I’m afraid that this is where I’m right. Your presumption about me is right – I think that the scientific method, construed in its broadest sense as rational exploration – is the only method we have for determining what is out there and what isn’t. Faith is about making assumptions for what is out there based on nothing more than belief and emotion. If it doesn’t pay attention to evidence or rational argument and, especially if it ignores them, then why should we pay attention to it?

Not just the arrangement of matter in the universe but the biology as well, is here as the net result of an incredibly large series of causal events and statistically speaking alone, it’s simply not credible to argue that this has all coalesced as a series of random events. Of course this is precisely what people who aren’t religious believe. I suspect this is because they’ve never bothered to think it through.

Some of have thought it through and don’t see any problem. In my experience its the ones who think that this isn’t possible who haven’t really thought it through.

I’m not aware of any such link although I’ve certainly seen christian apologists claim it. There were undoubtedly people who were motivated to study nature because of their christian beliefs just as there were others – Laplace being the famous example – who weren’t. There were also, one presumes, some who were privately agnostic or atheistic but made positive comments about the role of religion in order to please their patrons. I’m not aware however of evidence that Science grew out of Christianity as you and others claim. The ancient Greeks and Muslims, for example, were not motivated by any belief in a supreme rational being.

But the larger point is that a shocking number of people who claim to be science oriented don’t have a good grounding in the philosophy – but still feel justified in parading their ignorance.

And a shocking number of theologically and religiously oriented people don’t have a good grounding in science, and some don’t have a good grounding in philosophy. Look at the nonsense from Plantinga or Moreland, for example, or William Lane Craig’s mathematically illiterate gibberish about transfinite numbers and the kalam argument.

[...]recall Terry Eagleton’s summation of the God Delusion: “Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology”

A good description of how many of us feel when religious believers start to try to argue for their position – Craig’s kalam nonsense being a prime example.

And breakthroughs in neurobiology and genetics threaten religion no more than evolution does. Certainly, they didn’t undermine the faith of great 20th Century geneticists like the Catholic Jerome Lejeune and the Evangelical Francis Collins

I’m not sure that you should really bring up Collins as an example. He is widely regarded, in my experience, as utterly naive in his religious thinking. And there certainly are challenges. Twin studies, for example, show that religious belief has a strong genetic component. Many people become believers not because of philosophical questions but because of religious experiences – feelings of transcendance or connectedness with God, for example. Neurological explanations for those phenomenon would undermine those examples.

In order for the little boy to turn to his mother and say that eszett, he first had to look and observe what precisely it was he was commenting on.

What are you basing your opinion on that “the emperor has no clothes?”

Do you know what it is you are denying, in other words?

Thank you Cato, so was yours.

The relevant bit starts about 13’00″ in (though an explanation of his theories starts at about 10’45″). He impersonates a person who supposedly can convert people with a touch. He gathers an audience of atheists and skeptics and sets about “converting” them. The results are fascinating…

Other episodes in the same series, in which he explores the belief in ghosts and similar phenomena, are equally as interesting in terms of their insights into the human psyche.

“Amongst the many consolations with which divine Goodness has wished to make happy the years of our Pontificate, I am happy to place that of our having being able to see not a few of those who dedicate themselves to the studies of the sciences mature their attitude and their intellectual approach towards religion. Science, when it is real cognition, is never in contrast with the truth of the Christian faith. Indeed, as is well known to those who study the history of science, it must be recognized on the one hand that the Roman Pontiffs and the Catholic Church have always fostered the research of the learned in the experimental field as well, and on the other hand that such research has opened up the way to the defense of the deposit of supernatural truths entrusted to the Church….We promise again that it is our strongly-held intention, that the ‘Pontifical Academicians’ through their work and our Institution, work ever more and ever more effectively for the progress of the sciences. Of them we do not ask anything else, since in this praiseworthy intent and this noble work in that service in favor of the truth that we expect of them.”

That’s what I meant by being mutually incompatible. Some people, such as you perhaps, seem to think that the scientific method is capable of encompassing every single possible element of the known and unknown universe and that it’s the only that’s possible of doing so. I’m afraid that’s where you’re wrong.

See if all you had to do to establish Heaven was to look skyward and if Grandma and Grandad visited the grandkids every weekend despite having died years ago, there would be no need for faith and this would obviate the basis of religion. Claiming that there is no “scientific” basis for faith is not “proving” anything for there is nothing to prove. Faith by definition exists only in the absence of proof. Therefore if people think that science “disproves” religion, they’re wrong. It doesn’t and it has never claimed to.

One of the scientists in my congregation, who happens to be world renowned but I’m afraid if I gave you his discipline that would reveal his identity which I won’t do, commented once that it’s an absolute fallacy to imagine that the world as we know it scientifically, could possibly have emerged without intelligent design behind it. Not just the arrangement of matter in the universe but the biology as well, is here as the net result of an incredibly large series of causal events and statistically speaking alone, it’s simply not credible to argue that this has all coalesced as a series of random events. Of course this is precisely what people who aren’t religious believe. I suspect this is because they’ve never bothered to think it through.

Cato, I agree.

But the larger point is that a shocking number of people who claim to be science oriented don’t have a good grounding in the philosophy – but still feel justified in parading their ignorance. I remember one debate where some agnostic asked Richard Dawkins if he meant “epistemic” or “metaphysical” necessity and Dawkins said: “I don’t know the words ‘epistemic’ and so on, so I’m not going to use that.” It was embarassing.

And that’s what I mean – you don’t have to buy into religion or be interested in a systematic consideration of religion but if you take the attitude of eszett you really just recall Terry Eagleton’s summation of the God Delusion: “Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology”

And breakthroughs in neurobiology and genetics threaten religion no more than evolution does. Certainly, they didn’t undermine the faith of great 20th Century geneticists like the Catholic Jerome Lejeune and the Evangelical Francis Collins. In short – they don’t address the fundamental question of “Why is there something instead of nothing?” which is the driving force behind theology.

Some scientists back then, not all of them, had an in interest in theology largely because there didn’t really seem to be an alternative to explaining how things had come to be. It wasn’t just chemistry that was in its infancy but science as a whole.

And theology has advanced since then? Really? You mean like Reform Epistemology? Excuse me while I snigger.

Reid:The only people who hallucinate that science and religion are mutually incompatible are people who are ignorant of one or the other.

The only people who claim that religion and science are compatible because they are two separate arenas are people who have a very narrow grasp of science.

Cato:The only scientific discovery that could seriously put religion at odds with natural science would be some proof that the universe could have created itself or somehow necessarily exists. But while theories have been advanced they can not be and never will be tested – because they are not falsifiable.

Careful. Theories about the origin of the universe are sometimes testable. The ekpyrotic theory, for example, makes predictions about the cosmic microwave background that are currently being tested. By this time next year it may have been falsified.

One should also be wary of claiming that this is the only way that science can be at odds with religion. As I’ve remarked previously, Godel’s incompleteness theorem from mathematical logic shows that strong notions of Omniscience are logically incoherent. It may at some future point in time be possible to show that weaker notions of omniscience are also unviable using other work from logic or theoretical computer science.

Work in neurobiology and genetics could also potentially undermine religion by explaining away people’s religious experiences as being entirely naturalistic, rather than supernaturalistic, in origin.

The only scientific discovery that could seriously put religion at odds with natural science would be some proof that the universe could have created itself or somehow necessarily exists. But while theories have been advanced they can not be and never will be tested – because they are not falsifiable. Any positive belief on them actually rests on faith in the existence of a material first cause. This is one of the most destructive criticisms levelled at “strong” atheists – though often it flies over their head for a want of philosophical training.

To anyone who lacks a sense of humour / doesn’t like a particular TV programme – Go to the thing that changes the TV programme (not one of the kids but the battery powered control) and simply press the red button that says: ‘Off’.

Sorted.

It’s silly to suggest he’s wrong, the show advertises that is not wholesome. But it does highlight just how accepting our society is of what he has called filth.

scrubone it’s ironic given the point you’re making, what the serial number of your post is

No scientist thinks theology is science in any shape or form.

Of course not because theology doesn’t pretend to be science. The critical thing about religion some people don’t get, is that it is a separate arena to science, and they don’t mix. Science does not “disprove” religion anymore than religion “disproves” science. They are two separate arenas and only profound idiots conflate the two and pretend that either arena pretends to address something about the other. I have two scientists in the small parish I belong to, I have met plenty of other scientists over the years in the church. The only people who hallucinate that science and religion are mutually incompatible are people who are ignorant of one or the other.

I’m not arguing that a lack of interest in theology is a stain on someone’s intellect. I’m just rolling my eyes at you because you seem to think the opposite is true when the fact is that there are better people than you who have found theology a fruitful intellectual exercise.

Take your dismissal of Newton, for instance. Yes, Newton did conduct alchemical research – but that’s really not that laughable given that chemistry was in its infamy. What you seem to be mocking is Newton’s interest in material science. Well, guess what? Theology has developed and been refined since the 17th century too?

You clearly don’t have an interest in theology. That’s fine – to each their own. But your mocking the very idea of theology marks you out as a fool – like Midas’ judgment of Apollo’s music.

And classic fallacy, cato, argument from authority.
I could list Einstein, Hawkins, Crick, Edison, Dawkins, Coyne, Feynman, Krauss, etc, etc. on the other side.

And btw, Newton was also an alchemist. Are you therefore going to write about the merits of alchemy? Perhaps as the King of the Sciences???

I am a mainsteam Catholic – for example – and I don’t believe I have any special insight into God’s will. However, because I have a passing familiarity with history I am aware that the thinkers and geniuses who shaped our understanding of science and the natural world thought deeply about theology and considered it to be the “Queen of the Sciences”.

Newton, Descartes, Copernicus, Pascal – all people who cared deeply about theology – and, against them, who the hell is eszett?

The kid’s right – it is filth. The whole show is based on sexual innuendo; one bad sex joke after another.
In fact, most U.S comedy is like that now. The ads I see for that show with Betty White – she seems to be doing the same; one bad sex joke after another.

Where’s the wit in comedy nowadays?
I just didn’t laugh once, the parts I saw.

Rest assured if you hallucinate your point is (a) original and (b) an effective counter to the question of ‘is religion true,’ this says a great deal more about your capacity to think than it does about anything else.

It’s a shame those who condemn make their judgements based on profound ignorance.

lol, you can’t see the irony of talking about profound ignorance and quoting the bible to prove your point at the same time, can you?

Does it not occur to you that given the ability of Hollyweird to influence millions of people all the time, if Satan does exist, it would be surprising if he wasn’t involved in it?

If you’re ignorant about what to look for, just drive google and you’ll find plenty of unmistakable signs all over the Hollyweird output. Unless you’re so profoundly ignorant you can’t even bring yourself to honestly investigate the question, because in your infinite knowledge and wisdom, you know it just couldn’t be true so you won’t even bother to look into it. Surprising how many people make that simple mistake. They’re like children who close their eyes and put their hands over their ears because they don’t want to look at something their immature minds can’t handle.

If you’re ignorant about religion, just read the King James version of the Bible from Genesis to Revelations. It doesn’t take that long.