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Religion, Science, Scepticism, Philosophy and things metaphysical

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SirRumpole said:
but science may yet create an instrument that allows us to see our 'spiritual' bodies if they exist.
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And that is when we should believe it, until then, no.

But science can gather evidence for things and predict that things exist kong before they are proven to exist.

for example Dark matter, we haven't figured out exactly what it is, but we have evidence it is there.

and the elements, the periodic table predicted and reserved places for elements before some of these elements existed.

but when is comes to "souls" or "spirits" we don't even have anything that would lead science to predict they exist.

Would you accept that at least as evidence of mind/body separation and therefore life after death ?
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Yes, all you have to do is produce the evidence, and show how its evidence for the claim.

Religious people say there is nothing that can change their mind, I am the opposite I would change my mind in an instant if I had evidence, thats the big difference between religion and science, and its an important difference, changing your mind as new evidence comes out isn't a sign that your process is flawed, its a sign your process is robust.
 
Here is a video explaining the periodic table and how it allowed science to know certain chemical elements existed and even know their properties and even give them a name long before they were discovered in nature.

This is kind of how I see the dark matter studies, we are gather data and making prediction based on known facts, even though we haven't discovered exactly what it is yet.

Thats a lot different to a religious claim that is not backed with any evidence at all.

 
Anyhow, given a recent development,I think this might be an opportune time to highlight, a couple of the less publicised things, about the highly esteemed, prophet Randi and his widely acclaimed religious initiative/s:

 

So you do believe in a Messiah, but a different one form the one that I believe in. I mean, you wouldn't put up such comedy clips while at the same time holding the name of your own God in such a holy manner.

You previously mentioned a heavy passage from the NT about Christ's potential to be divine. I should also point out to you that in the OT God appeared as a theophany on several occasions in the form of a human being, and was worshiped in this form. So I'm fine with the worship of Christ in a similar manner.

What I also find interesting is that the historical Jews (for a very long time, in various quotations) seem to have shared some Christian views regarding their future Messiah. They saw Him as a 'sin offering' type of person, in addition to being 'victorious' in some way. And they held these views for a long time (many centuries) . Also, there is the well known Suffering Servant oracle (only a fragment was posted here on some previous pages), which wonderfully describes the passion of Christ to the Christians. Sure, it can be creatively applied differently e.g. about Israel, but what strikes me is the early Jews (for many centuries), saw it as referring to a human being, to their Messiah. What I'm saying is, their views may have been more like mine than yours.

There are also some good references in the OT which suggest the Messiah is an eternal person, rather than created. Of course, a Jewish person could interpret them differently, but I'll go with Christ's interpretations about Himself (David's messianic psalm). I also like Paul's explanation about the Messiah being 'of the order of Melchizedek' , and how this relates to an 'indestructible lifeform', ie an eternal person.

And it doesn't stop there. e.g. Christ's dramatic confession of Himself to be the Messianic figure Daniel has prophesies about. And the imagery in Daniel's visions represents Christianity well enough...

Not trying to convince you or anything, but I thought you were being a little smart with the comedy clips, so you could do with some lecturing.
 
grah33 said:
So you do believe in a Messiah, but a different one form the one that I believe in. I mean, you wouldn't put up such comedy clips while at the same time holding the name of your own God in such a holy manner...
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Is that truly the message you are gleaning from my various posts?

In one of my posts, to which you seem to be referring, I included a comedy clip, which I acknowledged as being potentially sacrilegious to some.

In the message I was seeking to convey, was there not a strongly implied defence, of the rights of others, to continue enjoying the fruits of their chosen belief system, irrespective of the authenticity (or lack thereof) of any purported relics/souvenirs?

Whilst I do not specifically insist upon it, I prefer to believe that Christ was the capital "M", Messiah, in whom many have chosen to invest their belief.

Having said that, my preference is not to become too embroiled in disputes over the more phenomenal claims (aquatic perambulation etc.), the reason being that these claims, although somewhat fascinating, seem to divert attention away from the importance of the message Christ brought to mankind.

When one places too much emphasis on the authenticity of miracles and/or historical relics, one creates openings, which detractors of theism can then gleefully exploit when contesting, both, the validity of theism, and the rationality of its subscribers.
 
Well, I'm not exactly sure what religion you are (one of the big 3 or not ), or which directions you favor. And one can interpret your posts to mean different things, but it looks like I misunderstood you.


Regards relics and all that stuff, never really interested me that much. I'm just into the simple things.
 
I remember a person who told me his god was gold. His company went bust and he had to sell his house. His wife divorced him. He put on a lot of weight and died suddenly of a heart attack.
 
Pope Alexander VI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Alexander_VI

Of Alexander's many mistresses the one for whom passion lasted longest was Vannozza (Giovanna) dei Cattanei, born in 1442, and wife of three successive husbands. The connection began in 1470, and she had four children whom he openly acknowledged as his own: Cesare (born 1475), Giovanni, afterwards duke of Gandia (commonly known as Juan, born 1476), Lucrezia (born 1480), and Gioffre (Goffredo in Italian, born 1481 or 1482). For a period of time, before legitimizing his children after becoming Pope, Rodrigo pretended that his four children with Vannozza were his niece and nephews and that they were fathered by Vannozza's husbands.[citation needed]
 
This is a very interesting conversation between Jordan Peterson and Matt Dillahunty (host of the Atheist Experience broadcast from Austin). It was intended to be non-confrontational (and mostly was). Matt set the scene by answering Jordan's question "what shall we talk about?" by saying "Is there a God".

Matt is a secular moralist (something VC tried to explain in various threads) which though is different to being an atheist (as explained often, an atheist has just one tenet and that is he doesn't believe the evidence for a God).

I know my opinion will be seen as biased, but I think Jordan lost the plot at about the 40 minute mark. He didn't seem to be able to come up with answers to Matt's assertions about secular morality and resorted to using almost Greek style paradoxes as a response, disputing the meaning of words that everyone commonly understands.

Although I like Peterson, I think his performance was quite poor here and perhaps he should confine himself to his area of expertise, psychology. I think he was quite miffed that he was unable to confuse/confound Matt with "psychology jargon" and Matt held his own in that area, in addition to dominating in the discussion on morality. I am sure some will disagree.

I think Grah might find the 20:10 minute Mark interesting as it relates to something we discussed last week.

 
Therein lies a large part of the problem.

Metaphorical constructs and/or word definitions, are commonly misunderstood, particularly by those allowing their personal biases to obscure critical distinctions.

As far as I could ascertain, Jordan's principal error, was in not conveying his contentions in a manner that would be correctly understood by Matt.

Matt's responses to a number of Jordan's assertions, showed that Matt largely misunderstood some very important literal and/or conceptual distinctions.
 
bellenuit said:
I think Grah might find the 20:10 minute Mark interesting as it relates to something we discussed last week.

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Well that is true I think. Some people mistake their natural experience for something else, but it doesn't mean it never happens. The action of the Holy Spirit can be far more convincing as well. It can reveal knowledge that can't be known otherwise, which is strong evidence to the people involved. And one can read about this in the NT letters, since they had the same experiences. And yes there are many fakes out there, as there were false prophets in the OT
 
I know people who have been converted to religion because of experiences like themselves or a close family member receiving a "miracle" cure after prayer or some other religious event.

Such events are sometimes hard to explain (leaving aside the faith healer shams)so it's easy for some to be convinced that a supernatural entity was involved.

If that is what people want to believe fair enough, but there are also a lot of cases where people were prayed for and died anyway, but these are not considered by the converted.
 
Telling a story to keep a group believing and faithful is a terribly deceitful practice.
 
Wysiwyg said:
Telling a story to keep a group believing and faithful is a terribly deceitful practice.
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I doubt they would be telling stories to deceive people. I think that it's just the way some people are, not critical enough. Also, they can be surrounded by other people who really do have experiences, so they think they're having it as well.
 
I wasn't specifically thinking of healing ministries that some people have, but I also believe in that too. Some people out there are fake , but there are very credible people as well, in different denominations. And the ones that don't have wealth and work for free are the ones I prefer .
 

I watched the youtube link and enjoyed it. Both missed some fairly obvious points, but that didn't really detract from the overall quality of the discussion.

jog on
duc
 

Tim sums it up perfectly

 
It is easie to raze, but hard to buylde

Richard Stanyhurst 1577
 
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