Longshot said:
Ah, I see what you're going at, but I respectfully disagree, at a principal level. I believe, for lack of better word, in science. But at a fundemental level, it is no more "true" than God.
On this we disagree.
We can get, philosophically speaking, all the way to 'I think therefore I am' before we have to make an assumption we cannot prove to be true. This assumption is the denial of the 'Matrix' scenario, that we are in fact not being deceived by demons or machines and that we are not brains in a jar.
We assume that the world we perceive is in fact real and independent of our own existance.
For us humans to function within this world, everyone must make this assumption weather they know it or not. Otherwise we might as well walk through walls and jump off high cliffs, because it's only false sensory input, right?
Science then continues from this, gathering evidence, doing trials and forming theories.
Whereas all religions go one assumption further: Supernatural exists, despite us not having any hint of it's existance. This is justified with varying means and varying levels of success, though never quite fully to scientific standards.
There, even at square one, science is one up on religions because it makes one unprovable assumption less and it's only own assumption seems to be true.
Yes, science can back it's theories up with "evidence", but it might still be as wrong.
Yes, but if science indeed is entirely wrong then we are essentially brains in a jar. Otherwise there is always some truth to the knowledge acquired and some true knowledge is better than no knowledge at all, true or false.
EDIT: And if our own perceptions cannot be relied upon, what possible knowledge could we have of any possible gods? Indeed, what true knowledge at all could we have, on any subject? This scenario destroyes science, personal intuition and messages from 'gods'.
Many a scientific theory has had plenty of evidence behind it, only to be replaced by a different answer, later on.
Yet never the facts go away, previous discoveries of factual information are always accounted for. It is only the explanation which differs or the amount of factual knowledge we have available. No true knowledge is ever lost during the process.
Let us take the Atom as an example. Once thought to be the basic building block of everything. Yet as more and more knoeledge was discovered, this hypothesis was discarded. The atom was instead composed of electron, neutrons and protons. Yet atoms themselves did not magically disappear and the properties we had previously observed were still there. We simply had more knowledge of the truth of things.
What that tells us, is that we can't be sure of the answers.
Of course not. However, science is the best method known to mankind that can get us close and closer to finding those answers.
We choose to "believe in them".
Again, you are using the word 'believe' as one might use the word 'faith', when the meaning that
should be applied is nowhere close to the meaning of 'faith'. He 'believe' in it because it works. It has worked before and likely will continue to work. It produces results in a consistent manner. Unlike any other alternative. You 'believe' that the sun will rise tomorrow because it always before has. Sure, you can't be
certain of it, but as far as practicality goes it always has and is therefore certain as far a we can say anything is certain.
Sure, there's a good likelyhood, what, with all the evicence and such. But is evidence all that seperates religion from science?
No, there is also the self-correcting cycle based on repeatability and the fact that in science all non-mathematical knowledge is always provisional to a degree and hence subject to change if the change can be shown to lead us closer to the truth of things.
For there are loads of religious evidence. There are historical records,
These are not evidence of anything else that humans lived. If I tell you I had cereal for breakfast, you would be unlikely to doubt me. Because eating cereal for breakfast is fairly commonplace, there is nothing extraordinary in it.
But if I claimed that I ate my bowl of cereal for breakfast while on the Moon, you might doubt my claims. Because visiting the moon is rare and a random guy on the internet saying he has been on the moon is unlikely.
If I claimed I had breakfast with the god Odin in Valhalla while watching the Big bang happen, you might call me delusional. Because there is no evidence that I did that or even evidence that it is even possible.
The more extraordinary my claim, the more extraordinary the evidence you would require to believe it.
We have historical evidence that both Russia and Japan exist. Does this mean that Red Alert 3 is an accurate description of history? We also know that Eqypt existed over 2000 years ago and have archeological evidence of the pharaos. Should we therefore believe they were gods and the Eqyptian Pantheon is true?
Of course not. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I can make signs, so can Jack, Pete and Susan. And every insane person with hallucinations hear otherworldly voices. Should we take these as evidence...?
and there is existence itself, that Science can't really explain satisfactory, at least not to my knowledge.
So a blind guess made by sheep farmers some 3000 years ago can? And you accept that a guy with a beard wiggled his nose, clapped his hands, wished upon a falling star and said 'Alakazam!' is better explanation than the partial one that science has to offer?
in fact, when it comes to existence, religion really has got the more likely explanation, if only because it is coherent within it's own logic.
Coherent with it's own logic!? That's the best laugh of the day.
Let's take the bible shall we? Genesis 1, chapter 1. God creates, among other things and in the following order: Light, solid ground, oceans, plants with seeds, stars moon and the sun, fish sea mammals and birds, land animals and finally human.
Chapter 2. The order of creation is solid ground and things before that, humans, plants, land animals, birds. No mention of sea animals.
We have a contradiction within the first two chapters.
Internal logic, eh? Sure, because the answer to everything is 'Goddidit!'. And that is the worst non-explanation there is. It says nothing of how did it, how long ago, for what purpose etc...
But I know we have to have faith in that the results science make, are correct. Else, how could I live in the modern world, if I didn't trust science? I couldn't drive a car, I couldn't take medication, I could nothing.
But I feel it's important, at a principal level, to acknowledge that science knows nothing.
On the contrary, science knows plenty. But nothing absolute beyond the artificial realm of mathematics. And if it is absolute 'truths' disguising baseless assertions is what you want, then religion is the way to go. However, if actual true knowledge is what you are after, absolute or not, then science wins hands down.
And even if you go for the 'absolute truths', whose absolute truth will you have faith in? The christians? The Jews? Hinduists ? Young-Earth Creationists? Because they all claim they are the sole holders of absolute truth and the others are wrong...
