Quote:
Originally Posted by d2_e4
I would like you to answer one question - "how do you reconcile logic with religion?". Before you do, I would like to propose my definitions of these terms:
- Religion: A belief that we are here as a result of a preternatural creator, who is omnipresent and omniscient. This creator wants us to adhere to the teachings of the ancients, and if we don't, bad things will happen.
- Logic: The syllogistic system that the human race has developed to demonstrate that the combination of a number of precepts and a non-fallacious argument must lead to a true conclusion. Conversely, if the precepts are false, or the argument fallacious, then the conclusion may be false.
There's a lot that you've embedded into your definitions. First, your concept of "religion" falls pretty far outside of the normally accepted definitions. Not all religions are theistic. Not all require omniscience or omnipresence. Not all require adherence to specific behaviors that are described by "the ancients."
Similarly, claiming that logic has humanity as its origins presupposes a lot of information.
I'd be glad to engage you in those things, but...
Quote:
Originally Posted by d2_e4
If you genuinely believe this, I retract my last statement about your being interested in a genuine discussion. And by the way, thank you for going some way towards proving my OP.
If you genuinely believe that you can prove statements in some sort of absolute way that the universe is older than a few seconds, please demonstrate this. What you ought to discover if you're thinking things through is that there are a whole lot of assumptions that go into the scientific method (which isn't to say that those assumptions are bad). You should also discover that absolute proofs of statements is beyond what science claims to do.
If you read the statement and think carefully about it, you should find that it's actually not that controversial. You should also read the posts around it to understand the context in which the claim was made.
I'll let you contemplate these things and decide for yourself how you would like to continue, or if you would choose not to continue.