I’m proud to say that even before my apostasy I would not have made such reaching arguments for faith not being psychological.
Faith is not evidence of things unseen. Just because you believe that there is a naked dancing midget in your living room does not mean that your belief of such is evidence.
[quote=“housecat”][quote=“fenlander”][quote=“housecat”]Faith is evidence of things un-seen. Scientists believe strongly in “dark matter,” which they can’t see, aren’t even sure what is, but “know” exists because without it, all their calculations about the density of the universe are wrong. Their “faith” is in their own mathematics and they have declared that this dark matter exists because they couldn’t possibly be wrong. I find that both arrogant and ironic.
Science can’t “study” faith, so can’t understand it. The faithful man can understand science but choose to continue his faith. It’s more than fossil records and molecular biology. Guess what? I think the scientists are right about thier “dark matter.” I also believe that organisms “evolve” in the sense that they continue to adapt to their environments, and continue to mutate, and that over time, these actions change them and enable them to survive. But I do not believe that Species evolve. 98% is close, but not human. It’s odd to me that people even wonder about that because you never ever here people debating whether or not a jackass or zebra is a horse, or evolved into a horse. And those ‘see-la-can’t’ fish that I won’t even try to spell, the ones with the boney fins that were thought to be extinct, did not evolve and eventually crawl out of the see and become a land animal. They can’t live out of the water, or even above about 200 feet below sea level, for more than two hours. Not long enough to walk and breathe and procreate and grow fur.
It was odd to me, at the OP, to read that “creationism” was thought of as an alternative. And evolultion, as in from particles of hydrogen into human and all points in between, is theroy, NOT fact; since we are only human, part of the evolutionary chain in this theroy, we cannot look on, scientifically, as only an observer and not participant, so evolution theroy cannot be proven as fact by humanity. So. . . you know where that brings us.
We’re back to “evolutionary dark matter.” Hmmm. I have no problem with the idea that God might be black.[/quote]
Not everything needs to evolve into another species.
[color=darkblue]I don’t think I said that everything evolved into another species. In fact, I think I agreed with your explanation of the evolution process.[/color]
No offense but you don’t really understand evolution. Things evolve when there is a mutation that is advantageous for the enviornment that they are living in. If there is no advantage in the mutation then it dissapears (the mutation not the fish). Most fish do just fine where they are.
[color=darkblue]But, at some point, evolution of one life form into another must have taken place, according to Darwinism, else how’d we get here? We’re evolving larger brains and bodies. Okay, maybe. But we weren’t just smaller brained and boned, and less self aware a few millinea ago. Those are chimps now, and they were then. We are human–now and then (heh heh, pun perversly intended.)
Anyway, I’m not telling you what to believe, or believe in. I’m saying what I believe in and why. That was what the OP asked for, right? And I haven’t even mentioned that your response didn’t touch on the fact that as products of evolution a human cannot be trully scientific about it’s study where humans are concerned, or that Darwin later wrote strenuosly that he was WRONG about evolution, and that he believed in creation! Well, I guess now I have mentioned it.[/color][/quote][/quote]
Darwin acknowleged there may be a god before he died on his dead bed as a last wish to his wife who was a fanatical christian. That can be verified in many ways. Mendel the monk had also discovered genetics at arond this time too, and Wallace as well. Not only Darwin.
Also what he regrded true when he died became irrelevant as evolution has been proved beyond reasonable doubt by molecular biology in recent years and only helped by fossil records. Evoloution is much as a fact as gravity or the rotation of the planets around the sun. Not believing it i think means a person doesn’t understand it, is not very bright, or has his head so far up his own arse he cans only see his intestines.
Just to get back to my point about not choosing between communities (scientific v religious)…the point I’d make is that that tends to idealize each community and also idealize the difference between them. Idealization is the problem and creates factions which inhibit thought.
So, when a scientist defines human being as the creature having a big, complex brain and then finds the gene responsible I get worried because if human being is defined by something measureable then don’t we have to say, in accord with elementary logic, that the guy or girl with the biggest, most complex brain the the most human being, others are less human in varying degrees? I swear I see question begging going on all the time in cognitive science especially.
On the other hand if the human is defined by something transcendent or ineffable the one has a priori foreclosed even the possibility of understanding and every a priori foreclosure is always something like psychosis, is structured like psychosis.
The great thing about reading Darwin is that, in Descent of Man for example, he’s committed to the notion of pangeneticism (and all that I’ve ever read confirms that as fact, even if, no, I can’t explain every single detail) and then tries to work out the mechanisms (natural, sexual, and unconscious selection) but stays alive to sheer objective observation. He notes that (ch 1) an Ateles after getting drunk stops drinking altogether, but a human…! He asks why a useless feature like knitting one’s brows in retained in human being, but a useful one like pricking up one’s ears has been lost…He doesn’t have explanations for these questions which are all the more fascinating in light of the fact of pangeneticism.
What I want to say is that science really does find facts and it is dangerous beyond belief to deny that; and yet, and yet, it’s really a question of conceptualizing those facts. That’s the fascinating and potentially enlightening part of intellection. For example, I cannot but agree with the notion of pangeneticism but I conceptualize it as follows in my notes: Selection is not an accumulation of wealth or useful finctions but instead a conservation of variations, differences, repetitions, and habits; and a “successful” species is just a hodgepodge of this or that arrangement of variations, differences, etc. Further, as there is no telos in nature (no origin and no final form) so, every species is, in the broadest sense, immature (and always will be).
Thus facts can be discussed (I’m saying that my conceptualization above can be challenged, rejected, amended, modified, discussed in light of it’s internal coherence and in light of facts–both) but just choosing “is it true or isn’t it?” misses the point. The same sort of conceptualization, re-conceptualization can be performed on religion.
…and a postscript…
Taking the strong view that humans cannot uncover facts about nature because they are themselves a part of nature, a product of what they are observing, is an attractive conceptual position. Vico and Herder once thought that history could be perfectly understood by human beings since human beings make it; but then that postion was undermined by the recursivity argument above: the observer as part of what he or she is observing.
That take on things is radical and coherent; there are no facts, there is only recursivity. But that’s what leads to what Sokol exposed with his Social Text prank some years ago: One tends to idealize language; or one devolves into systems theory and “self-consuming artifacts” (the whole of science is ultimately a self-consuming artifact just like any work of literature or architectural piece).
Ultimately I just don’t agree with that view, though I admit its conceptual power. I wish I could say why but my objection, if I could formuate it, is not based on faith in some ineffable, rather in a bias against any explaination that based on signification (whether self-signifying or not). I wish I could be clear, but it’s like a modern American atheist who remains nonetheless monotheistic because he or she has choosen not to believe in that ONE God. I know of no atheist who has taken the time to examine and refute the existence of EVERY SINGLE God who has ever been believd in. What if one of them is really compatible with all of science and more?
…and with that I’m unable to think of anything further; and no, I don’t have a point (but that’s my point, in a way…)
Simple~ God is energy.
Energy can take many forms - hence different gods.
The Big Bang is simply a release of energy… ‘God’ creating us in ‘his’ image.
No religion says anything about us not being able to evolve after our creation. We have simply evolved since our creation.
“We are all a part of God”… well yes… supposedly, in theory, you cannot create energy from nothing. Hence ‘God’ - the energy - must have give up some of itself to create us.
[quote=“x08”]Simple~ God is energy.
Energy can take many forms - hence different gods.
The Big Bang is simply a release of energy… ‘God’ creating us in ‘his’ image.
No religion says anything about us not being able to evolve after our creation. We have simply evolved since our creation.
“We are all a part of God”… well yes… supposedly, in theory, you cannot create energy from nothing. Hence ‘God’ - the energy - must have give up some of itself to create us.[/quote]
so why are you calling it God then ? That is energy.
Who is in his image ? Michael Jodan ? Jack the ripper ? Michael Jackson ? George Bush ?
King Kong ?
Which one did he choose ? Or does he look like everybody at the same time ? Wow beats the hell ou of David Copperfield and Houdini !
Well… speaking as such, ‘God’ is just a word, created by humans. There is no name. Can you tell me why you call your table a ‘table’, why not just ‘wood’?
I just made a theory which confirms to both the rules of religion AND the rules of science.
[quote]Simple~ God is energy.
Energy can take many forms - hence different gods.
The Big Bang is simply a release of energy… ‘God’ creating us in ‘his’ image.
No religion says anything about us not being able to evolve after our creation. We have simply evolved since our creation.
“We are all a part of God”… well yes… supposedly, in theory, you cannot create energy from nothing. Hence ‘God’ - the energy - must have give up some of itself to create us.[/quote]
Did I do the quote thingy right?
Anyways, if God is energy, the same as energy, identical to energy, then energy is energy no matter what you call it, and so there is no theory. No fact or absence of fact can confirm or deny what is essentially a tautology. So I agree with fenlander.
Falling back on the “its only just words” is what is dangerous: il n’ya pas hors de texte, 'there is no outside of (the) text: the text has no outside, texte is the ‘outside’, etc. Look at all the posts that jumped up and down at the mere mention of Derrida; yet, backed into a corner, Derridean, Stanley Fish-ean, systems theory stuff magically reappears.
Therefore, taking this thread to a new level, I hypothesize the following (just based on observations from Forumosa and the classroom, etc.): There are two fundamental fears that seem to be part of contemporary discourse (I mean, both formal and everyday): 1. Fear of facts 2. Fear of language. Both facts (like the brute fact of sexual difference for example) and language are surprising, unpredictable; both can upset deeply held psychic structures that lots of people depend upon so fervently that the slightest fact, the slightest new linguistic formulation can ruin a person’s psychic economy. (And I think that’s exactly how jouissance functions in Lacan: everybody has a pleasure lynch pin; a fact or a word can initiate a pleasure system, and a fact or a word can also ruin that pleasure system.)
Evolution theory and then the mass of evidence that supported it is still one such shock. When Derrida showed (I know, its still up for grabs, that’s why the Maretti book I mentioned on the Derrida thread is so important) that one cannot reduce what can be said to be to either a purely transcendent or a purely empirical presence (that the difference between the two is constitutionally undecideable), lots and lots of people went to pieces (and still go to pieces).
Anaways, two more of my cents for what it’s worth…
[quote=“Tralalangue”][quote]Simple~ God is energy.
Energy can take many forms - hence different gods.
The Big Bang is simply a release of energy… ‘God’ creating us in ‘his’ image.
No religion says anything about us not being able to evolve after our creation. We have simply evolved since our creation.
“We are all a part of God”… well yes… supposedly, in theory, you cannot create energy from nothing. Hence ‘God’ - the energy - must have give up some of itself to create us.[/quote]
Did I do the quote thingy right?
Anyways, if God is energy, the same as energy, identical to energy, then energy is energy no matter what you call it, and so there is no theory. No fact or absence of fact can confirm or deny what is essentially a tautology. So I agree with fenlander.
Falling back on the “its only just words” is what is dangerous: il n’ya pas hors de texte, 'there is no outside of (the) text: the text has no outside, texte is the ‘outside’, etc. Look at all the posts that jumped up and down at the mere mention of Derrida; yet, backed into a corner, Derridean, Stanley Fish-ean, systems theory stuff magically reappears.
Therefore, taking this thread to a new level, I hypothesize the following (just based on observations from Forumosa and the classroom, etc.): There are two fundamental fears that seem to be part of contemporary discourse (I mean, both formal and everyday): 1. Fear of facts 2. Fear of language. Both facts (like the brute fact of sexual difference for example) and language are surprising, unpredictable; both can upset deeply held psychic structures that lots of people depend upon so fervently that the slightest fact, the slightest new linguistic formulation can ruin a person’s psychic economy. (And I think that’s exactly how jouissance functions in Lacan: everybody has a pleasure lynch pin; a fact or a word can initiate a pleasure system, and a fact or a word can also ruin that pleasure system.)
Evolution theory and then the mass of evidence that supported it is still one such shock. When Derrida showed (I know, its still up for grabs, that’s why the Maretti book I mentioned on the Derrida thread is so important) that one cannot reduce what can be said to be to either a purely transcendent or a purely empirical presence (that the difference between the two is constitutionally undecideable), lots and lots of people went to pieces (and still go to pieces).
Anaways, two more of my cents for what it’s worth…[/quote]
I am still thinking about your post. Your post is great. I just got it. Damn that was a good post.
I agree with what you are saying i just can’t say it like you can!
p.s.
Agreeing with me on forumosa could lead to permanent ostracism. 
[quote=“SuchAFob”]I’m proud to say that even before my apostasy I would not have made such reaching arguments for faith not being psychological.
Faith is not evidence of things unseen. Just because you believe that there is a naked dancing midget in your living room does not mean that your belief of such is evidence.[/quote]
Oh, SuchAFob, you just do not understand. But it’s okay. I still like you and respect you for whomever you are or want to be. You aren’t daft for your apostasy, and I’m not daft for my faith. Just be cause we don’t see eye to eye doesn’t mean either of us is blind.