Some thougts on religion while visiting China.

Science exercises faith in its theory of evolution. It exercises faith in its hypothesis.

When scientists say there is no God, and the Christians faith is not real, then they are exercisisng faith.

Science exercises faith that their dating system is correct, which it isn't, in order to come up with the needed millions of years necessary for evolution.

Quantrill

 

The faith is your faith, Quantrill. When you oppose scientific findings on the basis of your faith then YOU make YOUR faith deal with science. This has absolutely no bearing on science. The scientific findings are what they are whether or not your faith exists.


Here's what happens: Someone uses science to arrive at an explanation of biodiversity. Out come people who say that if scientific findings do not align with their holy scriptures then those findings are wrong. Therefore, this particular explanation is wrong, they say.

Now, it doesn't matter if the scientist should be foolishly human in his urge to respond to these people or if he is able to ignore them, science suddenly deals with the faith of these people because that is what they decided to make science do.

In reality, of course, science doesn't deal with faith. By the very necessity of transcendence of divinity, it can't. As said above, it is the religious who try to digest scientific findings, not the other way around. But your posts demonstrate the resulting conception very well, namely that when the religious insists that science deals with his faith then science suddenly deals with faith, only if for that reason only.

 

A hypothesis is inherently untrustworthy. Relativity and evolution are not hypotheses. They're theories.

The point of faith is to feel absolutely certain without the right to feel that way. It's the very opposite of science. And while reason and faith are not exact opposites, faith is by its very nature inherently non-rational.

 

Even if I admit to this, science still attempts to keep faith to a minimum...because, if the goal is knowledge, FAITH IS BAD.

 

Since that presumably includes the knowledge of why things are the way they are, how is a scientist supposed to consider the possibility that a Creator is involved without faith?

 

This is a common mistake. Even if I admit that faith is unavoidable, that doens't make it good. The mistake is tryign to paint the necessary as good by default.

If it's literally impossible make sure no rat turds get into canned food, does that mean rat turds in canned food is a good thing? Of course not. It might be unavoidable, but it's still bad and should be minimized as much as possible.

 

Actually the mistake is entirely your own...

...since I said nothing about "good".

You clean missed the point.

 

The post to which you replied of mine stated that FAITH IS BAD, so I don't think was unfair of me to infer that you were attempting to reply that faith is good.

If not, your reply demonstrated your lack of understanding of what I said. Either way, the original mistake was your own.

 

Does science look at evolution concerning man as a possibility or as a fact?

Is the dating system used by science based on the assumption that all natural laws are the same now as they have ever been?

Quantrill

 

Then you think amiss, because such an inference serves no other purpose than to evade the point.

On the contrary, I understand what you said better than you do, because I'm aware of the intellectual baggage that comes with it.