Stone age doesn't sound very technological to anybody now a days. But pretty much that's what God can think of during the creation. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Though it may be useless to say so I believe you may have pointed out another small piece of evidence that humans create their gods. I can't argue with the point whatsoever; it's a very astute observation. Of course, if we remove omniscience and omnipotence from the mix, and accept the limitations of the god-concept imposed by the Biblical canon, then we can suddenly see why God created a stone age: lack of creativity. thanx, Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I believe that humans wouldn't really have a need for technology if God were supplying for all of our needs. I've quoted the verse in Genesis before a couple of times but perhaps mans pursuit of scientific knowledge is to become god's themselves.
I think that the origins of religion are excusable; that the original creators of our judeo-christian god were quite dynamic and cutting-edge in their observations. They took the beliefs of the people from 'false idols' being tribal religions and transferred them to a more refined way of thinking. I believe that the feeling of god is present in every one of us. However, I also beleive that the portrayal of that feeling as an existing god is nearing the end of its life. Not to say anything about the popualrity of religion now, I think that science, sometime in the very near future, will take over as the new meaning of life. It has been 2000 years since Christ. When Christ was born it was 2000 years since the beginnings of the roman gods.... In a modern context, we must always refine the portarayal of our deepest feelings, as we have always done. Now we have the ability to better analyze them and come up with a better way of thinking. that is not to remove the inner core of religion, but to transfer it to a system of beliefs where it can better flourish.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. God didn't try to explain the whole of science we would have the joy of discovering later, so He described what He could to an ancient people. It would do no good to use words or concepts that people at the time would not understand in the first place.
God did think of all the technology back then. He just didn't preassemble it. Maybe I'm weird but I think the journey is more interesting than any destination. "Lack of creativity" Wow. Nature. What a boring unimaginative thing. I bet we've only spent a couple years studying it. We should just pave over it with out wonderful technology that makes everything so pretty. That's a pretty shallow basis for an argument against God. Ben
People were stupid. Guest who made them? It doesn't matter what "ancient people" could understand. After all, God created them, which implies that is what the life of God in that time--primitive. Do you know what "the joy of discovering" will lead to? Do you know what does cloning imply? Do yon know what do star travel and colonization imply? Not many people will still believe lightning/thunder is the cause of an angry God. The "job of discovering" makes people no longer believe God has anything to do with thunder or earthquake, nor Earth is the center of the universe. Of course God won't pre-assemble them, because technology will render God's power into nothing. BTW, what is the technological destination that God is expecting? To over come God?
That's real shortsighted. We're finding out more and more the fact that people back then were smarter than we thought--probably as smart as we are today. They just didn't have a few thousand years of scientific dicovery under their belt to see what we have today. And I suppose you argue that you made yourself better? First, the Bible never argues that God is behind every lightning bolt or earthquake--maybe you're mixing up the Bible with pagan religions? Secondly, we're discovering that the Earth is much more unique than we first expected--maybe we will need to define "the center of the universe" to a more modern basis. Lastly, science has not answered to humanity's satisfaction the three questions of mankind, "Where did we come from?", "Why are we here?", and "What happens after we die?". This is still the territory of religion, and the more primary reason why people believe in God.
Are you talking about bullet in fossil? Battery in old tomb? Why those tech didn't last? Because God was afraid and crushed them? Hmm, if you don't make yourself better, nobody can. Do God think travelling between stars and spreading live on other planets appropriate? Given "the joy of discovery", how could you so sure that science won't answer those three questions eventually?
Given the "desire for worship", how could you be so sure that the Bible hasn't answered those three questions accurately? No I'm talking about the ingenuity that people had before they learned things like how to mine ore or create steel, or figure out which chemicals to combine for medicines and other products. You have to separate what people have discovered over the ages from their intelligence. I know it's hard, but I'm sure you can do it.
I learned the "joy of discovery" since my childhood, but the "desire of worship" never hits me, strange? BTW, isn't that God needs nothing? Why a sudden rush feeling of needed to be worship? Only a primitive God will need to be worship. What else could ancient people do if the sky never rain? Fly into sky and drop rain making chemical or pray God?
Woulda shoulda coulda but didn't I think a fair assessment is easy enough to accomplish. * If a large number of people walk in the merciful and beneficial way of Christ as a free-will choice that faith in God and practice of His method are the best option, then we can assert that society should reflect it. Inquisitory Europe? American colonization and expansion westward? Voting? Slavery and its resulting (American) racism? Economy and crime? Corrupt public servants? It seems a puerile idea at first when I mention that the clear majority of the US Congress' crooked wings are declared Christians. We might complain about our politicians, but they do claim Christianity as their faith, by and large. What of Christ's beatific benevolence is reflected in the Inquisitions? What of that benevolence is reflected in Manifest Destiny (and, no, we cannot blame the Deists for this, as I guarantee you there were more claimed Christians out there enacting the Destiny than there were Unitarians with or without Christian leanings). How about woman suffrage? How did greed triumph over Christian compassion before we set the slaves free? How did greed and hatred triumph amid so many Christian communities after the emancipation? We see, in the modern day, the effects of economic empowerment on the crime rate: why do so many choose personal gain through the pocketbook instead of personal gain by strengthening the community? And this is a short list .... We can fairly say that the failure of the Christian way to produce effects resembling that which are advertised soundly suggests that the Bible has failed to answer anything accurately, much less the three questions in question. You mean like the Central- and South American savages who could perform minor invasive surgeries with anesthesia? Or those empires whose quiet remains suggest strongly that electricity had been used? I agree about the medicines: such infidel pagan shamanism had to go .... To the other, God could have (would have, should have ... yeah, I know ...) created a technologically-advanced people amid a world with technology in it--in media res, as such. This would save a number of painful considerations; had we the technology to clone ourselves, for instance, we wouldn't have to put ourselves through the moral effort of figuring out if using embryos is proper or not, ad infinitum. We can offer a non-technological scenario, too, for comparison: God could have (would have, should have ... yes, we know) created people incapable of feeling sexual urges toward the same gender, but chose not to. That sort of thing is all I see in the topic post: God chose to make primitive people who depended on His ... uh ... benevolent will (as such) to survive. Had he created a species better prepared for the environment he chose to bestow upon them, things would be much different now. thanx, Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Uh, did I miss something here? We are of course, taking it for granted here that 'God' created humankind right? Assuming that we are, how do any of you think we would be able to figure out the thoughts of such a powerful being? Therefore, the whole argument is moot.
You did miss something here. We are of course, taking it for granted here that 'God' was created by humankind. If nobody can figure out the thoughts of such a powerful being, that means He is unpredictable. And worshiping a not predictable God is a very dangerous act.
What do you call a scientist who fakes his data so that it will fall in favor with some political agenda? What do you call social darwinism, that promoted the colonization, and enslavement or slaughter of more primitive races? What do you call the Nazi experiments on people to recklessly push forward scientific advancement at the cost of countless human lives? These were not done in the name of God or Christianity, they were done in the name of science. Why should we follow science if it has been such a poor example in the past? Why should we follow science if so many people were killed in its name? Why should we follow science if so many take it for their own agendas and cause harm? If you replace "science" with "Christianity" then you see that these are your own arguments--and you should see how invalid they are. Know that when you defend science against these questions, you defend Christianity against the very arguments you bring up yourself.
Did you miss, or are you shooting at bystanders? You're off-base, Dan, and I think you know it. A very bad scientist, at least, and usually a fraud. Why, what do you call it? Umm ... Spencerism wasn't identified until the 19th century. In the Americas, most of the damage had been done by this point. Spencerism is usually exploited conceptually by Capitalists, whom Weber attributes to Protestants. But this social darwinism is an idea that can be abused, like many ideas have in the past and present. Murder, torture ... part and parcel of the Nazi party. You seem to be getting more specific as you go along. 1) Please show me the catechism, creed of faith, or singular holy text that links these ideas together. 2) Your point is? 3) Do you really think that no Christians took part in the ongoing Spencerist atrocity? Do you think no Christians facilitated Nazi Germany in order to save their own mortal asses? Do you think no Christian has ever fudged data for a political agenda? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 4) Humanity often seems like a string of tragedies. This I understand. What puzzles me is how the compassionate Christians are so often at the center, causing the hurt. Show me the Bible that connects the Nazis to Spencer to whatever scientific nightmare you would like to invent to make your point. Oh, that's point 1 all over again. Whoops. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Because it never pretended to be benevolent, it never aspired to rule humanity, and its failures are those of individuals who are wrong in their actions, not those of individuals who have a common textual basis (e.g. a Bible, a Catechism, ad nauseam) which they continually violate. You're trying to make science something it isn't. Science isn't a protected religion, except for the for-profit Scientology and, perhaps, the Church of Christ Science Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! You'll have to make a better case to establish the similarity of Kepler's Laws of Motion and the Nicene Creed. Is that all the gas you have left? Let me explain something to you, boy ... science does not promise you an afterlife. Science does not compel you to hurt other people in search of that afterlife. A person who is scientific who hurts another is not doing so because they believe they will be punished after they die if they don't. If you think so little of the power of Christian faith to affect human conduct on Earth, then why the hell do you bother defending it? Never mind that such a defense is fast becoming a mockery here at Sciforums, but really--Christians here left and right think to walk in the way of Christ is to behave just like the savage infidels and merely believe themselves to be better off. Take off the blinders and realize that Christians are just like everyone else, and that makes their self-superior litany just a bit annoying. Do you really think people who aren't Christian are as homogonously bland as Christians? Guess what? The so-called scientists who fudge their data are bad scientists in respect to their own standards. Remember the cold fusion debacle? I don't see a whole lot of people clinging to that idea, do you? Science is not an authority of conduct; Christianity is. Your attempted switch of terms fails simply because those who respect science come from a vast diversity of creeds which they often will place as more important than science. Science is a tool designed to help humanity; religion has generally failed in this aspiration. Nobody ever declared a city-wide extermination of Muslims on behalf of the Grand Unified Theory; and nobody ever will. Why? Because GUT doesn't judge you. Science isn't awarded a cohesive personality, except by the most superstitious and ill-educated of people. Establish the parity of science and religion in the manner you have attempted to establish by replacing one word with the other in your rubber-glue vomitus of illogic. I dare you. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!, Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
you call that incoherent mishmash you posted logic? You're funny, tiassa. You did exactly what I knew you would do, and it shows any objective person that the arguments which you present go directly to support Christianity against yourself. To my question, "What do you call a scientist who fakes his data so that it will fall in favor with some political agenda?" You answer, "A very bad scientist, at least, and usually a fraud. Why, what do you call it?" When I said that Christians who don't follow Christ, but do things in God's name for their own personal agendas unchristian, you didn't accept the argument. Now you shove the same one back at me. When I asked, "What do you call the Nazi experiments on people to recklessly push forward scientific advancement at the cost of countless human lives?" You answered, "Murder, torture ... part and parcel of the Nazi party." Yet even when I say that people who killed others in the name of God in such things as the Inquisition are murderers and will be judged, you just lump them in with <i>all</i> Christians--as if Christianity agrees with such things. Then you try and differentiate yourself from Christianity and imply that the Bible encourages hypocrites and murder. You sink to new lows all the time tiassa. I thought you could keep a coherent argument without resorting to name-calling and unfounded assertions from your own bias, but I guess when you're really challenged, you resort to insult throwing and saying your own creed as if it were fact over and over. It's sad. There are two ways to exterminate people. One way is to say that the other people have harmful beliefs and should be exterminated. The other is to say that their lives don't matter, and dump poisons and toxins into their rivers and waters so that science and progress can continue elsewhere. Since science has done its best to minimalize the sanctity of human life, it promotes the latter. Either way, the result is the same.
You've still got it wrong, Dan Actually, you're wrong on this one, Dan, and I'll even do you the favor of explaining why. Oh, wait, I already did. But you couldn't connect the concepts. Sorry to confuse you. So I'll try it again: If you have faith in God, you are choosing to believe what you have chosen to believe you are required to believe. All you have is a musty book and two-thousand years of misinterpretation of the One Way that is apparently the intended path set by He Who Created Us. Science makes no such claims over your conduct or your beliefs. If you think it does, you're buying into superstition. It's about as perceptive as the way Christians at Sciforums speak as if their own interpretation is the only applicable one. It's like the contextual problems people are having in the Predestination thread: They are so hooked on their own vision of their Christianity that they defend it instead of addressing the form of Christianity in question. Perhaps people do see science as a religion; in fact, I'm quite sure there are individuals who treat their scientific knowledge religiously. So that's not in question. However, your inability to establish parity 'twixt religion and science in the applicable sense you've provided indicates to me that your off-the-cuff comparison is as worthless as its first reading advised. You are only correct in your own fantasy. A) Humanity generally recognizes the Holocaust as a mistake. B) How many times do I have to repeat that the same self-assuming motivations behind the savageries of the Inquisitions are still present today? Just because Christianity isn't given a free hand to murder people into conformity doesn't mean that they won't sack the liberty that allows their existence in chase of dominance. In science, if you show a principle to be false, the principle becomes false. In Christianity, if you show a principle to be false, it doesn't matter, since the One Way means whatever the hell people want it to. Just because Christians can't kill people who get in their way doesn't mean Christians don't want those people out of their way. You seem to have missed my several diatribes explaining how I perceive Christians are attempting to homogonize the culture through censorship, enforced religious principles, ostracism, economic disenfranchisement, legal disenfranchisement, ad nauseam. And your response is? Or are you just hiding behind your disgust at my impatience with your puerile comparisons which you cannot even justify? You're right: your inability to view things from any other person's point of view is very sad. I'll never say the Christians have cornered the market on this one, but it's the method that brought the faith to its present market-share. A) Demonstrate that Christians did not participate. B) Demonstrate that Christians who did participate wrangled with their consciences. C) Despite the best efforts of American WASP culture to stamp out our indigenous tribes, poisons and pollutions affect all of us. This is not the case when it's the Authority setting people on fire for disagreeing with it. The people hurt are the ones burning on the stake. What you're saying is tantamount to claiming that a nuclear explosion is a scientist's attempt to exterminate Christians. You cannot wash the Christian hands of what you accuse. Seems rather hypocritical to me. This is an unfounded assertion. Why the hell are you getting so offended when you're just as full of what you think you're perceiving? Get over yourself. I dare you to demonstrate that. But first you ought to quit whining and address the questions you've chosen to skip over. --Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
And people are just as willing to kill and torture for science today. That doesn't make it right, and that doesn't mean that it is from Christianity that they get these ideas. And because it's old it must be wrong. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Try another one. That's exactly it. Science makes no claims, and in the absence of claims, it encourages people to do whatever they want without any moral restraint--too those who believe that all religions are wrong and morality is whatever someone believes it is. I don't justify murder or hypocrisy--and neither does my faith. It has some commandments against that. What people choose to do is separate. If someone who calls himself a Christian murders, does that mean the religion encourages murder? Absolutely not. Why do you keep trying to use this argument? I'm pointing out what has been done in the name of science and progress is sometimes murder. That is all.
You haven't established ideological parity yet, Dan Dan-- Map out the points of belief that you think are required to call oneself Christian. Now, map out the points of the scientific method. You have two exceptionally different lists, don't you? First off, what does it accomplish to establish that your philosophy is just as bad as any other? We know this. That's part of both the problem and the point. Nobody puts a standard on Chrsitian conduct except Christians; that they fail to meet their own standard is just fine--that they choose to belittle other ideas in order to justify themselves in the face of their own sense of guilt is just stupid. You have yet to establish the common creed 'twixt science and the atrocities you provided, and furthermore have yet to establish how science motivated these atrocities. Furthermore, you have yet to establish that Christians were immune from this conduct even in the name of science. You're right that it doesn't make it right. Now, if I am born into a Christian family, and raised on Christian values, and in the course of my studies make immoral decisions about how to attain scientific knowledge, yet my Christian values don't override my choice to enact my immoral decision, then my morals must be comfortable with that decision. This is why it's important to establish that Christians are immune from the conduct you denounce. Problem is, they're not. And some of those scientists are atheists. Some of them are Jewish; you can make a list of religions. Science does not claim to be what religion is; science does not affect your conduct the way religion does. The effect of that Christian conduct then is no different in a scientist who worships Christ than it is in a scientist who doesn't. You're trying to apply a broader paradigm of science and match it to the narrow dogma of Christian faith. This is why your comparison is not valid. It's like trying to compare the sins of Islam to the sins of English Literature. As I noted elsewhere, I think the two-millennia failure of the book to properly convey its meaning is exceptionally compelling evidence. You forget that the Christians had to use science in order to burn or behead people. It makes no encouragements, either. Science is science. It is a method for observing and recording data and trying to understand what that data means. Science does not have a personality, does not encourage, and does not claim to be the living authority in the Universe; it is a method for acquiring knowledge. Science makes no claims on morality, but neither does Marketing. Hello? Why aren't you out yelling at the Marketers? And I love your claim that science allows morality to be whatever someone wants it to be. Why do Christians resort to that? Science doesn't regard morality. People regard morality; Christians forfeit their moral determinations to a book. Morality, in the end, is experiential. I know Christian pacifists. I also know Christians who think it's moral to shoot a man to death under certain circumstances. Both find their justifications in the Bible. I know atheists who believe in peace under all circumstances; I know atheists who believe in shooting a man under certain circumstances. Each can look to social sciences to demonstrate the propriety of their stance. But each has to choose to do so. With Christianity, one looks to the book to tell them what to do. With the atheist, one looks to the data to explain the terms of the question, so that their intellect can solve the problem. The atheist does not look at the scientific data and feel compelled by a living source to interpret it in a specific way; it is a matter of perception and intellect, and the reason why I think education is a social priority. If those people in history who chose separately to violate God's word were all there was, then sure I'd buy that cheap argument. But the sad fact is that divisive, immoral, and even hateful interpretations of Biblical propriety still exist in much the same form as they did centuries ago; why can't Christians learn from the mistakes of the past? Oh, maybe because God will forgive? You know, forgive and redeem--those things Science doesn't claim to do in order to create a state of blind faith? Because future Christians use the murderer's justifications for a host of offenses against people. You'd think if the faith was effective, that the lot of you would have figured out a few things about the world. I live in the United States, where liberty is a relevant factor because without liberty, American Christians would have less interpretational options without being condemned. Yet the Christian liberty seems largely directed at suspending other people's liberty in order to achieve a theoretical godly society in which temptation to sin is lessened. After all, it's a civil rights violation to tempt a Christian, even accidentally because they have a dirty mind, right? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! If you've chosen to ignore every time I've mentioned the concept, then I have no idea why I should expect you to understand it now: Christians have been attempting to establish hegemony among mankind for centuries. In my lifetime, Christianity has generally been abusive to the liberty that allows it to exist in its current forms specifically because of that quest for hegemony. Tell me, sir ... what does it matter if someone else is gay? Yet Christians in Oregon seem to have a problem with homosexuals. What does it matter if another person records a profane word on his rock album? Yet Christians around the US have had problems with rock and roll since day one. What does it matter at all what other people believe that Christians should feel compelled to attempt to force people to think differently in their daily lives? The same cheap greed and self-assumed superiority that motivated the Inquisitors to put the flame to human flesh motivates the cheap, self-assuming persecutors who wield Christian faith as a weapon in their perpetual quest for earthly dominion. Progress is murder? I can accept that: warfare is called progress. Executions are generally considered progressive by conservatives (?!) But when you equate the "name of science" to the "name of God", you're not drawing a straight comparison. The Christian paradigm puts certain constraints on people that result in certain moral choices. The Christian paradigm is larger than science in one respect: a Christian perceiving scientific fact should make moral decisions about that fact based on their faith--or so it seems to go; if this is wrong, let me know. Science is not that kind of functional paradigm. You're trying to change the nature of science to make it equal to religion in the manner in which harm is done in its name. And that's flat cheap. Ri-ight. What parts of the Bible aren't you including in your faith? The ones that would compel you to hypocrisy? In that case, and without sarcasm, I commend you. I can only hope, then, that you choose for your faith those parts which compel you toward compassion and empathy. Christianity in general is sorely lacking these attributes in the modern day. --Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
