Captain Howdy

Whoah. Umm... This doesn't really require me to say anything does it. Uh, that is one of the most illogical, unscientific, <edited> things I have ever heard.<edited>

Chin Chin!

<let's play nice, boys and girls, and rip that claim about god to pieces on a logical basis only. OK?>

emotional

That's OK. You have no idea how much science frightens me.



Yes, science has got us out of the "Dark Ages", certainly, but at what price? I think I'd be much happier if I were living in the so-called Dark Ages than now. Then there was certainty, now only doubt all the time.



Heck, I didn't even choose it, it was changed by an administrator from my former username.



I use reason for most of life. When I drive my car, I use reason and logic, so I'm quite safe to be driving by. But as concerns beginnings and endings, logic and reason lead to a place where I do not want to go, so I dispense with them. I assure you, I have no choice in the matter: it is either faith or the lunatic asylum for me. Faith changes everything. It is by faith I triumph over death. When I looked at the stars before faith, I would look at a star a thousand light-years away and think to myself: in a thousand years from now where shall I be? Dead in the grave, that is where I shall be. But now that I have faith, the stars are the glory of God, and that is what I expect to see after I die.

GunnerJ

Disease, starvation, political oppresion... yeah, we sure lost a lot when we left the Dark Ages.

Warcraft3

Hey guys. I was in Alabama for a few days (I have a friend who just graduated from Officer Training School so I went to the ceremony) and so I wasnt able to follow the thread. I see there were alot of posts and I will try to respond tomorrow. If I have any down time at work I will post then, otherwise it will have to wait till I get home. I should have a temporary computer while mine is getting fixed so I should be able to post.

Just wanted to let you guys know I wasnt dodging the discussion or anything. Hopefully I will get to respond tomorrow to several recent posts.


Russ
"Strumming the ole violen"


:boohoo:

snoiduspoitus

Used to try that myself. Is it possible? Sure. Likely? No. We dont' know lots of things about lots of things, but on a scale of believable things, all fall into an order of declining possbliities. I suppose I believe as you, but I've taken to telling my children that that they shall in fact be part of the next series of stars, for we are all stardust. "Enjoy the stars, for you are part and parcel of them." That's what I tell my kids.

Life's great; because I can read and write makes me no more special than a frog, but I still enoy my life.

emotional

I understand why you find creationism disturbing, and why you find fundamentalist religion disturbing. But why do you find theistic evolution and liberal religion disturbing? Why the "all or nothing" - be either a fundie or atheist, but not something in between - attitude?

You say you have a zeal for truth. The fundies also say that they have a zeal for truth. It is zeal for truth that has washed humanity in rivers of blood. Theistic evolution and liberal religion may be accommodationist, compromising, emotion-driven and - shudders - untruthful (though I believe theistic evolution is truthful), but at least they're moderate, they provide a framework for people who do not want to lose comforting faith, and they're a golden middle between extremes. How can you find fault with that? Why let the "zeal for truth" (which Osama bin Laden also has aplenty) override support for a worldview that does no harm? I can understand hate-filled fundies pouring wrath over theistic evolution, but I can't understand atheists, humanists doing the same. Is everyone of you a fanatic like Richard Dawkins is? That would be most alarming. Dawkins is as much a captive of a meme as the fundies he lashes out against.

I'm beginning to think AiG's Jonathan Sarfati's description of theistic evolutionists as "a bunch of useful idiots who can later be discarded" actually holds water. Frank Zindler doesn't hesitate to use a theistic evolutionist such as Francis Graham for help against creationists (geocentrists, in this case), only to deride theistic evolution on the American Atheists website later. Is it any wonder creationism and fundamentalist religion are on the rise?

Oolon Colluphid

Well I do try...
:boohoo:
Ah, but you see, he and I can test our memes against reality, to see if they're right. We're still awaiting the Nature article from the 9/11 zealots (did they get dem virgins?). Or from any test of a religious idea.

Oh, and the thing with science is, you've got to be willing to throw out any memes shown to be in error. So while it may be difficult to escape one's memes, by definition a scientist should try, if needs must. Not, as with religion, run to embrace them all the harder.

TTFN, Oolon

emotional

So if it can't be scientifically tested and verified, then it's not worth considering - then it had better be stamped out?

By the way, the 9/11 zealots and the Christian fundies do believe in science. Both Christian and Islamic fundies will insist that their faith is consonant with reason and science, that it is not blind faith, and will offer "rational proofs" for the faith in order to defend it from sceptics and convince unbelievers. Fundies don't say "science is evil", they just say "your science is wrong science; true science verifies our religion". Fundies don't advocate blind faith (fideism). The war between evolution and creationism is not between science and faith, but between mainstream science and alternative science.

I, in contrast, acknowledge that there will never be rational, scientific proof for what I believe (monotheism and afterlife), so I rest upon blind faith (fideism) instead. I have long despaired of finding scientific support for what I believe. Theistic evolution is not a scientific theory and cannot be scientifically verified; but also, in that sense, it is not an alternative science that wars with mainstream science like creationism does, and that is why I think theistic evolution should be shown a little tolerance.

Wounded King

What about pseudoscience rather than 'alternative' science.

Oolon Colluphid

Sure. I happily tolerate (ie, ‘ignore’) it. What else is there to do with that which I, as a scientific rationalist, find completely superfluous?

But it’s worse than that.

Creationists specifically claim -- often unwittingly, due to an ignorance of biology -- that their god actually created all the parasites and pathogens (and remember that the easy majority of species are parasitic), and their god is therefore refuted (assuming it is also claimed to be ‘loving’ etc).

But while theistic evolutionists, by having a god that may have interfered along the evolution trail to produce living things, or even allowed evolution a free reign, can shoehorn their god into things, their god is nowhere near off the hook(worm) WRT what gets called ‘natural evil’. Their allegedly loving god allowed 99.9% of species to become extinct; it allowed the evolution of bot-flies, Plasmodium, Ebola and Rickettsia prowazekii; it allowed the evolution of the living things that kill three children a minute from diarrhoeal diseases; it allowed evolution, predicated as it is on suffering and death. Creationists say god created this stuff; theistic evolutionists say he allowed it.

By what standard can such an entity be called ‘loving’? Why do the mechanisms of the living world not refute the existence of such a deity?

So by all means have a god invisibly involved. But it sure as hell doesn't seem to be the Christian god.

TTFN, Oolon