Pope Francis: The Big Bang and Evolution Are Real

[Write4U]

duplication deleted

 

[Seattle]

Faith is the anticipation of things not seen by the eyes. All innovation uses the charisma of faith. Faithful visionaries use the same tools, since their vision is often not be seen by their contemporaries until after the fact. Faith builds the visionary skills needed to function alone, even when walking in the wilderness of contemporary thinking. Without faith you won't leave the box out of fear. The fearful and faithless throw stones from the walls where one is safely afraid of change.

Fear is the prime attractor for religion...fear of dying, fear of God's wrath,etc..

Faith and science are opposites in the sense that one forms beliefs only from reality and the other posses beliefs based on insufficient knowledge (otherwise it wouldn't have to be a belief).

Many scientific hypothesis' are just wild ass guesses but they aren't held as a belief until evidence turns out to support them. Most are rejected. With faith nothing is rejected even when presented with unsupporting evidence.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

But is the pope real?

The car is real, and I demand to be allowed to buy tickets!

 

[GeoffP]

The car is retired.

 

[GeoffP]

This is like the inquisition all over again.

Well, I never expected that.

 

[Yazata]

Fear is the prime attractor for religion...fear of dying, fear of God's wrath,etc..

Couldn't we say the same thing about everything that people do? People go to the supermarket because they fear hunger. Medical researchers practice science because they fear disease. Explorers and pure researchers do what they do because they fear the unknown. People fall in love because they fear loneliness...

I think that people feel more positive motivations too. In most cases it isn't primarily fear that drives them. That's as true for religion as it is for the rest of life, including science.

Faith and science are opposites in the sense that one forms beliefs only from reality and the other posses beliefs based on insufficient knowledge (otherwise it wouldn't have to be a belief).

I think that I might define 'faith' as something like 'confidence in the truth of beliefs that aren't absolutely certain'.

Seen in that light, faith is necessary for human existence, since we can't be absolutely certain of anything. That's true for science as much as anything else. We trust that natural laws exist that hold true universally, even though there's no way that we can actually know that. (The problem of induction.) We trust in the necessary applicability of the principles of logic to reality, even though nobody has yet been able to provide a fully convincing account of what logic is or how we come to know about it. We trust in the universal applicability of cause and effect...

We should also keep in mind that the goals being sought and the nature of confirming evidence might be rather different in science and religion. Science is concerned with objective sensory experience. Religion is typically more concerned with subjective interior experience. Science succeeds when it manages to produce publicly verifiable predictions of physical states of affairs. Religion works when it reduces psychological suffering and perhaps even provides a fleeting taste of transcendence.

I'm not convinced that those pursuits must always be contradictory and opposed.

 

[Seattle]

Couldn't we say the same thing about everything that people do? People go to the supermarket because they fear hunger. Medical researchers practice science because they fear disease. Explorers and pure researchers do what they do because they fear the unknown. People fall in love because they fear loneliness...

I think that people feel more positive motivations too. In most cases it isn't primarily fear that drives them. That's as true for religion as it is for the rest of life, including science.



I think that I might define 'faith' as something like 'confidence in the truth of beliefs that aren't absolutely certain'.

Seen in that light, faith is necessary for human existence, since we can't be absolutely certain of anything. That's true for science as much as anything else. We trust that natural laws exist that hold true universally, even though there's no way that we can actually know that. (The problem of induction.) We trust in the necessary applicability of the principles of logic to reality, even though nobody has yet been able to provide a fully convincing account of what logic is or how we come to know about it. We trust in the universal applicability of cause and effect...

We should also keep in mind that the goals being sought and the nature of confirming evidence might be rather different in science and religion. Science is concerned with objective sensory experience. Religion is typically more concerned with subjective interior experience. Science succeeds when it manages to produce publicly verifiable predictions of physical states of affairs. Religion works when it reduces psychological suffering and perhaps even provides a fleeting taste of transcendence.

I'm not convinced that those pursuits must always be contradictory and opposed.

Faith is belief in that for which you have insufficient evidence and not belief in something for which you aren't certain.

Nothing is certain however kids have faith in Santa Clause and are even close to certain in his existence. He still doesn't exist however.

Someone's confidence in their belief has nothing to do with how likely it is to be true if they aren't basing their belief on evidence.

The problem with your argument is that you are equating a belief in science with a belief in the supernatural simply because they both "could" be true.

They aren't both equally as likely to be true however and that is how we generally go through life making rational decisions.

We could all go to work, take our entire paycheck each week and play the lottery with it. We "could" win the lottery but it isn't likely so "winning" and "not winning" aren't equivalent outcomes.

We don't put all of our salary into the lottery just because it's statistically possible to win and we shouldn't believe in a spirit in the sky with humanlike characteristics just because we are able to imagine such a thing and therefore able to have "faith" in such a thing.