Does anyone have any comment on the following thought:
Doesn’t it seem like humans, as a collective, are growing up, with respect to religion and science? Before, we belived in religion as the answer to our questions. Why do we die? Because God made it that way. What are lightning and thunder? God’s bowling. Where did we come from? God made us.
But suddenly, we start to challenge that authority. Hey, lightning and thunder aren’t God bowling, or even God being mad at us. It’s a function of the powerful energy in the atmosphere as convection occurs which charges the atmosphere. Once the atmopshere has a high enough charged, a path to the oppositely charge ground can be made and the energy discharges as electricity (simplified answer). Thunder is just the atmosphere expanding rapidly from the heat generated by the electrical discharge.
It seems to me that we’re outgrowing religion for MOST of what it provides. Not all, but most. It seems to me that religion is now only appropos (sp?) to personal beliefs. Who cares if God created the world? Who cares if He parted the Red Sea? What’s important is how God relates to you personally. Sorta like growing up to realize the you parents teach you simple things to make it easy for you when you’re young, but they don’t apply when you’re 21. When you’re 21, you find your own rules and your own way, but you find your parents were right on most of the time.
The silly things in religion are like that. Creationism, meat on Friday, bans on birth-control, these are things which we’ve outgrown as a society, as a people. Love your neighbor like you love yourself, this we should keep forever.
Does this make sense? Weed
Humanity
I don’t think humanity as a whole is growing up.
I just think we are.
It’s one of the reasons I think we are going to be over in Iraq for a very long time. We have to wait for the current generation of young, idealistic insurgents to get older, wiser, and more level-headed, with the hope that, like the Germany we occupied through the forties and fifties, they’ll eventually still hate us but be less violent about it. And then eventually they’ll die, and their grandkids will grow up trying to figure out how to work within the system to improve things.
At least, that’s the theory.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
No sense at all!
Your mother told you that God was bowling in hopes that you would not be so scared during the big storms. You might not care if God created the world or if Moses parted the Sea. You might not care that religion provides plenty for us.
You’re noticing these “changes” in your life because you personally have chosen not to believe. Because of this choice, you are not seeing anymore what religion can do for you personally.
Yes, it’s important that we each feel that God relates to each of us personally. But it’s also important to recognize that God is the same yesterday today and tomorrow. He is never changing. He has to abide by the laws of nature, the laws of the universe.
If your parents taught you that God is bowling, yes, they were trying to make it easier for you and no it doesn’t really apply when you’re 21 because, hopefully, you’re no longer scared of those big storms. But if your parents taught you from the Bible, they certainly do still apply to you no matter what your age. It’s a matter of whether or not you choose to believe and worship.
Creationism, meat on Friday (or not), bans on birth control are all still taught among different religions for what they consider to be sacred reasons. People still follow those teachings. Just because you don’t doesn’t mean society has outgrown those beliefs. They haven’t.
I respect that many people choose not to be believers in God and choose not to worship. I also respect that the majority of those people choose to be good people, love your neighbor like yourself, do kind deeds, & choose a value base to live by. In return, those of us “believers” appreciate your respect in our choice of beliefs. If for no other reason besides we are trying to be good people, too.–
Christy
Sense is in the eye of the beholder
Christy,
Two things:
1) The statement “society had outgrown those beliefs” should have said “society has outgrown the NEED for those beliefs”.
2) Society HAS grown up. God may be permanent, but your religion has changed and continues to change. Do you sacrifice animals to the altar of God? The Bible tells you to. Do you defer to Matt’s wishes since he’s the man and you’re the woman? The Bible tells you to.
I’m not disrespecting what you believe. But the way you believe is much different than what was believe 100, 500, 1000 years ago. Granted, the Mormon religion isn’t that old, but the Bible claims to be. I say claims because we have no way of knowing if the words in the Bibles we read today are the same as what was recorded 2000 years ago (give or take).
When your child takes ill, do you claim a spirit is in his body which needs to be exorcised, or do you give him medicine?
I believe God is permanent. However, religion isn’t about God as much as how we are susposed to believe in God. And that changes all the time. All I’m saying is as we mature as a society, we rely on God less for understanding our world as we do knowing how to act in it.
My $.02 Weed
Hmmm…..
Okay, I will accept the postulation that we no longer need to look to “God did it that way” as the reason things happen. God should be relied on for how to act in the world, and while he is involved in how the world works, it is in our best interests to understand the world scientifically.
As for the Bible.. its been pretty well researched that the Bible has changed very very little since the original authorship. Through archaeology, we have much of the bible dated within 50 years of the death of Christ (which places them within just 20-30 years of the deaths of the authors) – before the Bible was even assembled into “The Bible” and the only changes are punctuation and the like… 99.9% of it has made it through 2000 years unchanged, and not a single point or teaching has been changed in any noticable way from those early manuscripts and today.
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
Time out!
Praise Allah!
You’re a funny guy…
Let me rephrase..
Christians should look to God for how to act as opposed to looking to him for explanations of the seemingly unknown.
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
Yummy
I’m cool with that. At least much more than the first way you put it.
Could you pass the Flavor-aid?
I agree with that statement
I have no problem with the statement:
“God should be relied on for how to act in the world”
If Muslims stuck to the basic tenets of the religion, we’d be okay.
It’s when you rely on “religious leaders” who incite you for their own gain for how to act in the world, then we have a problem.
Unless you believe in a violent or wacked religion, following the basic tenets of most religions will get you by fairly well. Some minor tweaking of civil rights issues, tolerance of other religions, and stripping out of morals pertinent to the time period of authorship may be required, but otherwise you’d be okay.
Okay, maybe minor to heavy tweaking.
My $.02 Weed
Till we meet in Zion
This reminds me of an extremely interesting (and relatively brief) letter from the President Randel of the University of Chicago. He talks about delusions of progress toward utopia. I had never thought about the issue before I read it, but it certainly rang true–just as individuals see their personal development leading to a posthumous “heaven,” they see their society, and their contributions toward it, heading toward a distant-future “heaven on Earth.” (I’m speaking very generally here–obviously not everybody sees their lives through these lenses.)
It was sort of a let-down when I read it, forcing me to face the harsh realities of the cycles of history. Many great and progressive societies have long-since disappeared, often replaced by periods such as the Dark Ages. With the Western world so rapidly abandoning the practice of procreation, and the fundamentalist Islamic world not following suit, who knows where we’ll be in 50 years?
I HATE RELIGION
I hate religion. Its a dumb word that connotes a lot of false ideas into people’s heads. I’m not a fan of organized religion in mega-corporate structures, although in that case, hate would be an inappropriate word. I really am just sick of religion.
But here’s the deal, Weed. You start from a fundamentalist atheist view that God is not in any way real, but is a construct we made to make ourselves feel better.. You propose God exists to fill a need to know about the unknown, and that through science we have outgrown that need.
Let me be very very clear, the vast, overwhelming majority of Americans believe in Creationism in its strictest sense.. that God or a god deliberately made this world in a certain way. Now, some believe it was a 6 day week, and some think it was millions of years guided by God through evolution, and some think other things. So, I would say that your placement of Creationism as a silly thing in religion.. well, it borders on offensive. Mostly because of the use of the word “silly”.
Having enganged in quite cool discourse over thast few years leads me to think that perhaps youdidn’t mean to say that my belief that God planned and executed the creation of the world (which is basically saying my belief in God) was just some “silly” notion that I would outgrow if only I were more mature. But thought it should be pointed out that THAT is exactly what you’ve said.
As for the other things.. if we fully understood everything about science.. that means we would understand the mechanisms for how things happen. I don’t believe that thunder is God’s anger bowling… but let’s pretend I did. Let’s say we were talking about the sound of Bowling from outside a bowling alley. You could tell me that what I was actually hearing was invisible waves traveling through the air into my ear that were simply jostling tiny bones and cilia to send the sound to my brain. All that would be true.. I would still hear bowling.
So, yeah.. I care that God created the world.. and I think its wicked cool that he parted the red sea, and I think that even if nobody believed he existed, God will still exist – so really, while I agree that the most important thing is your personal relationship with God (One of themost central Christian teachings), its cool to know who He is.
I hate religion, and I agree that people need to outgrow the trappings of religion that are unrelated to the teachings of their faith (specifically Christians) – but I would postulate that if it is in the Bible, we haven’t quite outgrown most of it, and I dont think we should.
Now, I don’t think thunder is anger or bowling.. and you’re right, we understand the mechanism..
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
My point
Justin,
I meant Creationism to be the fact that God made the world just for humans and that dinosaus didn’t exist and evolution is wrong. I find that belief silly. I do. No disrespect to the who believe in that, but I find it silly the same I find it silly that you would tell me a woman is less of a person than a man, simply because they’re a woman. Some people believe both of those things, and even though this board is based on respect, I can’t respect either of those views. They’re, in the opinion of Weed, silly.
If you get into the notion that God created the Big Bang, set the world in motion, then sat back and watched what happens with no bias one way or the other whether dinosaurs, humans, or mice rule the Earth, then you have my attention. Heck if you throw in the fact that the Earth may be only one of a multitude of such planets where the inhabitants debate the meaning of life, I’m even more interested.
So what I said could be either put you at ease with my earlier post or make you ready to issue the duel request. I hope you choose the first. I apologize for not being clearer with my dismissals of silly things. I actually didn’t mean to offend anyone with this post, but the idea in my mind came our different in 0s and 1s. Probably because it sprang from the ID debates, which I failed to mention.
My point is that we don’t need God to explain things for us, we’re doing a better and better job of doing it for ourselves. What we need him for more and more is to guide us personally, because we need him just as much now for that as we ever did.
My $.02 Weed
I accept that…
I accept the clarification, and would respond that in terms of the most inflammatory issue (treatment of women), I interpret the writings of Paul regarding submissiveness to be a policy of co-submissiveness, where a husband is required to love his wife more than himself, and in that way submit to her. Women are not second class citizens.
I do think earth is just for humans, I do think dinosaurs existed.. I do kind of think God made the big bang, but I dont think he sat arbitrarily and unbiasedly by.. I think he nudged it like a potter nudges clay… allowing Humans to have free will.
Either way, I was pointing out the potential for your wording to be offensive, and not that i was personally offended.. your posts are an asset to the board, and your discourse is civil.. even genial.
So no worries.. go team, go.
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
Geniality
The jury is obviously out, but I will go out on a limb and say that “New Earth Creationism” — the belief that the earth is less than 6,000 years old with the incipient flat-earth-like justifications for why it’s so — is stupid, silly, and wrong.
Two of my dear friends believe in New Earth Creationism, and it’s like pulling nose hairs out trying to avoid arguing with them about it when it comes up. There’s just no rational basis for such a belief; someone has to ignore massive amounts of evidence to reach such a belief. You just can’t argue with that kind of blind, ignorant faith.
Like I’ve said before, if a cosmic lab chick is running a gigantic lab experiment and we’re the rats, I’m down with that. I don’t have an opinion as to its truth, but it would be really cool. Particularly if she’s hot. Just like God as Superman living on a crystal planet. Cool? Yeah. True? Dunno. Doubting it, though.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Listen to what I mean, not what I say
My mindset when I wrote the post was think of the ancient Greeks and Romans who had Gods for everything to whichever religion thought the earth was support on four elephants on the back of a turtle (or was it the other way?) to today, where most scientific people discount such things along with the 6000-year-old planet idea. I think we can all agree such things are silly.
Believing God started out the universe, which has been around for as billions of years, is a view I find valid. Not necessarily true, but one I could believe in if evidence was found. If it comes to pass the Earth is only 6000 years old and God put evidence to the contrary out there to throw us off the scent, well I’ll eat crow it that pans out. But I’ll take my lumps rather than play along with the desires of that sort of God who requires us to treat him like God. My view of heaven isn’t a bunch of Christians who accepted that Jesus is the only true way. I want some Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Atheists, and Sammy G there too. 😉
My $.02 Weed
I will say this…
I want Sammy G everywhere, at all times. Omnipresent, if you will.. And, with a bass.
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
Dude, That’s Unhealthy
I’d like some time away from Sam when Laetitia Casta comes calling. I mean, it IS heaven 😉
My $.02 Weed
Just a couple clarifications
From the Christian perspective in general, we quick doing animal sacrifices when Christ died. The whole purpose of the animal sacrifice was to help remember that Christ would die and atone for each of us, should we accept him as our savior. Even in the Bible, after the death of Christ, there are no more animal sacrifices. The sacrament was implemented in it’s place in rememberance of the sacrifice of our Savior.
From the LDS perspective, we do not teach that there was no such thing as dinosaurs. I do know some religions teach this, but mine does not. In fact, there’s no denying the existance of dinosaurs. Right here in Utah we have dinosaur tracks, fossils, and museums to show them off in several locations. My children were thrilled last summer when we visited a dinosaur museum in St. George (our favorite vacation spot).
From the LDS perspective, we do not believe that men are better than women. On the contrary, in the last general conference one of the speakers addressed this very issue. It’s not as much of a problem among the American culture, but our religion is world wide and it’s a tough adjustment for some cultures to bring their marriage onto equal grounds.
From the LDS perspective, we believe that there are worlds without number, just like us. It does get interesting, huh? I like the quote from the movie “Contact” where they decide that if there aren’t other worlds out there, what a shame it would be to have so much wasted space.
As I have said many times before, religion and science go hand in hand. It’s weird to me that we try to separate them. We do have many more answers about how the world turns that we did a few hundred years ago, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need God to help us continue to understand science. I believe God does help explain things for us. And yes, we do need him just as much now as we ever did, especially personally.–
Christy
Budding feminist
Please clarify this more for me. Here’s how I see it.
Let’s say there’s a company, LDS, Inc. It hires more women than men, but systematically puts them in different functions. Women are only allowed to work in the HR department, and occasionally in Sales. Their presence in Sales is sometimes overtly, and almost always subtly, discouraged. They are only allowed to be account reps, never disitrict managers or VP’s. If a women is in sales, her coworkers usually chide her as being incompetent at HR.
HR in LDS, Inc. is unusual in that it takes a man and a woman to recruit a new hire. The woman reports to the man, but the men are encouraged to be good managers. The woman’s role is vaunted here, usually by disparaging those “silly” men. “Good thing for the women,” the CEO says, “otherwise we’d never get any recruits!” Sometimes a skilled man, particularly one being groomed for upper management, is allowed to supervise multiple women (although that practice has been suspended temporarily).
Men, of course, work in all departments of the company: Manufacturing, Marketing, R&D, Finance, Sales, and HR. Only men rise to the director level or above. Most men work in HR as well as other functions at the same time, but their HR work suffers due to demands from their other job. Nobody ever says it, but hey, the HR stuff isn’t important enough for a man to be doing anyway, right?
The women employees do get special access to a health club on the corporate campus. They are responsible for running it, and only they can attend. This is the only organization in which women serve as managers. The most powerful woman in the company is the one running the health club. It used to be a separate company, but LDS bought it a while back. Since then, someone else in the company has decided how much money it can get, what kinds of equipment it will buy, and the reading material by the treadmills. And that someone is always a man.
The company regularly issues press releases about the diversity of its workforce and the value women add to the company. But actions speak louder than words…
Mapping for those who don’t get it…
With the understanding that most of the reading audience won’t get the metaphor without some explanation, here it is.
Note: All links are to WikiPedia, where articles can be edited by both apologistic and antagonistic sources. As a result, they tend to be both factual and neutral; where they are not, they are generally marked as disputed. None of the links provided are disputed.
— Matthew P. Barnson – – – – Thought for the moment: Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life. — George Bernard Shaw
Separation of God and Science
I believe the separation of God and Science is simply because they are mutually exclusive.
Science is based on observable fact, and using those observable facts to descibe how our universe works.
God is someone outside of our observable universe. You may feel him in your heart, but never as a physical object. Rumors abound God’s made guest appearances as a physical object in the past, but curiously enough never anymore, when a simple drop-in on Oprah would boost his followers astronomically.
But that’s not the point, one might say. The idea is to believe in God even though there’s no physical evidence of him. Believing in him without physical evidence is what actually gets you into heaven, in a lot of religions.
And that is the difference. Science necessitates physical, recreatable evidence before stating something. God requires belief in the absence of such evidence. Science would definitely accomodate God is he made an appearance.
God is a constant presence for you and other believers. You credit him with showing you answers and guiding you. The difference between you and me is that I credit myself for finding those answers. When something pops in your head, you credit God for putting it there. I claim it’s the subliminal mind, the brain doing something we don’t fully understand yet. Again, using God to fill gaps in our knowledge.
In my humble opinion.
My $.02 Weed
Mutually Exclusive
I completely disagree with you there. I don’t think that God and Science are in any sense mutually exclusive, and there are a ton of religious scientists who would agree with me.
I think that the point that you’re trying to make is that science is incompatible with the idea of a God who is constantly intervening in your life, providing you with answers, etc. I don’t personally agree with that view of God. I think that God (or whomever) put us here in order to live life for ourselves, and study the mysteries of the universe in whatever means we saw fit. I don’t believe in fate, and I don’t believe that God makes us do anything.
There are those who believe (and sometimes I agree with this) that God is the creator and Science is the method. I don’t see why there’s any cognitive dissonance in believing that God made the Big Bang, or God set up the process of evolution, or created genetics, or whatever. There’s no arguing that science exists, and that there are observable and definable processes going on in the universe. But that doesn’t mean that God didn’t set up the universe in such a way as to allow those processes to work. Pretty clever, I’d say.
I agree with you that answers come from within ourselves. There’s a great quote I spout off whenever I can: “For if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.”
— Ben
No swearing
I won’t use the s-word here, but let me just address the following:
You seem to be saying two different things here, so let me just restate the numbers as I interpret it. 72% of Americans (vast, overwhelming majority) believe in Creationism in some sense. 45% believe in Creationism in its strictest sense. Either way, that’s a lot.
But so what? I’m writing this in a country where 80% or the population, and that equals 800,000,000(!) people, believe that advanced human civilazations have existed for billions of years. So Christians are outvoted?
Now, if somebody were making a non-arbitrary assertion, like the environment is getting warmer because of human influences, you can have a lot of people on both sides of the aisle and nobody ought to be throwing the “s” word around. You just say, “here’s how I see the data,” or “if we could create this kind of controlled situation, we could observe phenomenon X, then come to an agreement.” That’s an aspect of the scientific method.
But that doesn’t work with Creationism (or anything else arbitrarily asserted). So if 45% of Americans say God created the world in 6 days and 80% of Indians say the world was never created, well, somebody’s just being silly. You can say, “respect my right to believe whatever I want,” but you can’t say, “respect my beliefs.”
You’re wrong.
yup, you’re wrong.. but You’re not silly.
That’s the idea, my friend. You can respect someone’s beliefs, but you can think they’re dead wrong. Now, Weed has adjusted his statement in such a way that is is less inflammatory, and that was kind of my point.
You and I can debate how the other one is wrong till the end of time, but we don’t have to use words like “silly”. You can arbitrarily say something, and I can say, “I don’t see the proof”, and you can say “Well the proof is there, even if you can’t see it”, and that’s well and good. “Silly” differs from “wrong” because “Wrong” makes a judgement about the correctness of the assertion. “Silly” makes a judgement about the person who believes the assertion. Its like saying “ridiculous” or “stupid” – and that’s why one might find it disrespectful.
In the case of Weed, he has a history of well thought out, open minded, respectfully stated posts on this topic. I was surprised at his use of “Silly”, pointed it out.. he clarified, and I’m satisfied with the clarification.. his intent is never doubted. Even now, he has shown his ability to engage in civil discourse, with his clarification.
So, I can expect you to respect my beliefs.. as well as my right to believe them. And by respect I mean that you attempt to understand why I believe them, as I have with yours and others. I like religioous discussions because I seek to know why people believe what they do. I respect the scientific mind for wanting proof. I disagree with someone who says that everything that cannot be proven scientifically, and must be taken on testimony, must therefore not exist – must be arbitrary- and therefore, “silly”. But I respect your beliefs.. and I seek to understand why you believe them.
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
Believing beliefs
I didn’t say “therefore must not exist.” But if something must be taken on testimony then yes, it is arbitrary.
If a white-supremicist lobbied a school board to make sure 10 minutes of biology class is spent discussing how “degenerate races” came from God’s curse on Cain, would you insist on respecting that belief? Your response would be, “that a very reasonable statement, and I realize that many people feel the same way; however, our curriculum is too full?” (Maybe you would if you felt threatened, but that’s beside the point.) Or would you say, “Look man, that goes against everything I’ve ever experienced with diverse races. You’re welcome to your beliefs, but I see no reasonable way to believe that myself and, furthermore, it’s an idiotic point of view.” You might not say the last part, but are you telling me you wouldn’t even think it?
The danger with “silly” is it signals the end of a debate. If I tell my wife I want to switch careers to professional carwashing, and she says, “That’s silly,” it’s very different than “Interesting–why?” But if I lay out my “evidence” to support why it’s a good thing to do, and one of my points is, “God promised I would make $1,000,000 a year,” she might say, let’s go research that figure. If empirical evidence overwhelmingly suggests that I will make $15,000/yr, but I insist that God was right, then she can say, “That’s silly.” I’m being arbitrary, and an arbitrary statement intrinsically cannot be debated. It’s like debating music tastes.
In Praise of Silly
Two reasons why I am in favor of the use of Silly in certain situations.
1) Because someone telling me that they think my beliefs are silly is a damn sight better than “You’re going to hell, where you will burn in everlasting fire and unbearable torment because you don’t believe what I believe.”
2) We can say how important it is to respect people’s beliefs, by which I mean to give full consideration to those beliefs in open rational debate, but deep down I’m not sure if we think that’s really true. I mean, c’mon, haven’t we all been faced with certain ideas which have immediately struck us as just being, well, more than a little dumb and not really worthy of our intellectual time? No? You’re sure?
How about a UFO hiding behind Comet Hale-Bopp that will come down and take the chosen away if they kill themselves while wearing Nike sneakers?
I’m just as guilty of saying “always respect others’ beliefs” as much as anyone else, but let’s face it, people: sometimes the Emperor’s just got nothing on. It’s something that takes all of two seconds to realize, and debating the issue for an hour won’t make him any less naked.
Interesting–why?
My high school job at SuperSonic Car Wash was the BEST job. You and your wife should spend more time taking that seriously 🙂
my paltry answer
I don’t think it’s a matter of society growing up. (Society, as a whole, is just as pigheaded, prejudiced, and stupid as it’s always been – I don’t see any new maturity.)
What I think, however, is that religion has always filled the gaps of human knowledge. When we didn’t know what made the rain and what made crops grow, we figured it was the gods and we prayed to them for help with the rain or the crops. Gradually, over the past few millennia, we’ve filled those gaps with scientific answers. But every answer we fill just creates more questions.
Yes, we know where babies come from. We have a pretty good guess about the origins of the universe. We know why thunder is loud. But there is still plenty that we don’t know. What caused the big bang? Is evolution random or is there some plan? Is the natural world this beautiful simply by accident?
We will never reach a point where our curiosity as a species will be entirely satisfied. We will never find that ALL of our questions have been answered. Because of that ambiguity, there will always be room for God (or gods) in human society.
— Ben