Big Bang

Fondren,

Philosophers tried to hold your position of just looking at "objective" information in the first part of the 20th Century. It has been soundly rejected by all high level philosophers. Reason? Because the position is built upon its own faith pre-suppositions.

I reiterate. You are a man of great faith.

Fact of the matter which all philosophers and high-level scientists would agree is that all positions are positions of faith. You have to assume on faith certain things which can never be proven in a complete fashion.

So I am a scientist and a Christian and I have very reasonable reasons for believing both have validity in their given areas. However, they are both limited. God, in my opinion, gave us good and sufficient reasons to believe that Christ is the Son of God and Savior. However, many people saw miracles and still refused to believe.

The complexity and beauty of the Universe and the belief that I am more than a mere collection of matter and energy who must come from a higher consciousness are part of my belief system. If you believe you are just a collection of subatomic particles and energy where does transcendence come from? The answer is no where and you are left without free will, without love, without significance. Yet, everywhere men and women believe they have meaning and are more than just a collection of molecules and energy.

Science must assume that a collection of finite measurements can add up to become a theory which is a faith position. You can measure as many points on a graph as you want and never have categorical proof that the next measurement will fall on the graph. Thus, you have to have faith in science. (So please no more patronizing of those of us who admit our faith; you are naive if you do not understand that you are a person of faith also).

You, as an "objective" observer also have to come to terms with the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle which says that you can never know things objectively by science's own position.

Now you might deny that the HUP is poppycock, but it has stood the test of time for almost 80 years.

You are stuck. The things I have inadequately explained are the positions of high level academic philosophers and scientists the world over.
 
LongHornWin,

'Faith' is not a word that has much meaning in science. I'm sure you don't think that your faith as a Christian is the same thing as a scientitst's confidence in her observations. I'm sure you don't mean to conflate two very different things, but that's what you seem to have written.

texasflag.gif
 
You mean like this?
The Link

I do equate faith in science with faith in anything else. I believe that experience leads us to have faith in our 5 senses. I believe that experience leads us to have faith in the scientific method and in logic. But, I can not pretend that these are indeed things in which we place a measure of faith. It is reasoned and rationale faith, but there is faith there.

I had a philosophy major friend who went to UT, and he was a complete skeptic. It was actually a bit scary. He doubted even his own existance, and everything around him. He said he was unwilling to have the faith that even the physical things in which world were anymore than mere dreams....
 
If by 'faith' Davies means that scientists expect the universe to behave in an orderly, copmprehensible manner, he is right. That expectation is based on a long history of scientific observations being - almost always - comprehensible using the methods and rationale of science. 'Natural law is sufficient to explain my data.' Is that a statement of faith? Perhaps. But if so, it is a different usage of the word than is used in religion. Faith, in a religious sense, is belief in the absence of evidence. Science, on the other hand, is completely lost without evidence. Science doesn't have faith to fall back on..

texasflag.gif
 
I reject blind faith, as do most Christians I know.

Most Christians I know believe in Christianity, because they believe it to be a reasonable faith, with evidences that lead them to belief.

I agree with you that there are VERY VERY good reasons for science to be believed in. But there is an element of faith that can not be removed.
 
Theu said it nicely.

GT, I am not conflating anything. I intentionally used faith because a lot of skeptics now think they have the high ground based on the success of science and that it is observational.

I was merely pointing out two problems.

1. It is not verifiable in the sense that most naive empiricist believe. Logical positivism (AJ Ayer and others) took the position and has been utterly rejected by philosophers as untenable exactly because science is based on presuppositions (faith). Moreover, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says that we can never observe in a precise fashion in the way that previously scientists thought (This was the source of the famous Einstein quote that "God does not play dice" because he did not like the lack of precision in science). Thus, again science is reasonable, but so is faith in my opinion.

2. I think i one rigorously takes a pure physical view of things, I believe we lose all sorts of things that would be very painful to lose such as love, beauty, justice, personality, passion, and so on.

Why would we lose those? Because how can chemicals and energy experience those? By adding more chemicals and energy? Now that IS faith.
 
Oh, I believe that a materialist scientist who believes that he is a collection of molecules and energy love beauty and they fall in love and have personality and so on.

However, they believe this inconsistently with their fundamental beliefs. If you are a collection of molecules and energy, then you have no free will, love because merely lust, personality becomes merely programmed behavior, and so on.

Even Hume, who is often pointed to as the great skeptic, wrote in his seminal work dismissing the reliability of causality wrote that he did not live according to his views because it would not be a very good life.

So yes, materialists have such thoughts as love and beauty, but they shouldn't or if they do, they should say they are illusory and not transcendent, because such things cannot exist for materialists.

I find that to be a grave weakness in materialism. I will take my faith which does have lots of supportive evidence and consistency to it which materialism does not.

Fondren, there is a lot of evidence for the truth of Christianity if you are really interested, you can send me a message. It is for more consistent than the position you support for the reasons I have sited and a fair number more.
 
You're never going to come to a conclusion, logically, that either God exists or not. Just like it takes a certain amount of faith to believe your senses, it takes a certain amount of faith to believe in God or to be an atheist.

It would probably be more fun if everyone was arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
 
We all have a perspective that gives our lives meaning. LongHornsWin believes that his faith gives him a unique appreciation of beauty, love, and happiness. I, on the other hand, would be miserable if I found evidence for his omniscient, omnipotent deity. Such a God, if He exists, is guilty of all the crimes of the ages.

"Oh, Thou who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take! "

texasflag.gif
 
Well, Fondren, we are making progress.

You have admitted that you pre-suppose your position which is faith by another name.

I agree with you that if I were born on a desert Island, unless a Bible washed onshore that I would not be a Christian because I wouldn't know other than if God gave a specific revelation for me.

Your concentration on what you observe is problematic. How do you know that what you observe is accurate? Philosophers would call it naive realism. It has been rejected as a tenable position by philosophy. You can continue to hold that, but it is a faith position even atheistic philosophers would say.

I know I am not going to convince you to be a Christian tonight, but may I ask what is your profession?

My guess is engineer.
 
This has been argued so many times on Quacks. Yet here we are.

Omniscient entity -------> Predestination

If there is omniscience (it doesn't have to be God) then logically there can be no free will. If that being knows what will happen, it must happen. There's no misreading of lines, there are no mistakes, there are no choices, there is no free will.

You can have omniscience or you can have free will. You cannot have both.

To believe otherwise is to give up the claim to being a rational human being.

texasflag.gif
 
I think the root of the "omnipotent creator = no free will" argument is this...

Omnipotence requires that God could create the universe in all its forms great and small. Omniscience requires that God knows all aspects of all things. It is impossible for God to be passive in the creation, or there could be no creation. If God chose the universe and knew its properties before its realization, then he alone is responsible for all interactions and their outcomes. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, then there can be no will but God's and no choice but God's. If there is no will but God's, then your "will" is not free.
 
What about the time traveler analogy, where GT WT goes 10 years into the future, and sees Red Five quit his job, move to Hawaii, and marry Scarlett Johanson (hey, **** off, it's my analogy). Assuming no interference from GT WT, this WILL happen. He's seen it happen once, and it will happen again. Does this mean that I have no free will? How would this be different than the omnipotent God who has also already seen the future?
 
Fondren,

Thanks for sharing your profession. I will share mine. I am a pediatrician with a graduate degree in philosophy.

It does seem to me from your shared background that you have rejected Christianity more from hurts in the past than arguments from the present. (I am guessing here, but you guessed I was born in a Christian family which was not correct).

As I will say again, your argument about observation is untenable. It also is convenient in that it immediately eliminates all transcendent religion unless you believed that Santa Claus was God because he walked up to you and granted your Christmas wishes which you observed.

I have studied all the major religions and philosophies before committing fully to Christianity and it is the only one in which is consistent as a worldview which also allows me and you to have TRUE significance as being made in the image of God.

One who accepts materialism, philosophically can only hold love, personality, free will as being actions of quarks and energy and therefore ultimately without significance. I believe I am more than that and have chosen to be a son of the Living God, not random energy packets.

I do completely understand that you may not choose to be a Christian, but do not think it is from a position of choice. That would be entirely inconsistent with your worldview (aka faith). You have chosen it because of what happened to you in your family, mistakes made by other Christians that made you angry, or whatever other events that you "feel" inside that allowed you to reject Christianity (which is analogous to the argument you made about a person being born in the US becoming a Christian for that reason).

No reason to believe me. Your observational approach was abandoned by philosophy about 70 years ago about the time that Heinsenberg showed that measurements were not precise and can never be precise (so much for observation).

Virtually all non-theistic (Materialist) mind-body philosophers do not believe in Free Will as you seem to. Again, an untenable position.

I hope you will consider the other side out of intellectual honesty and for your own sake.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Weekly Prediction Contest

* Predict HORNS-AGGIES *
Sat, Nov 30 • 6:30 PM on ABC

Recent Threads

Prediction Results Threads

2024 Schedules

Back
Top