My fault. I dont particularly care who did what to whom in the middle ages (which was the thread topic) and have no respect for staying on topic on bulletin boards.

I think the inherent conflict (if it exists) is the interesting part, mainly because I think both areas or ways of thinking are important and valuable. Reconciling the conflict and keeping the two unentangled is an important part of being a rational theist, imo.

What is rather ironic with your example is that churches and temples have also killed and tortured _a lot_ of artists throughout the times.

There most definitely is a conflict. It's almost feels artificial.

It all began when somebody looked at religion and thought, "hey, wait, this could be used for mass control!" People were generally ignorant at the time - most still are - so when novel ideas starting emerging from some minds of scientists and philosophers it posed a great threat to the machinations of religious control, because it started to smarten some regular folk up and ask questions that the church didn't have the answers to. Instead of risking looking incompetent and foolish, and losing their power in the process, they burned these thinkers at the stake. This way they would scare the populace into remaining ignorant, and what better way to maintain control over people than keep them out of the loop?

The power that religion wielded was tied to the state, so when things got grossly out of hand, everybody stood up and said that we have to remove this church from our state so that our lives can get back to normal. After this bloody and painstaking event of removing religious power from political affairs, people felt (and were) free to learn about science again. Slowly, but surely, the notion that science is opposed to faith slowly crept up into the cultural subconscious and put on the shoes that were built for it by the religious leaders over the time past.

The current status quo in this kind of thinking (science vs. religion/faith) is the product of power abuse at the highest echelon's of religious leadership from centuries ago. This stuff doesn't just happen overnight. I suspect that the public consciousness (scientists included) would have been very comfortable and open with the idea of mixing religion and science had it not been for the short-sightedness of greed and lust for power. Maybe in a parallel universe....

I do not see how there can be a conflict, at least with Christianity. The bible makes no real scientific claims. Anything that could possible fall under the umbrella of science like the creation of the universe, still does not enter the scientific realm as anything that God does is going to be in the realm of the supernatural and science only deals with the realm of the natural. Science is merely dissecting what I believe to be God's methods.

I think you're on to something here. I think everyone senses a conflict but every person's individual emphasis and interpretation will vary.

I'm postulating (emphasis on postulating) that at the fall in the Garden of Eden that the roles of spiritual power and natural power were reversed and that's why we are all caught up in spiritual warfare on various levels all the time.

God designed the spiritual to be above the natural but at the fall this natural order was somehow severed and/or the order was reversed elevating the natural (flesh) over the spiritual. It is the devils great deception now to divide the scientists from the religious because its a delay tactic for him. He knows the inevitable outcome of the spiritual war but this science/religion conflict and any delay in scientific advancement helps him prolong his stay in Heaven before he is cast down to Earth.

Chaos is pretty much multiplying every where you look. Churches are falling apart, families are falling apart, economies are falling apart, famines are increasing, weather problems abounding, drug problems everywhere you look,
etc.

(Speaking of drugs. I read somewhere that the word "pharmakeia" in Greek means sorcery. Certainly a lot of demonic influence under the influence of drugs or alcohol and that leads to all kinds of criminal acts.)

http://www.searchgodsword.org/lex/gr...gi?number=5331

You said:

So if poets make a truth claim, which both quotes do, and science can't analyze or investigate, then by your reasoning there is a conflict.

"I dont see any scientific reason to think these conflict with science, since they are not factual claims about the world. They are metaphors."

I don't think that Keats really thought that truth and beauty were synonyms. Nor do I think that he really thought that the sum total of the reader's knowledge on earth was that "Beauty is truth".

Do you think the bible says that praying can affect one's chance of surviving a disease?

I think that prayer can make a difference in ones life, yes. Now explain to me how science contradicts that.

I didnt ask you whether you think prayer can make a difference in one's life.

Do you think the bible says that praying can affect one's chance of surviving a disease?

Come on man, are you willfully ignoring questions?

You don't think prayer could affect a disease?

I think it could. Not necessarily in the definitive way I think you want it to but a lot of people get relief from stress by praying and stress is very unhealthy. A lot of physicians really respect the positive outcomes that seem to result from faith.

In holistic medicine the cures are frequently symbiotic. Combo treatments and frequently faith is one of the factors.

Of course, hard to prove definitely but I think God likes his mystery even here.

One of those million and one coincidences that don't count if you tend toward a more objective viewpoint.

It's a yes/no question about interpreting what the bible says, not a question about whether practitioners of holistic medicine respect the positive outcomes that seem to result from faith. Nor is it about whether prayer has any actual effect on disease.

"Do you think the bible says that praying can affect one's chance of surviving a disease?"

Yes it does. I think its at the end of the book of James. You have to have olive oil to annoint with and elders to pray and annoint you.

A metaphor isn't a falsehood. It's a poetic way of expressing TRUTH .
Since it isn't a scientific truth, isn't that a conflict?

I dont think that's right. I think at best, a metaphor is a poetic way of expressing an opinion and sometimes not even that - sometimes it's just a trigger to make us think.

What "truth" do you think Keats was expressing? It will be different from the "truth" that someone else thinks he's expressing - the meaning is dependent on the receiver of the message as well as the sender.

This is not the same as some claim about the age of the earth or the atomic mass of sodium (except in a trivial way) - such statements are qualitatively different.

I think this is consistent with your previous statements.

I think artists believe they are offering more than an opinion and though figures of speech are meant to trigger our thought, they generally aim for some truth as the object of our thought. You should read some of Lewis and others on aesthetics.

The language of art often can't be reduced to discursive reasoning - that's why it's art. But that doesn't lessen it's truth - on the contrary, many think it heightens it. What do you think Shakespeare meant about acting holding up a mirror to nature?

I'm sure Keats, Shakespeare and every other artist worth anything felt they were expressing truth, not just an opinion. I think specifically Keats felt that anything that was true was beautiful and anything truly beautiful was also true - and he probably thought of true as something larger than mere facticity.


As for the "science/faith" conflict, the important things of faith that are true are qualitatively different from the empirical facts and behavioral laws of nature. "God is love" or "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son" or "You must be born again" are not in conflict with science, but they are meant to be factual propositions about reality. I literally can't think of any factual statement of the Bible that directly contradicts any proven fact or law of science. Not one.

This is certainly an area of ignorance for me. Nonetheless (at least at the moment), I think statements of religion are different from statements of art are different from statements of science. I think all of them have similarities and differences and that one of the things science and religion have in common is that they often make claims about the physical world - one of their differences is in the nature of us coming to learn such putative facts.
Water into wine? Parting the red sea?

The Bible doesn't make scientific claims about the physical world - it makes truth claims about reality, as does art.

The Bible doesn't say water changed into wine, it says Jesus changed it, i.e., miracle. Science CAN'T make a claim about that, thus no conflict. Ditto red sea.

Surely the bible claims that the red sea parted - that may have left physical evidence, no? It certainly seems to me to be a claim about the physical world (if interpreted literally).

I'm not sure what a scientific claim is if "someone changed this water into wine" is not one but "this water changed into wine" is.

EDIT: By the way I agree with "The Bible doesn't make scientific claims about the physical world - it makes truth claims about reality, as does art." but I'm specifically discussing a literal interpretation here (in case it appears this was somehow different from positions I've taken before). I think taking a figurative interpretation of the bible is one way of reconciling what is, on the face of it, a conflict.

Of course allegations of fact can be investigated. But do you really claim there's no difference between saying "some water changed into wine for no apparent reason" and "God changed some water into wine"? Science can investigate whether or not something is wine but how would it determine whether or not it was God who did it?

And none of this has to do with figurative interpretation - changing water into wine isn't a metaphor, and where the Bible does use figurative language( "Jesus is the Lamb of God") it means to convey a literal, usually non-scientific, truth.

There is definitely a difference, however I dont see that something happening by chance and something happening by the will of an intelligent being makes one scientific and the other not.
It can (possibly) investigate whether it happened. The scientific claim that literal interpretations of the bible make is that it did. Why it happened is a non-scientific claim that the bible also makes.

It's as close to declarative facts as science gets that water doesnt change into wine - the atoms making up the molecules of water can't spontaneously rearrange to make wine.

There are some religions which claim that it does sometimes - this contradicts what science tells us about the world. (They also have a scientifically untestable reason as to why).

The conflict which I alluded to is that a purely scientific approach says "We only accept empirically verifiable evidence. Anything else doesnt count." (and therefore the water didnt turn into wine) Religion says there are other sources of evidence which are acceptable and that we can confidently talk about things and come to know facts which are not empirically testable.
I agree with the last part, I disagree with the first. I think the bible is almost exclusively figurative. (Obviously I'm not trying to convince you of that as a fact, however I think it's worth making that difference in our views explicit, at least for comprehension purposes).

Here's a long definition of science from wiki:

This would seem to exclude miracles done by supernatural power as objects of scientific investigation - not whether the event happened, but how.

The Bible doesn't - on the contrary, it mentions there is fixed order in the universe.

Yet again, this isn't what the Bible claims happened.

You're the only person I've ever heard say this. It certainly isn't the position of any major theologian or Christian denomination.

Science has nothing to say about whether there is a personal God who is capable of preforming supernatural acts.

What Science does say is that the world normally works in one of the ways it could if there is no God OR altenatively one of the ways it could if there is a personal God who doesn't usually "micromanage". In other words it doesn't proclaim that miracles can't happen or even that miracles don't happen. It just explains and predicts what happens when there isn't a miracle worker intervening. Science does, howeve show that God is not an incessant micromanager.

The stupidity of most religions is not exposed by Science but rather by MATH. Specifically Probability and Statistics, with the help of investigators and magicians. Again they can't prove that a miracle worker does not exist. But they can prove that if he does exist he performs such miracles with incredibly rare frequency. Very likely ZERO frequency.

In other words if you want to believe that God created the universe and will give you an afterlife, neither Math or Science can refute you. Likewise if you believe that Christ was ressurected. At least for now. Once you throw in the idea that there was a worldwide flood or that the Sun stood still or that most animals did not evolve from others, Science will smack you down. And if you believe that miracles are occurring daily or that prayers are routinely answered, Math will show you to be a moron.