So who said I didn't take calculus? Or was that simply another assumption of yours?
Another assumption so soon? Who said I didn't have any training in calculus?
Science, soul and free will
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Your spirit goes to heaven, and your will already deciding to be with God, combined with all negative concepts being removed from your knowledge, is "locked in". When I walk with Jesus in the garden one day, I will be unable to rebel against him. I won't have a concept of rebellion.
So do I still have a free will? Sure! I willfully walk with Jesus in the garden, or I willfully could take a nap and allow others to talk to him.
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Well, sorry to be off topic, by i feel compelled to respond to some of the nonsense the directed at me.
I very specifically referred to Renaissance, not the Enlightenment, which is an important distinction. The Enlightenment took hold in the middle of 18th Century and like the Renaissance had both positive and negative impulses. Prior to that there was no separation of Church and State, in fact no separation between Church and Science.
But there would have been no Enlightenment without a Renaissance and the growth of learning and science that was propelled by the Church from the 11th Century. There was a militantly anti religious character of the Enlightenment. Both the American and the French Revolutions were products of this. In the last 40 years that character has emerged and gained almost complete ascendancy, overturning the religious sentiments that are deeply ingrained in our civilization. We are very much in a Post Christian society now.
The establishment of a separation of philosophy from theology, in the Enlightenment, has consequences that are only starting to be realized in full now. The constructive faith based rationalism is increasingly being replaced by the reductive rationalism based on nihilism in our time.
The Church is based on critical thought. Read any Encyclical and you will glean how assertively and constructively it is founded on reason. The loss of that reason is profoundly undercutting science in our age. Science at its foundation now is becoming a belief system, notably in modern Cosmology, which has lost all sense of empiricism and utility.
It spouts out nonsense like the unprovable mathematical artifice of multidimensional superstrings, with nary a blink from people who should know better. It's become a closed system, with its own priesthood, tenure is its Holy Orders, and it has become completely alienated from what should be its primary inspiration of producing useful technology.
It ruthlessly shunts aside any who do not accept its dogma, which it knows can never be proven, and therefor can never be disproven. It is complete conceit, and nothing else. We are the edge of an era of a dictatorship of a Cult of 'Experts'.
While the Enlightenment did spur the development of the modern republic, its descent from a standard of Truth, into moral relativism, and radical individualism will ultimately undermine the democracy that it developed. We seem to be increasingly governed by fools and political hacks. That's not their fault, its our fault, and it is rooted in our lack of any sense of objective morality, which used to be represented by the Church, but now is in the hands of New Age Sorcerers.
Such is the destiny of a society that not only separates, but declares science, state, and religion solitudes within themselves, unresponsive and uncommunicative with each other.
Who is the most influential and celebrated icon of the last decade. Can you guess. It's not a great religious leader, or humanitarian, or statesman, or scientist.
It's a Wizard, Harry Potter. Meet your new pontiff.
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I another thing I'd like to point out is that your soul, being your individuality, is also your personality. So when your soul will still determine if you prefer to climb a mountain or paint a picture while in heaven.
I love harry Potter. He makes a whole lot more sense than the Poop. Anyway, you seem to forget the history of the church and the papacy and the ones who had children out of wedlock or who bought the throne and ruled the church like the mafia or the ones who order men killed just because they threatened their power, or the Inquisition or the Crusades or the burning of innocent women simply because they were herbalist (called them witches to justify their slaughter. Your view of the church is through rose coloured glasses. The reason the church was separated from state is the same as for the reformation - unadulterated corruption and power mongering.
What odd opinions. Science didn't really exist in any modern sense until Galileo, that's the real beginning of the empiricism at its heart, the Church never promoted science, there's by definition no such thing as faith-based rationalism, the Church and critical thinking have been antagonists from the beginning, and still are. The Church existed for over 1500 years before anything that could reasonably be called the Rise of the West began to happen, and it was the weakening of the Church's influence via the scientific and industrial revolutions that came out of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment that let it happen. The Church had nothing to do with it, and would have prevented it if it could have.
So now not only do emotions and perspectives determine what is truth but also actions? Because fallible humans committed atrocities this determines whether something is true or not? Because the Catholic Church continues to pollute Christianity with religion this determines whether or not Jesus was God?
Actions, feelings, perspectives don't determine or change the truth because the truth is unchanging.
And if someone's believability factor is determined by their actions, then we can only believe Jesus, because he was perfect. If you actually read the various accounts of Jesus you would see that its not made up. Even his enemies acknowledged he was without flaw. His accusers tried to trap him with questions on many occasions and they couldn't do it.
In fact, the father planned his son's whole life so that it was an illustration of all the things we face in our lives and how we can defeat them just like he did. Jesus faced and defeated temptation, sickness, death. He was able to change any circumstance. He was able to right into a crowd that was plotting to kill him.
So, to keep in line with the thread topic: Jesus spirit was connected directly to his father's. His soul(his will) only wanted to do his father's will. Jesus made his body completely subjective to his spirit. Fasting for forty days...etc.
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That is only so if you believe it is anything more than an allegorical story made up by well meaning people or maybe not so well meaning people. There is no proof that he existed and that the story is anything other than a fiction.
Ally's offering the standard sophistry: the evils done by those who claim to speak and act in the name of religion were errors, misunderstandings, perversions, the faith itself remains pure and unsullied so its followers can disclaim all responsibility for the evils done in its name, while happily taking credit for whatever good it does. Bull****.
It is always fascinating to see the mental gymnastics of believers to justify their chosen belief system. It must take about as much practice as physical gymnastics.
That is simply not so. There has always been a constructive engagement between science and religion, until the last few decades, when universities were taken over by philosophical forces fiercely antagonistic to the Church. Faith and theology are fundamentally critical and rational processes. You are talking about superstition, charms, sorcery.. fear based.. as opposed to faith's reliance on agape (divine love). It is the former that is irrational, uncritical, and credulous. Its disciplines are those of alchemy and astrology.
The Rise of the West was well advanced by the year 1500, when it had finally beaten off its rival Islam from European shores. The Great Cathedrals and metropolises were initiated in the 11th and 12th Centuries. Universities were established in the same period, as were the great teaching orders. The emergence of the nation state, with territory rather than tribal allegiances became established along with sophisticated civil services. Banking, commerce, craft guilds, and even representative government made their appearance well before 1500.
The entire education and research systems prior to this were in the care of the Church. They built observatories. Many of the astronomers in the Middle Ages were priests. Galileo's patronage came from the Church. Beyond that science has always existed, in the form of the development of technology, in toolmaking, in architecture and shipbuilding, in armaments, in transportation.. in all phases of human history. Mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, metallurgy have been with us for thousands of years. It is certainly not true that the diminishing of religion somehow freed human creative forces. Just the opposite, religion has been an agent and organizer of those processes.
Science's primary inspiration then and now, should be to invent technology.The proposal that we should conduct science as purely aesthetic meditation, with no practical utility, which is exactly the stance Cosmology, and the 'social' sciences have moved into, is a sign that something far more destructive has overtaken our society. And it came contemporaneously with science's divorce of religion as partner in the cause of human progress.
I think i've seen figures that something like 80% of scientists in universities now label themselves atheists. Well atheism is still an intellectual system with its own obligations and tenets that will have profound effects on the way science is conducted, and on what this produces. It will be something entirely different than what we have seen for the last 1000 years, and it might be similar to something other civilizations have seen when they've lost their sense of cohesion and confidence in a divine will and purpose. It will rust out the internal organs of our society.
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Like I said, what odd opinions you have. You're clearly viewing history through the church's eyes. There has never been a constructive engagement between science and religion that I've ever heard of, and you evidently don't know the difference between science and technology. You can have technology without science, and for most of human history that's exactly what we've had. The Church has been in retreat for about 400 years, as science has repeatedly shown its empirical claims about reality to be false. Religion, or at least what I understand to be your version of it, is based entirely on a false, or at best highly dubious, premise, that there's some supernatural being who has some interest in us and will protect us if we follow the proper rituals. Far as I can tell, that's simply not true, the available evidence doesn't justify that claim.
Truly unbelievable! The church has maintained its strangle hold on humanity since the beginning through fear. The christian and in particular, the catholic church has use the fear of god and ever lasting torment to keep their followers in line. You completely side step the reality of the church and its history to spout a bunch of highfalutin nonsense.
Why won't you address this: the history of the church and the papacy and the ones who had children out of wedlock or who bought the throne and ruled the church like the mafia or the ones who order men killed just because they threatened their power, or the Inquisition or the Crusades or the burning of innocent women simply because they were herbalist (called them witches to justify their slaughter. Your view of the church is through rose coloured glasses. The reason the church was separated from state is the same as for the reformation - unadulterated corruption and power mongering.
Why won't you address this: the history of the church and the papacy and the ones who had children out of wedlock or who bought the throne and ruled the church like the mafia or the ones who order men killed just because they threatened their power, or the Inquisition or the Crusades or the burning of innocent women simply because they were herbalist (called them witches to justify their slaughter. Your view of the church is through rose coloured glasses. The reason the church was separated from state is the same as for the reformation - unadulterated corruption and power mongering.
Nonsense, free thinking people who are not controlled by others, have much
more flexibility and creativity to do their work, no one should 'have' to follow
any relgious path at all, or, they can if they choose, it's having a 'choice' that
is the 'winner' for all.
Being an atheist just allows one to follow their own path, atheism is not a
religion, and does not tell others what to do, it is just a name for those who
don't wish to be controlled by religions, their mind will not be narrow, they
can spread their wings and see their own path open up before them, and
it is their free choice to go their own way, and realize their own strengths,
and learn how strong we really are when thinking for ourselves.
cliffy.. I don't know how you can ascribe exactly what motivates someone who through an act of will has chosen to believe in God, if you have just as wilfully chosen not to believe in him. I've said before superstition is based on fear, faith is based on love. So it is not fear that impels someone to faith, and it is not within the Church's ability to compel someone to believe through fear. Faith is consciously, critically, rationally and freely accepted, or it is not faith at all.
You chose anecdotes to condemn the Church, from the Crusades, to the conflict with heresies, the Inquisition, the prosecution of Galileo, its rigid stands of sexual propriety, rejection of homosexuality as a legitimate act in the eyes of God. The Church's mandate is to witness to Truth, the revelation of Jesus Christ. Much of that Truth is now at odds with a culture that is inundated with doubt and has fallen back on material idols and indulgence to assuage its spiritual drought. But that does not make it any less True.
The Church exists at the nexus of the divine and the human. But it is a human institution, and subject to the frailties and prejudice of the human condition. It is also an institution that is constantly under attack from forces that see its potential for Good and desire only capitulation to Evil in the world, and who invade, deceive and co-opt its message and mandate to that purpose.
I guess that sais if you're looking for perfection look to God, not the Church. But you are not going to get to God, without going through that Church. In Vatican 2, one of its better postulates stated that the Church of Christ SUBSISTS IN rather than IS the Universal - Catholic Church, which acknowledges that elements of the Church have worked contrary to Christ's means and intent. But it also states that the full ongoing revelation of Christ exists within its precincts, and only within those precincts.
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You're going to have to enlighten me, Dexter. Give me one verifiable example of where science has shown its (the Church, i assume) 'empirical claims' about reality to be false. I'm not sure i understand your statement. I'm not sure you are well versed in what claims the Church has or has not made. And i'm not sure this is anything but an opinion founded on your own belief system.. uh.. that there is no God. :smile:
Science did exist well before Galileo and it surpassed the current modern sense in some notable instances.
The beautification of scientists is popularly practiced and applied even in the face of contrary science itself.
Memories of Plasma
Aug 05, 2009
What do oriental carpets, craters and rilles, ancient mythology, rock art and plasma configurations have to do with each other? Along with others they are all pieces of evidence in a composite picture of catastrophe in ancient times.
/www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/00current.htm