Were you once a Christian?

Au -- I think it's one of those topics which has been beaten to a pulp already, to be honest. Perhaps another time?

Laws of Science; The most serious problem with this concept grows out of the fact that it uses a metaphor, the Laws that govern or control nature.... We seem to believe that there literally are such laws. The concept is anachronistic in that it originated at a time when the Almighty was thought to have established the laws of nature and to have decreed that nature must obey them.... It is a great pity for the Philosophy of Science that the word 'law' was ever introduced.

OK, what rational explanation would you give to the basic features of nature that do not derive from any other regularity, and cannot be mathematically proved or disproved? Why did these appear?

Tartarin
I agree after what went on-on the Abuzz I stay away from those discussions. However, the statement sort of pushed one of my buttons. Let sleeping dogs lie.

Apologies, Au! It's a touchy subject.

all science is, in its essence, descriptive of the history of phenomena.

The fact is that we don't know what started 'it'. The universe's early stages are unknown. So, no matter how far back we debate god vs science..... we just don't know. NEITHER side does know.

I was sent to Sunday school and scripture lessons as a child. But as I grew older and stopped believing in Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy and The Easter Bunny, I realised how ridiculous was the idea that everything we see around us was created in single instant by an omnipotent fairy waving his magic hand.

Fortunately I grew up in a fairly christian neutral environment. Now there was no other faith to have but christianity but what you practiced as long as you were christian was up to you. My mom came from a long line of catholics and she was a bit fed up with it.

So I didn't give religion or faith all that much thought 'til recently when I moved away from home and into a very concervative christian town. I started off planning to attend a religiously affiliated school (Church of Christ) but one day of orientation that kept me up until 1am hymm-hawing, praying, and hearing about the evils of clubbing and I knew that wasn't for me. So I opted to go to a larger public school near by. My uncle a professor of theology at the little scary school still wanted me to attend church and I thought "why not, I always meant to add church to my weekly routine." Well I didn't get all that much involved because it took about 1 month of going to church to figured out it was not for me.

But then I was worried about going to hell for not buying the Jesus story and such. So I start doing some research. I read a good bit of the bible and did some historical research and came to the conclusion that christianity was no more based on some ultimate truth than other religions and that I probably wouldn't burn in hell eternally if I chose not to follow it. In fact what little respect I had for people capable of blind faith evaporated because it only took me a few days to find out some of the questionable history behind the christian faith but others spent a life time trying to stay ignorant of anything but Gods Word.

midnight:

Well said. We dance around the reality of how silly the whole notion is because it has long been assumed that we owed some dispensation from critical examination to those who "believe."

Good manners in action, huh, Boss? Sort of like the joke that landed Scopes in a courtroom in Tennessee so long ago: "God created Man, and, Man being a gentleman, he returned the compliment."

Setanta:

Point well taken. "Good manners" is an apt description of the rules zealots seem to believe don't apply to them in the case of their beliefs.

The two major proselytizing religions in the world are both based on dogma that requires believers to convert everyone else in the world to their way of believing.

Christians think they have an obligation to get in everyone's face about their belief. The lucky target is surely doomed to eternal hell, fire and brimstone if he, or she, doesn't mouth the dogma just so and go annoy other people with a message they don't want to hear either.

Muslims are a bit more direct: convert or we will kill you, and then you'll go to hell.

Belief, or disbelief, should be a private issue. It is the insistance on imposing theirs on others that makes believers obnoxious. I don't care if you believe the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. That is certainly your right. What is not your right is to insist that I believe it also, or, to tell me about it at length when I'm really not interested.

Just as expressing a belief in astrology will cause most critical thinkers to draw certain inferences about the believer's intellectual skills, so it is with those who express belief in fundamental religious dogma. I suppose the good manners come in when you realize you are dealing with such a person and don't immediately break into guffaws of laughter.


Lazarous Long (Robert Heinlein)

Do you guys believe that someday physics\science is going to discover the law(s) or the glue that holds things in "order"?

husker: yes if we survive that long

If something can't be currently be explained by science, it's only because science hasn't reached that point yet.

If mankind survives long enough, most of the questions we can now pose will almost certainly be answered. However, as has always been the way of inquiry, those answers will reveal new questions.

Your use of the words "in order" raises the issue of the existance of "order." Humans reason that there is order because we are taught to perceive it. Time and space may well be contstructs created by man as concepts necessary to perceiving that order. Our need to perceive things in a cause and effect relationship makes such devices useful, if not necessary.

Consider the possibility of sentient beings on another planet in some other solar system that have evolved under other conditions and, hence, with different perspectives. For the sake of the hypothetical example let's say that they too have sought the answers to some of the same questions as do we. The nature of the answers would perforce be contingent on their perception.

Conditions of their development might have led to the perception that all is chaos and any semblence of order is only a temporary abberation. They might, if they found the need for belief in a supernatural something, perceive the "creator" as the force involved in the big bang and, hence, a destructive force. Their search for ultimate answers would seek the ultimate level of disorder rather than any illusion of order.

Development of a Unified Field Theory, an model that explains everything, is possible. Einstein believed it was attainable, and some really impressive talent is today pursuing several possible avenues. However, the Unified Field Theory can never answer the question, "why".

Recent evidence that the Universe is an open system is going to require much re-thinking about the nature of things. Open systems are not elegant, yet we crave elegance in our solution. What are we missing? I'm afraid that I'll have long turned to dust before definitive answers can be made. Oh well, we have some billions of years left to ponder the essential questions.

"One can't believe impossible things," Alice laughed.

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." -Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll

That's part of the beauty of life, Husker.

But God is not the only Impossible Dream.