The Impact of Science on the Concept of God

[heusdens]

Originally posted by Iacchus32
What about the freedom to learn from one's mistakes? If we put too many restrictions on what freedom is supposed to entail, if nothing more than to root out any possible "narrow mindedness," then how much freedom does that leave us? And, by the time I start hearing "my way or the highway," then I realize that maybe people don't deserve their freedom, although it does indeed exist.

I'm sorry, you can't have freedom without the freedom of religion.

Would it imply mankind would no longer be free as religion goes extinct? I don't think so.

 

[Iacchus32]

Originally posted by heusdens
Would it imply mankind would no longer be free as religion goes extinct? I don't think so.

Before we can answer this we need to establish whether there was anything substantial to religion in the first place, otherwise, it's not abouts to die.

Besides that, if you take away our right to our beliefs, then you take away our freedom. This is the one fundamental idea (I believe) which made the United States so prosperous.

 

[BoulderHead]

I don't advocate force. I want freedom from force, actually. There need not be any force used against people to make them surrender religious beliefs. That would only drive it underground where it might become even more powerful.

They know that we represent reason and science, and, however confident they may be in their beliefs, they fear that we will overthrow their gods. Not ncessarily through any deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion. Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor but they have few followers now."
Arthur C. Clarke

 

[Iacchus32]

Originally posted by BoulderHead
I don't advocate force. I want freedom from force, actually. There need not be any force used against people to make them surrender religious beliefs. That would under drive it underground where it might become even more powerful.

They know that we represent reason and science, and, however confident they may be in their beliefs, they fear that we will overthrow their gods. Not ncessarily through any deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion. Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor but they have few followers now."
Arthur C. Clarke

If you lay something to rest, you better be sure to give it a proper burial, otherwise it will come back to haunt you.

 

[BoulderHead]

Originally posted by Iacchus32
If you lay something to rest, you better be sure to give it a proper burial, otherwise it will come back to haunt you.

But on the other hand if it simply dies and rots away, why bother with a funeral?

 

[Iacchus32]

Originally posted by BoulderHead
But on the other hand if it simply dies and rots away, why bother with a funeral?

It's like I said ... Before we can answer this we need to establish whether there was anything substantial to religion in the first place, otherwise, it's not abouts to die.

 

[BoulderHead]

Ok, let me try to get back to my topic;
I think there is a relationship in this topic to science being involved so intentionally with the material world that If a religion proclaims a ‘cow’ to be sacred, for example, that science will not agree and explain a cow as a biological creature. If a rock is proclaimed to be ‘holy’ then science will say the rock is just so much mineral matter. If God is proclaimed to be fire, earth, wind, etc, then science will explain this away too. In short, if you are able to define god as something we are able to test and experiment on then after testing and experimentation it may/will never be ruled as god, just some element of the natural world or force of nature (and note that whether god might actually be any of those things is a tad beside the point here). So, barring absolute knowledge god can never be ruled out of the picture with 100% certainty. But, with each stone unturned by science as we go along, god will never be hiding under it.
On a more personal level, if you tell me that God exists I might say; “yes, you might be right”. But, if you define your god to be living inside the heart of a palm tree I would tell you “I doubt it”. By saying that god is everything you present an un-testable and I think ‘vague’ concept of god that one may choose to believe or not. If god ‘hides’ in the mysterious, the unexplained, the un-testable, ‘he’ has a better chance of being believed in.

[edit]
I don't how to put this in a way that I'm certain Wu Li will accept, but I'd like to think I'm trying to.

 

[devil5_advocate]

I don't how to put this in a way that I'm certain Wu Li will accept, but I'd like to think I'm trying to.

Haha, one always hopes...that is man's last right when all's said and done.

 

[heusdens]

Originally posted by Iacchus32
Before we can answer this we need to establish whether there was anything substantial to religion in the first place, otherwise, it's not abouts to die.

The substantiability of religion is inherently there on the basis of the limited and relative knowledge we have had and always will have, although our knowledge is ever growing and improving.

Besides that, if you take away our right to our beliefs, then you take away our freedom. This is the one fundamental idea (I believe) which made the United States so prosperous.

Eh. You mean an idea that made so many other countries to suffer?

You have to separate freedom from religion.
There is no implication that people would have less freedom when they are free of religious beliefs or superstition.

If that is not the case, then please proof that to me.

In the end we have to deal with only human freedom. Any human freedom stops where it limits some other humans freedom. So freedom is an inherently inter-human relation, it must be based on how all humans relate to each other. And one of the ways humans relate to each other, is through the economy.

And we still have to consider that the way the current economy in fact works, makes in some places of the world people terrible rich, and somehwere else, makes people terribly poor.

Which then can be stated as that some of the economic mechanisms, that exist, are harmfull for human freedom. Which urges us to rethink how the economy works, and that an economy that painfully hurts the freedom of a large amount of the population, while on the other side, providing excess of goods for a minority, can not be a good concept of how the economy should work, provided the fact that economic relations and activities, serve the purpose of setting humans free, provide for their real needs, and so on.

This could in fact mean, that - in order to liberate a majority of people that suffer under these conditions - we need to limit the (economic) freedom of a minority, that profit from these existing relations. All goaled towards providing an equal amount of freedom to all human beings.

Which is a human goal, and what is freedom all about.