How has scientific knowledge affected your faith?

[Quid est Veritas?]

The difference is, off course, that nobody using the english words "sunset" and "sunrise" actually believes that the earth is stationary and that the sun is literally "rising" or "setting" upon the world.

But when it comes to fundamentalists reading the OT, they do mean that adam and eve and the flood and all that other shenannigans are literally true.

This is vastly different from simply having a word to refer to the phenomena of the day/night cycle.



No. The conflict doesn't arise when science starts to pick the bible apart - because science doesn't do such things, since the bible is actually rather irrelevant.

The conflict, instread, arises when people read to OT and pretend that it is literal truth. So you have it backwards. It's not science that invades the biblical shenannigans. It's the biblical shenannigans that invades science.

It's the fundamentalist reading of the bible that makes it conflict with reality. Not the other way round.

Reality is just what it is - regardless of what books say, bible or otherwise.

You miss the fundamental point. If we test reality to see if it is true, you are applying Empiricism at least and usually in our setting Scientific Method. This is a type of philosophic reasoning. The Old Testament creation doesn't claim there will be evidence of a flood, it says there was a flood. It is a statement of fact. As soon as you assert If there was a flood there must be evidence and find it lacking to disprove the original, you are using Scientific method and not Old Testament thought. You only think it implies that there must be evidence, because of the modern scientific view that it must be verifiable and falsifiable, but this is not universal.

Take for instance the Ancient Egyptians: They held the Sun was the Barque of Amon-Re, but also the Eye of Horus, but also a ball pushed across the sky by the invisible Khepri the Scarab, but also Ra himself, but also used it in more "scientific" terms for time reckoning, Astronomy etc. to work out the risings of Sirius.
You would say that these are all mutually exclusive, but they aren't if each is used in their own framework of thought as Heliopolitan, Theban or practical ideas. This is how the Egyptians saw them, so sometimes these different explanations and uses appear in one and the same text.
The problem is that the ideas of Scientific Method has become so ubiquitous that they have drowned out the study of Epistemology to such an extent that people think Science=true or that if something can be disproved by Scientific Method it is false. Unfortunately this is not Philosophically valid, by the definition of Science itself. Science is a narrow construct of Empiricism, allowing only a limited number of propositions to be entertained, those that are repeatable and falsifiable. Otherwise it cannot say anything at all about it.

You missed the point of my language analogy. People don't think the sun revolves around the earth when they stop to think about it, because they switch over to the Truth Framework of Scientific method they were taught. When they just use the Truth Framework of English they never consider the question and in so doing, continue to hold and use a framework which implies the opposite.
This is the standard problem of defining language to define a problem, hence the need of Jargon in specific fields. It is the problem of Newspeak from 1984 or Wittgenstein's "the limits of my language is the limits of my world". If your language doesn't allow you to conceptualise something, then you cannot do so as you are limited to what you can place a framework of understanding on. The fact is that when we speak English, we understand the other person's idiom and grammar based on the Truth construct of the Language, which implies some unscientific statements. When we investigate the Physics underlying it, we switch over to Scientific language and truth construct in talking of orbits etc. and no longer speaking of sunsets. We are in essence holding two "contradictory" systems at the same time, one which we consciously consider 'true' in a scientific sense and the other that we use as if we do consider it true, even though if we stop to think on it, our Scientific mindset would say it is false. But we never doubt that second truth-construct because we never consider it at all, just use it as it was taught us implicitly by whomever taught us the language, for if we consider the problem at all we immediately switch over to the rules of Scientific method that had also been taught to us. It is impossible to deny the truth-construct of the language without attempting to synthesise it with scientific method by changing terms or grammar or such, do you understand?

As to the Fundamentalist reading of the Bible, they say that the Bible is reality. It is their Truth. You cannot deny that Truth by substituting another system to ascertain what is true, for this conflicts with their axiom. In the same manner, if I believe firmly the sky is light blue, but someone else sees it as dark blue, no amount of debate will resolve that issue. The base truths do not have common grounding from which we can achieve any compromise, they are fixed facts. Science's fixed assumptions are perpetual Repeatability, Falsifiability and inability to ascertain absolute truth. Fundamentalist Bible assumptions are absolute Truth is in the Bible, Miracles (no-repeatability then) and faith. They have no common ground.
Therefore Science saying there was no flood as there is lack of evidence versus There was a Flood, is the same as the argument on the shade of the blue of the sky.
I understand why you have difficulty understanding what I am saying as you appear to have very little if any Philosophic background or Epistemological training. When you say that lack of evidence disproves the Creation account or Adam or whatever, you are making the mistake of importing Scientific Method into a non-scientific system, essentially creating scientific hypothesis and disproving them and as you consider Science=true, you fail to see that it doesn't actually disprove anything at all. You are merely redoing work that science already accomplished years ago when they established the probability of an old earth and evolution and thermodynamics etc. against the scientific hypotheses of creation in the manner described in the Bible. It is an argument within Science, not an argument of Science against another truth-construct. As the other system has no reason to consider the Scientific method's conclusions as valid by its own rules, it is irrelevant to it. It only becomes relevant if Science and any other system are synthesised together to try and create a unified view, so creationism for instance or a scientific hypothesis crafted from biblical passages, but it does not disprove old testament creation at all. Either you must synthesise both which will cause Hegellian cycles or abandon one and solely adopt the other, but this is a false dichotomy as there is no reason why such mutually exclusive systems can't be held concurrently (since almost everyone does that anyway in regards to language amongst other things).

As to reality is just what it is. Really? How do you define reality? You don't know if you are currently hallucinating, your whole life may be an hallucination. You don't know if the sense data you receive actually exists since you are only aware of it as sense data (ie Matrix argument). You don't know if you exist as you may just be a clever program programmed to respond in the manner that you do and consider it to have been You deciding it. You cannot prove that matter exists, even Descartes Cogito Ergo Sum is actually faulty as just because something thinks or is perceived, does not mean there is something thinking or perceived (a good example here would be Buddhist conceptions of the Not-Self, that the self is an illusion of the ordering mind).
This is why Scientific method was invented in the first place to try and ascertain truths of some form by making base assumptions (matter exists, repeating an experiment under the same conditions will always give the same outcome, I can trust the sense data I receive etc.).
Go read Plato. For you would say an absolute exists, a Reality that everything is referring to, something that is True regardless. That is the Platonic Form, which unfortunately the sceptical Aristotlean tradition of Scientific Method has rejected, hence adopting probability instead and only very obliquely an Absolute Idea at all. In Post-Empiricism even that is rejected.

Besides this is all a moot point as "Science" in the form of Theoretical Physics and Medicine (EBM) have begun to adopt non-scientific systems of garnering what is 'true', so the argument in future will be made even in house that different mutually exclusive Truth-Constructs can be held concurrently with no contradiction. (If your interested in that see: Feyerabend's Against Method, Feinstein's Clinical Judgement, String Theory and scientific Method by Dawid or for more accessible and quick reading http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02985383?LI=true ; http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-defend-the-integrity-of-physics-1.16535 ; http://www.euroscientist.com/how-particle-physics-is-eroding-the-scientific-method/ amongst others).

 

[KWCrazy]

Science uses reason and empiricism. What epistemology does Christianity use? And how does this resolve the problem when your religion says one thing and your observations say another?

You didn't observe any of the events of the Old Testament. Jesus did, and He assured us that the Scriptures were correct. Do I think a global flood would leave provable evidence? No. In fact, I predict, as have others, that the "scientific" evidence will become so overwhelming that faith in the Scriptures will be greatly reduced world wide. Many will follow the false teachings of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism or other false religions. All this is predicted and will take place before the Lord returns. The false teachers and the false prophets will be cast into the lake of fire and the judgment of a just and wrathful God will be on mankind.

As for me, I prefer to be among the faithful when the Lord returns. Where you choose to be is up to you.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Science uses reason and empiricism. What epistemology does Christianity use? And how does this resolve the problem when your religion says one thing and your observations say another?

Christianity is based on an assumption of a known Absolute, ie God with ontological reasoning. It tends to adopt Scientific method with regards to observations if you must know. To think that Observation trumps something else (ie is True above another concept that disagrees) is Scientific Method being applied, not Christianity. It is an assumption, which must itself be proved as Fact before it can be applied outside a scientific framework, which of course it can't.
The point is that there is only a problem when Synthesis is forced (Science nowadays anyway uses post-empiricism, not empiricism in a philosophic sense but English has not yet caught up.)

Anyway, Scientific Reason has negated itself by the Argument from reason, here adapted from Victor Reppert discussing CS Lewis.

"No belief is rationally inferred if it can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes.

Support: Reasoning requires insight into logical relations. A process of reasoning (P therefore Q) is rational only if the reasoner sees that Q follows from, or is supported by, P, and accepts Q on that basis. Thus, reasoning is trustworthy (or "valid", as Lewis sometimes says) only if it involves a special kind of causality, namely, rational insight into logical implication or evidential support. If a bit of reasoning can be fully explained by nonrational causes, such as fibers firing in the brain or a bump on the head, then the reasoning is not reliable, and cannot yield knowledge. Consider this example: Person A refuses to go near the neighbor’s dog because he had a bad childhood experience with dogs. Person B refuses to go near the neighbor’s dog because one month ago he saw it attack someone. Both have given a reason for staying away from the dog, but person A’s reason is the result of nonrational causes, while person B has given an explanation for his behavior following from rational inference (animals exhibit patterns of behavior; these patterns are likely to be repeated; this dog has exhibited aggression towards someone who approached it; there is a good chance that the dog may exhibit the same behavior towards me if I approach it). Consider a second example: person A says that he is afraid to climb to the 8th story of a bank building because he and humans in general have a natural fear of heights resulting from the processes of evolution and natural selection. He has given an explanation of his fear, but since his fear results from nonrational causes (natural selection), his argument does not follow from logical inference.

2. If naturalism is true, then all beliefs can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes.

Support: Naturalism holds that nature is all that exists, and that all events in nature can in principle be explained without invoking supernatural or other nonnatural causes. Standardly, naturalists claim that all events must have physical causes, and that human thoughts can ultimately be explained in terms of material causes or physical events (such as neurochemical events in the brain) that are nonrational.

3. Therefore, if naturalism is true, then no belief is rationally inferred (from 1 and 2).

4. We have good reason to accept naturalism only if it can be rationally inferred from good evidence.

5. Therefore, there is not, and cannot be, good reason to accept naturalism"

So people in glass houses should really not be throwing stones.

 

[The Cadet]

You miss the fundamental point. If we test reality to see if it is true, you are applying Empiricism at least and usually in our setting Scientific Method. This is a type of philosophic reasoning. The Old Testament creation doesn't claim there will be evidence of a flood, it says there was a flood. It is a statement of fact. As soon as you assert If there was a flood there must be evidence and find it lacking to disprove the original, you are using Scientific method and not Old Testament thought. You only think it implies that there must be evidence, because of the modern scientific view that it must be verifiable and falsifiable, but this is not universal.

...Great. So how do they establish the truth of the matter? Just assuming it doesn't help us; it is entirely possible that the bible is false, and I don't just mean this in a "we're all in the matrix and nothing is real" sense that you appeal to later on, I mean in a very real, practical, "reality exists and this book simply does not provide a good window into it" sense. If you're going to jettison the scientific method as a means of exploring reality, you need something to replace it, and we need some way of verifying that this method actually comports to the truth in any meaningful way. So what is the "biblical method" and how do we use it to establish the truth? And how do we establish that it, in any way, comports with reality?

The problem is that the ideas of Scientific Method has become so ubiquitous that they have drowned out the study of Epistemology to such an extent that people think Science=true or that if something can be disproved by Scientific Method it is false. Unfortunately this is not Philosophically valid, by the definition of Science itself. Science is a narrow construct of Empiricism, allowing only a limited number of propositions to be entertained, those that are repeatable and falsifiable. Otherwise it cannot say anything at all about it.

Just out of curiosity, do you know why the scientific method has become so ubiquitous? Because we can apply it to solve problems like "how do we stop dying from this disease?" or "how do we produce so much food that we almost never have to worry about starvation any more?". Because nearly every aspect of modern civilization was built by the scientific method. I feel like I've beaten this horse half to death on my time here on the forum, but it cannot be stressed enough that the value of the scientific method is immediately clear to anyone with a brain. That's why it's so dominant - it's not only the best epistemology we have, it's the only epistemology we have that even remotely seems to comport with reality. Unless you're willing to reject reality itself for the sake of your beliefs (at which point you are not worth debating with, and also not being intellectually honest, see below for details), there's no getting around this.

As to the Fundamentalist reading of the Bible, they say that the Bible is reality. It is their Truth. You cannot deny that Truth by substituting another system to ascertain what is true, for this conflicts with their axiom.

Their axiom is demonstrably garbage. Existing epistemologies with extremely strong track records contradict it in numerous places, and it contradicts itself in numerous places. It is not logically sound or reasonable. You might as well start from the axiom "Harry Potter is the literal truth", and then proceed to ignore and shut out all evidence to the contrary (and people would be perfectly justified in calling you a nutter for doing so) - it's a stupid way of looking at the world.

And you know what else? They also know their axiom is garbage. Because I'm willing to bet that they don't apply that methodology in most parts of their lives. They don't follow the sermon on the mount when it comes to lawsuits, because it's terrible advice. They don't follow the demands to abandon their family or abandon physical wealth. They won't follow the old testament cure for leprosy, I guarantee you that! But they will avoid sticking forks in electrical outlets, jumping from high places, juggling chainsaws, or any number of other behaviors that the bible says nothing about, but which empiricism tells us are probably bad ideas.

As to reality is just what it is. Really? How do you define reality?

If this is the point you have to reach back to in order to justify your epistemology, you have nothing. You can literally justify any belief about reality you want with asinine assertions of "reality is what we make of it". Any book, any religion, any prophet, any psychosis, any drug trip, any incoherent insanity. And what's worse, you can talk all you want about reality being an illusion, but no matter how much you try to pretend that empiricism is just as good as "take this book to heart", the fact is that you look both ways before you cross the road, and you obey local traffic laws, and you don't jump off the roofs of parking garages. Fancy that.

So people in glass houses should really not be throwing stones.

Well at least we can build glass houses. Because we can do the science. 'N stuff.

 

[DogmaHunter]

The Old Testament creation doesn't claim there will be evidence of a flood, it says there was a flood. It is a statement of fact.

It is a factual claim. A statement that we can verify to see if it is true. And when we do, we find that it is false.

When I state that "I killed X", then I'm also not claiming that there will be evidence of a murder. But there will be evidence of a murder: at least the dead body of X, if -and only if- my factual claim of killing X is actually correct.

As soon as you assert If there was a flood there must be evidence and find it lacking to disprove the original, you are using Scientific method and not Old Testament thought.

"OT thought", being "don't ask questions, shut up and just swallow that what is said is true"? Because that seems to be where you are going here.....

You only think it implies that there must be evidence, because of the modern scientific view that it must be verifiable and falsifiable, but this is not universal.

That is not a scientific view.
That is a realistic view. When I kill someone, there will be a body.

Or are you saying that we must ignore reality and basic logic to believe the OT is accurate?

Take for instance the Ancient Egyptians: They held the Sun was the Barque of Amon-Re, but also the Eye of Horus, but also a ball pushed across the sky by the invisible Khepri the Scarab, but also Ra himself, but also used it in more "scientific" terms for time reckoning, Astronomy etc. to work out the risings of Sirius.
You would say that these are all mutually exclusive, but they aren't if each is used in their own framework of thought as Heliopolitan, Theban or practical ideas. This is how the Egyptians saw them, so sometimes these different explanations and uses appear in one and the same text.

I find it interesting that you use mythological lore as an analogy to your own religious beliefs.

In any case, none of us are 4000 year old Egyptians. We've come a long way since then. For example, we understand what the sun actually is, and have no more need or motivation to surround it with supernatural gibber-gabber.

The problem is that the ideas of Scientific Method has become so ubiquitous that they have drowned out the study of Epistemology to such an extent that people think Science=true or that if something can be disproved by Scientific Method it is false.

Do you understand what the word "disproved" means?
Last time I checked, it means that something is false...

Unfortunately this is not Philosophically valid, by the definition of Science itself. Science is a narrow construct of Empiricism, allowing only a limited number of propositions to be entertained, those that are repeatable and falsifiable. Otherwise it cannot say anything at all about it.

And as it turns out, a fundamentalist reading of the OT is exactly that: falsifiable claims. So why would science not be able to address them?

Again, claims concerning a flood, ancestry / origins of humans etc... these are all claims about testable reality. Meaning they can all be tested against reality.

You continue to state that we aren't allowed to do that, for some reason. I wonder why.

You missed the point of my language analogy. People don't think the sun revolves around the earth when they stop to think about it, because they switch over to the Truth Framework of Scientific method they were taught. When they just use the Truth Framework of English they never consider the question and in so doing, continue to hold and use a framework which implies the opposite.
This is the standard problem of defining language to define a problem, hence the need of Jargon in specific fields. It is the problem of Newspeak from 1984 or Wittgenstein's "the limits of my language is the limits of my world". If your language doesn't allow you to conceptualise something, then you cannot do so as you are limited to what you can place a framework of understanding on. The fact is that when we speak English, we understand the other person's idiom and grammar based on the Truth construct of the Language, which implies some unscientific statements. When we investigate the Physics underlying it, we switch over to Scientific language and truth construct in talking of orbits etc. and no longer speaking of sunsets.

Boy.... what an elaborate way to make a total non-point.
It is a non-point because, once again, we are talking about a fundamentalist reading of the OT. Meaning it is literally seen as literal truth.

When you talk about a "sunrise" or "sunset", then people do not mean that as a literal truth. It's just the name of the phenomena of the day/night cycle.

A fundamentalist YEC literally believes the earth is 6000 years old. He literally believes all animals species were on the ark. He literally believes the adam and even and talking snake bit.

As to the Fundamentalist reading of the Bible, they say that the Bible is reality. It is their Truth. You cannot deny that Truth by substituting another system to ascertain what is true, for this conflicts with their axiom. In the same manner, if I believe firmly the sky is light blue, but someone else sees it as dark blue, no amount of debate will resolve that issue. The base truths do not have common grounding from which we can achieve any compromise, they are fixed facts. Science's fixed assumptions are perpetual Repeatability, Falsifiability and inability to ascertain absolute truth. Fundamentalist Bible assumptions are absolute Truth is in the Bible, Miracles (no-repeatability then) and faith. They have no common ground.
Therefore Science saying there was no flood as there is lack of evidence versus There was a Flood, is the same as the argument on the shade of the blue of the sky.
I understand why you have difficulty understanding what I am saying as you appear to have very little if any Philosophic background or Epistemological training. When you say that lack of evidence disproves the Creation account or Adam or whatever, you are making the mistake of importing Scientific Method into a non-scientific system, essentially creating scientific hypothesis and disproving them and as you consider Science=true, you fail to see that it doesn't actually disprove anything at all. You are merely redoing work that science already accomplished years ago when they established the probability of an old earth and evolution and thermodynamics etc. against the scientific hypotheses of creation in the manner described in the Bible. It is an argument within Science, not an argument of Science against another truth-construct. As the other system has no reason to consider the Scientific method's conclusions as valid by its own rules, it is irrelevant to it. It only becomes relevant if Science and any other system are synthesised together to try and create a unified view, so creationism for instance or a scientific hypothesis crafted from biblical passages, but it does not disprove old testament creation at all. Either you must synthesise both which will cause Hegellian cycles or abandon one and solely adopt the other, but this is a false dichotomy as there is no reason why such mutually exclusive systems can't be held concurrently (since almost everyone does that anyway in regards to language amongst other things).

As to reality is just what it is. Really? How do you define reality? You don't know if you are currently hallucinating, your whole life may be an hallucination. You don't know if the sense data you receive actually exists since you are only aware of it as sense data (ie Matrix argument). You don't know if you exist as you may just be a clever program programmed to respond in the manner that you do and consider it to have been You deciding it. You cannot prove that matter exists, even Descartes Cogito Ergo Sum is actually faulty as just because something thinks or is perceived, does not mean there is something thinking or perceived (a good example here would be Buddhist conceptions of the Not-Self, that the self is an illusion of the ordering mind).
This is why Scientific method was invented in the first place to try and ascertain truths of some form by making base assumptions (matter exists, repeating an experiment under the same conditions will always give the same outcome, I can trust the sense data I receive etc.).
Go read Plato. For you would say an absolute exists, a Reality that everything is referring to, something that is True regardless. That is the Platonic Form, which unfortunately the sceptical Aristotlean tradition of Scientific Method has rejected, hence adopting probability instead and only very obliquely an Absolute Idea at all. In Post-Empiricism even that is rejected.

Besides this is all a moot point as "Science" in the form of Theoretical Physics and Medicine (EBM) have begun to adopt non-scientific systems of garnering what is 'true', so the argument in future will be made even in house that different mutually exclusive Truth-Constructs can be held concurrently with no contradiction. (If your interested in that see: Feyerabend's Against Method, Feinstein's Clinical Judgement, String Theory and scientific Method by Dawid or for more accessible and quick reading http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02985383?LI=true ; http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-defend-the-integrity-of-physics-1.16535 ; http://www.euroscientist.com/how-particle-physics-is-eroding-the-scientific-method/ amongst others).

I stopped reading somewhere in the middle.

Sorry, but I just don't see any sense in this.
It's like a wall of text, seemingly meant for nothing but clouding / obfuscating the obvious. A very elaborate excuse to not face the obvious.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

...Great. So how do they establish the truth of the matter? Just assuming it doesn't help us; it is entirely possible that the bible is false, and I don't just mean this in a "we're all in the matrix and nothing is real" sense that you appeal to later on, I mean in a very real, practical, "reality exists and this book simply does not provide a good window into it" sense. If you're going to jettison the scientific method as a means of exploring reality, you need something to replace it, and we need some way of verifying that this method actually comports to the truth in any meaningful way. So what is the "biblical method" and how do we use it to establish the truth? And how do we establish that it, in any way, comports with reality?



Just out of curiosity, do you know why the scientific method has become so ubiquitous? Because we can apply it to solve problems like "how do we stop dying from this disease?" or "how do we produce so much food that we almost never have to worry about starvation any more?". Because nearly every aspect of modern civilization was built by the scientific method. I feel like I've beaten this horse half to death on my time here on the forum, but it cannot be stressed enough that the value of the scientific method is immediately clear to anyone with a brain. That's why it's so dominant - it's not only the best epistemology we have, it's the only epistemology we have that even remotely seems to comport with reality. Unless you're willing to reject reality itself for the sake of your beliefs (at which point you are not worth debating with, and also not being intellectually honest, see below for details), there's no getting around this.



Their axiom is demonstrably garbage. Existing epistemologies with extremely strong track records contradict it in numerous places, and it contradicts itself in numerous places. It is not logically sound or reasonable. You might as well start from the axiom "Harry Potter is the literal truth", and then proceed to ignore and shut out all evidence to the contrary (and people would be perfectly justified in calling you a nutter for doing so) - it's a stupid way of looking at the world.

And you know what else? They also know their axiom is garbage. Because I'm willing to bet that they don't apply that methodology in most parts of their lives. They don't follow the sermon on the mount when it comes to lawsuits, because it's terrible advice. They don't follow the demands to abandon their family or abandon physical wealth. They won't follow the old testament cure for leprosy, I guarantee you that! But they will avoid sticking forks in electrical outlets, jumping from high places, juggling chainsaws, or any number of other behaviors that the bible says nothing about, but which empiricism tells us are probably bad ideas.



If this is the point you have to reach back to in order to justify your epistemology, you have nothing. You can literally justify any belief about reality you want with asinine assertions of "reality is what we make of it". Any book, any religion, any prophet, any psychosis, any drug trip, any incoherent insanity. And what's worse, you can talk all you want about reality being an illusion, but no matter how much you try to pretend that empiricism is just as good as "take this book to heart", the fact is that you look both ways before you cross the road, and you obey local traffic laws, and you don't jump off the roofs of parking garages. Fancy that.



Well at least we can build glass houses. Because we can do the science. 'N stuff.

You miss the point. I embrace Science. I use it daily. I am well read on the matter as well. I just happen to know it is only a truth construct like many others, a way to establish probability, not literally the Truth.
Therefore I can hold more than one truth framework at the same time. I don't need to replace it with anything whatsoever. I can use Scientific method when it is called for or a faith based system or a boolean logical construct or a whatever one or more I deem necessary for the task at hand. For Material comforts Science is very handy, but on other ideas like Metaphysics it is not very helpful at all.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

It is a factual claim. A statement that we can verify to see if it is true. And when we do, we find that it is false.

When I state that "I killed X", then I'm also not claiming that there will be evidence of a murder. But there will be evidence of a murder: at least the dead body of X, if -and only if- my factual claim of killing X is actually correct.



"OT thought", being "don't ask questions, shut up and just swallow that what is said is true"? Because that seems to be where you are going here.....




That is not a scientific view.
That is a realistic view. When I kill someone, there will be a body.

Or are you saying that we must ignore reality and basic logic to believe the OT is accurate?



I find it interesting that you use mythological lore as an analogy to your own religious beliefs.

In any case, none of us are 4000 year old Egyptians. We've come a long way since then. For example, we understand what the sun actually is, and have no more need or motivation to surround it with supernatural gibber-gabber.



Do you understand what the word "disproved" means?
Last time I checked, it means that something is false...




And as it turns out, a fundamentalist reading of the OT is exactly that: falsifiable claims. So why would science not be able to address them?

Again, claims concerning a flood, ancestry / origins of humans etc... these are all claims about testable reality. Meaning they can all be tested against reality.

You continue to state that we aren't allowed to do that, for some reason. I wonder why.




Boy.... what an elaborate way to make a total non-point.
It is a non-point because, once again, we are talking about a fundamentalist reading of the OT. Meaning it is literally seen as literal truth.

When you talk about a "sunrise" or "sunset", then people do not mean that as a literal truth. It's just the name of the phenomena of the day/night cycle.

A fundamentalist YEC literally believes the earth is 6000 years old. He literally believes all animals species were on the ark. He literally believes the adam and even and talking snake bit.





I stopped reading somewhere in the middle.

Sorry, but I just don't see any sense in this.
It's like a wall of text, seemingly meant for nothing but clouding / obfuscating the obvious. A very elaborate excuse to not face the obvious.

If your not going to read what I wrote, then there is no point continuing the discussion. It appears I wasted my time on someone who does not investigate propositions at all, yet invokes Science? My word.
Besides, your philosophical training appears non-existent as you make statements outside of Science itself as if it is plain and insist there is only one possible truth while Science itself is built on the axiom that Truth cannot be ascertained.
Good day, sir.

 

[DogmaHunter]

You miss the point. I embrace Science. I use it daily. I am well read on the matter as well. I just happen to know it is only a truth construct like many others, a way to establish probability, not literally the Truth.

Yet, the difference with "all the others" (whatever those may be....), is that science actually works.

Therefore I can hold more than one truth framework at the same time. I don't need to replace it with anything whatsoever. I can use Scientific method when it is called for or a faith based system or a boolean logical construct or a whatever one I deem necessary for the task at hand.

Yes, it is very handy to be able to simply "switch" when you encounter beliefs that you really want to hold, but which science demonstrates to be nonsense.

For Material comforts Science is very handy, but on other ideas like Metaphysics it is not very helpful at all.

Claiming that a planet was flooded is not a metaphysical claim.
It is a testable, falsifiable claim concerning a physical event.

 

[DogmaHunter]

If your not going to read what I wrote, then there is no point continuing the discussion.

I did read what you wrote, except the ending which I just scanned.
I didn't need to read on, because you were completely off track anyway.

Your entire case is based upon picking and choosing on when to use the scientific method and when not to, for the convenience of your a priori beliefs - not to actually find out if what you believe is true or false.

You used a lot of words to say almost nothing.

Besides, your philosophical training appears non-existent as you make statements outside of Science itself as if it is plain and insist there is only one possible truth while Science itself is built on the axiom that Truth cannot be ascertained.
Good day, sir.

I just like to live in reality. I just like to have rational justifications for my beliefs.

When someone makes a claim concerning physical reality, and it doesn't match the facts of actual physical reality, then I get to dismiss that claim.

Also, I think that by "philosophy", you actually mean "apologetics".

 

[ClothedInGrace]

Scientific knowledge hasn't affected my faith in the slightest. I believe in any and all science dealing with things we can observe and use for technology, but I reject the science that rejects God and His creation. Big Bangs, billions of years, and evolution have no bearing on what the scientific community can create for man's benefit; it's just a Godless interpretation of our history.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Scientific knowledge hasn't affected my faith in the slightest. I believe in any and all science dealing with things we can observe and use for technology, but I reject the science that rejects God and His creation. Big Bangs, billions of years, and evolution have no bearing on what the scientific community can create for man's benefit; it's just a Godless interpretation of our history.

No, those are merely the results that we see when we investigate reality. By the way, you use the science that says the Bible is wrong all of the time, in countless many different ways. How do you justify that?

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I did read what you wrote, except the ending which I just scanned.
I didn't need to read on, because you were completely off track anyway.

Your entire case is based upon picking and choosing on when to use the scientific method and when not to, for the convenience of your a priori beliefs - not to actually find out if what you believe is true or false.

You used a lot of words to say almost nothing.




I just like to live in reality. I just like to have rational justifications for my beliefs.

When someone makes a claim concerning physical reality, and it doesn't match the facts of actual physical reality, then I get to dismiss that claim.

Also, I think that by "philosophy", you actually mean "apologetics".

You are mistaken. All truth constructs can and usually are applied at the same time. When facing a question science may give more fruitful answers or another. There is no pick and choose as I can employ both, as can you ( and do you just don't seem to realise this). As we don't know what is absolute truth, investigating things from all angles seem prudent and as they are different methods of ascertaining what may be true, they don't exclude each other.
As to Science working, there is no way to know if it is any closer to the truth then any other system. Results don't mean it is working as Galenic blood systems frequently gave good results but was ultimately proven wrong. This is a fallacy.
You purport to use Science when you clearly do not understand its basic structure, which begs the question of whether you would realise if something is a scientific proposition or not.

As you are neither a serious scientist nor interested in ascertaining truth beyond what you have decided must be True, I shall say no more to you. I say again, good day sir.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Scientific knowledge hasn't affected my faith in the slightest. I believe in any and all science dealing with things we can observe and use for technology, but I reject the science that rejects God and His creation. Big Bangs, billions of years, and evolution have no bearing on what the scientific community can create for man's benefit; it's just a Godless interpretation of our history.

*bzzzzt*

The science behind radiometric dating is the same science as the science behind nuclear technology.

 

[DogmaHunter]

You are mistaken. All truth constructs can and usually are applied at the same time. When facing a question science may give more fruitful answers or another. There is no pick and choose as I can employ both, as can you ( and do you just don't seem to realise this)

I can only repeat myself.....

When a claim is made concerning physical phenomena, why wouldn't we employ the method by wich we investigate physical phenomena to verify said claim??

As we don't know what is absolute truth, investigating things from all angles seem prudent and as they are different methods of ascertaining what may be true, they don't exclude each other.

When a claim is made that a planet was completely under water by a cataclysmic flood, what "other methods" are there, besides the scientific one, to verify the truth of said claim?

As to Science working, there is no way to know if it is any closer to the truth then any other system.

My pc disagrees. So does my cell phone, my car, my satellite dish, the airplane that flew me to my destination, .......

See, science is pretty results based.
We can assume that atomic theory is pretty accurate, because nukes explode.

Results don't mean it is working as Galenic blood systems frequently gave good results but was ultimately proven wrong. This is a fallacy.

Lol, that's funny...

Tell me, how was it proven wrong? By which method?
It wouldn't be a certain empirical method, would it?

But as you are neither a serious scientist nor interested in ascertaining truth beyond what you have decided must be True

My irony meter just exploded.....

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I can only repeat myself.....

When a claim is made concerning physical phenomena, why wouldn't we employ the method by wich we investigate physical phenomena to verify said claim??




When a claim is made that a planet was completely under water by a cataclysmic flood, what "other methods" are there, besides the scientific one, to verify the truth of said claim?



My pc disagrees. So does my cell phone, my car, my satellite dish, the airplane that flew me to my destination, .......

See, science is pretty results based.
We can assume that atomic theory is pretty accurate, because nukes explode.



Lol, that's funny...

Tell me, how was it proven wrong? By which method?
It wouldn't be a certain empirical method, would it?



My irony meter just exploded.....

I have explained the matter ad nauseam. See my above posts which you refused to read for your answers.

(As to cars etc. proving the validity of science, you again parade your ignorance of what science actually is.)

 

[The Cadet]

You miss the point. I embrace Science. I use it daily. I am well read on the matter as well. I just happen to know it is only a truth construct like many others, a way to establish probability, not literally the Truth.
Therefore I can hold more than one truth framework at the same time. I don't need to replace it with anything whatsoever. I can use Scientific method when it is called for or a faith based system or a boolean logical construct or a whatever one or more I deem necessary for the task at hand. For Material comforts Science is very handy, but on other ideas like Metaphysics it is not very helpful at all.

Great. So what methodology do these people use? What truth construct do they use? And how did they establish that this truth concept is in any way more valid or useful than my truth concept of "Literally everything in Harry Potter is exactly the truth"?

Scientific knowledge hasn't affected my faith in the slightest. I believe in any and all science dealing with things we can observe and use for technology, but I reject the science that rejects God and His creation. Big Bangs, billions of years, and evolution have no bearing on what the scientific community can create for man's benefit; it's just a Godless interpretation of our history.

Obligatory reading.

Things that happened in the past leave a mark in the present. If I stabbed a guy a little over three years ago, you'll find his body buried in a shallow grave in the woods near the end of Sunset Hill Road in Hot Springs, Virginia, and you'll probably still be able to clearly identify the stab wounds, and if you're good at forensics maybe even get a clue as to what the murder weapon is (You'll find that about 200m southwest, a bit past the mobile home at 350 Sunset Hill Road). Similarly, we observe the past by looking for tell-tale signs things in the past left. We can tell the age of the earth by measuring isotope ratios in rocks and long-dead organisms. We can use this to date artifacts of known age with astounding accuracy. Denying that this works is essentially denying that forensics works, and denying that poor hobo any chance at justice.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Great. So what methodology do these people use? What truth construct do they use? And how did they establish that this truth concept is in any way more valid or useful than my truth concept of "Literally everything in Harry Potter is exactly the truth"?



Obligatory reading.

Things that happened in the past leave a mark in the present. If I stabbed a guy a little over three years ago, you'll find his body buried in a shallow grave in the woods near the end of Sunset Hill Road in Hot Springs, Virginia, and you'll probably still be able to clearly identify the stab wounds, and if you're good at forensics maybe even get a clue as to what the murder weapon is (You'll find that about 200m southwest, a bit past the mobile home at 350 Sunset Hill Road). Similarly, we observe the past by looking for tell-tale signs things in the past left. We can tell the age of the earth by measuring isotope ratios in rocks and long-dead organisms. We can use this to date artifacts of known age with astounding accuracy. Denying that this works is essentially denying that forensics works, and denying that poor hobo any chance at justice.

As we cannot ascertain what is absolutely true, if someone held a view of literal belief in Harry Potter then to that person it would be as valid as anything else. I cannot disprove an absolute belief in Harry Potter, but if we synthesise this belief with literary theory or history or such, we can disprove it on that grounds, but this is no longer the original Potterism.
I do not share that truth construct, so by applying the various systems I do accept such as Scientific Method, Christianity or whatever, I would conclude this is highly unlikely to be true based thereon. It doesn't mean I have to accept it because someone else believes it. From my perspective it is hocum.

Most people don't realise they have a conceptualisation of something being true and that they may hold two seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time. (See my language analogy above for instance). Generally we reason through a system of thought and thus adopt it either implicitly or explicitly. Science is a good example of something that delivered concrete results and consequencely has many adherents, but that doesn't mean it is True or even that it is more likely, that can only be established if you have some view of the Absolute itself, which a purely scientific view will not give.

So from your perspective, that I hold Christianity does not mean that you have to adopt it or consider it true at all. If you adopt your framework, you may conclude it is highly unlikely. You can however not say it is definitely false though. But with no absolute truth to measure against, you cannot conclude which of your beliefs are closer or not to actual Truth.

I, holding both science and christianity need not place the two in opposition as they are based in separate frameworks and can believe the conclusions of both, without issue, for I need not import Scientific Method into my Christianity at all. Christianity however establishes an Absolute, God, so my other truth constructs can now be measured against an Absolute, so I can establish the probability of it being more correct or less correct (but still not absolutely false).
Again this does not mean that God necessarily exists in your perspective, for my establishing Him as an absolute is faith based, a truth framework you likely would not adopt. Therefore you can ignore my ranking of evidence closer or further from the truth as well.

As to denying evidence, nothing of the sort. If there is scientific evidence then thats fine. The problem is that a non-scientific system would not be proven wrong on rules of falsifiability that it does not share, no matter how much evidence is thrown its way. It is the equivalent of Religious people saying we have experienced God and the Atheist continuing to deny He exists as such experience of the divine does not fall within the spectrum of proofs accepted thereby.
So your hobo being found would leave scientific evidence, but if I held he spontaneously combusted and did not synthesise it with some scientific methodology, your evidence would not yield a thing to me. If I did synthesise it, I could conclude that it merely appears that way, you were framed or multiple other conceptions. The evidence is not evidence in and of itself, but needs to be weighed in a framework of meaning for validity to be present. Else it is just a corpse and a knife and nothing else, so what that framework is, is paramount.

Now I was speaking throughout of old testament creation as a fixed belief, not synthesised systems borrowing from multiple truth constructs, but this tends to be what exists in practice with most people. Hence some people disbelieve old testament creation on scientific grounds, but it doesn't follow that it has to be adopted logically nor that it disproves it firmly.
(I actually consider Genesis mythic narrative myself by the way, but if I didn't, there is actually no logical reason why I couldn't maintain it and the Scientific consensus compartamentalised as a sort of double-think).

 

[The Cadet]

As we cannot ascertain what is absolutely true, if someone held a view of literal belief in Harry Potter then to that person it would be as valid as anything else. I cannot disprove an absolute belief in Harry Potter, but if we synthesise this belief with literary theory or history or such, we can disprove it on that grounds, but this is no longer the original Potterism.

Psst. Hey buddy. That's supposed to have been the argument from absurdity, i.e. "Your position is so stupid that you can justify literal Potterism". You don't then turn around and say, "Yeah, that's fine, to that person Harry Potter is literally true", you instead pause and try to understand how the heck your position went so far off the rails!

Fundamentally, you've admitted that your logical construct can admit literally any position, regardless of how insane it is. Last Thursdayism, Church Of The Subgenius, Islam, Christianity, Scientology, Potterism, Satanism, none of these can be in any way distinguished by your thought process. It can entertain both an epistemology founded on "X=FALSE" and an epistemology founded on "X=TRUE". It is utterly useless. You need to rethink your position, and come up with a better way of judging epistemologies than, "Welp, hard solipsism can't be solved yet, so I guess anything goes!"

As to denying evidence, nothing of the sort. If there is scientific evidence then thats fine. The problem is that a non-scientific system would not be proven wrong on rules of falsifiability that it does not share, no matter how much evidence is thrown its way.

And if I smacked you in the face with a baseball bat, I'm sure you would find this argument extremely unconvincing in court. Or am I wrong? If so, allow me to procure said baseball bat, because this is perhaps the one case where Argumentum Ad Baculum is not a logical fallacy!

 

[Hoghead1]

Scientific knowledge hasn't affected my faith in the slightest. I believe in any and all science dealing with things we can observe and use for technology, but I reject the science that rejects God and His creation. Big Bangs, billions of years, and evolution have no bearing on what the scientific community can create for man's benefit; it's just a Godless interpretation of our history.

No, you are not being fully accurate or honest here. What is actually being rejected is your, underline "your," own homespun theology. The issue here is not God per se or the Bible per se. The issue here is how right is your understanding of these matters.

 

[AV1611VET]

No, you are not being fully accurate or honest here. What is actually being rejected is your, underline "your," own homespun theology. The issue here is not God per se or the Bible per se. The issue here is how right is your understanding of these matters.

Perhaps, like I, he has Boolean standards you can't (or won't) understand?