God is already witnessing erosion on faith. Now many scientists or thinkers are in the negative when it comes to Gods existence. People do not pray as they used to for a variety of reasons. Man has been growingly returning to science to seek their answer. And more and more people are becoming evolutionists. I switch to both theism and atheism from time to time. I am somewhat agnostically oriented. I argue mostly for nonexistence but when I see the mystery of the universe or the multiversity I cannot satisfy myself with logic or scientific arguments. Science has its own limitations and scientific discoveries or searches can never fathom the very profundity of reality. And like myself there will be no shortages of believers.
Well I work at a major university with strong science departments and I have noticed the opposite. It seems that more people in the hard sciences are actually becoming Christians, not rejecting it. Maybe they are realizing that their work in various fields actually fits in quite nicely with Christianity so they are giving it a shot. After centuries of being unable to conclusively being able to prove the bible wrong maybe this brilliant people are stopping to consider what this means, as any good scientist would do.
Classically God fills in the gaps while science is slowly answering the unexplained thus diminishing the need to rely upon theism to explain the unexplained. I do not think science can ever answer all as if one does a regressive analysis of matter I believe one will inexorably arrive at a point where no answer can be assessed or obtained. When we arrive at that point some will use God to fill in the gap while others will maintain faith that sconce will one day answer the unanswerable. Science is sequential, thus a regressive analysis will inexorably arrive at a point where there will be a question that cannot be answered. Once we arrive at this place all we can do is use the last known answer as the base for our axiom and hope that our premise is right. The problem can be seen in Socrates argument (as argued by Plato) that all forms are based upon a perfect form and Aristotle's counter of what is the perfect form based upon thus setting a cascade of infinite regression.
Science indeed answers some of the unexplained and we have answers to so many questions as to why people becomes sick and we investigate and do not believe that particular deities are angry with us and we are sick. But there are domains of thoughts that cannot be satisfied by scientific logic and we have to take refuge in spirituality or metaphysics though the answers they provide is mostly unconvincing. That is why I believe in self inquiry and do not hinge on metaphysical prescriptions or scientific descriptions. Science suffers its own limitations and religion suffers its own unconvincing assertions.We swing between these two extremes but fail to arrive at where we want to reach. That is why I believe in agnosticism that does not deny both science and metaphysics. I read voraciously ancient texts and I lately feel that Vedanta is much more revealing than any other scriptural treatises. It is a great storehouse of metaphysical knowledge. This is not my Brahmanic perspective
What exactly has science proved that contradicts anything in the bible? - - - Updated - - - I was t aware that the bible tells us God is responsible for getting people sick.
Come on, you 'work in a university' and you haven't encountered Bishop John Shelby Spong's 'The Sins of Scripture:Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love' or Douglas Lockhart's 'The Dark Side of God: A Quest for the Lost Heart of Christianity' ? ? Time you began catching up with recent biblical studies.
god is largely a sociological phenomenon. Whether you believe in god is more a function of where you live, more than anything else. Being a scientist has some effect, but geography has a much greater one. If you were scientist in China or Japan, you are going to be an atheist. If you are scientist in America, you are going to be christian, and if you are scientist in Iraq, you are going to be Muslim. So it's more likely to be simple demographics that determine your beliefs, rather than some complex spiritual reason. Elite scientists, however, are almost always atheist.
All gods will last only as long as the people who created them find usefulness in them. When people are no longer superstitious and afraid of the dark, when peoples goals are not to browbeat others into thinking like them, when we are no longer afraid to be responsible for our own actions.... Then these gods will become what they have always been.... mythology!
The Earth is a sphere. The Earth is not six thousand years old. There was no global flood. Pi is not 3. Firmament does not exist. The moon is not a light source. Plants cannot survive without Sunlight. The Earth was not created before the Sun. The Sun does not revolve around the Earth.
Where was the Bible wrong? What I would find interesting is what did the Bible get right and what proof is there that a power greater than humanity was the source of that knowledge? The Bible is an inanimate object that has no function nor power in and of itself... it takes fallible humans to read it, interpret it and it was written, edited and the cannon was decided by fallible humans. Much of the Bible is fantastical where proof to the positive or the negative is all but impossible to empirically verify or refute. The Bible was around during the dark ages yet the masses thought that the plague was a demonic possession rather than what it actually was, an infection. The faithful filled their ignorance with the idea of demonic possession and the Church plausibly facilitated this belief or at least was impotent to dispel the belief. The weakness of any religious text is that it is open to the interpretation of the reader thus the subjectivity. Science is based upon rules, can admit when it is wrong, correct itself, and is progressive while literalist religion is static and backed by an intangible authority who is allegedly never wrong. The single greatest weakness of religion is humanity. Science is more a uniter while religion is more a divider.
God thrives among the ignorant. As the world becomes more educated old superstitions will gradually disappear.
The future of "deity" is a bleak one. Science has had a relatively short time to work its wonders, but its effects are far more profound than anything religion has tried to come up with. That trend will only continue as the species expands throughout the solar system and into the galaxies.
As to the notion science will eventualy replace the idea of God I suggest another more frightening possibility. With the exponential expansion of artificial intelligence we ourselves could be in the early stages of creating a godlike entity, an entity with absolutley no moral conscience whatever. If you think that far fetched read up on genetic algorithms and their application to autonomous drone swarms in the US military. Only a beginning but a move our species is insane to allow.
Where was the Bible wrong? Where do we start with that one - - - here's as good a place as any:- http://infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html What makes you imagine human weaknesses are applicable only to religion? Take the application of science to the creation of monstrous weapons of mass destruction. Just because a development is the result of scientific method provides no guarantee it won't be used for evil purposes. Arthur Koestler's 'The Ghost in The Machine' examines this question in some depth and presents a thesis yet to be refuted.
Is there meaning and purpose in the universe? Some say no, some say yes. If there is meaning and purpose, that infers something greater than we experience on this plane of existence that we live on. Man has for ages, created images of this thing, that humanity has intuited. But they are creations of thought, and thought is the response of memory, of experiences in daily existence, going back to infancy. And thought involves imaginations. The sterile meaningless view of philosophical materialism, which is the foundation of most of science, has created the views of science. Yet we are on the cusp of turning the very materialistic view of evolution on its head, but this moves at the pace of tombstones. Yet I think as materialism itself is questioned more and more, since it is a philosophical assumption that limits science, we will discover that randomness and chance is not what propels evolution, but there is something else involved, a kind of intelligence and memory. For we still do not have a materialistic based reason what takes the seed and turns it into a particular species of trees. And men like Sheldrake may end up being the biological sciences Einstein as the materialists die out of biology, which will allow science to open up, and not be constrained by dogmatic beliefs, which infects it. Scientific knowledge is extremely still vastly limited. Yet the arrogance of some in science act as if that limitation is not as limited as it actually is. You see the same thing in science as you see in religion. Dogma, and the refusal to question things. Science has been in the rut of philosophical materialism for a very long time. This yields a universe with no purpose or meaning, just a reality driven by chance and randomness, while humanity has always intuited something different.
The few things in the Bible that are important are very clearly spelled out but the rest of it is just their foe context. The bible was not written to offer proof of anything, it was written so that we can communicate with God in a way just like we use prayer. The whole idea is to read it under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and interpret it to ways you think it matters to your life. It is a way in which God guides you to things he wants us to do.
My understanding of the world I live in is it is infinite and kind of nonlocal quantum nonlocality. I am not a physicist and I cannot understand theoretical physics and do not try to since I know even I master it will be back to where I was an ignorant inquirer. But I believe in evolution, not in the prescriptions of theologists. Meaning is a very vague, personal, thought centric term and I do not seek meanings. But seeking answers is somewhat more appearing to me. What I strongly believe is there is some connection between you and me and also among the rest of beings in this planet. I can feel warmth with you though you are an invisible, unknowns stranger. This warmth that led me to respond to your post from a distant land, culturally different build up a connection. That convinces me of the fact that I am not different from you and I can be at war with you and also at peace with you but I cannot become indifferent to you. Now when I believe in empirical science I cannot believe in Biblical or personal God(s), the kind our scriptures infer or our Gurus or saints always advocate for. Atheists are not always right and theists are not always wrong. At the same time science too suffers the kind of limitations religious thought or prescriptions do. That is why these days I am exploring into a different domain, into the domain of the Vedas. I do not agree with the most of what the Vedas have prescribed. But there are some truths, some searches that tell me something more about the universe or answer some of the questions science other cannot. I do not which ultimately lead me to the truth or the fact about my existence here but I travel to both these lands side by side
The beauty of scientific inquiry is in the fact it does not need to "Know" and would in fact not exist if it did. It can handily state that any one individual "God" does not exist, yet cannot and need not state that God does not exist.
Science and religion are totally different domains and anyone trying to prove the existence of one in defiance of the other making a blunder. Science trying to define or understand God or religion using its methods or scientific tools does a big mistake and religion trying to prove itself scientifically is making another boo-boo. They are two different streams of thought never likely to converse. Our saint and scientists are straying from the truth by going out of their boundaries to this end.
You of course are free to hold this opinion, It does not however deal with my commentary in anyway other than defecting it away from the accuracy.
If the Bible does not offer proof of anything then what is the basis for stating that "it was written so that we can communicate with God"? If you are under the guidance of the Holy Spirit then why the need to interpret and leave it up to what you think?
Good questions and I will try to answer them. The bible does not offer conclusive proof of anything or we would not be having this discussion since there would be no point so why was it written? The OT was written as a set of laws for the Jews to follow so that is obvious but what about the NT? Obviously we need to know some things in there such as how to find salvation but what about the rest such as all the poetry and seemingly pointless stories that do not really matter? The reasons for those are that when we read the bible, and if we are a believer, we will usually come across something we can apply to our own life. There are times when we are depressed or hurt and we can turn to the bible to not only see how we are told to respond but how others have faced what we are going through and how they handled it. Two Christians could read the same passage and come away with two entirely different meanings and this is where the Holy Spirit guides us. It doesn't mean either of them are wrong or right but it's gods way of guiding us through his word. It may sound weird but it is what happens. I was asked by a forum member here about why God could not save the soldiers in the chariot and while researching it I came upon a whole new answer to a question I had that seemed totally unrelated to that particular passage but that was God guiding me as he always does. I hope that explains it for you a bit more clearly.
