I grew up in a fairly conservative Christian home and was taught that God gives humans the intelligence to use science. There was no big disconnect between science and Christianity. This was the 1980s though…
Things like religion give frameworks on how to live and guide moral choices, science is a tool for living. Science won’t tell you if the death penalty is right or wrong, if there should be limits to what people can say, etc. Religion won’t tell you how old the earth is, why people get sick, etc.
But it does though… All religions pass descriptive statements about the world like “earth sits atop the backs of elephants which stand on the back of a huge turtle” and so on.
Sure, religions do pass normative statements (i.e., statements about what you ought to do), but they try to objectify those too.
I was told that the dinosaurs were the animals that weren’t allowed on the Ark and all the scientists knew it. Also that the universe was only a few thousand years old.
I grew up in the 90s and in Mexico and I was taught the same thing. I still didn’t end up religious but that’s because my family always pushed for critical thinking and was pro science. Tbf they also grew up in an age and area where they saw older family legit die of shit that was preventable with medicine that might not have existed yet or was unavailable in their poor town.
He was an Unitarian (Christians that reject the Trinity) so even for his time he believed in two less gods than the people around him did. Making him that much more of an atheist.
I would like to know what they mean by that. Like a Spinoza-Einstein higher power, or a diest higher power, or go to services once a year higher power…
Belief in a higher power is pretty vague. If you pushed me I might concede that since I believe that our universe has operating laws and humans have the ability to understand them I believe in a higher power that is our understanding of these laws. That the community that is humanity can produce a collective understanding that is greater than we can produce as individuals. In this very vague sense I believe in a higher power. I would prefer we just call it our collective knowledge but whatever.
This is about the practice, not the practitioners.
When I read your message, my takeaway is, “Science as a process is so reliable that you can take irrational beings who believe in a ghost father, teach them the scientific method and generate provable rational outcomes that yield progress.”
The rational ‘machine’ is what matters, I could not care less about the irrational thoughts of the ‘gears’.
TLDR, People are irrational, yep, even scientists. Thank goodness even irrational beings can follow a rational process.
And exploiting the same children to push their religion. A lot of services, like help for the disabled, are heavily outsourced to churches, so they double as a recruitment agency. Churches even started to provide services to those that are victims of sexual assault and human trafficing, which lead to the rise of the argument “porn will lead to increase of human trafficing”.
Can we take a second to appreciate how cool film is? Tell your ancestors you can capture a perfect likeness of someone by suspending silver in animal fat and exposing it to light. Imagine how that conversation goes.
Plot-twist: your ancestor is DaVinci and he has already came up with the idea of one-hour-photobooths. Also the camera he designs doesn’t actually work and is a crossbow for some reason.
Parable of the sower, and parable of the talents by Octavia Butler. Sci fi fiction about a woman who makes a religion based on science instead of theology. Good books, I recommend
The worst part is that many interpretations of the bible are completely compatible with modern science and vaccines in the same way (almost) all Christians now believe in the Heliocentric model. At this point its not even the bible that is the problem, instead its the pastors.
The problem is religious texts are generally vague and come from cultures hundreds or thousands of years ago. That lets people claim they speak for god or know “the truth” and cherry pick and twist meanings until they get the answer they want. I’ve listened in on bible studies where they pick over the tiniest word and inflate it into a huge story. They’d make all sorts of assumptions about it “This is what they meant!” I’d be thinking “Really? You got all of that out of one word that can be interpreted a number of ways?”
Yep, but it also means its there fault for choosing to ignore science because of a human “error”. Its not even “gods word” at that point, its just another humans opinions.
Some random cult leader pastor: YoU hAvE tO ReAd ThE bIbLe LiTeRaLlY
Also some random pastor: "This verse from the Bible is not a contradiction to what I just said, you have to read between the lines"
In catholic circles it’s more like: “Don’t read the bible, you don’t have the proper toolset and knowledge to understand. Come to church, we’ll explain it to you and leave out the bits we don’t like.”
“Oh, and while you’re there, make sure to put some money in the box we pass around. That is before you put money in the other box to touch our fancy cross. And after you put money in the other other box to light a candle.”
You are forgetting that The Bible is written (new Testament at least) after Christ’s death. Therefore The Bible itself is written by a political organisation.
What you are saying is true only if you stretch interpretation way way past what you would accept anywhere else. I could interpt Batman to be an allegory for the French revolution seen through the eyes of a Marxist-Heggelian but just because I could do such a thing doesn’t mean I ought too.
Added to this the Bible often references itself and it’s pretty clear that when it does it is taking itself literal not allegorical. Just look at the letters attributed to Paul, he is talking about a literal snake in a literal Garden of Eden and a literal Adam and a literal Eve made from his rib.
So yeah if you do whatever you want you and ignore what doesn’t suit you there is a way you can try to save the Bible and science.
Yes there are some interpreteations pushed forward by various later authors of the bible which force different interpretations of it (the previous fortelling of the macciah being applied to Jesus being one of them, something the Jews disagree with).
I am not talking about that, I’m talking about ambiguity in the bible which allows it to work with modern scientific theories, for example in Genesis 1:11
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass …”
It does not say how it was brought forth, allowing the use of evolution, intelligent design or some other thing to explain it. This ambiguity is what allows one sect to condemn science while another embraces it.
Added to this the Bible often references itself and it’s pretty clear that when it does it is taking itself literal not allegorical. Just look at the letters attributed to Paul, he is talking about a literal snake in a literal Garden of Eden and a literal Adam and a literal Eve made from his rib.
I don’t need to though? Its not really relevant to what I discuss. As it stands, science can not disprove that the first female human was created by god constructing a human using the dna taken from adam. Science can not disprove that god invisibly guided evelolution to create a human or created the process of evolution knowing a human would eventually be created. Science by its nature can not disprove thr bible by events alone. Untill the day science can prove that god isn’t real, the bible and the scientific method remain compatible with each other.
You don’t need to do anything in life. Just pointing out that your position of Genesis being a metaphor does not align with the primary authors of the Bible thought. No Genesis, no fall of man, no original sin, no need for God’s son to come down and be killed then reborn and in the words of Paul himself that would mean the entire faith was in vain.
Judaism as well. Lots depend on there being a historical Exodus. Which there wasn’t. A metaphorical one makes the entire Hebrew Bible a lie. We see a nice ordered path from Abraham to Micah that involves one prophecy to the next.
Science can not disprove that god invisibly guided evelolution to create a human or created the process of evolution knowing a human would eventually be created. Science by its nature can not disprove thr bible by events alone. Untill the day science can prove that god isn’t real, the bible and the scientific method remain compatible with each other.
Yeah they are compatible which I admitted. As long as you are willing to lower your standards to nothing everything is permitted. Do you do this with other stuff? Do you argue that invisible unicorns could be real and are compatible with science?
Be honest: could you even imagine what form of evidence would be required to disprove your god? If you can’t you might want to think about the ramifications of an unfalsifiable idea are
Incorrect, praise be the flying spegetti monster, though I can understand how you can arrive at that conclusion.
… your position of Genesis being a metaphor …
I never said that. At no point do I say that an interpretation of Christianity that accepts science requires genesis to become a metaphor. I argue instead that since how life was created is kept incredibly vague, scientific theories are not “disproven” by the bible and can remain in use. The bible does not say “And God created great whales from scratch, by designing them from scratch to be a perfect part that will not ever evolve”. This allows people to accept science and learn from it without having to leave there christian support network and entire friendship network.
Please make sure to not use a strawman in your argument.
Do you argue that invisible unicorns could be real and are compatible with science?
Somehow, since anything invisible could be real, yes. Science is just a series of hypothesises about the world derived from continuous gathering of data that is still on going to this day. Let us suppose there are magical creatures that are invisible to all scientific instruments and have not been observed by a human since the 1500 and who’s bodies seace existing. Since there is no way to detect these creatures, science can not prove they exist, similar to the concept of a soul or a teapot floating in space (read up on that last hypothetical, its another great rebuttal against the divine)
the reasons I do not believe any of these things is there existence would not change my life, there is little evidence for them existing and because the current scientific theories being completely true for my purposes is a much more useful framework for understanding the world.
could you even imagine what form of evidence would be required to disprove your god?
Yes, it is lack of evidence of god, the fitting of a non religious framework that perfectly lines up with the creation of religions, the breaking of gods oath of plague, combined with the monsterous nature of a god that will cast out cripples and force his worshipers to stone those who insult him.
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