Master_Ghost_Knight
New Member
Ok, fair enough, not everything. I also taught that he was pretty real when I was younger.Miracles4Real said:I don't think everything in the bible is literally true but I think both of us would agree that some of it is and I don't know very much about God but to me he seems to be real.
Truth is a label that we apply to statements, when I say that something is true what I mean is that the statement accurately reflects the actual state of things. I was just an example of things that christian say that warped their view, they all do it. When then say God is truth, do they mean that God is literally the abstract characteristic of a statement to accurately represent the actual state of things?Miracles4Real said:also I believe the word "truth" is something philosophy is still struggling with. even whether or not it is attainable or if we can only construct practical models that seem to work. Do you know the truth? Can a terrestrially evolved brain designed merely to survive and not understand- know the truth?
But never mind mind about that, that is another discussion. The main point here intuition is nothing more than baggage that we acquire doing our life time, and different people acquire different baggage, and none of it makes it necessarily true.
And that is the important thing, because thing are complicated, they are not intuitive, but if you have an open mind and follow along you will see that everything checks out despite the fact that it goes against our intuition.Miracles4Real said:I think that was a beautiful bit from Richard Feynman. We could all be wrong maybe it isn't elegant, maybe we'll find that it doesnt match the kind of things a mind would do. To me though, it does seem elegant, functional and designed. Don't worry though, I'll try and be willing to change my mind if it turns out I'm wrong.
This isn't the same as saying that you have to accept everything and anything. It just means that you are willing to consider ideas and challenge what you think you know.
Well I would say it's more of a reason why science is secular. You could still believe in God, you just don't use it as an explanation because it doesn't work. One could argue that is all it takes to stop believing in God, because you stop having reasons to do so, but you don't do it because you want to not believe in God, it is just something that happens.Miracles4Real said:You're summary of mans assent from religion to a world wide acceptance of atheism is a history lession I don't think I could get anywhere else.Master_Ghost_Knight said:People tried God before, it didn't work, it didn't tell them anything, it was useless, it was wrong. And then they tried something simple, "maybe God doesn't have anything do with it", and in that case it worked.
Sure they were people of faith. And they even may have been moved by the concept of God, but God wasn't an answer, to try and answer anything with god didn't actually helped them, and that is what I mean.Miracles4Real said:Some people were driven to study the natural world in order to understand God. in that, their belief wasn't useless. They learned many useful and amazing "truths" and maybe they are wrong about God but it doesn't seem like it to me, it sure didn't seem like it to them.
I accept that maybe that was not what you mean, but that is what it means when you say: "If we don't know, why not go with the simplest explanation?". What did you think that would mean?Miracles4Real said:I'm not saying I have an explanation when I don't.
Just because you are not omniscient it doesn't mean that you can't say that you know something to the extent were we can actually know anything. But we have to be honest when we don't know something to admit that we don't know.Miracles4Real said:I'm saying that to me the universe appears designed by an intelligence. I'm not sure I could live my life if I said "I don't know" to absolutely everything simply because I am not omniscient?
And just because we don't know something, it doesn't mean that we are unable to function.
I would disagree. Science doesn't make you a fact spewing robots. It doesn't tell you how you should live your life, but it can tell you allot. Science isn't a thing, it's method of looking at the world, and if there is a way in which Y makes a difference in respects to X then you can be sure that there is a scientific way to to tell X and Y apart. And if science can't do it, then nothing else can.Miracles4Real said:1 I'm not a scientist droid. I don't think anyone really lives their life as scientist droids. Pretending that the only useful questions are scientific questions doesn't really work for me. Science is extremely limited in what it can give us in this regard. There are useful, even necessary questions that are not falsifiable or testable or within the realm of science. There are other ways for us to learn things. intuition is a good tool when you're lost like we all are. mine points to some cosmic presence. I don't see how you can tie your shoes or drive a car thinking only about facts and chemical processes.
This isn't the same thing as to say that you make all your decisions based on science. You don't, to take your example, you don't have to submit to peer review your method of tying your shoes or conduct inquiries on the best method to put on your pants.
And as I have mentioned about intuition, intuition is not a good tool to tell you things about the world, if you are not prepared to abandon it, you will have an hard time learning new things.
Well it's a bit late, and I won't address everything. I think this is getting of topic. However if you have any question, ask and ye shall be answered.Miracles4Real said:Everyone has been very cool. I'm so glad that it feels less like everyone is fighting each other and more like everyone is struggling with new ideas and working together to understand. A good learning environment.