Rational Faith

[cj44]

No rest for the wicked. Being the anti-christ is a full time job, doncha know.

Clearly, you didn't get enough rest last night.

 

[Cliffy]

Clearly, you didn't get enough rest last night.

You are right. I will return to my warm bed soon but first I wanted to let you know... I've got my eye on you! Nyahahaha!

I'm not the Anti-Christ. I'm just some urchin with a dime store anti-christ costume on. Actually, I kinda like the guy and his teachings, but I feel you do the Christ a great disservice.

 

[L Gilbert]

That returning home thing seems pretty universal in the older philosophies. It's very often to the empyrean, the lake of fire and or light. Long time ago Cliffy we may all have thought as one.

That's quite probable. One thing has been on the minds of humans since day 1.

I think Les should establish the purpose of the human form first before casting doubt on the utility of the design/form.

Survival. It's been on human minds since day one.

Rational faith isn't calling upon science to prove Christianity. Science cannot investigate the divine.

True. Science isn't into investigating improbable ifs and maybes, especially when there is no evidence suggesting their existences.

However, science/scientists like Collins can recognize the divine.

Or more likely, they can be self-deluded into thinking there's something there when there isn't. The whole thing might be made up or at least 60% might be and 40% is genetic tendency.
Genes contribute to religious inclination - life - 16 March 2005 - New Scientist
What Twins Reveal About The Science Of Faith | Popular Science

Define Create. Creation: to make something out of NOTHING.

Man made gods from nothing? Now that's believable.

Just about every religion and spiritual path recognizes the divine but is it rational to think that only your religion is the only true path home?

It is rational to invent a grand delusion if one is seeking to have power over many or more wealth than one can use. Wealth and power are extremely attractive. So is the desire to be a part of something big.

Well, of course it is rational, Cliffy.

I think you want to pull all religions and beliefs into the same pot of stew. Why can't there be "diversity"! Do all religions have to say the same things? Do all paths have to lead to the same home? Why? That would suggest a schizophrenic God to me. You cannot take all the world religions, philosophies and individual beliefs and say they all mean the same thing. They don't.

That's just the monotheistic ones. The polytheistic ones are a different breed.

Rational faith isn't faith in faith. Rational faith is faith in God. Who is He?

A creation in your definition by my guess. And who says it's a "he" rather than a she or an it anyway? Men? lol Humans have a strong tendency to anthropomorphize. This tendency, he's kind of quaint.

Gilbert, you are looking for an answer regarding my "obvious planning" comment. Well, ducks have flipper feet - that suits them well to landing in water.

More likely evolution caused their genes to make them have webbed feet for the purpose of surviving in their environment.

Dogs - well, they are swell all the way around.

Really? There are more intelligent creatures around. Humans love having slaves as companions. Are dogs all that great when they don't bend to human wants?

And, planned to be man's best friend and they are.

More likely evolution caused their genes to make them wolflike for the purpose of surviving in their environment.

Look at the magnificence of the human hand. Don't even get me started on the eyeball.

The human hand is pretty cool butthe human eye is extraordinarily contrary to evolution. It's a joke. Humans have one of the worst eye constructions in the natural world.

How about the mountain goat - there is a nimble fellow. The sun set just right so it doesn't incinerate the skin off our heads. The beauty of a rose and its scent (prior to the genetically engineered mass produced roses). I see the universe was made with love by a loving God. He planned it.

Or more likely evolution engineered everything to be what they are for the purpose of survivability. There's tons of evidence supporting that.

You said, "Don't even get me started on the eyeball" in a context that suggested you consider it a marvel of design. I've already touched on that specific item in a previous post, apparently you weren't paying attention or just cancelled that idea out of your thoughts. From an engineering design perspective, it's built upside down, backwards, and partly inside out. Cephalopods have much better designed eyes than we do, the light-sensing rods and cones are on the front of the retina facing the direction of incoming light, and the nerves and blood vessels that supply them are behind them, so they don't have the foveal blind spot we do, and they wouldn't go blind if they were diabetic. What can we conclude from that, that god likes squids and octupuses better?

Quite right.

Obnoxious bastids!

I don't think that's true. I think nobody wanted to domesticate 'em, coz how silly would you look riding around on a stripey mount? Like a bloody poofter!

Can't see Wild Bill Hickok riding around on a zebra. Nobobody'd take him seriously. Well, not til he shot 'em.

lol Good point.

While I was sleeping.......tough crowd on the forum last night. I'll need my morning coffee before I address you all. Wolves, Zebras, Eyeballs, Cephalopods....That's quite a to do list you have given me. Don't you people sleep?


JLM, ".. how many times do these theories have to be stated over and over ad infinitum?" Until they are learned, JLM. And it appears some of our fellow posters were not paying attention in Sunday School. So, on we go. Lesson One: GOD CREATED STUFF

I better get my coffee.

lol Also funny stuff. But, most likely, when evolution caused the human brain to be lifted above most other species' intelligence; enough to start wondering how things happened and why they happened, humans needed something to explain these phenomena and leaped to the assumptions of super- or unnatural causes for the lack of better explanations.

 

[cj44]

I think I might know what is the matter with all of us today. Didn't Mr. Beaver mention some sort of atomic solar flare going off??? It must be effecting us.

I need more coffee before I respond to this unruly group.

 

[Cliffy]

I think I might know what is the matter with all of us today. Didn't Mr. Beaver mention some sort of atomic solar flare going off??? It must be effecting us.

I need more coffee before I respond to this unruly group.

There is not enough coffee to prepare you for this bunch. You are way out of your league here. A few before you have run off screaming into the night or got banned from snapping and threatening people. Check your pulse. Make sure you are not about to blow a gasket.

 

[L Gilbert]

I think I might know what is the matter with all of us today. Didn't Mr. Beaver mention some sort of atomic solar flare going off??? It must be effecting us.

I need more coffee before I respond to this unruly group.

I would have made more if I'd known.

hehe This one is for Mr. Sinister: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/08/the_human_eye_is_so_poorly_des009951.html

I have my own reply for it (most of which has to do with knee-jerkiness and apologetics), but I am curious.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

My first reaction was that you can bet engineers don't put the CCD sensor into the camera facing away from the lens with all the wires in front of it. The mimicry of the human eye they DO use is the curvature of the sensing surface, not the general structure of it. Overall my impression is "grasping at straws." And the stuff about the blood vessels needing to be in front because of the rods and cones nourishment needs is just false, if it were true the cephalopod eye would be desperately inefficient.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

My first reaction was that you can bet engineers don't put the CCD sensor into the camera facing away from the lens with all the wires in front of it. The mimicry of the human eye they DO use is the curvature of the sensing surface, not the general structure of it. Overall my impression is "grasping at straws." And the stuff about the blood vessels needing to be in front because of the rods and cones nourishment needs is just false, if it were true the cephalopod eye would be desperately inefficient.

Faith-based science. It's the branch of study that involves coming up with whatever explanation (whether true or not) you need to support your religious dogma.

 

[L Gilbert]

My first reaction was that you can bet engineers don't put the CCD sensor into the camera facing away from the lens with all the wires in front of it. The mimicry of the human eye they DO use is the curvature of the sensing surface, not the general structure of it. Overall my impression is "grasping at straws." And the stuff about the blood vessels needing to be in front because of the rods and cones nourishment needs is just false, if it were true the cephalopod eye would be desperately inefficient.

lol There ya go.

Faith-based science. It's the branch of study that involves coming up with whatever explanation (whether true or not) you need to support your religious dogma.

AKA pseudoscience. The pseudo- part is there because the science part is contaminated. Science is based upon accuracy and as soon as a motive other than that is applied, science is deviant.

 

[talloola]

Obnoxious bastids!

I don't think that's true. I think nobody wanted to domesticate 'em, coz how silly would you look riding around on a stripey mount? Like a bloody poofter!

Can't see Wild Bill Hickok riding around on a zebra. Nobobody'd take him seriously. Well, not til he shot 'em.

its been attempted many times through history, 'they' will not consent to anyone riding ont their back,
or bossing them around at all, and from what i hear they are quite cranky.

they would look great in a parade, or at children's birthday parties, but
the outcome wouldn't be too comfortable. lol

 

[Motar]

No. Behavioural evidence is. It's the observed behaviour of a real person (the one standing in front of the parole board).

Right, TBones. Behavioral evidence is real evidence. It is not physical, material evidence like DNA. It is soul evidence. It reveals the bent of the human spirit which engenders it. It is spiritual evidence.

Faith-based science. It's the branch of study that involves coming up with whatever explanation (whether true or not) you need to support your religious dogma.

I would suggest that faith-based science is called a hypothesis.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

I would suggest that faith-based science is called a hypothesis.

No, that's not what a hypothesis is. It's a proposition, or a set of propositions, offered as a possible explanation of some phenomenon. It'll be followed by attempts to devise tests to find out how well it works as an explanation, and if it doesn't work it'll be tossed out. Faith doesn't enter into it. Faith-based science is called pseudoscience.

 

[darkbeaver]

Got a look at todays new National Geocraphic, it's title is The Truth About Black Holes. If you want to witness faith based science this new issue is your ticket. The article is about ten pages long. It's new age science based religion. It's hard to find Bible thumpers as crazy as the Big Bang cult, the Black Hole Priests are truly demented. It's not at all unusual for NG to support any industry drivel no matter how whacked. The publication has been bird cage paper for a long time.
Of course everyone of the scientists involved will swear on a log book that they mercilessly eliminate the possibility of faith slithering to their labs. I didn't read any of it so I don't know how they handled Hawkings revelations or if they did. He has to be replaced you know, he's no longer reliable.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Yeah, I guess you'd know, wouldn't you, given your profound and insightful knowledge of physics.

 

[darkbeaver]

Yeah, I guess you'd know, wouldn't you.

Of course you guess.

 

[Motar]

I'm having a difficult time trying to figure out how you relate behaviour and spiritual. Spiritual is interior, behaviour is external.

Behavioral evidence does not belong in the material/physical evidence type or category, Cliffy. It is not a hair sample. It is soul evidence. It reveals the bent of the human spirit which engenders it. Understanding from a Christian worldview that human beings are more than just "meatsacks", it is reasonable to place human behavior in another evidence category. Spiritual evidence works for me.

 

[darkbeaver]

Behavioral evidence does not belong in the material/physical evidence type or category, Cliffy. It is not a hair sample. It is soul evidence. It reveals the bent of the human spirit which engenders it. Understanding from a Christian worldview that human beings are more than just "meatsacks", it is reasonable to place human behavior in another evidence category. Spiritual evidence works for me.

Why then did the Neo Christian Church decide on the insane confirmation vehicle of a human meatsack the very device which won them legions of believers? The meaty baby god was and is the only novelty offered by your association.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Behavioral evidence does not belong in the material/physical evidence type or category, Cliffy. It is not a hair sample. It is soul evidence. It reveals the bent of the human spirit which engenders it. Understanding from a Christian worldview that human beings are more than just "meatsacks", it is reasonable to place human behavior in another evidence category. Spiritual evidence works for me.

Behaviour is a manifestation of electrochemical processes happening in the brain, it has ultimately a physical basis, and the proof of that is how chemicals and physical damage can change it. There's no evidence there's any such thing as a soul separate from the physical brain.

 

[darkbeaver]

Behaviour is a manifestation of electrochemical processes happening in the brain, it has ultimately a physical basis, and the proof of that is how chemicals and physical damage can change it. There's no evidence there's any such thing as a soul separate from the physical brain.

There's no proof that any electrochemical process in the brain is mind. Consciousness is not physical and not a physical process. You don't agree with Sheldrake do you?

 

[Motar]

Behaviour is a manifestation of electrochemical processes happening in the brain, it has ultimately a physical basis, and the proof of that is how chemicals and physical damage can change it. There's no evidence there's any such thing as a soul separate from the physical brain.

Not separate, Dex. Humanly speaking, commingled. At times, uncooperative:

“Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41 NIV)

Why then did the Neo Christian Church decide on the insane confirmation vehicle of a human meatsack the very device which won them legions of believers? The meaty baby god was and is the only novelty offered by your association.

Well, DB, I cannot speak for the "Neo Christian Church".

Francis Collins and rational faith:

"...to apply scientific arguments to the question of God's existence, as if this were somehow a showstopper, is committing a category error.”
Francis S. Collins Quotes (Author of The Language of God)