Soldato
Examples please.
Trust in a proven & validated method isn't the same as faith in a concept with no evidence. The trust in the method is founded upon its predictive value & real world applications.
Richard Dawkins sums up religion
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Trust in a proven & validated method isn't the same as faith in a concept with no evidence. The trust in the method is founded upon its predictive value & real world applications.
Soldato
When you think half (or more) of the world's population is, at some level, nuts, it's not a great feeling.
Provided you're not some religious fundie using your religion to brainwash children, mutilate genitals and defend your bigoted beliefs then whatever man.
If going to church or temple gets you through the week, who am I to judge. But the second you start using religion as a means of control and spouting archaic crap, then I have to get involved.
If going to church or temple gets you through the week, who am I to judge. But the second you start using religion as a means of control and spouting archaic crap, then I have to get involved.
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Soldato
I guess Einstein was a "Backward thinker" too?
"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
"The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."
"The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—-a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects."
Albert Einstein.
George Viereck: “You accept the historical existence of Jesus?”
Einstein: “Unquestionably. No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. How different, for instance, is the impression which we receive from an account of legendary heroes of antiquity like Theseus. Theseus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus.”
George Viereck: “Ludwig Lewisohn, in one of his recent books, claims that many of the sayings of Jesus paraphrase the sayings of other prophets.”
Einstein: “No man,” Einstein replied, “can deny the fact that Jesus existed, nor that his sayings are beautiful. Even if some them have been said before, no one has expressed them so divinely as he.”
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Those are just the ramblings of a devout Christian that time after time sucker people into thinking that because Einstein believed in God, his belief carries a greater weight than your friendly neighbourhood cleric.
Nikola Tesla was an equally great scientist of the 20th Century who happened to believe he could control the weather. Because he was an unquestionable genius, does that mean we should blindly accept his beliefs as carrying more weight too?
Soldato
Ahh, Richard Dawkins, the man who absolutely never gets his facts wrong! LOL
Raymond, it is widely accepted that Moses wrote the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible/Torah).
It is historical fact that a Jesus of Nazareth lived during the time the bible states - a little research into various Jewish (secular) historians who certainly wouldn’t have an ulterior motive to prove Jesus was the Messiah proves this.
I do agree with you Raymond, it’s all down to faith. I personally think it takes far far far more faith to believe we all came from (in essence) nothing, from a big bang, by chance or sheer luck, rather than by design. There are far too many variables to this universe for it all to be by chance.
I just think of things like:
- The distance of our planet from the sun (sustain life)
- The angle of our planet
- The speed our planet rotates (gravity)
- The weather (plants and crops to grow etc)
- The way nature produces oxygen and other gases required for life
All are too finely balanced to be by chance. Far easier for me to believe God created it but ultimately we choose whether to believe in God or not. Freewill.
Soldato
Pragmatism throws the baby out with the bath water by not concerning itself with its methodology being a true depiction of reality, only with the fact that it appears to work. There is no predictive value in science beyond the post priori given the problem of induction. To do so would ascribe to Science an authority or legitimacy it doesn't possess. Which is what myself and Spoffle have tried to show. Faith in concepts with what you refer to as no evidence isn't just peculiar to religion either.
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Soldato
"The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concetrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power."
Nikola Tesla.
Soldato
Way to completely ignore my point.
Care to rephrase "your point" as I do not get it?
Why are the beliefs of somebody who achieved great things for science given more weight than those of people who haven't? Just because somebody was able to develop AC or come up with the theory of relativity doesn't mean that they are any more qualified to prove the existence of a deity.
Associate
sums it up
Soldato
I can't stand Richard Dawkins, and i'm an atheist. The man is just comes across as one of the biggest douche bags.
Soldato
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“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”
Albert Einstein.
..your move
Soldato
I used Einstein as he is the epitome to the common man of a highly intelligent person. The opening poster said he believes as Dawkins stated, that belief in the miraculous is a good sign of being "fairly unintelliegent".
*Edit. Thank you b.t.w.
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Soldato
Ahh, thought so - you have none.
The predictive value has real world applications, the post-prior observations in many cases relate to natural laws or fundamental attributes of a given object or it's properties.
A given theory is values by it's function & it's predictive use - it's measurable in the creation of rules & estimations which are then used to determine the probability of future events.
Science isn't attempting to garner any authority in the sense you speak, it simple attempts to understand based off observations - then tests these observations to determine additional trends or future events.
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Soldato
Soldato
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Why is it that some atheists have such a big issue with people believing in a higher power? I believe and you don't see me having an issue with people that do. Its like people that believe are personally insulting them... seems to me its the other way around
Stelly
Stelly