Question

If you believe that god created the universe then you must admit that god had to have a ton of scientific knowledge. He had to know about astronomy, physics, biology, etc etc.

If you have ever had a conversation with anyone who is highly scientific or an engineer or a geek you will hear a different conversation then if you were talking to a high school buddy. They all talk with a certain precision in their field and even when they are just having a casual conversation there is a certain precision to the words that they chose.

So here are my questions

When one reads the holy books, the translated words are very ambiguous and open to wide and many interpretations. This in my opinion is why there are many religions or sects within a religion. A scientist or engineer does not speak this way, so why aren’t the books written with a higher level of precision that would not be open to wide interpretations?

Why didn’t god just put in the books E=MC2, some scientific type would have wondered about that and maybe figured it out centuries before Einstein?

Why aren’t there any formulas in the holy books?

If you were running an experiment to see if you could get everyone on a certain planet to believe in just one god and you observed the mess we have now wouldn’t you show up and adjust some of the parameters that you started with and rerun it?

If you wanted everyone on a planet to follow the same rules wouldn’t you make the same copy for each population center?

Wouldn’t you carve them on the biggest stone you could find so it wouldn’t get lost or destroyed in a flood?

If an all knowing god was the source for the holy books and he knew that English would be the quasi world language wouldn’t he have written at least a portion in English?

:wave:

elevator

There are many posts in this forum dedicated to describing/arguing why our holy literature largely must have been written by mere mortals influenced more by the historical context in which they lived than by the presence of an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent deity of any religious dogma.

There are many puzzling elements about our holy literature in addition to its lack of accurate scientific data and the ambiguity of its translations and interpretations. For example; take the shear number of existing and extinct conflicting dogmas and religious doctrines; most with different historic and scientific claims, most with different views on the process of creation, morality, philosophy of the afterlife and the existence of the supernatural.

Another example; if one truly believes that the biblical God is the moral superhero he is sometimes portrayed as; it is quite odd that the 10 commandments and Levitical law is the best he could come up with. It makes more sense if one views these "moral elements" in an historical context and as the work of ancient humans, rather than the work of an omniscient and omnipotent God.

NZSkep

good first post elevator.
Welcome.

Have you been lurking for a while?

Question

Yes the mere mortal authors comes thru load and clear.

Welcome also

elevator

Thank you both for your welcome. Yes, I have been reading this forum for quite some time, but I just recently registered to be able to post. I guess a brief introduction is in order: if I were to label myself; it would be as an agnostic with regards to knowledge of the divine and atheist in regards to belief in the divine - that is I think it is impossible to know whether or not God exists, but I also believe that there are no good reasons to believe that any particular deity or religious doctrine is true, or is more true than any other religious doctrine, or is more true than no religious belief at all.

But to get back on the topic; I do think it is dangerous to draw knowledge (scientific or moral) from alleged divine sources that have perfectly good roots in well-established secular sciences or moral philosophy. Especially when various religious sources differ (or outright contradict) on many key points.

youngalexander

Perhaps Jesus and Mo have the answer?

dr lazer blast

I'd actually have to disagree with this statement. Some of the worse things in mankind have been created by secular scientists. The atomic bomb to name one.

elevator

The science of atomic theory is a fantastic achievement; and in addition to the atomic bombs have brought us nuclear power and nuclear theory. It was also not the secular scientist that made the decision to drop atomic bombs over Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Science in itself is not a dangerous endeavor; however pretending that religious doctrines was allegedly mediated by a God over 2000 years ago are valid scientific facts; are dangerous.

The so-called "science" of creationism (recently guised as Intelligent Design) is a perfect example of dangerous claims to scientific knowledge in religious discourse. Tell me which is more dangerous; teaching science as it really is, or teaching science to "comply" with the latest on religious literalism? And Christianity shine with their moral wisdom through the book of Leviticus don't you think? The morality of the Manu Smriti and the Caste System in the Hindu religion is also a fantastic example of dangerous moral ideas in a religious doctrine. My point is; you don't need to invoke the divine to be a moral being and you certainly should never invoke the divine or any "holy" ancient literature (claiming to be the mediated word of God no less) to be an accurate and trustworthy representation of scientific fact.

Tuffa Nuff

I have been told at times, that the way things are written in the Bible and other holy texts was chosen to make them easier to understand for the state of education of the people at the time. For myself, this seems a silly notion, because a layperson's science appearing in the Bible would have been no less credible than what IS there in the Bible. Things became as they were by the "power of GodAllahYahweh", (ie. magic). Why not give a scientific explanation to begin with?

Why would God making a big kablooie, and stuff expanding, and coming into existence, and slowly over billions of years becoming what we see today, be harder to accept then what is in Genesis? How is it any easier to believe that God made the heavens and the earth and all, in six, (elastic), days - whoosh?

God could still be magic, and know that it would all come out as he intended, 'cause he would've arranged things just so - so that determinism would do the trick, (I am a compatabilist on the freewill debate).

I'd say that the answer is to do with the educational and knowledge levels of the populace of the day. If them olden day guys had known of this modern sh*t, they'd have put it in the Bible. They could only make up stories which were acceptable to them, and it was essential that they have a god who was one powerful dude, for their possibly well intentioned aim of mass control of the folk, to work.

NZSkep

How do you know this? I’ve never seen anything on the religiousness of the hundreds of scientists involved in making the atomic bomb.
Not to mention, of course, that the only person in history to actually authorise the creation and use of atomic bombs were christian. (being the president of the USA during WW2)