme is this sense that heaven is a place of perfection. And because life on earth is not perfect, it means that earthly life is intrinsically faulty; thus the only solution is to suffer ourselves until the imperfect is changed out for the perfect.

But when I look at the aspects of reality that science uncovers, I would argue that the above is a fatal view of perfection; perfection can only exist in a state that remains a potential state. When a state becomes actual, perfection results in chaos. As a simple illustration: imagine everybody in this heaven where everything is perfect. As I walk past you, my foot begins on a trajectory loaded with a point force for your toe; (Ouch!) but wait- because things exist perfectly, a force arises to change my foot’s trajectory! Injury averted! Except this alien force translated awkwardly through my body which shifted my trajectory toward your favorite sculpture ensuing plot lines from 1920s era silent movies.

As I see it, in a state of actuality it is impossible for perfection to exist. What can exist in this state of actuality however, is something that we could call elegance. What this means, is that yes, we will at times, step on toes; so we apologize and forgive. Elegant.

Christians have been wrongly locked into a world view that stifles the genius inherent to this life that we as human being get to participate in so uniquely. I think that one of Jesus’ central arguments that he voiced as “the kingdom of God is at hand” could be voiced today as, ‘the difference between heaven and earth is real estate. There is nothing in heaven that is not available here on earth; heaven is not a place as much as an emergent phenomenon- not characterized by perfection but by elegance. Elegance there, elegance here. So what keeps us from pursuing elegance?

Anyway, I’m not expressing this to you in any personal way. But I want to highlight just one example of my interaction with science and religion.

You never checked the trial in Dover and the Manuscripts of “Of Pandas and People,” did you. “Intelligent Design” was merely substituted with a spell checker where previously “creationism” had been used.

“”"Any scientist who says that ID is religiously based is flat wrong since the people who are studying ID specifically say that it is not. And who are YOU to say they mean otherwise?”"”

I take it that you never heard of the “Wedge Document” from the Discovery Institute, the premier proponent of ID (And, incidentally, funded by a Dominionist, THAT’S the crowd you support here). The Wedge Document clearly shows ID to be warmed-over creationism. It specifically stated:
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“The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built. Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the West’s greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences.

Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud …..
…Finally, materialism spawned a virulent strain of utopianism. Thinking they could engineer the perfect society through the application of scientific knowledge, materialist reformers advocated coercive government programs that falsely promised to create heaven on earth.

Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature. …”
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THAT’S what the ID movement is all about. Your dishonesty is thus exposed.

Likewise, the attempt at limiting evolution to only intraspecies, for one is a strong admission of error of your argument being contrived, because you admit that Evolution is real. When you get to that point, you will have to actually show what the limiting bottleneck is, making the speciation impossible.

What you DO forget in your fervor to discount Evolution in your solidly creationist arguments is that speciation has been directly observed.

And the most spectacularly described examples are those of ring species. Since their evolution INTO NEW SPECIES (the very process you declared an impossibility, thus making you look ignorant and ridiculous) is geographic rather than in time, you have both species existing AND you have every one of the intermediaries, each transitional species still living. Creationists dishonestly argue about “no transitional fossils.” Well in ring species, the transitionals are all alive and well and directly observable. These species are in the here and now divided by location, not time. So you can continue to insist that it is “still a theory,” obviously inferring “ONLY a theory.” As it is false to begin with, it merely underscores either you being incredibly ignorant of the subject you are trying to argue against, or outright dishonest in that argument. Neither ignorance, nor false witnessing is an appealing prospect. In either case, what you say is useless and irrelevant, and the world pass you by in your fervor to push an already invalidated point.

It is like you making arguments against the space shuttle by going with the Wright Brother’s early papers, utterly useless.

“”"It is also clear that your hatred of religion blinds you to even look at the intelligent design theory.”"”

Given that I am a Christian, your argument remains utter nonsense. And while your arguments for “design” certainly is an argument, trying to use the term “theory” here as if on line with a SCIENTIFIC THEORY, that just further demonstrate your ignorance of Science (Not to mention, it underscores your creationist leanings, as it is the bread-and-butter argument of creationists). Your silly, and frankly STUPID idea that only creationists are Christians, just show what a fringe loon you truly are.

“”"You, just like the author, dismiss it out of hand. That is truly ignorant.”"”

No, we dismiss it per having looked into it and seen the lack of actual Science (Again, per your ignorance of the Scientific Method, you might not understand this. I suggest you educate yourself soon, before further ridicule is heaped on your head. It is NOT wise for you to fervently argue against something you show yourself utterly ignorant off).

The CORRECT way of expressing it would be that Science has not found Evidence for God, like so many other things it has not found evidence for. It would be correct that Science has no evidence for or against God, mainly because exploring God through Science is operating outside the parameters of science. It would be similar to claiming that since you can not divide a number by zero, that zero doesn’t exist. Rather, it would be correct that mathematics is unable to confirm or deny any numerical relationship requiring division by zero.

You see the pattern? To say that Science disproves God is a lie. To say that science makes God unnecessary is philosophy and is not borne out by Science. To say that Science is so limited and weak in exploring subjects outside of what is measurable and testable that it is unable to make any determination about God, that would be correct.

Whenever you hear somebody making arguments about Science proof and God, just think about dividing by zero. It is an invalid application.

Science does nothing for evaluating prose or what is the imagery of poetry. Science does little for evaluating subjective experiences in life, the very subjective experiences that give joy and spice to life.

So no, Science is effective but only in limited spheres. Science is the WHAT and the HOW. It is not at all about the WHY about the subjective life and experience. On the other hand, Religion is especially suited to explore the WHY.

There is no competition between the two but rather a complementary synergy where the two together are more than the sums of the parts. The problem arises when you try to use one to explore the other. Because then you are back to the equivalent of dividing by zero, regardless of whether done by dawlins or creationists.

I have my knowledge and my Faith both. They are not in conflict but in congruence. (I am not a theistic evolutionist. My views on Evolution is based only on science, and my Faith is based not on science).

Beautiful post!

PS this is my last one.

I’m perplexed at the lack of engagement with my comments as I thought I was thinking toward a new ground. Instead, as Robert Johnson noted, people seem to be interested in the polarities.

Maybe if I make some of the implications of my thoughts more explicit I would make them clearer.

I am in no way trying to prove or disprove ‘God’ or any mechanism of life establishment. And for the record, I don’t relate to Christ as a “savior” but as a hero of being human.

I think that an amazing feature of human being is that we can make ideas, and from these make lives and worlds. Ideas are accessible for exploration if our sense of self (and God) is larger than our ideas. In dialogue, god is an idea.

To argue a side of which is true, god or evolution in all its forms, ignores the fundamental effect of these world views: we interact with these as ideas, and as such, we see through them. I could state this in another way: as eyes are to brain, so ideas are to mind. I think it becomes more fruitful to then, to ask questions like, what is it to look at life through Darwinian theory, or what is it to look at life through a god? Something like this better fits this genius within the human being doesn’t it?

For instance, when I look through ideas of evolution, I notice that life evolves in human being to a level of complexity that allows us to have a say in how we evolve. Or, when I look through an idea of god, I can look at intention rather than natural selection; doing this shifts my inquiry from how does this work to, what might be possible?

However we got here, as human being, we hold a genius that in this world is unique to us. And in our unique genius, we have the ability to look into our selves in terms of machinery with the hopes of finding the right lever to pull or gear to adjust to solve our problems. Arising from this, is the paradox that if there were such a lever, who will pull it? The genius present in human being runs deep and amazes me constantly.