If you want to find out how science works, don't you think it would be useful to spend time with scientists?

If you want to be a real scientist (say a biologist), you must do more than just read a textbook on biology. You have to engage the topic in the company of other biologists.

FYP?

Your suggestion that someone study religion to move from the most primitive form of deism toward and understanding of "what god wants" shows an incredible amount of bias at a fundamental level.

Why in the world would I start out assuming that anything that any combination of morality plays, laws, history, or poetry, created by any culture(s) long ago that have been picked up on the waves of time and carried down through the years across many cultures and environments such that they survive even today, would have anything whatsoever to offer about the nature of the universe that is unobservable, or the ancient history of the universe going so far back in time that the very notion of time may no longer make sense and so far different in energy / temperature / dimension, etc., than anything we are familiar with that physics as we know it breaks down and fails to accurately describe it?

Why should it stand to reason that the oral traditions, eventually recorded, transcribed, translated, compiled, edited, censored, and bastardized (intentionally and unintentionally) by a thousand different wars and cultural shifts over the centuries, would offer profound insights into the origin of life, the nature of consciousness, or the ideal in law and morality for a happy, healthy, and long lasting life for all sentient creatures the world over?

When it appears that religion has sociological explanations for its very existence, and evolutionary explanations for our capacity to entertain it, and psychological evidence of our proclivity to assign agency and to see patterns where there are none, why would I assume that religion isn't exactly what it seems: man made, fallible, exploitative, exploitable, and by and large determined (at present) by where you happened to be born? (Even though I'm sure you've studied them all and "figured out" that Christianity is right.)

dude are your serious with this?

we, as humans, can only take things for what they're worth, based on our pool of knowledge of to this point.

sitting in a church with a dude yelling about passages written by desert dwellers thousands of years ago is not at all the same as sitting in a lab and learning about (x) type of science.

are you going to tell me that i should believe your god is real, just as easily as i should believe a certain acid will burn me if i see a scientist dump some on a bunch of rats, and i personally witness their skin melting?

you are so far out there, bro...really. i don't even know why i ever reply to you. i guess it's a certain fascination with someone so smart being so dumb at the same time.

well, there was this exchange...

you claimed to have "put up", but in this case, "putting up" can only be achieved by providing what OP has asked for. that you did not do, which was my point...you didn't put up, you told OP he's dumb.

as for the rest of your post, fair enough.

I'm not telling you what you should believe about God, acid, or rats. This has nothing to do with the statements you made previously.

Your argument was primarily one of how one goes about discovering knowledge. You called it "brainwashing" to spend time with Christians to find out about Christianity. I pointed out that you should spend time with scientists if you really want to find out about science. Do you dispute this?

I said that reading books about Christianity will probably not make you into a Christian. I also said that reading books about science will probably not make you into a scientist. Do you agree?

So all of this fluff that you're throwing out there doesn't hide the fact that if you are interested in becoming something, you should spend time around those who already are.

Edit: You don't even need to be interested in "becoming." Even if you're just trying to find out information, it's useful to spend time with someone who already is.

when theists cannot admit that the bible isn't literal fact for everyone to follow (they can have whatever personal beliefs they want), its impossible and pointless to continue the discussion any further.

think about it----you cannot have a logical, open-minded, rational conversation with someone like this. why continue to discuss anything when they have already proven they are incapable of rational thought?!

now it's "find out about Christianity", not "find true faith", eh?

you said this, word for word? i'm having trouble finding where you said that... sure it wasn't the true faith thing again, or perhaps you're referring to a much earlier post?

probably not, sure.

but one doesn't need to spend time around any christians to learn what every last shred of evidence for the religion being true consists of. so wtf is your point?

you made a very specific claim, to which I made a very specific reply. is it that hard for you to stay on task? not once in this response did you mention "true faith", which was the entire basis of my "attack" on your post.

so excuse me while i lol at you calling my posts "fluff"

Huh? He started a thread with mostly just insults about how bad theists are. I was just pointing out how absurd that is when unprovoked. Pathetic? I guess if you need to continue to put others down to make yourself feel better.

Does knowing a lot about science make one a scientist? Are you saying that you still don't get the distinction?

Are you parsing between "faith" and "true Christianity" here? Meh. I'll equate those two concepts. I'm just trying to distinguish orthodoxy statements with faith in those orthodoxy statements.

Are you sure of this claim? Care to try to prove it?

Which claim? This one?

Knowing a lot of information about science does not make one a scientist. Knowing a lot about Christianity does not make one a Christian, nor does it give people "true faith." As stated before, faith is trust based on knowledge. You keep focusing on knowledge without ever addressing trust.

They cherry pick the bible, they do not believe the word of God is the will of God, they do not believe that its God inspired.

They do not know HOW to rightly divide the word and they break one major principle all the time.

2Pe 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

They are all private interpretors of the bible, most of them. Private interpretation means they have their opinon about what it says, you are not to do that at all, you are to study the word from the principles within it, and let the word speak for itself and let the word define itself. '

The word of God is to primarily define itself from within its ownself, I wish I could teach people how to do this on a forum but its way to detailed, its not complicated though, much of it is just simple common sense.

You are to learn the definitions of the words in the bible by how the words are used in other places within the bible.

The word of God actually operates almost like a dictionary, it has keys and signposts that need to be learned, remembered and followed in order to rightly divide it and understand it.

correct....I am asking theist to give me reasons why they believe what they do and why.....and these reasons must be verifiable or i wont spend 1 min on them.

If your beliefs lead to absurdity....they are probably wrong.

sorry been gone out of town (got new I/O AK-47)

The Abrahamic religions make it clear that the "mind of God" is unknowable by man. Why God chooses to take an innocent life at an early age or let a vile human prosper is not for us to lose hairs over. It doesn't mean we can't question it, only that our understanding is extremely limited and that we should always keep this in mind when we do end up questioning. And more importantly that our faith isn't lost in asking these questions.

If you adhere to a religious doctrine and set of tenets, then your lifestyle will be guided by them. This is what's meant by "what God wants." It does not take a requirement of understanding an omnipotent and omniscient mind in order to live a pious life as per a religion. Ask yourself how a limited, finite mind that isn't even capable of knowing every tiny event from every step of every insect to every action of every person in the world be capable of understanding something as great as the mind of God? You're pushing against a mountain.

Focus on asking the right questions.

Even though your rebuke is nullified by what's above, I'll do the honour of replying to rest of your post.

Get this either/or thinking of science and religion out your head. I don't know when this false dilemma appeared, but you'd be doing a disservice to yourself by perpetuating this false notion that you must pick between religion or science and that the two are incompatible.

Religion tells us the what and the why. Science fills in the spaces with the how. There are some things that we simply know we cannot know of, no matter which angle we approach it from. Things like the experience of being outside of time. These are things which neither can offer an answer.

It stands to reason, because of your faulty reasoning. You're suggesting that the tradition itself is erroneous because of the politics that surrounded it in times following. By your line of reasoning democracy should be discarded as well, since not only was that an ancient Greek tradition thought up by people who had slave trading among other backwards practices at the time, but there were plenty of wars and cultural shifts due of it.

And what if it actually does? Have you personally studied every major religion for its ideas on the origins of life and universe + consciousness, or the ideal for happiness? I have, and some of the ideas are fascinating.

Sociology doesn't explain religion's existence, nor does it try to. It studies the relationship between religion and the societies in which they function in. The evolutionary explanation you're talking about is linking our natural curiosity with unknown variables in our environments, and makes a loose connection with religion in that religion attempts to treat those unknown variables. It only assumes the rise of religion because of this. Our tendency to see patterns where there are none does not mean that there are no patterns, and the assignment of agency is a philosophical proposition, not a psychological tendency.

None of these things should lead to your conclusions, let alone the fact that "what it seems" is a matter of opinion, unless you're appealing to your emotions in which case I can understand how you feel.

Aaron,

Do you not believe in probabilities, or are you just acting like you don't believe in probabilities?

Serious question.

Glad to hear you admit that all those books "man" wrote 1500-3000 years ago are bull****.

Define what you mean by "believe in probabilities"? Do I believe that the theory of probability can be used to model situations? Yes. Do I believe that probabilities are what ultimately justify all beliefs? No.

Now you're just putting words in my mouth.

If I tell you to do something, you can infer my intent, right? In other word you can guess as to what's going on in my mind. Say, I tell you to go fetch me a glass of water, you may infer that I'm thirsty. You might be incorrect however, and you may see that I actually intended to give the glass of water to a friend in the other room that happened to be thirsty. Or I may have wanted to water a plant. Or whatever. In this same regard because we say have a book with some instructions from God, it does not mean that we know exactly what's going on in the divine mind. We can guess but we cannot be sure, unless it explicitly says otherwise.

Without knowing the mind of God there can be no rules, guidelines, tenants. There can be nothing. To "know" what he wants he must make it available with his mind. How do Abrahamic religions know God doesn't want me to commit adultery ? He must of communicated that information to someone with his mind. After that info was given we know that aspect of Gods mind. Religion is all about speaking for and knowing the mind of God and every rule given is an insight into Gods mind.

Somehow I just KNEW this would happen when I engaged.

I'm asking if your religious (read: metaphysical) beliefs are exempt from the probabilities you use to gauge everything else (read: physical) in your life. If so, how do you differentiate one non-probabilistic belief from another?

Holy books explicitly say a lot! Do you believe them when they do? (remember that they were written by man)

Please read the post directly above yours.

If the message is written, the mere fact that it's written by man does not make it incorrect or fallible. I could be wrong but it appears that you're implying this. Writing stuff down is a great way to keep track of things, you know.

You were right to predict it that I would ask for clarification if I didn't understand what you were asking.

There's an underlying implication here that I reject, which is that I make most of my decisions based on probabilistic reasoning. I suppose it's possible that I actually do, but I'm certainly not cognitively aware of the calculations as they happen. If I'm making an unprotected left turn in traffic, I don't think that I have a 97% chance of success if I turn right now to direct me as to whether I make the turn now or wait for the next gap.

So I don't really know how I differentiate non-probabilistic belief with probabilistic belief except for when I'm able to explicitly assign numerical values (or at least ranges of values) to situations, and then spend the time to actually compute them.

Furthermore, neuroscience research seems to indicate that people generally do not make decisions through purely rational mechanisms, anyway.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=101334645

I did. I know your mind wants water.

I still cant know what God wants without knowing some aspect of his mind. How do you know God doesn't want me to commit adultery?

You mean writing stuff down about the unknowable mind of God so that later we can access this unknowable information and pretend to know what it says?

You're not making much sense.

No matter how convoluted you try to make this, I will keep going back to the basics. Here:

Let's say I make a claim to you. Do you assign probabilities to this claim, or do you accept whatever it is you hear come out of my mouth at face value?

Your posts in this thread seem to imply the latter, but I don't think you really do that. Do you?

I certainly wouldn't assign a numerical value as probability, but if I'm asked to make a judgment of some sort, I'll make a judgment of some sort. There will be some sense of whether I believe or disbelieve, and some associated sense of confidence in that assessment. But I don't have any clear sense at all what exactly would go into either one of those assessments. Depending on the type of claim, I'm likely to react in different ways (as does everyone).

Can you be more explicit about which posts you're referring to? I don't really know what you're trying to get at.