Faith...

[Johno please?]

It's his punishment from the invisible man in the sky

Aye, nothing to do with the smoking at all.....

 

[Castiel]

Its always up to people that say something exists to prove something, not for skeptics to prove it doesnt.

You can take supernatural activity and religion the same.

It is only necessary to prove your faith to yourself.

If someone comes along and starts calling them ignorant or deluded then the burden of proof is on them to prove why.


I'm a sceptic, and I fully accept that people have faith for a myriad of personal reasons that I can neither truly understand or explain.

Does that make them crazy?

The simple answer is No it doesn't.


Only when you are proselytising (either theism or atheism) do you need to prove the claims you make, be that by science in the case of the atheists who want physical proof or by belief by the theists who want spiritual proof.

 

[Metalface Mark]

It is only necessary to prove your faith to yourself.

If someone comes along and starts calling them ignorant or deluded then the burden of proof is on them to prove why.


I'm a sceptic, and I fully accept that people have faith for a myriad of personal reasons that I can neither truly understand or explain.

Does that make them crazy?

The simple answer is No it doesn't.


Only when you are proselytising (either theism or atheism) do you need to prove the claims you make, be that by science in the case of the atheists who want physical proof or by belief by the theists who want spiritual proof.

Thats the problem though isnt it, you do have people banging on your doors every so often doing exactly that.

Im agnostic, Ill sit and chat with people if they do bang on my door and ask them what proof they have and ive yet to have anyone offer anything convincing to change my mind.

 

[Castiel]

Thats the problem though isnt it, you do have people banging on your doors every so often doing exactly that.

Im agnostic, Ill sit and chat with people if they do bang on my door and ask them what proof they have and ive yet to have anyone offer anything convincing to change my mind.

AFAIK only the Witness' do door to door proselytising and tbh I haven't seen one for over 10 years.

But what you say is true, people of religion do not need science to convince people, they need belief.

People without faith that require proof by scientific method either way it is up to them to provide it.

This is the main problem in my opinion on the continuing debate over proof, each side are operating from a different set of criteria.

 

[FosterK]

Science answers questions like "Why are we here" and "What happens when we die", not religion.

I'll give you that one, that was what I meant. I put purpose in quotes, 'cause if you ask me, searching for meaning in life is pointless. Maybe I'm cynical about it, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a fluke we're here, and searching for meaning beyond making little versions of yourself with a ladyfriend and enjoying your life is pointless. Also, that's why I think religion is a nice thing - I'm happy believeing that there is no great end goal to my life, but I know not everyone is like me, so if people choose to find meaning in religion, and it makes them happy, in a non-sarcastic way, good for them!

I am not aiming the following wholly and squarely at you, but putting these points into this thread which were provoked by your mortality comment:

Well you're getting my two cents anyway

Firstly: we evolved the ability to live in civilisation from which our 'morals' stem. Name one humane or good thing that has been done in the name of religion that would not have been done without it.

I disagree with the first part there. Without getting too heavily into psychology [because I do enough on my course as it stands], as a species, living in large societies isn't what we know. Instinctually, we know living as tribes. Modern life isn't natural to us, hence the prevalence of stress, anxiety and depression. But I digress.

There are thousands of religous charities, schools and churches/mosques/synagogues/temples/houses of other religions across the country that actively participate in schemes to help out those in need regardless of their faith, be it the homeless, the starving in the third world, or hospice-type arrangements, for example. Yes, it would be nice to think that this would happen without religion - and, yes, it would. But you'd be somewhat naive to think it would be to the same extent. Unfortunately, some people just need shepherding into doing good things. (Please note I'm not tarring all those who believe in a God with that brush - charitable, good things like that just don't occur to or even bother some people, religious or otherwise.)

Secondly: are you honestly telling me that the only reason why you are not out raping, murdering and stealing is because stories written more than a 1000 years ago tells you not to?

I think you misunderstood my point, I probably wasn't too clear. Thousands of years ago, the morals in religion applied, which is what I was referring to. Nowadays, I don't think the likes of the 10 commandments apply, due to societal pressures and norms, as well as laws of course, having taken over that role. Generation after generation of social reinforcement have done that.

To answer your question more directly? No. I don't need a book to tell me not to be a **** to others. I don't think many people, if any, do - because of society dictating it as wrong, hence my opinion of it being outdated. I do however realise the distinction between being a moral person, and faith. For some, they go hand in hand, and others just have the morals, like me. I try to live my life by the idea of do to others as you would have done unto yourself, whether that statement has religious foundations is unimportant to me. The unfortunate part though, is occasionally you will get those who have blind faith and have lost sight of their morals. But that doesn't just happen with religion.

Thirdly: the religions the majority of the world subscribe to are based on text which are hardly full of good morals and social conduct, are they?

Not really, no. My interpretation of holy books is as guidelines. They're stories of good and evil, to discourage you from being 'evil'. Most religious scripture is interesting and insightful - but if you'll forgive the awful misuse of words here... I don't think they should be taken as gospel. If you know what I mean.

 

[ordinaryjoe]

thats not even remotely true.

I have never read so much nonsense in such a short space of time.

Have you actually been brainwashed or are you just ignorant of facts that we are here and are alive without the need of an imaginary being magically forming us out of nothing?

Because an invisible omnipotent being that is in everything and is everywhere, always, all of the time is sooo much more statistically likely?

You all 'rubbish' the arguement, yet fail to point out the flaw?

If you have a chain of 1000 amino acids, the chances of them all being the same enantiomer are 1 in 2^999, so you will need 2^998 chains of amino acids before it becomes probable that you will have a sequence in the right order. That is only 1 of the many requirements for life.

 

[xJcBx]

You all 'rubbish' the arguement, yet fail to point out the flaw?

If you have a chain of 1000 amino acids, the chances of them all being the same enantiomer are 1 in 2^999, so you will need 2^998 chains of amino acids before it becomes probable that you will have a sequence in the right order. That is only 1 of the many requirements for life.

Yes, it's extremely unlikely to happen, but it did.
It's extremely unlikely to win the lottery, but people do.
Your argument being scientific, based on the orgaisation of amino acids, yet the being that you thank for organising them, does not actually have any amino acids, and when asked how it came to form, it's impossible to explain because it's 'always' been?

I don't understand how you fail to grasp this?

 

[CLAWS]

 

[Uriel]

Haven't had time to read the thread but would just like to comment a little on the OP's question.

Faith is a word we use differently to it's meaning in the Bible. The Greek word in the New Testament is pistis. This doesn't mean belief as such. The usual context is more like our word 'faithful' as in faithful friendship. That is the primary way I experience faith rather intellectual adherence to an idea.

In terms of intellectual satisfaction, I prefer to use the word theology rather than faith. I find Christian theology to be the most coherent explanatory intellectual framework I have yet encountered. I have two science degrees but see Christian theology as complementary to my scientific knowledge rather than contradictory to it. Likewise I find theology complimentary to my faith - separate from it but closely interwoven with it.

In terms of intellectual coherence, a lot depends on our starting assumptions. I believe that I have experienced the miraculous - indeed the direct activity of God himself. This removed any a priori objection I might have had to miraculous occurrences. Without the assumption that there is no miraculous or supernatural activity that a lot of historians and scientists take as given, you tend to find that there is actually overwhelming evidence of it (and not just within the Christian church).

I write as someone that was once fearful of thoroughly investigating the hisorical claims of Christianity (e.g. death and resurrection of Jesus). I thought that intellectual investigation would effectively derail my faith. When I did look at it in detail I found quite the opposite - so much so that it surprised me. I find Christianity convincing from a historical perspective and complimentary to everything else I know.

What I do find to be a problem is a good section of the church is positively anti-intellectual. Elements discourage serious intellectual study in favour of 'faith'. I think this is something that is severely damaging in the current Western church, leading in particular to large numbers of men leaving or struggling intellectually. I found that several aspects of fairly normal church teaching that I found did not make sense have been dealt with pretty thoroughly by various Christian theologians. The trouble was, for years I just didn't know this more rigorously intellectual Christianity existed. It's been a pleasant surprise discovering it. I just wish someone had told me about it earlier.

 

[ordinaryjoe]

Yes, it's extremely unlikely to happen, but it did.
It's extremely unlikely to win the lottery, but people do.
Your argument being scientific, based on the orgaisation of amino acids, yet the being that you thank for organising them, does not actually have any amino acids, and when asked how it came to form, it's impossible to explain because it's 'always' been?

I don't understand how you fail to grasp this?

I can't define the probability that there is an omnipotent god, I admit. I was simply pointing out how improbable the alternative - that life came about by chance - is.

The way I interpret your arguement is this: "Life is here without God intervening, so even though abiogenesis (life coming about by chance) is practically impossible, we are here so it must have happened".

This arguement conveniently ignores the improbability of life happening, and makes the assumption that we can be certain that there is no god. To use the famous watch analogy, it's like walking through a field you believe no one has ever been in before and finding a watch and concluding

"There is a watch here. No one has been in this field before, so although it is practically impossible that the watch just made itself by chance from the dirt, the impossibility is irrelevant as I see that it happened" without considering the alternative that you were wrong about no one having been in the field before.

The difference with the lottery analogy is that it is much more likely. The chances of this single requirement of life (and lets not forget that there are many other improbabilities involved like the order of the amino acids being right, them all existing together etc) are far less likely...

log(2^999) / log(14 000 000) = 42.0827844

So the chances of all of the amino acids in a chain of 1000 amino acids being the same handedness is similar to someone winning the lottery 42 times in a row.

 

[ordinaryjoe]

[woops]

 

[aardvark]

You all 'rubbish' the arguement, yet fail to point out the flaw?

If you have a chain of 1000 amino acids, the chances of them all being the same enantiomer are 1 in 2^999, so you will need 2^998 chains of amino acids before it becomes probable that you will have a sequence in the right order. That is only 1 of the many requirements for life.

because your logic is flawed, and that is not how life would have started.
the first life forming molecules would be much much more simple and easier to form - a 1000 amino acid chain didn't just appear out of nowhere, thats ridiculous.

 

[BunnyKillBot]

Its always up to people that say something exists to prove something, not for skeptics to prove it doesnt.

Fair enough, but lets look at the real world instead of idealism. Derren Browns lottery prediction trick. Brown shot an illusion and broadcast it on live tv, then afterwards broadcast a prerecorded false explanation.

The rational, sceptic response is 'It must be fake, I do not believe it'
The irrational, gullible response 'It must be real! I believe'
The indifferent response 'I don't care how he did it, cool trick though'

Now what your suggesting is that its up to the irrational gullables to prove the trick was real. When, in reality, the only single person who has a shred of credibility on the issue is the Originator Derren Brown and his closest confident cronies. But he does not NEED to prove it was for real because he does not CARE about the validity of his suggestion. All Brown wants is maximum exposure for minimal cost. It is also worthy of note that the loudest voice were the rational skeptics, whose continued debate simply plays into the hands of Browns unstated goal, keeping the debate fresh and alive and earning more recognition for him.

So in a real world example, the skeptics are the loud angry mob, the gullible are a sizeable proportion of society*, and the only sane people are the indifferents who quite frankly dont give a ****

Landing this down to the theological topic at hand (And why so many people on this forum are so obsesses with trolling religion i have no idea) the only entity that can realistically prove the existence of God is God itself. But how can God offer a proof to you, if you do not believe it exists? The only way to be sure something doesn't exist is to have first considered the possibility it does exist, and then dismissed the idea out of experience and reason.


*(yes, not everybody is as rational as i am sure you are, if they were, nobody would watch x-factor)

 

[ordinaryjoe]

because your logic is flawed, and that is not how life would have started.
the first life forming molecules would be much much more simple and easier to form - a 1000 amino acid chain didn't just appear out of nowhere, thats ridiculous.

I know a 1000 amino acid chain appearing out of nowhere is ridiculous - that was my point. However, the simplest of life forms would require a means of reproduction, and would have to be able to survive in it's environment. Estimates at the simplest possible life which isn't just a parasite on another life form still require hundreds of genes - 1000 amino acids is nothing compared to the reality of how complex a genome would have to be to reproduce itself in a natural environment

 

[Metalface Mark]

Fair enough, but lets look at the real world instead of idealism. Derren Browns lottery prediction trick. Brown shot an illusion and broadcast it on live tv, then afterwards broadcast a prerecorded false explanation.

The rational, sceptic response is 'It must be fake, I do not believe it'
The irrational, gullible response 'It must be real! I believe'
The indifferent response 'I don't care how he did it, cool trick though'

Now what your suggesting is that its up to the irrational gullables to prove the trick was real. When, in reality, the only single person who has a shred of credibility on the issue is the Originator Derren Brown and his closest confident cronies. But he does not NEED to prove it was for real because he does not CARE about the validity of his suggestion. All Brown wants is maximum exposure for minimal cost. It is also worthy of note that the loudest voice were the rational skeptics, whose continued debate simply plays into the hands of Browns unstated goal, keeping the debate fresh and alive and earning more recognition for him.

So in a real world example, the skeptics are the loud angry mob, the gullible are a sizeable proportion of society*, and the only sane people are the indifferents who quite frankly dont give a ****

Landing this down to the theological topic at hand (And why so many people on this forum are so obsesses with trolling religion i have no idea) the only entity that can realistically prove the existence of God is God itself. But how can God offer a proof to you, if you do not believe it exists? The only way to be sure something doesn't exist is to have first considered the possibility it does exist, and then dismissed the idea out of experience and reason.


*(yes, not everybody is as rational as i am sure you are, if they were, nobody would watch x-factor)

I guess that is the crux of religion, specifically, people who become born again for whatever reason, at some point they see God in something, and this is what triggers it for them, a proof of sorts.

Whether its in a baby's smile, the look in the eye of the gorgous bird you have just nailed that you didnt believe you had it in you to pull or your mum pulling through from a incurable cancer, I dont have a problem with people selecting whatever religion they want, whether they need religion in their life or not.

Im not a huge fan of religion just based on what you were taught as a child (my own religion would be Christadelphian, which my mother and sister are, they believe in the literal word of the bible, frankly which is ridiculous to me). My sisters children are now being taught the same which i find wrong.

 

[Castiel]

The Universe is not infinite though,

The Universe is infinite however in two of the three probable models.


An open Universe has a negative curvature and is infinite spatially and have no boundary


A closed Universe has a positive curvature, this is the only postulated finite Universe model. This one however is the least likely due mainly to the paradox that wherever you begin, you must end up, much like travelling around the earth in a straight line.

Then we have the Flat Universe which has no curvature and is flat like a sheet of paper, but this type like the Open Universe is also infinite spatially so has no boundary. This is currently the most popular of the postulated Universe models among Physicists.

So due to the fact that the Universe is in all probability infinite, the rest of your conjecture is somewhat questionable.

 

[Vonhelmet]

Science answers questions like "Why are we here" and "What happens when we die", not religion.

Huh? Science can't answer those questions because they are not testable. You could say that science tells us how we came to be here, but that's not a "why" in the wider philosophical sense. Or you could say that science tells you what happens to your physical body when you die, but that generally isn't what people are concerned with.

 

[Vonhelmet]

Yes, it's extremely unlikely to happen, but it did.

Weak anthropic principle to the rescue!

 

[deej]

If you are religious, how do you rationalise yours? I realise you are not really supposed to, as it part of you, but surely you must question your belief?

I am an atheist so it is an alien concept to me. I just see no reason/evidence for the existence of a God.

I am not judging or saying you are wrong, just fascinated.

How do you rationalise your faith? As an atheist you "believe" that there is no god as much as a religious person believes that there is a diety. Do you question your belief?

As an agnostic, I like to sit on the fence.

 

[Lodgeinator]

Have a look here ordinaryjoe.
It shows the mechanics for the creation of cells and their duplication.
(it takes a few mins to get the the explanation).