Thank-you Patrick.
I take faith as an action, and so faith means belief, a verb, not a noun. The object or person etc., that I believe in (substitute what/whom you will) is the noun. And so I think a person can believe, or have faith in science without the added pretending.
I believe that having faith in God does differ from faith in science because the first is not testable by science, but can be seen and re-affirmed in different ways. The heart soul and mind believes, and scientists cannot ever disprove God.
The thing is, I don’t understand why science and belief in God must compete IE: one be true while the other untrue?
They seem to me as completely different, one spiritual, dealing in matters of the heart, the other dealing with physical matter, dimensions of this world, universe galaxy etc.
Marlene,
I am trying to understand what you mean by “faith as an action”. I don’t know what that means. Can you define faith? Also I don’t know what you mean by “spiritual”. Can you describe it as well?
Thanks,
Patrick
Patrick,
Sorry, imo faith is synonymous with belief or trust, IE I trust/believe the stairs will hold my weight etc. or “I have faith the stairs will…” And so faith in science is believing in science, something I do. Faith is also a noun, thing you have IE "My faith, or religion"
Spiritual person: one who believes there is at least one other dimension unseen by the naked eye, a spiritual realm.
As an engineer, I won’t use those terms at all. I know that the stairs will hold my weight because it was designed and properly installed and tested to meet building codes that far exceed my weight.
I don’t have faith in science. I look at the results. Are they testable, falsifiable, can I reproduce them. If so the results are accepted as provisionally true until new results show them untrue.
That is how science works. Faith is the opposite. Faith pretends something is true first, then hold on to that belief even with mounting evidence to the contrary.
I have some questions.
When another Christian, or even non-Christian asks me why I believe in evolution, (which I do) and yet at the same time believe the written word of the Bible as truth, what can I say? Although Genesis 1 and 2 seem to read as literal, they are not really? God made it “simple” for the people of the day? The Bible is not meant as a science text book? but rather … word of God showing us a part of who he is? Some parts of the Bible are literal, others not, pick and choose for yourself? (I guess that wouldn’t be a bad thing. I feel that the only reason I am keeping my faith in God through this discovery process (truth of evolution) is because of the real miracles that have happened personally in my life, which absolutely will not allow me to disbelieve… but they are not valuable to majority of others as proof of God.
You could go with the Biologos view and leave it at that.
Nothing profound here. To live in the modern world, yes I have to accept that the world operates the way that it does. I drop a bottle and it drops to the floor and shatters. I will never see that the reverse happening. I see the world around me and can explain most things without involving anything supernatural or metaphysical as you say. I can love, have compassion, virtue, justice, purpose and meaning without gods, spirits, devils, talking snakes, ESP, astrology, superstitions, mystics, charmans, divinities, trinities, lords, and masters.
If you meant that the event was sad because it what made you feel sad, that is what you should say what have you said, rather than the event was sad.
Of course you realize that subjective morals and cultural norms are based on meaningless myths. LIfe " is a tale, told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
That is true, morals and cultural norms are in large measure based on myths, superstitions, fear mongering from long ago as well as a lot of “that is the way we have always done it around here”.
@Patrick
If you think that morals and values are not based on reason, why do you seem to think that they are important?
Moral and values tend to be tribal, group ideas evolved over decades but still subject to change. You are taught these as a child and usually develop them based on where you live, the time period when you live, your parents and the society you live in. As you grow older societies moral and values tend to move with the younger generation coming up, leaving the older persons with their “older” morals/values. Reason on the other hand transcends moral and values and tends to grow with age. Reason is the sum of your education, your experiences and your own conclusions about the world. It is the highest level and hardest to stay focused on as you then to fall back on instinct first and morals/societal values second.
Now as I understand you, you have three levels of morality.
The lowest is instinct, the next highest is culturally conditioned which changes with each generation, and the highest is reason.
First question I have is where is science in this pyramid. You said that science was going to make things better, which should include morality I hope.
In terms of Instinct it would seem that if you accept Darwinian evolution that instinct, our basic human way of looking at things is dictated by our selfish genes. That is what Dawkins said. If se then we all start from a hostile point of view.
At the second level our culture this is a common experience. Society is trying to make us social human beings. Today much of this comes not from parents, but from peers, which is why morals and values change with generations.
The third and highest level is reason, which sounds like metaphysics to me as we try to make sense out of our experiences and our knowledge. The problem I still have with your saying that Reality has no objective meaning and purpose, is that Reason needs an objective Reality within to work.
To have a rational, reasonable life we need an objective Reality governed by objective rational rules and guidelines. That does not mean that these rules have to be always the same, because they are relational. People need to treat others as the individuals they are and living in the changing times that we live in.
That is why the Golden Rule, “Love and respect others as you would others love and respect you,” is so good. It is rational, and yet it is not so complicated that almost if not all people can understand it.
However it expects that most people are not basically selfish, so it does not agree with Darwinism. Also it believes that people do have free will, which is contrary to what people like Jerry Coyne, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris say based on their reading of neurological science. See the article Why We Have Free Will by Eddy Nahmias, Scientific American Magazine, Jan, 2015, p. 77 - 80.
I don’t have three levels of morality. I just have one - my own morality. It changes as I live (and get older). It is based on my basic instincts for survival and self preservation. It is molded by my upbringing, the society that I live in, and most importantly the wisdom that I have acquired through formal education, career, continued learning, and just living. I don’t live by golden rules or any rules, however there are certain conventions, habits, and norms that I will do over and over again 99% of the time. The whole free will discussion is an area of scientific investigation. I read the article in SA. It says that 99% of the time we will do things based on past habits. The remaining 1% of the time requires allot of energy and a lot of reason to change directions.
Patrick, I am glad that you have a morality. We all need a yardstick to judge what we see is going on around us. We all need to make decisions as to what we should do if anything to make things better.
Also I think that is good and wise to try to anticipate things that might happen before they happen, so we can prevent and react in a reasonable fashion. Life can be complicated and at times we need to rethink where we stand on a particular issue.
Change is not easy, but it is better to anticipate and change because one wants to, rather than wait and change because one has to.
Thank, glad your glad that I have a morality. When you say that we all need a “yardstick to judge”. Well yes, but I am the judge of my actions. And most of the time I am a very critical judge, as after doing something (or not doing something), I usually say to myself I should (shouldn’t) have done this or that. I think that is one of the problems with modern human thought is that we think too much. We over analyze everything. He said, and then she said that, and then I was thinking about doing that. And it is usually very repetitive. Once we stop this maddening noise and just sit quiet on a park bench and just look at the world without thinking about it, we can enjoy living.
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