Infinite does not imply that God is everything, but does specifically state that God is bigger than any finite thing, even the observable physical universe.
[/quote]
Jerry, I respectfully disagree. We all know what the word “finite” means, “limited,” and the prefix makes it mean “unlimited.”
See Merriam-Webster definition infinite 1 of 2 adjective in· fi· nite ˈin-fə-nət 1 : being without limits of any kind : endless infinite space 2 : seeming to be without …
However, your definition might be used by people like Dawkins which might explain why he and others seem to totally misunderstand Who is the Judeo-Christian God YHWH, I AM WHO I AM. Maybe he is still living in the culture of the gods, Jupiter or Zeus.
Christians do not think that God is one thing or being among others, but that God is the Source of all. Pantheists believe that God is every thing.
What is your definition of Good? A definition “limits” something. It allows us to say this is the work of God while that is not. I am not interested in quantifying God, but we need to define Who God is if we are to know God. The Christian definition of God, YHWH, is Jesus Christ, or the Trinity,
I would not put al-Ghazali in the same group with Avicenna, al-Farabi, Augustine, and Aquinas. al-Ghazali was the philosopher of Muslim anti-philosophical legalism, so he helped destroy the Classical culture that gave Islam its live.
Modern science is very different from classical science in that it is not based on simple speculation, but thinking, which is physically and systematically tested to insure against misunderstanding, error, and bias. Philosophy is separated from science, which becomes an end in itself and a social enterprise.
This is not possible under Islam because Allah and the universe are Absolutely One unlike in Christianity. (Judaism is not clear.) It was early Christian scientists who created a Christian culture in which science would thrive and influence others. al-Ghazali did the opposite.
As an atheist, I certainly don’t think they are at odds with one another, or rather they don’t need to be at odds with one another.
I often think about it as the difference between objective and subjective. I try to be as objective as I can when I’m doing science, but there are many, many things in life that I judge subjectively, such as the beauty of a sunset or the power of a story in a book. I think part of being human is experiencing both sides of the human intellect, both the objective and subjective.
I’ve never been convinced by this argument. We use science because it is proven to work. We can see it in all the technology around us as well as all of the new discoveries that are being made. I don’t consider it to be faith when you can objectively demonstrate that something works.
I tend to think of it as pragmatism. When we let go of a rock we expect it to fall. We don’t read books on philosophy and metaphysics to reach this conclusion. Scientists themselves aren’t students of philosophy, but instead learn how to do science by doing science.
“Physicists do of course carry around with them a working philosophy. For most of us, it is a rough-and-ready realism, a belief in the objective reality of the ingredients of our scientific theories. But this has been learned through the experience of scientific research and rarely from the teachings of philosophers.”
–Steven Weinberg, “Against Philosophy”
Modern science is a product of the Enlightenment which involved the study of many non-Christian cultures and social legacies. It’s a complicated story, for sure.
I’m not seeing this at all. Evolutionary biology is strongly tied to empirical observation, more so now than ever before. The ability to easily and inexpensively sequence genomes has opened up a massive set of data. In theoretical physics we have the discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC, and even now the empirical observations being made by the JWST is greatly influencing astrophysics.
So you say that God is limited. Does this mean that our finite human minds can comprehend the totality of God? Or is God infinite in some ways, even if She won’t do some things (or are you saying He can’t do some things)? The point here is that a conceptual line can be of infinite length, even though it is limited in two of the three spatial dimensions to a single point. Another example is that a sphere is made up of an infinite number of points even though it is limited in extent in all three dimensions. So I accept that I was sloppy in applying the adjective “infinite” to the noun “God” instead of to one or more infinite attributes of God. I hope this clarifies what I was trying to get at, the fact that we humans have a much too great an attraction to our own beliefs about God, and do not recognize two other truths: 1. Believing something does not make it true (it is either true or not whether we believe it or not); and 2. Two ideas that are different are not necessarily mutually exclusive, especially when the two ideas are both small parts of a much larger set of information. This is the point where good science (mathematics) helps me be more proper and non-judgmental in my interactions with humans who have different religious beliefs from mine.
In discussing “The Christian definition of” anything, I think it might be relevant to point out that most people have a different understanding of complex ideas than anyone else does. I have wondered whether people’s understanding of the meaning of any particular word is like a snowflake: No two are alike.
My definition of “Good” cannot be simply stated. Good for what? Good for scoring points in a basketball game, or good for dumping trash? It almost seems to me that you are using “Good” in the same way I referred to God as infinite. One aspect of the question comes back to me from a high school friend many years ago: There are only two kinds of good: Good for nothing and good for S**T.
I do most strongly agree that anyone who wants to know God, who truly wants to love God, needs to know something about God, and, as starting to know, beginning to love, will want to know a lot about God. In reflecting now, I can see that the way I presented my thoughts about infinity might have been difficult to accept. The point here is still true: Yes, I can have sufficient knowledge about God to love God, but there is so much more to God that others can have different knowledge and also love God. I do believe that Jesus comes to us humans where we are, doesn’t demand that we go where He is to find Him. I also believe that we will, if we love Jesus, do as He asked Peter, and witness to others what we do believe and why, but leave to Jesus and the others how what we say helps them to improve their own individual relationships with Him.
I recall looking it up once upon a time, but either I’ve forgotten what he was arguing about or (more likely) was far more interested in the crunchy math bits.
I seem to recall what we now call Bayes Theorem/Law/Rule first appeared in a letter to … somebody … maybe Hume?
For Weinberg’s quote, the issue I see is this realism itself is not reached by scientific conclusions, but instead by one’s empirical senses, mental faculties, and memories which science itself questions the reliability of (hence hallucinations, false memories, etc). Would this “rough-and-ready realism” be considered a faith? Can we objectively demonstrate that the laws of nature will be the same tomorrow as they are today (and with that in mind, that time itself even exists the way we often assume it does)?
If scientists assume a belief in the objective reality of the ingredients of scientific theories, than this would challenge a scientist’s belief in materialism (and perhaps naturalism) because this seems to imply a realist stance on mathematics. Furthermore if scientists have not subjected their own belief in realism to falsification or the scientific method, is it fair to say their belief in realism is anything other than “faith”? I mean this to be a serious question, and not a rhetorical one: to the religious believer (of any religious or supernatural tradition), they could make a similar argument that their religious belief is pragmatic and explains the world they see. So the difference (from what I can tell) seems to be a trust in falsification and the methodology of science. But how do scientists justify this?
Pragmatism is an interesting idea - I realize all of my research could be done with me living in the matrix or something and I would still see the same results I see. Since I have no way of testing or determining whether I live in the matrix or a “real” external world, am I still justified accepting non-skepticism about the external world?
What I was wanting to point out is in all of these experiments, we are using tools (computers, microscopes, satellites) much more than our 5 empirical senses. By empirical observation I meant the use of our 5 senses, not simply quantitative/qualitative data. This means we are relying on the theories used to build these tools to produce an accurate picture of the world if we are committed to scientific realism. I don’t know any current mathematical or scientific models that don’t have some degree of error (perhaps due to numerical computation).
I don’t know of anyone who considers that to be faith. Do we consider it faith when we don’t expect thermodynamics to reverse itself and create a suffocating vacuum around us at some random moment?
I don’t see how it is faith to come up with ideas of how reality works. We can touch, see, taste, smell, and otherwise observe reality. No faith needed.
Is everything faith? If so, does the word even mean anything anymore?
I don’t know of anyone who considers using tools to be an article of faith. Empirical observations have always included measurements made with tools. We could even say that our own eyes are tools.
Paul, I can’t speak to history of science or philosophy of science, but I think I see assumptions here that won’t hold up to specific examples. I see that T_aquaticus has some of the same points in mind. You and T_aquaticus have information that is specific to scientific practices, which I don’t. So I usually have to rely on questions. But I think I can make a few points here.
What more seems to be going on?
And what does that have to do with faith/trust? If there’s more going on that’s yet to be understood, that seems like impetus to research.
[Sorry. Questions. I’ll try harder to steer from them.]
You better have more than faith or trust. Any fool can draw nonsense and claim it’s a model. There’s more behind the math you use than magic you can believe in. You know that. You know how models are developed and why they work.
There has to be some basic agreement on the way things probably work in order to study the natural world further. Why not start with assuming that things work consistently, because they seem to.
If these assumptions turn out to be wrong, then they will be dealt with. Hasn’t that already happened with physics, and cosmology for example? (I have to let someone much more qualified than me fill in the details.) The work we see going on today didn’t just come out of the box yesterday. The falsification has been going on for a long, long time.
If the methods themselves keep giving results that are consistent with each other, then they might just be working, especially, if one is looking using a number of different tools and strategies.
Do you have examples demonstrate that assuming the laws of nature have been and will remain consistent is unreasonable?
Or outright wrong?
Do you have reason to assume they work differently? How? Why?
I think (in some cases) the religious person’s belief’s ability to explain the world as well as the methodology of the scientist can be put to the same scrutiny. Actually, we see examples of the religious views of the way the world works pretty often around here. And we see very good responses from scientists who carefully and repeatedly explain that one alteration in a natural law to conform reality to Genesis, leads to all sorts of mess with other natural laws, for example.
Of course, there are many beliefs that are untestable (God, forgiveness of sin, the existence of sin, you name it), but some beliefs can be tested or examined logically.
Taking a greater risk, I’ll say, some beliefs can be rejected outright, although scripture seems to support them: superiority of one group over another, for example.
I would be interested in specific examples you might give in real life that would demonstrate the similarities of faith and trust that you have in mind.
We need tools. They extend what we can do with our bodies. I can’t even make it through a regular day without tools everywhere in my life, and particularly magnification tools and screen readers.
Using tools to observe things that are too big, too small, too far away, invisible but present, etc. is only reasonable. The tools that scientists use, again, didn’t just pop out of the box yesterday. They are, themselves, the result of scientific work and engineering – and testing, testing, testing. Often developed to meet a specific need.
I think it could be helpful for you to really examine the development of one specific tool at a time to see what has gone into the thing that is used now. They are not just built up from “theory.”
My mind is already wondering off to the Federal Register where U.S. patents are recorded…How many specific patented components go into an electronic microscope, for example, and how do they work? If the components were patented in the U.S., the registration has to tell how the thing works and what it’s made up of.
I suppose, what I am really proposing throughout this entire, pedestrian-view-post, is to test your assumptions at the ground level with real world examples.
In the case where this is most troubling, I believe Longman captured the sense of herem perfectly when he said that a Canaanite was saved when they acted like a Jew, and a Jew was cutoff when they acted like a Canaanite.
I’ve looked at some of the problem passages and I haven’t found anything that says a man is better than a woman. But maybe you are aware of something I am not.
Mike, I’m trying not to clutter up Paul’s thread with off topic stuff. I understand that’s important to you, too. I am swamped with other reading, study and work today and don’t have time to look for addresses. So, my last response in this vein: for starters, look through the OT laws and compare the monitary and trade value of things associated with males and females (fees, fines, payments, value of offerings at birth,etc.). Keep that in mind, and then start looking at any mention of women, recognizing that they were not valued the same as men. Then look at mentions of men, and notice their cultural primacy. Of course you will find exceptions. They don’t count toward the whole. They are exceptions. Keep them in your pocket. Later compare to what degree the exceptions are exceptional compared to the whole. They stand out.
A lot.
Jesus’s view and treatment of women, all women, was beyond revolutionary.
It’s important to me that the Bible not be mischaracterized, which is why I read Longman’s Confronting OT Controversies. While Jesus was revolutionary in his treatment of women, so I believe was Israel when it followed the Law. Even the creation of Eve from Adam’s side was a picture of equality. I don’t know what the surrounding ANE culture was like, but if I had to guess, I’d say this was a peculiar thing.
I’m not sure this is the only quote where my thought might apply, but here it is: I do believe that one difference between a scientific belief in a statement such as, “The laws of physics do not change from day to day” and a religious belief in some characteristic of God, such as, God is Love. As a scientist, I always accepted my belief in the constancy of the laws of physics as a hypothesis, and also accepted that this hypothesis was acceptable as a basis for other inferences as long as the hypothesis was not falsified. Is this different from the usual idea that I understand religious faith to mean, which is believing something is true, even though it is not objectively proven? If theologians also accept that any unproven belief may or may not be true, then there is no difference. I do believe that too many zealous folks in most religions do not even consider the possibility that their deeply held beliefs could possibly be untrue. But the fact still stands: Believing something does not make it either true or untrue. And I do think that most scientists are more comfortable with that thought about their scientific beliefs (assumptions) than a lot of the religious folks seem to be about their own religious beliefs.
As a scientist, how comfortable are you with considering what philosophy can tell us about the world?
With an observable event, it was either caused by another observable event to which the same question applies, or the event just happened, or the event was caused by something that doesn’t happen.
If you have some familiarity with philosophy, you may recognize the third statement to be a description of an unmoved mover, or something that can affect change without changing.
Notice also, the strange dilemma that the immediate effect of an unmoved mover would appear to come from nothing.
I don’t think any of this proves God, but I think it’s a discussion worth having.
