atheim is an adventrue of faith

Discuss arguments for existence of God and faith in general. Any aspect of any orientation toward religion/spirituality, as long as it is based upon a positive open to other people attitude.

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atheim is an adventrue of faith

Post by Metacrock » Wed Sep 15, 2010 9:51 am

here's an excellent answer to Hawking's new book. Peter Woit is a physicist at Columbia. He's ruling out string theory purely on scientific grounds, he says nothing to indicate he's a believer.

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

an interesting statement he makes, in speaking of an interview he did with a reporter:
British journalist contacted me about this recently and we talked about M-theory and its problems. She wanted me to comment on whether physicists doing this sort of thing are relying upon “faith” in much the same way as religious believers. I stuck to my standard refusal to get into such discussions, but, thinking about it, have to admit that the kind of pseudo-science going on here and being promoted in this book isn’t obviously any better than the faith-based explanations of how the world works favored by conventional religions.
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Re: atheim is an adventrue of faith

Post by Kane Augustus » Sat Oct 09, 2010 12:35 am

This really shouldn't come as a surprise, I think. It would seem to me that positing anything that cannot be somehow tested for its veracity should be either acknowledged as an agnostic proposition, or simply a creative idea. Taking it any further than those two categories beggars logic: how can you know what it is not possible to know? M-Theory is one of those things I would state is an agnostic proposition: it is a premise based on the (so far) ultimate unknowability of certain aspects of our universe.

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Re: atheim is an adventrue of faith

Post by ZAROVE » Sat Oct 09, 2010 3:07 pm

Agreed. I’ve told people before that everyone has a Religion, and no one believes me. Religion really is not “Belief without evidence in supernatural powers”, but simply a set of beliefs that regards the Fundamental Nature of our existence. In this way, even Adamant Anti-Religious zealots like Richard Dawkins really aren’t attempting to posit Reason against Faith and science against Religion, but simply trying to replace one Religion with another.

Its also of note that Religion is not all about belief without evidence, and Faith is not itself belief without evidence.


Propositions such as Hawking recent newsmaker are rooted as much in Philosophical Presumptions as they are in Scientific Fact, and are followed y men like him, or Dawkins who promoted the same idea in “The God Delusion”, simply because they create a way to visualise the Creation of the Universe without referring to God. If you start with the proposition that God cannot exist, then you must find explanations for those sorts of things, and this provides a vehicle for that, and a vehicle that allows you to keep the quaint Culturally erected delusion that Religion is about spiritual matters and gods, and Science is its antithesis. You can believe in this absolutely unprovable and undemonstrateable Hypothesis and claim to be Scientific. it’s a “Scientific” view, because a Scientist said so, and we are conditioned to think of Scientists as cold, calculating individuals who pursue Truth for the purpose of Truth, out of sheer Altruism, and who use Logic and Reason and have no predisposed ideas and no Prejudices.

But this is not True, any more than All Scientists are Atheists.

Fred Hoyle, himself an Atheist, even acknowledged this. He said that People Imagine that in Science each new discovery and all new ideas and Theories are accepted as soon as evidence is given, but this view is simply wrong. Science doesn’t advance by people giving up only assumptions with new evidence, it works by a Younger Generation embracing he new idea, and the older generation clinging fiercely to its assumptions till it dies out.
Scientists are as Human as the rest of us, and in a way Science is just another Facet of Religion, rather than its opposite. Science is about explaining our world that we live in, as is Religion. As I’ve said, Religion is really just a set of beefs that serve to give us a basic understanding of the Fundamental Nature of our existence. Anything that covers Foundational matters is a religion, which is why I say Secular Humanists are Religious, though they become angry with me on this.

Famously, when on message Boards Science VS Religion coems up somehow the argument becomes a Creationsit one with the posters assuming Creationism is Religion and Evolution Science. Never midn that this is a dull witted way of approaching the topic or that not all “Religious people” are Creationists, I want to focus on what both of those beliefs do for the believers in them.

They both explain our Origins.

A Young Earth Creationist may think the Genesis Account of Creation is 100% True, and thus God created the Heavens and Earth, and in one Week our world was fashioned and Humanity created on the Sixth Day. An Evolutionist will hold to live Evolving slowly on our Planet over its 4.4 Billion year History, and most also adhere to the Big Bang Theory. (Itself Ironically a Creationist Theory that dislodged accepted Atheistic assumptions.) In the Mind of the modern Humanist who accepts a godless Big Bang and a godless Evolution, the world can be explained as emerging via these undirected Natural Processes, and to the Young Earth Creationist God created everything about 6000 years ago or so. We see them, because of the stark contrast in what the beliefs hold, as very different. But in the most important way they aren’t. They are both beliefs about how life on Earth emerged and how we got here. The Big Bang Theory is no less a Creation Myth than the Genesis Creation Account, and neither is Evolutionary Theory. Both are also no different from the Creation of the Universe by Brahman in the Veda’s, or the Hopi Indian Creation Myths. They are in the end stories that explain were we came from, narratives that help shape how we understand our life and the meaning it holds to us, that help us to interpret our world and find a place in it.

In that way, they really aren’t different at all. They serve the same basic purpose in the minds of those who believe in them, and they fill the same basic need that we have of knowing where we came form and how all this came to be, and how we relate to our world.


Moreover, what we believe will be dependant upon several factors, not just education level as some thing. I have known highly intelligent and highly educated men who are Creationists, and I have known idiots who are Evolutionists. What people believe and why depends on more than just being educated, but also in how your education was delivered to you, and what, exactly, you were taught.

If you attend Liberty University your most likely to end up taught from an Evangelical Christian perspective and as a result will likely pick up those philosophical assumptions, especially if you are Young and unwary of the Biases inherent in education. No one will doubt me when I say this. However, the same is true if you go to a venerable Ivy League college like Princeton or Harvard. Those institutions are notoriously biased in Favour of a Humanist perspective and a Liberal Political View, just like Liberty is biased in Favour of a Conservative political view and an Evangelical Christian bias.

The University of Colorado is even worse in being Liberal and Humanistic than Harvard or Princeton, and has garnered massive complaints regarding its treatment of Students how do not tow this line, unlike either Harvard or Princeton.

The University of Tennessee on the other hand is officially Secular but is not really Hostile to Christianity, as it sin the Bible Belt, and many of its teachers are Christian themselves.

A Young Student at any of those schools is likely to pick up the political and religious biases inherent in the Institution, and the beliefs they inherit form this education will seem logical and natural to them, as few will reflect upon why they hold their views or how they really differ.

But the end is always the same, they acquire a sort of intellectual framework by which everything else is filtered through. They have a Narrative in their head that acts as an overarching story that tells them how the world works and what to expect in life and who they are.


In the end, this is all Religion itself is. The Overarching Narrative we use in life to tell us who we are, were we came from, and were we are going, the story that tells us how we are relate to the world we live in and that gives us our values, our morals, and our ethics, the story that tells us the meaning of our life.

And everyone has this the end.

And everyone adds to or builds form that Story.

Which is what men like Hawking are doing, simply trying to complete the gaps n the story by giving us a Creation account without God that solves that dilemma. It doesn’t matter that there’s no proof, they need this, and need it to be void of God.

But it will be seen a Science and Not Religion, and completely more Rational to believe in, thanks to the other great narrative of Science VS Religion we have in our society.

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Re: atheim is an adventrue of faith

Post by tinythinker » Thu Oct 14, 2010 10:50 pm

ZAROVE wrote:Agreed. I’ve told people before that everyone has a Religion, and no one believes me. Religion really is not “Belief without evidence in supernatural powers”, but simply a set of beliefs that regards the Fundamental Nature of our existence.

In that way, they really aren’t different at all. They serve the same basic purpose in the minds of those who believe in them, and they fill the same basic need that we have of knowing where we came form and how all this came to be, and how we relate to our world.

But the end is always the same, they acquire a sort of intellectual framework by which everything else is filtered through. They have a Narrative in their head that acts as an overarching story that tells them how the world works and what to expect in life and who they are.
It depends on how one defines religion, but I agree with you in the sense that prior to the age of reason in the West there was no separating of religion as some other thing. When missionaries arrived in Japan they found there was no word for religion in the native language, even though we would by our standard tend to include Shinto and Buddhism as religions. For many cultures, while there may be some dichotomy between worlds, none of them were optional and all were interrelated. As I teach in my classes, one of the defining (if not the defining) aspect of modern Homo sapiens is that we are story-tellers, and culture is our collective narrative. As Gary Eberle suggested in his book "Dangerous Words", our common societal narrative and its supporting myths and rituals (here myth doesn't mean story that is historically false but one containing a timeless truth) form an outline for how to live a meaningful and successful life.

There are scholars Zarove who have compared the myths of religion and the theories of science, the way in which knowledge is legitimized in religion and science, etc, so it isn't a strange idea at all. I myself have referred to "belief" or lack thereof in (abstractions and models of) God as orientations to existence, but it is highly similar to what you describe. Cultural anthropologists have long studied the key symbols, metaphors, and stories of societies and how they are used to filter, interpret, and give meaning to their experiences. My own shorthand for this is the cultural lens (because then I can also add other forms such as methodological lens, metaphysical lens, etc). I actually do a lecture in which I talk about how the same observations (fossil beds in which similar forms persist, then disappear and are replaced with new forms, only to occasionally re-appear later) are seen through the lens of Cuvier (a brilliant paleontologist living prior to the rise of evolutionary theory whose only mechanisms were Biblical -- series of creations interspersed with catastrophic floods), Darwin (a gradualist), early saltationists like Huxely and Mivart (who were evolutionists like Darwin but who also were clueless about heredity), later Darwinians like GG Simpson and later saltationists like Otto Schidenwolfe (soon after population genetics had come into ascendancy in evolution after the Synthesis), and then more recent scholars of evolution promoting gradualism and saltationism with newer models of heredity and development. This doesn't mean all these interpretations are accurate or equally valid, but it does force one to be firmly grounded in their epistemological principles.

As many others have suggested over the years, even if we "got rid" of all music, art and religion and all ritual too, we would reinvent them in a new form. It is who and what we are. Even now in the US people pray in the temples of Capitalism and genuflect before the images of Democracy before going home to be mesmerized by Media, a fickle deity that is not strictly aligned with any group of gods but is sought to be controlled by all. And of course we hate the gods of the enemy, which we tend to lump together and even conflate from time to time, such as Totalitarianism, Socialism, Communism, etc. We loath and fear them so much that even to utter their names with anything other than derision can considered blasphemy and labels you as a likely heretic if not an outright heathen. So long as we are faithful to our gods and spurn the false gods of our enemies, we are promised our nation will prosper. And when bad things happen anyway, we accuse our rulers and chief priests of either not being true to the faith or perhaps of not using the proper ceremonies to please the gods. But we of course are oh so modern and nothing like those poor Norse, Greek, Roman, Babylonian or Egyptian peoples of ancient times and their primitive beliefs!

It's ironic then that while when people "do religion" they may be professing Christianity, Buddhism, atheism, etc, but in their hearts and everyday lives most in the US truly worship these other gods, so that in the end many Christians and atheists do in fact share a common faith. That silly Old God, who has had many names and faces throughout history and all over the world and who was proclaimed to be Love; well, his symbols and status can be appropriated or annexed because few people really believe in him anymore. After all, people have been appropriating him or his symbols for tribal and nationalistic purposes (especially for conquest and enforcing conformity) for thousands of years anyway. Surely he faded away eons ago, if he ever existed at all.
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Re: atheim is an adventrue of faith

Post by ZAROVE » Fri Oct 15, 2010 1:40 am

Of coruse yoru right, and I base my statements on my studies. If you'd like I could offer you the titles of some books I've read on it.


But wheneer I tell them that todays love of Demcoracy, and subsequent devotion to the need to spread it, is no different from a Missionary Zeal in Christianity or Islam, they balk and insist that its different. One is politics, the other Religion!


Its mainly a distinction of lables and not of reality. Rather like how Sprit is an Uncola. Its still in the end a soft drink, just of a different colour. it serves the same fundamental purpose and is the same general thing, but on the commercials its different.

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Re: atheim is an adventrue of faith

Post by met » Fri Oct 15, 2010 12:30 pm

It's ironic then that while when people "do religion" they may be professing Christianity, Buddhism, atheism, etc, but in their hearts and everyday lives most in the US truly worship these other gods, so that in the end many Christians and atheists do in fact share a common faith. That silly Old God, who has had many names and faces throughout history and all over the world and who was proclaimed to be Love; well, his symbols and status can be appropriated or annexed because few people really believe in him anymore. After all, people have been appropriating him or his symbols for tribal and nationalistic purposes (especially for conquest and enforcing conformity) for thousands of years anyway. Surely he faded away eons ago, if he ever existed at all.
:D .. . TT, i dunno, somehow that's just a really great paragraph. .. . almost like a poem
The “One” is the space of the “world” of the tick, but also the “pinch” of the lobster, or that rendezvous in person to confirm online pictures (with a new lover or an old God). This is the machinery operative...as “onto-theology."
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Re: atheim is an adventrue of faith

Post by met » Sat Oct 16, 2010 6:08 pm

tinythinker wrote:Even now in the US people pray in the temples of Capitalism and genuflect before the images of Democracy before going home to be mesmerized by Media, a fickle deity that is not strictly aligned with any group of gods but is sought to be controlled by all. And of course we hate the gods of the enemy, which we tend to lump together and even conflate from time to time, such as Totalitarianism, Socialism, Communism, etc. We loath and fear them so much that even to utter their names with anything other than derision can considered blasphemy and labels you as a likely heretic if not an outright heathen. So long as we are faithful to our gods and spurn the false gods of our enemies, we are promised our nation will prosper. And when bad things happen anyway, we accuse our rulers and chief priests of either not being true to the faith or perhaps of not using the proper ceremonies to please the gods. But we of course are oh so modern and nothing like those poor Norse, Greek, Roman, Babylonian or Egyptian peoples of ancient times and their primitive beliefs!

nonono! sorry .. . oops :oops: i meant THIS paragraph!! :oops: :oops: :oops:


THIS is the great paragraph . . . see? i was so mesmerized, i quoted the wrong one :)
The “One” is the space of the “world” of the tick, but also the “pinch” of the lobster, or that rendezvous in person to confirm online pictures (with a new lover or an old God). This is the machinery operative...as “onto-theology."
Dr Ward Blanton

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Re: atheim is an adventrue of faith

Post by tinythinker » Sun Oct 17, 2010 3:11 pm

met wrote:
tinythinker wrote:Even now in the US people pray in the temples of Capitalism and genuflect before the images of Democracy before going home to be mesmerized by Media, a fickle deity that is not strictly aligned with any group of gods but is sought to be controlled by all. And of course we hate the gods of the enemy, which we tend to lump together and even conflate from time to time, such as Totalitarianism, Socialism, Communism, etc. We loath and fear them so much that even to utter their names with anything other than derision can considered blasphemy and labels you as a likely heretic if not an outright heathen. So long as we are faithful to our gods and spurn the false gods of our enemies, we are promised our nation will prosper. And when bad things happen anyway, we accuse our rulers and chief priests of either not being true to the faith or perhaps of not using the proper ceremonies to please the gods. But we of course are oh so modern and nothing like those poor Norse, Greek, Roman, Babylonian or Egyptian peoples of ancient times and their primitive beliefs!

nonono! sorry .. . oops :oops: i meant THIS paragraph!! :oops: :oops: :oops:


THIS is the great paragraph . . . see? i was so mesmerized, i quoted the wrong one :)
It appears a bit plain to me.
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met
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Re: atheim is an adventrue of faith

Post by met » Sun Oct 17, 2010 5:12 pm

no, actually, they're BOTH great paragraphs :P
The “One” is the space of the “world” of the tick, but also the “pinch” of the lobster, or that rendezvous in person to confirm online pictures (with a new lover or an old God). This is the machinery operative...as “onto-theology."
Dr Ward Blanton

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Re: atheim is an adventrue of faith

Post by Metacrock » Mon Oct 18, 2010 9:21 am

yea I think so too
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