The Case for Christianity

[NoHolyCows]

Good. I want to address your points directly. My argument here is that this "rich, flawed, fascinating mythologies of human history" is the reality of the ancient mind. They are not constructing mythology, they are expressing and explaining the world as they see it. Not only that, this "flawed" understanding of the world is in fact how we ourselves experience the world we live in today. It is our reality.

When we raise a child, it is still more important to raise them with an appreciation of art, beauty and values than to teach them science. When we are sad or happy, we still express ourselves and find comfort in song and stories than in science. We have art therapy and music as therapy and even story telling as therapy, we don't use science as therapy. Sure, we have medicine, but that heals the body, not the soul. I suggest that it is more important to teach our children about Santa Claus than it is to teach them physics. I suggest that not to believe in Santa Claus is to deprive ourselves of a deep, fundamental and important hope in life. And that this hope is the very essence that makes life worth living. This is not superstition. It is reality.

Our obsession with science has blinded us to what I see as the most glaring failure of science. It has not addressed anything of vital importance to how to live our lives. It is, I insist, about dead things not living things.

I suggest that to understand living things, we need to first see our world spiritually, the way our ancestors do. We need to revisit the world of emotions and of the soul. These things, the spirit and the soul, lie beyond science but are the very essence of life itself. To insist that life, even in ameobas, has been explained in science is, I suggest, so off the mark I can't even begin to discuss it.

To understand God, we need to step down from the pulpit of science and embrace the world we actually live in. A world that we experience through the moment of the present and through our senses and emotions and mind, and begin to understand that. A world that is captured through art and stories rather than scientific fact. I suggest that the very "superstition and mythology" that you reject is the very reality of life itself. And until we embrace and try to understand this reality, we don't understand life at all. Let alone God.

Thanks for the earnest and beautifully written reply—it’s clear this topic matters to you deeply. But for the sake of clarity, let’s untangle the important conflations at work here.

You’re absolutely right that myths, stories, art, music, and symbols express how people make sense of the world. But that’s the point—they’re expressions, not explanations. Myth is meaningful precisely because it reflects human experience, not because it reveals literal truths about reality. Calling that “reality” is to confuse subjective meaning with objective fact. We feel the world this way, yes—but how we feel about something and what is actually true are not always aligned.

When you say things like “it’s more important to teach children about Santa Claus than physics,” that’s poetic, but also dangerously romanticized. Santa Claus is beautiful as a story—but it’s not reality. We don’t teach kids fairy tales to ground them in fact, we teach them to dream, to imagine, to empathize. That’s valuable—but only if we also teach them to eventually distinguish imagination from reality. Otherwise we’re not nurturing minds—we’re misleading them.

You mention that science hasn’t addressed “how to live.” But this is a false dichotomy. Science doesn’t replace values or meaning—it helps inform them. We still need ethics, literature, psychology, and philosophy. But the difference is: science asks what is true. Story and symbol ask what feels meaningful. We need both—but we need to know the difference.

And when you say we should see the world “spiritually” like our ancestors did, what you’re really asking is that we return to a mode of thought that blurs metaphor and fact, subjectivity and truth. That may feel comforting—but it’s also how people ended up believing in curses instead of medicine, in demons instead of trauma, in floods that covered the Earth instead of local river overflow. That’s not wisdom—it’s projection.

Science does study living things—including emotions, cognition, even meaning-making itself. The claim that it’s “about dead things” is simply false. Neuroscience studies emotion. Biology studies behavior. Psychology explores identity and meaning. Evolution explains cooperation and altruism. These fields don’t ignore life—they embrace it at every level. What they don’t do is wrap it in sacred metaphor and call it untouchable.

And finally, if the only way to “understand God” is to abandon reason and embrace the emotional stories we already want to believe, then God becomes indistinguishable from wishful thinking. If your argument is that we must step away from evidence, inquiry, and logic to find truth—then you’ve redefined “truth” as whatever makes us feel better. And that’s not a path to understanding. It’s a retreat from it.

We should absolutely value stories. But we shouldn’t mistake them for reality—or build worldviews on metaphor when what we need is method.

NHC

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

There's a lot to unpack here. Will it be alright if we agree to disagree on parts that are tangential and focus on those parts which are central to the discussion?

I think the first part to unpack is the Bible itself. I take it to be a collection of holy books, but not sacred in the sense that it is literally true. In fact, the fact that it was written by human agency and not by God himself is admitted in the Bible itself. Thus, the Bible is not so much a collection of books written by God but books about human encounters with God written by humans. The fact that it is freely translated and interpreted seems to suggest that we're supposed to see it that way.

Understood that way, the narrative in the Bible takes on a different nuance. For example, I'm rather amazed and impressed by how closely the Creation myth anticipates the Big Bang and evolution. Looking at other myths extant at that time, it's really quite amazing that someone much later after the birth of humankind could conceive such a concept. Perhaps, it came to the author as a vision or a dream. And if so, imagining seeing the unfolding of the Big Bang as a dream, the author might communicate it in human terms as they did. If so, indeed, perhaps the dream came from God, rather than their own imagination.

In those days, authorship wasn't as big a deal as it is now, and so even though Moses was ascribed as the author of the Pentateuch, he probably had a group of advisors and prophets who advised him, and what the Bible actually is, is a history of the Jewish nation and not an all out condemnation of the rest of humankind.

Does that make sense? I dread to anticipate the brilliant rebuttals to come, LOL. It's so way beyond my modest mind.

Appreciate your tone here—genuinely. And yes, I’m all for narrowing the discussion to focus on core claims. So let’s do that with what you’ve just laid out: the nature of the Bible, its authorship, and whether the Genesis narrative anticipates modern science.

First, your framing of the Bible as “books about human encounters with God written by humans” is far more theologically modest than many traditional Christian claims. That’s refreshing—and far more defensible. But the moment we admit that the Bible is human in origin, we’re in a different category. We’re no longer talking about divine revelation, but about subjective human interpretations of perceived spiritual experiences. And once we go there, those interpretations are no longer exempt from critique—they’re historical claims, and they compete with other cultural myths that make contradictory assertions.

Second, the idea that Genesis “amazingly anticipates the Big Bang and evolution” doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. The Genesis narrative doesn’t describe a singularity, spacetime expansion, or billions of years. It gives a flat-earth cosmology: a firm dome (“firmament”) above, waters below, light before the sun, Earth before stars, humans made from dust, and plants created before the sun. Trying to retrofit modern cosmology into this text is like seeing nuclear physics in a fortune cookie—it only works if you squint hard and read into the text what isn’t there.

If the Genesis account came to someone in a dream, we still have no reason to conclude it came from God rather than imagination, culture, or guesswork. Humans dream all the time. Some dreams resonate. But resonance isn’t revelation. If we grant that some ancient person’s dream was divinely inspired because it sounds a little like modern science, why not grant the same to the Rigveda, or the Enuma Elish, or even Plato? Selective attribution doesn’t get us to truth—it just reinforces the worldview we already lean toward.

And finally, yes, authorship in antiquity was different. But that weakens the historical credibility of the text, not strengthens it. If the Pentateuch wasn’t written by Moses but compiled and edited over centuries (which critical scholarship supports), that doesn’t invalidate it morally—but it certainly reframes it as the evolving national mythology of a Bronze Age people, not a pristine revelation from outside time.

So yes—it makes sense that you interpret the Bible this way. It makes it more survivable in the modern age. But it also strips it of divine authority and places it back where it belongs: among the rich, flawed, fascinating mythologies of human history. That’s not a dismissal—it’s a reclassification. And from there, we can discuss it more honestly.

NHC

Good. I want to address your points directly. My argument here is that this "rich, flawed, fascinating mythologies of human history" is the reality of the ancient mind. They are not constructing mythology, they are expressing and explaining the world as they see it.

That is the basis of mythology! It is using made up stories to explain how they interpret the world.

Our obsession with science has blinded us to what I see as the most glaring failure of science. It has not addressed anything of vital importance to how to live our lives. It is, I insist, about dead things not living things.

Failure of science. Science didn't try to replace religion. In fact, most of the founding fathers of sciences tried to use science to prove god. That failed. And then religion stepped in and interfered with science. The dichotomy between science and religion was started by religion and it is quite something else to here religion whine about. Science isn't about understanding how we fit in our environment. That is a different field. You can lambast science all you want... the fact that you need to target science to somehow provide value in Christianity (of which you haven't even begun to actually do specifically, instead relying on the camel nose technique of sneaking deism into the tent), indicates that your arguments aren't all too hot as you need to quilt together a false dichotomy to sneak your solution in to the conversation.

I suggest that to understand living things, we need to first see our world spiritually, the way our ancestors do.

Our ancestors worshipped animals. Our ancestors likely enacted acts of human sacrifice. I don't see you selling zoolatry or animism or human sacrifice. What makes the slide into polytheism / monotheism more worthy of nostalgia?

To understand God, we need to step down from the pulpit of science and embrace the world we actually live in. A world that we experience through the moment of the present and through our senses and emotions and mind, and begin to understand that. A world that is captured through art and stories rather than scientific fact. I suggest that the very "superstition and mythology" that you reject is the very reality of life itself. And until we embrace and try to understand this reality, we don't understand life at all. Let alone God.

You keep saying the same thing over and over and over again. Repeatedly trying to develop a false dichotomy setup to support your baseless "soul" and "spirit" nonsense. Inventing a wonky problem for your infomercial solution to fix.

Do you wonder about your origin and why science can't fully describe it? Is your uncertainty about the future that science can't solve bothering you? Are you tired of science just never have the answer about how you feel you fit in this world? Then we've got the solution for you... Christianity! Christianity will help you understand your place in the world. And now with Prayer 2.0, you can troubleshoot all your problems away with an invisible deity that will gladly intercede in your life or the lives of your loved ones.

 

[steve_bank]

Spiritual is another contextuall term that varies from person to persons.
Same with the terms holy and sacred.

Here in the PNW there is a bend in a river,hills, and trees that Native Americans claim to be sacred. They make a big deal over it.

I expect all religious experience frmo Christians to Jews to yoga practitioners are the same, rooted in brain chemistry and hormones.

When asked about people converting to Buddhism the Dali Lam said 'why not practice the one you have'.

I have come to believe it is not what you believe it is how you believe it. A orm of placebo effect.

It is experimentally demonstrated that if people with pain really believe an inert pill is tactfully a powerful painkiller some will feel relief. In one experiment when told the pill she was given was not a pain killer she still needed to take the placebo to get relief.

Spiritual so to speak is a feeling based on a belief.

Under the heading of morality I take spiritual to mean a rejection of consumptive materialism, happiness derived from acquiring possessions.

Spiritual versus material pursuits.

If you want to explore spirituality define exactly what you mean by it.

 

[bilby]

It's interesting to note that in the early Medieval period, Islam had a big head start in science. All the best mathematicians and astronomers were Muslims, and they were far in advance of Christendom.

All that changed, because the Imams, who were immersed in the scientific world of these great early experimenters and thinkers, could see that the more people studied reality, the more they found that it didn't support religion. So they did what threatened religious leaders always do - they declared science to be heretical, and that the only study allowed was study of scripture.

Around the same time, the leaders of the (western) Christian church were ignorant of science, and made the exact opposite call - they assumed that a study of reality could only bring people to a more worshipful understanding of God, and could only strengthen religious belief by uncovering God's many interventions in our world.

So the Muslims, who understood science and could see where it was leading, made the fact-based decision to suppress it in favour of religion; While the Christians made the erroneous decision to support science, expecting it to favour religion.

Fast forward a thousand years, and the Imams were right - Islamic faith is strong and passionate, while western Christianity is collapsing. But their expectation that this would bring God's favour, and thereby improve the lives of their people, has been dashed.

Of course, it's also true that the post-Christian west is booming technologically, and has left the Islamic world in its dust. But then, neither Imam nor Cardinal was hopeful of future technological dominance; They wanted theological dominance, and the Christians blew it.

What was bad for religion turns out to be good for humanity. Christianity's loss is Europe's gain. Islam's victory has sentenced the once great centres of Egypt, Persia, and Mesopotamia to backwater status (mitigated slightly by western demand for oil to power their technology).

Even in the USA, where (uniquely) Christianity has retained some strength, that strength is concentrated in poor rural areas, and the South, while religiosity wanes in the wealthy and technologically advanced cities of the North East and the Pacific Coast.

The whole thing has been a long natural experiment, testing the hypothesis "religion is better at improving human lives than science and technology are". The conclusion is clear - that hypothesis is false.

 

[Coleman Smith]

Suggesting that science disproves the existence of God violates the principle that you cannot prove a negative.

The history of human religious belief is vast and varied, encompassing a multitude of deities worshiped by different cultures across the globe. Here is a list that covers some of the major deities worshiped throughout human history:

1. Ancient Egyptian Deities: Ra, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Anubis, Thoth, Bastet, Hathor, and many others.
2. Greek Deities: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hermes, Dionysus, and many others.
3. Roman Deities: Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Minerva, Apollo, Diana, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Bacchus, and others, often directly corresponding to Greek deities.
4. Norse Deities: Odin, Thor, Loki, Freyja, Freyr, Tyr, Baldr, Frigg, Heimdall, and others.
5. Hindu Deities: Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Parvati, Ganesha, Hanuman, Kali, Krishna, and many more.
6. Buddhist Deities: Buddha (not always considered a deity), Avalokiteshvara (Guanyin), Amitabha, Maitreya, Manjushri, Tara, Vajrapani, and various Bodhisattvas.
7. Judeo-Christian-Islamic Deities: Yahweh (God), Jesus Christ (for Christians), Allah (for Muslims), along with angels, archangels, saints, and prophets such as Moses and Muhammad.
8. Mesopotamian Deities: Enlil, Enki, Anu, Inanna (Ishtar), Marduk, Shamash, Nammu, Ninhursag, and others.
9. Aztec Deities: Huitzilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Tlaloc, Chalchiuhtlicue, Xipe Totec, and others.
10. Inca Deities: Inti (the Sun god), Viracocha (the creator god), Pachamama (the Earth goddess), Mama Quilla (the Moon goddess), and others.
11. Shinto Deities: Amaterasu (Sun goddess), Susanoo (Storm god), Tsukuyomi (Moon god), Inari (Fox deity), and many kami (spirits or deities).
12. Celtic Deities: The Morrigan, Lugh, Brigid, Cernunnos, Danu, Dagda, and others.
13. Sumerian Deities: Anu, Enlil, Enki, Inanna, Utu (Shamash), Nammu, Ninhursag, and others.
14. Mayan Deities: Itzamna, Kukulkan (Quetzalcoatl), Ixchel, Chaac, Ah Puch, and others.
15. Vedic Deities (predecessors to Hinduism): Indra, Agni, Varuna, Surya, Ushas, Saraswati, and others.
16. African Traditional Religions: Various tribal and regional deities and spirits, such as Olorun (Yoruba), Anansi (Ashanti), Nyame (Akan), and many others.

This list is by no means exhaustive, as human history is replete with diverse religious beliefs and practices, each with its own pantheon of deities. Additionally, many cultures have believed in local or household spirits, ancestor worship, and other forms of spiritual entities.

However, I think it's important to point out that neither the national Academy of science are the equivalent organizations in Asia or Europe have ever published enany evidence for the existence of the estimated 35,000 deities worshiped by humans since the beginning of human history.

(AI was used in part to generate this post.)

 

[bilby]

Suggesting that science disproves the existence of God violates the principle that you cannot prove a negative.

Not at all. Science is all about disproving hypotheses; Specify what a God is, and science is just the tool to show that that thing isn't real.

You can't prove the non-existence of God. But you can disprove His existence - if you can specify what that existence entails.

If you tell me that God always answers prayers, then I can disprove that God by praying and getting no answer.

If you tell me that God is all powerful, all knowing, and opposed to evil, then I can disprove that God by finding evil.

Disproving a positive claim (eg "A God exists who has these properties, abilities and attributes") doesn't require proving a negative.

Proving the negative claim "God does not exist" is a whole other thing - but by disproving a bunch of God concepts, one can prove that IF God exists, He is nothing like what his followers say he's like. That's not proving the negative; But it is disproving religions.

 

[pood]

Little did I know that molecular biology is founded on Egyptian science.

All of science is founded on all previous science, so yes, it is.

I would say that I am glad to hear that you have learned something, but I suspect that you are attempting sarcasm here.

Not at all. I'm just trying to rise to the level of intelligent discourse displayed in this thread.

Really? Then you are failing.

I know. It may be way beyond me.

BTW, what are the fundamental principles of Egyptian science?

The same as any science - observe, hypothesise, test, repeat.

Hmmm. Sounds like methodology, not principles.

I had the crazy idea that science evolved from the Christian universities of Europe in an attempt to understand the mind of God. But what does my grandmother know?

If she thinks that, then "Nothing about the history of science, or apparently about what science even is" would be a good summary. That certainly is a crazy idea, and appears to be Christian propaganda that ignores a massive history prior to 1088.

Is there a particular reason why you think your grandmother is an appropriate authority? Did she study the history of science?

Not at all. I'm just acknowledging the paucity of my knowledge. I'm looking forward to learning from you.

There's a lot to unpack here. Will it be alright if we agree to disagree on parts that are tangential and focus on those parts which are central to the discussion?

I think the first part to unpack is the Bible itself. I take it to be a collection of holy books, but not sacred in the sense that it is literally true. In fact, the fact that it was written by human agency and not by God himself is admitted in the Bible itself. Thus, the Bible is not so much a collection of books written by God but books about human encounters with God written by humans. The fact that it is freely translated and interpreted seems to suggest that we're supposed to see it that way.

Understood that way, the narrative in the Bible takes on a different nuance. For example, I'm rather amazed and impressed by how closely the Creation myth anticipates the Big Bang and evolution. Looking at other myths extant at that time, it's really quite amazing that someone much later after the birth of humankind could conceive such a concept. Perhaps, it came to the author as a vision or a dream. And if so, imagining seeing the unfolding of the Big Bang as a dream, the author might communicate it in human terms as they did. If so, indeed, perhaps the dream came from God, rather than their own imagination.

In those days, authorship wasn't as big a deal as it is now, and so even though Moses was ascribed as the author of the Pentateuch, he probably had a group of advisors and prophets who advised him, and what the Bible actually is, is a history of the Jewish nation and not an all out condemnation of the rest of humankind.

Does that make sense? I dread to anticipate the brilliant rebuttals to come, LOL. It's so way beyond my modest mind.

Appreciate your tone here—genuinely. And yes, I’m all for narrowing the discussion to focus on core claims. So let’s do that with what you’ve just laid out: the nature of the Bible, its authorship, and whether the Genesis narrative anticipates modern science.

First, your framing of the Bible as “books about human encounters with God written by humans” is far more theologically modest than many traditional Christian claims. That’s refreshing—and far more defensible. But the moment we admit that the Bible is human in origin, we’re in a different category. We’re no longer talking about divine revelation, but about subjective human interpretations of perceived spiritual experiences. And once we go there, those interpretations are no longer exempt from critique—they’re historical claims, and they compete with other cultural myths that make contradictory assertions.

Second, the idea that Genesis “amazingly anticipates the Big Bang and evolution” doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. The Genesis narrative doesn’t describe a singularity, spacetime expansion, or billions of years. It gives a flat-earth cosmology: a firm dome (“firmament”) above, waters below, light before the sun, Earth before stars, humans made from dust, and plants created before the sun. Trying to retrofit modern cosmology into this text is like seeing nuclear physics in a fortune cookie—it only works if you squint hard and read into the text what isn’t there.

If the Genesis account came to someone in a dream, we still have no reason to conclude it came from God rather than imagination, culture, or guesswork. Humans dream all the time. Some dreams resonate. But resonance isn’t revelation. If we grant that some ancient person’s dream was divinely inspired because it sounds a little like modern science, why not grant the same to the Rigveda, or the Enuma Elish, or even Plato? Selective attribution doesn’t get us to truth—it just reinforces the worldview we already lean toward.

And finally, yes, authorship in antiquity was different. But that weakens the historical credibility of the text, not strengthens it. If the Pentateuch wasn’t written by Moses but compiled and edited over centuries (which critical scholarship supports), that doesn’t invalidate it morally—but it certainly reframes it as the evolving national mythology of a Bronze Age people, not a pristine revelation from outside time.

So yes—it makes sense that you interpret the Bible this way. It makes it more survivable in the modern age. But it also strips it of divine authority and places it back where it belongs: among the rich, flawed, fascinating mythologies of human history. That’s not a dismissal—it’s a reclassification. And from there, we can discuss it more honestly.

NHC

Good. I want to address your points directly. My argument here is that this "rich, flawed, fascinating mythologies of human history" is the reality of the ancient mind. They are not constructing mythology, they are expressing and explaining the world as they see it. Not only that, this "flawed" understanding of the world is in fact how we ourselves experience the world we live in today. It is our reality.

When we raise a child, it is still more important to raise them with an appreciation of art, beauty and values than to teach them science. When we are sad or happy, we still express ourselves and find comfort in song and stories than in science. We have art therapy and music as therapy and even story telling as therapy, we don't use science as therapy. Sure, we have medicine, but that heals the body, not the soul. I suggest that it is more important to teach our children about Santa Claus than it is to teach them physics. I suggest that not to believe in Santa Claus is to deprive ourselves of a deep, fundamental and important hope in life. And that this hope is the very essence that makes life worth living. This is not superstition. It is reality.

Our obsession with science has blinded us to what I see as the most glaring failure of science. It has not addressed anything of vital importance to how to live our lives. It is, I insist, about dead things not living things.

I suggest that to understand living things, we need to first see our world spiritually, the way our ancestors do. We need to revisit the world of emotions and of the soul. These things, the spirit and the soul, lie beyond science but are the very essence of life itself. To insist that life, even in ameobas, has been explained in science is, I suggest, so off the mark I can't even begin to discuss it.

To understand God, we need to step down from the pulpit of science and embrace the world we actually live in. A world that we experience through the moment of the present and through our senses and emotions and mind, and begin to understand that. A world that is captured through art and stories rather than scientific fact. I suggest that the very "superstition and mythology" that you reject is the very reality of life itself. And until we embrace and try to understand this reality, we don't understand life at all. Let alone God.

I find this rather puzzling. Earlier you were saying how Christianity supported science. Now you are saying it is less important to teach kids about physics than it is to teach them about … Santa Claus?

Does this mean that in adulthood, God belief is substituted for Santa belief? Santa Claus is God for adults?

There is no doubt that most people, and all cultures throughout history, have had and do have what may be broadly construed as a spiritual experience of the world. Native American cultures were rife with spirituality, with an awe and reverence for nature with which they had much more direct contact than does technological society today.

But you know the rest of the story, right? Spanish conquistadors and later other Western colonizers came over waving their bibles and their guns, trashed native spiritual experiences and their customary life ways, destroyed the sacred texts of the Mayans, liquidated many of the natives across the continent and forced those who remained onto little reservations, and over time forced them to adopt Christianity, or at least say that they did.

And this is your wonderful Christianity? That we should literally believe in?

Francis Collins sees a beautiful waterfall and literally falls to his knees and declares his life for Jesus Christ.

I have had much contact with nature, especially when I was younger. I have camped in Big Sur under the sprawl of the Milky Way at midnight. It is indeed awe-inspiring, and feelings of reverence come over one. Never once did it occur to me to drop to my knees and declare for Jesus Christ. The idea would have stuck me as bizarre — no, laughable — back then, and still does now.

Nor is my experience of awe, my feeling perhaps of being in the presence of something ineffable, diminished one iota by knowing, scientifically, what the Milky Way is. On the contrary, it is increased, especially by the knowledge that humans were able to figure out what it is, and so much else besides.

You seem to be saying that science can’t touch on the meaning of life, on values, and this is largely true. But you also seem to be saying or implying that by literalizing the world, science drains it of spiritual meaning.

I find quite the opposite to be the case. Doctrinaire religions, especially of the Abrahamic variety, literalize spiritual experiences, and drain them of meaning by stuffing them into a box of dogma and indoctrination.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Has Brunswick ever heard of... you know, BIOLOGY? The study of living things. I can't facepalm hard enough.

 

[pood]

Has Brunswick ever heard of... you know, BIOLOGY? The study of living things. I can't facepalm hard enough.

To be charitable, he’s seems to be saying that while science can explain biology, biochemistry and the like, it can’t address the core question of how we should live our lives, which is largely true. But then, neither can religion.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Has Brunswick ever heard of... you know, BIOLOGY? The study of living things. I can't facepalm hard enough.

To be charitable, he’s seems to be saying that while science can explain biology, biochemistry and the like, it can’t address the core question of how we should live our lives, which is largely true. But then, neither can religion.

Again, I don't care about being charitable to those who aren't being.

 

[WAB]

Has Brunswick ever heard of... you know, BIOLOGY? The study of living things. I can't facepalm hard enough.

It might not make any difference to their God-belief. There are millions of scientists on the US alone who adhere to some religious faith, some two million of whom are evangelical Christians.

 

[pood]

Has Brunswick ever heard of... you know, BIOLOGY? The study of living things. I can't facepalm hard enough.

To be charitable, he’s seems to be saying that while science can explain biology, biochemistry and the like, it can’t address the core question of how we should live our lives, which is largely true. But then, neither can religion.

Again, I don't care about being charitable to those who aren't being.

In what way is he being uncharitable?

 

[Swammerdami]

EACH side of this debate has much truth on its side. But each side erects barriers to communication. Some of the confusion arrives from the word "religion" -- an ambiguous overloaded word. Replace that word with "human experience and spirituality" and the dialog might be more useful.

... My argument here is that this "rich, flawed, fascinating mythologies of human history" is the reality of the ancient mind. They are not constructing mythology, they are expressing and explaining the world as they see it.

That is the basis of mythology! It is using made up stories to explain how they interpret the world.

Our obsession with science has blinded us to what I see as the most glaring failure of science. It has not addressed anything of vital importance to how to live our lives.

When I ponder my experiences today, or over recent months it is very seldom that "science" concerns me directly. I hope my physiotherapist knows enough anatomy to perform her role and give good advice, but I don't worry much about that. The science of psychology might shed light on some of the interactions with other humans I have, but I just experience and derive some pleasure from the interactions. I'm dependent on various technologies, but I can ignore that almost all the time. My son sometimes tries to educate me a bit on the science of nutrition: I should pay more attention to that.

Mostly I just experience life, with "science" completely in the background (despite that "scientist" was once part of my job title).

If a frog is conscious, it is experiencing its life without contemplating science. If a human takes special interest in a frog, the science of frogs' biology might be relevant.

It is, I insist, about dead things not living things.

As phrased, that sentence is confused. I don't have a cite, but I think scientists working in biology hugely outnumber scientists working in astronomy and physics. The disparity is much larger if fields like psychology, linguistics, pharmacology are included in "life sciences".

Living processes are generally much more complicated than inert processes, but that's almost part of the definition of life.

Failure of science. Science didn't try to replace religion. In fact, most of the founding fathers of sciences tried to use science to prove god.

Examples of this? I know Kepler and Newton assumed some creator-god that initiated or stabilized planetary orbits but I don't recall them trying to use their science to prove the existence of such a god.

That failed. And then religion stepped in and interfered with science. The dichotomy between science and religion was started by religion and it is quite something else to here religion whine about. ...

Religion came first. Most natural philosophers -- a convenient designation for the earliest "scientists" -- didn't try to separate "religion" and "science." Sometimes scientific thinking was at odds with religious dogma but only specific doctrines were challenged. Nicholas of Cusa, a Catholic bishop, was an important 15th-century thinker whose intuitions contradicted some assumptions of the Church, but Nicholas did not reject Christianity.

Even in the 20th-century there was only limited schism between science and religion. Niels Bohr called himself a "Christian atheist" and

[Albert] Einstein didn't identify as an atheist, [but] he also wasn't a traditional religious believer. He referred to himself as an "agnostic" or "religious non-believer," and expressed a belief in what he called "Spinoza's God" – a God who reveals himself in the order of the universe, rather than a personal God who intervenes in human affairs. He was closely involved with humanist organizations and rejected the idea of a conflict between science and religion, believing that a "cosmic religion" was necessary for science.

I suggest that to understand living things, we need to first see our world spiritually, the way our ancestors do.
To understand God, we need to step down from the pulpit of science and embrace the world we actually live in. A world that we experience through the moment of the present and through our senses and emotions and mind, and begin to understand that. A world that is captured through art and stories rather than scientific fact. I suggest that the very "superstition and mythology" that you reject is the very reality of life itself. And until we embrace and try to understand this reality, we don't understand life at all. Let alone God.

I think this last paragraph by Brunswick1954 has much validity and is almost poetic. The one objection I would offer (and perhaps Einstein would have the same complaint) is that no matter how strong our faith may be that there is some sort of supreme divinity, there is no factual reason to connect that divinity to the one discussed in the Bible. Making such a connection as a matter of FAITH might be useful to an individual, but I and others here will continually point to the lack of evidence for such a connection.

 

[James Brown]

Richard Dawkins — 'Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?'

 

[southernhybrid]

T

Richard Dawkins — 'Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?'

But garden fairies are such an adorable myth. I even have one in my living room, and a Buddha on my patio along side my dragon. I suggest that the author of this thread read the book, "The Power of Myth" by the late Joseph Campbell, or better yet, see if he can get his hands on the DVD set that was produced by PBS when Campbell was still alive. Campbell thought there was a lot of beauty in religious mythology as long as it didn't develop into extremist. As a hard core atheist I agree. I love many of the symbols of religion mythology. I just don't take them literally.

Another book that everyone should read is "2000 Years of Disbelief" by John Haught. The author did an indepth study of how non believers or those who happened to have the wrong belief in their society were often sentenced to prison, tortured or executed. Most of our founders were skeptics, some openly atheists among their friends. He describes examples of how being a Protestant in a Catholic society might cause you great harm or visa versa. It's an interesting read with lots of quotes from skeptics including Socrates, Washington, Lincoln etc.

And since I may be the only woman posting in this interesting thread, let me add one more of my favorite books: "Women Without Superstition." It's a compilation of famous female skeptics and atheists and what their activism achieved.

I'll bow out now and let the rest of you argue, i mean discuss. Please no more It's much more pleasant when people can disagree without bringing out their swords. And, don't be upset with Bilby. We all love him, but he's an Aussie, you know a cunt. His comments are just a part of his culture. He means no harm.

I just moved from the South where we are mostly polite. I grew up in the Northeast where the culture is very different. Now I'm in the Midwest and I haven't quite figured out the culture here, althought there are as many churches as there were in the South here in Indy, but it seems there are more liberal ones. I personally think of liberal Christians as the allies of atheists, as values are more important than beleifs imo.

And, let me correct something that Bilby said. Religion is still very much alive in the Northern US. It's just not as deeply ingrained in the culture as it is in the South. In the South we have expressions like "have a blessed day"and "God bless you" but they are just cultural. In the North, the population is heavily Catholic and Jewish, while the South is mostly Protestant. Oddly enough I was raised by nutty evangelials in NJ. Mythology still rules the day, but until recently, most of the beleivers respected the SCS, including my late mother. That is now being threatened by creeps leading our country who want a theorcratic form of government. I'm off topic, but felt the need to mention that.

Okay. I mean it this time. Back to you all, I mean you guys.....I'll likely sit on the sidelines and read what at least some of you have to say.

 

[pood]

T

And, let me correct something that Bilby said. Religion is still very much alive in the Northern US. It's just not as deeply ingrained in the culture as it is in the South. In the South we have expressions like "have a blessed day"and "God bless you"

I think “have a blessed day” is quite charming. Here in New York City, the more general term is, “Fuck you, you fucking fuck.” It’s even printed on T-shirts.

 

[steve_bank]

T

And, let me correct something that Bilby said. Religion is still very much alive in the Northern US. It's just not as deeply ingrained in the culture as it is in the South. In the South we have expressions like "have a blessed day"and "God bless you"

I think “have a blessed day” is quite charming. Here in New York City, the more general term is, “Fuck you, you fucking fuck.” It’s even printed on T-shirts.

What part of NYC? I came from Jamaica in Queens. Then Lynbrook and Rackaway. Then Stamford.

Remember the Fillmore East by any chance?

 

[steve_bank]

It would be refreshing to hear a Christian say I understand it is not pro0able but I believe in god, Jesus, and the bible...I have faith.

I would have no problem with that.

 

[southernhybrid]

T

And, let me correct something that Bilby said. Religion is still very much alive in the Northern US. It's just not as deeply ingrained in the culture as it is in the South. In the South we have expressions like "have a blessed day"and "God bless you"

I think “have a blessed day” is quite charming. Here in New York City, the more general term is, “Fuck you, you fucking fuck.” It’s even printed on T-shirts.

I agree. A close friend of mine is on her way today to visit New York City for the first time in her life and I told her to be prepared for culture shock. I have no problem with the expression, "Have a blessed day." I've told my atheist friends that we can think of it as secular blessings. One time when I was visiting New York City with family members, an older woman walked by and said to us, "Damn Tourists". I guess she was upset because we were trying to read the menu outside of a restaurant. i ignored her, but wanted to tell her that NYC would be in a lot of trouble if it wasn't for the damn tourists. I grew up so close to the city that I could see the Empire State Building from my bedroom window, so I'm familiar with the culture, although the fuck you shirts weren't around when I was a kid. That would have upset my mother who used to tell us that hearing those words were like cutting her with a knife.

One time I had a group of humanist friends over for dinner and I shocked them by telling them I wanted to say the blessing before we ate. My blessing was this: "Since the sharing of food is a Human Universal found in all known cultures, it's with great pleasure that I have the privilege to share food with all of you this evening". They seemed to like my blessing.

 

[bilby]

And, don't be upset with Bilby. We all love him, but he's an Aussie, you know a cunt. His comments are just a part of his culture. He means no harm.

Australian profanity is a fucking art form. It's poetry, and has subtleties of form that separate a term of endearment from a deadly insult based on a huge range of nuances and contextual clues that require years of exposure to master.

For example, your best mate would be described as "a total cunt", while somebody you despised would be "a bit of a cunt" - minor insults are insults, but major insults are compliments, and the more hyperbolic the insult, the more of a complement is is.

"We all love him, but he's an Aussie, you know a cunt" is slightly poor form; It's not quite insulting enough to be a compliment, and the smiley makes it even weaker. Not bad for a fucking Seppo, but.