Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[BigMike]

Jesus and other prophets explain and describe eternal goodness and truth as it affects morality.

Whenever somebody says something like this, I know for certain that they've been infected with Western secular liberal propaganda. They don't know what Jesus Christ actually said, relative to what other "prophets," as they call themselves, said.

For example, Jesus said "Love your enemies." Mohammed said, "Kill them." If both Jesus Christ and Mo are celebrated as "prophets," which one told us about "eternal goodness and truth"? They commanded the moral opposite in both attitude and action.

God or nature is not all -powerful as neither God nor nature has any intentions concerning future events; future events are influenced by natural laws and human endeavours.

That's Deism. And it's another contradiction. Because Jesus said that God has definite intentions for both us and for the future. So if a "prophet," a Deistic one, says God does not, how do we reconcile those two?

I am a deist who is aided by the teaching of Jesus and other sages .

There's your problem: if you're a Deist, and if you're led by these contrary "sages," then you cannot be led by Jesus Christ.

Your quotation from Augustine is more explicit than mine and I like your discussion of it.

I think you had the general idea right: I was just clarifying. It's an interesting point Augustine makes, and I've thought long about it. However, Augustine was not a prophet, so how seriously we have to take his claim is not certain. It's certainly worth thinking about.

Immanuel, your argument rests on a foundation of pure nonsense. The belief in divinities—whether it's your specific version of God or anyone else's—is utterly unsubstantiated by evidence. It’s based entirely on ancient hearsay, selective interpretations of texts, and the desperate desire for moral and existential certainty in an uncertain universe. This isn’t deep insight—it’s wishful thinking masquerading as truth.

And your claim that someone's perspective is "infected with Western secular liberal propaganda"? That’s just too stupid to warrant serious engagement. It's a laughable, knee-jerk dismissal of any viewpoint that doesn’t align with your own dogmatic beliefs. It reeks of intellectual laziness and an inability to engage in honest debate. Are you really suggesting that basic observations about the contradictions in prophetic teachings, or the lack of evidence for divine intervention, are all part of some liberal conspiracy? Come on.

Your cherry-picking of religious figures is equally ridiculous. You quote Jesus and Mohammed out of context as though that settles some grand moral debate, while ignoring the oceans of contradictions and complexities within all religious traditions. This simplistic dichotomy you’re trying to draw only proves your unwillingness—or inability—to grapple with the nuanced reality of human culture and history.

So let’s be clear: belief in divinities is a choice to embrace unprovable claims and contradictions while rejecting evidence-based understanding of the universe. Trying to dress that up as a moral or philosophical high ground is laughable at best, and a display of outright intellectual cowardice at worst. If you want to argue that your God is real, then show your evidence—not just your faith-based ramblings. If you can’t, then maybe it’s time to stop throwing around baseless accusations like “Western propaganda” and take a hard look at the shaky foundations of your own beliefs.

[Immanuel Can]

The belief in divinities—whether it's your specific version of God or anyone else's—is utterly unsubstantiated by evidence.

That's not true, of course. It's only a matter of what you'd accept as evidence.

But let's clear that up, just so everybody can see if I'm right about that: supposing there were a God, what evidence of His existence would you accept?

[BigMike]

The belief in divinities—whether it's your specific version of God or anyone else's—is utterly unsubstantiated by evidence.

That's not true, of course. It's only a matter of what you'd accept as evidence.

But let's clear that up, just so everybody can see if I'm right about that: supposing there were a God, what evidence of His existence would you accept?

Immanuel, if the best you can offer is hearsay from the late Bronze Age, coupled with vague suggestions that “evidence” is just a matter of interpretation, then you’ve already conceded the argument. The standards for evidence in any serious discussion—scientific, legal, or otherwise—are far higher than ancient stories written by unknown authors, edited over centuries, and filled with contradictions and myths. That won’t cut it.

You ask what evidence I’d accept. Simple: verifiable, repeatable, observable phenomena that unambiguously demonstrate the existence of a divine being. Something that doesn’t rely on subjective interpretations, emotional appeals, or leaps of logic. If your God exists and wants to be known, surely an omnipotent being could provide clear, undeniable evidence that transcends the hearsay and wishful thinking of ancient texts. Why hasn’t He? The fact that you're forced to fall back on faith rather than evidence speaks volumes.

So no, pointing to scriptures or personal experiences doesn’t count as evidence—it’s just the same tired, unconvincing routine. If you’re going to claim the existence of a deity, you’ll need to do better than late Bronze Age mythology and hollow rhetorical questions. Until then, your argument is nothing but noise.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The KingKong/Godzilla Debate

The conflict that arises inevitably between a religious fanatic (Immanuel) and a scientistic fanatic (Big Bike) can be quite illustrative.

We have been examining Immanuel Can’s unbelievable child-fantasy that God dropped Adam & Eve into a Garden, Eve screwed things up, Adam made the mistake of going along with her, and God expelled them both into our world of woe, and there is where *evil* entered the world.

As I have indicated with startling precision, Immanuel is locked within religious story and has devoted his life to the effort to reconcile the elements of an impossible story with “science facts”. It morphs into not Adam & Eve in that primordial garden but early hominids (I presume on the plains of the Serengeti?) who grunt at each other, who mate, and from which the race of modern human emerges.

“There simply had to be an Original Mating Pair, can’t you see this?!”

On another spectrum entirely, but no less reductive, and no less *captured* by his projected ideas, is Big Mike — a man attempting to be a Prophet of a radical new anthropology based in a skewed grasp of *brain science*. He shows himself just as unmovable as Immanuel Can but his theories and his anthropology do not depend on former metaphysics or religious symbolism, but rather on The Laws of Physics.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Immanuel, your argument rests on a foundation of pure nonsense.

No, this is not right. Immanuel Can’s conceptions, the pictures he entertains, can be described as *containers* which hold and express entire series of verities which can only be understood through what I term *intellectual intuition*.

Immanuel is a low-end proponent of a series of ideas that derive from metaphysical concepts with exalted potential that could be described as of a Universal order.

Immanuel Can’s is deeply invested, however, in a sort of bastardized concretization which we know by the term Protestant Evangelical Christianity. To state it fairly, this religious modality has both a very high and actually rather exalted *upper end* but, Good God Almighty, on its low end are some really bizarre and ugly versions of perverse intellectualization gone amok! This type of hysterical, ungrounded, fanatical belief, is of a sort that is attractive to a certain sort of person.

Immanuel is an odd specimen because on one hand he is *intellectually capable* and quite good at using reason productively in argumentation (in various areas). But when he tried to *preach the Gospel* he fails — not just a wee bit but absolutely. He can make no headway among anyone participating in this forum and so he has crafted for himself a forum personality that suffers all the abuses meted out and, from time to time, makes it plain that all who do not *bend the knee* will very very soon find themselves in the Infernal Regions lamenting their bad choices.

But in no sense is the metaphysical platform from which Immanuel Can’s deviant images and principles are derived *pure nonsense*. But let me propose the following: You have no means to conceive of an intellectual realm (I refer to intellectus) that has existence apart from yourself. The nature of your *philosophy* (an aggressive physicalism underpinned and motorized by psychological elements which you cannot recognize) is a set of pictures that disables you from accessing any other conceptual possibility except the one that you have invested yourself in.

Intellectual intuition is for you a notion involving self-trickery. For you the vessel of the intellect is the brain’s complex neural network and it merely senses, stores as memory sense impressions, and then combines and recombines them according to what I might term *will* but which has no foundation in anything outside of itself. There is no *reality* to what I refer to as metaphysical and supernatural and you reduce whatever that is or could be, as I say, to the vastly complex neural network dreaming dreams about higher dimensions and what-have-you.

Your philosophy, your physiology, actually destroys the intellectual world and reduces it to a catalog of ‘facts’. The sort of perception and intuition that I refer to as Intellectual (in the sense of Intellectus) is non-comprehensible to you because you cannot attach a science instrument to it and *measure* it!

And in this way, in an endless rehearsal of cut’n’paste in your prose tones imitating an AI robot you repeat the same things over & over & over & over again …

[BigMike]

The KingKong/Godzilla Debate

The conflict that arises inevitably between a religious fanatic (Immanuel) and a scientistic fanatic (Big Bike) can be quite illustrative.

We have been examining Immanuel Can’s unbelievable child-fantasy that God dropped Adam & Eve into a Garden, Eve screwed things up, Adam made the mistake of going along with her, and God expelled them both into our world of woe, and there is where *evil* entered the world.

As I have indicated with startling precision, Immanuel is locked within religious story and has devoted his life to the effort to reconcile the elements of an impossible story with “science facts”. It morphs into not Adam & Eve in that primordial garden but early hominids (I presume on the plains of the Serengeti?) who grunt at each other, who mate, and from which the race of modern human emerges.

“There simply had to be an Original Mating Pair, can’t you see this?!”

On another spectrum entirely, but no less reductive, and no less *captured* by his projected ideas, is Big Mike — a man attempting to be a Prophet of a radical new anthropology based in a skewed grasp of *brain science*. He shows himself just as unmovable as Immanuel Can but his theories and his anthropology do not depend on former metaphysics or religious symbolism, but rather on The Laws of Physics.

Alexis, your attempt to reduce this discussion to some sort of "King Kong vs. Godzilla" caricature does nothing to address the substance of the debate. This isn’t about personalities or competing "fanaticisms." It’s about whether the scientific principles that underpin observable reality—namely, the conservation laws and the four fundamental interactions—hold up under scrutiny. If you believe they don’t, the burden is on you to identify the flaw.

I’ve repeatedly asked you, Alexis, to point out which specific principle you take issue with. Is it the conservation of energy? Momentum? Electromagnetism? Gravity? Strong or weak nuclear forces? If you accept these as premises, then you must engage with the conclusions they lead to. If you reject the conclusions, show where the reasoning or the logic fails. That’s how serious debates work—by examining the framework, testing it, and identifying where, if anywhere, it breaks down.

Instead of engaging seriously, you’ve chosen to hide behind vague rhetoric and mockery, as if avoiding the actual argument is somehow clever. It’s not. If you think the scientific framework is wrong, then demonstrate it. If you think determinism misinterprets these principles, then pinpoint the error. Simply dismissing it as "reductive" or labeling me as a "scientistic fanatic" is meaningless. You’ve provided no counterargument, no evidence, and no coherent alternative. Just noise.

Until you’re willing to address the core issue—whether or not the principles governing observable reality hold up—you’re not participating in this discussion seriously. You’re posturing, and it’s incomprehensible to anyone genuinely trying to grapple with the question at hand. Step up, Alexis, or admit that you have no basis for your views beyond hand-waving and empty rhetoric. The choice is yours.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Immanuel Can has become the subject of examination...

Wouldn't you like that?

I rather think that it is inevitable.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It’s about whether the scientific principles that underpin observable reality—namely, the conservation laws and the four fundamental interactions—hold up under scrutiny. If you believe they don’t, the burden is on you to identify the flaw.

May I politely suggest (with a touch of irreverent humor) that you fold your entire shtick 5 ways and tuck it up your asshole?

Stop this BS, Mike. Those laws naturally hold up to *scrutiny* yet the bizarre argument that you have concocted around them, and which are expressed in AI imitation tones, do not stand up in any sense. It is rejected entirely.

But don’t let me stop you! You will have to take the whole show to its logical conclusion.

The flaw is one that can only be known through an exercise of higher intellect. And in regard to that whole endeavor I cannot be of any service to you. It is part-and-parcel of a domain that is outside of your grasp.

You will say: “There is no way to measure whatever it is you are talking about!” And you will conclude that whatever is referred to is unreal. And that is your prerogative!

The Hyperborean Apollo wrote:

But in no sense is the metaphysical platform from which Immanuel Can’s deviant images and principles are derived *pure nonsense*. But let me propose the following: You have no means to conceive of an intellectual realm (I refer to intellectus) that has existence apart from yourself. The nature of your *philosophy* (an aggressive physicalism underpinned and motorized by psychological elements which you cannot recognize) is a set of pictures that disables you from accessing any other conceptual possibility except the one that you have invested yourself in.

[Dubious]

But let's clear that up, just so everybody can see if I'm right about that: supposing there were a God, what evidence of His existence would you accept?

...more than the total silence which has thundered through existence forever and a day! Another would be the ultimate miracle...if WE were the ONLY intelligent life in the Universe.

[Dubious]

Stop this BS, Mike. Those laws naturally hold up to *scrutiny* yet the bizarre argument that you have concocted around them, and which are expressed in AI imitation tones, do not stand up in any sense. It is rejected entirely.

...not entirely, but not wholly accepted either.

[BigMike]

It’s about whether the scientific principles that underpin observable reality—namely, the conservation laws and the four fundamental interactions—hold up under scrutiny. If you believe they don’t, the burden is on you to identify the flaw.

May I politely suggest (with a touch of irreverent humor) that you fold your entire shtick 5 ways and tuck it up your asshole?

Stop this BS, Mike. Those laws naturally hold up to *scrutiny* yet the bizarre argument that you have concocted around them, and which are expressed in AI imitation tones, do not stand up in any sense. It is rejected entirely.

But don’t let me stop you! You will have to take the whole show to its logical conclusion.

The flaw is one that can only be known through an exercise of higher intellect. And in regard to that whole endeavor I cannot be of any service to you. It is part-and-parcel of a domain that is outside of your grasp.

You will say: “There is no way to measure whatever it is you are talking about!” And you will conclude that whatever is referred to is unreal. And that is your prerogative!

The Hyperborean Apollo wrote:

But in no sense is the metaphysical platform from which Immanuel Can’s deviant images and principles are derived *pure nonsense*. But let me propose the following: You have no means to conceive of an intellectual realm (I refer to intellectus) that has existence apart from yourself. The nature of your *philosophy* (an aggressive physicalism underpinned and motorized by psychological elements which you cannot recognize) is a set of pictures that disables you from accessing any other conceptual possibility except the one that you have invested yourself in.

Alexis, your response is a perfect example of why this conversation is so infuriating for anyone who takes the future of humanity seriously. While real people are out there trying to improve lives with tangible, verifiable knowledge—derived from those "scientific principles" you so smugly dismiss—you waste your breath spinning mystical nonsense and pretending that unverifiable speculation somehow elevates the discussion. It doesn’t. It cheapens it.

Let’s be clear: anyone who genuinely wants to make the world better for actual, living, breathing people engages with the facts. They deal with the reality of the conservation laws and the fundamental interactions of nature because those principles shape the very fabric of our existence. Dismissing that as "extreme" isn’t just lazy—it’s a tacit admission that you have nothing substantive to offer. Instead, you hide behind pretentious vagaries about "higher intellect" as though hand-waving your way through the conversation makes you some enlightened sage. It doesn’t. It makes you a coward.

Your inability—or unwillingness—to grapple with the hard truths of reality is telling. You say these laws hold up under scrutiny, yet you reject their conclusions outright without bothering to explain where or how they fail. And no, Alexis, "an exercise of higher intellect" is not an answer. It’s a cop-out. It’s an excuse to dodge accountability for your ideas.

Meanwhile, the rest of us—the ones you arrogantly dismiss as "aggressive physicalists"—are too busy solving real problems to entertain your self-indulgent ramblings. Medical breakthroughs, technological advancements, and even the possibility of tackling systemic social issues all stem from understanding and working within the framework of scientific principles. That’s the realm of people who care about making life better—not some "intellectual realm" that exists only in your head.

So, Alexis, here’s the challenge again: if you think this framework is flawed, then show where the flaws are. Spell it out. Otherwise, your metaphysical musings aren’t worth the pixels they’re displayed on. They’re not an intellectual contribution—they’re just noise. If you’re unwilling to step into the realm of verifiable, actionable ideas, then at least have the decency to admit it instead of pretending your incoherent mysticism is anything more than a distraction.

[henry quirk]

You ask what evidence I’d accept. Simple: verifiable, repeatable, observable phenomena that unambiguously demonstrate the existence of a divine being. Something that doesn’t rely on subjective interpretations, emotional appeals, or leaps of logic.

And, again, that would be you.

Lil old, hylomorphic, free-willed, you.

[henry quirk]

anyone who genuinely wants to make the world better for actual, living, breathing people engages with the facts.

Yep, and here they are: we're free wills, morally discerning, self-responsible and -directing. We each have a natural right to our, and no one else's, life, liberty, and property.

You want a better world? Start by acknowledgin' that.

[Immanuel Can]

The belief in divinities—whether it's your specific version of God or anyone else's—is utterly unsubstantiated by evidence.

That's not true, of course. It's only a matter of what you'd accept as evidence.

But let's clear that up, just so everybody can see if I'm right about that: supposing there were a God, what evidence of His existence would you accept?

Immanuel, if the best you can offer is hearsay from the late Bronze Age...

This is unrelated to my question. Let's stick to the relevant.

You ask what evidence I’d accept. Simple: verifiable, repeatable, observable phenomena that unambiguously demonstrate the existence of a divine being. Something that doesn’t rely on subjective interpretations, emotional appeals, or leaps of logic. If your God exists and wants to be known, surely an omnipotent being could provide clear, undeniable evidence that transcends the hearsay and wishful thinking of ancient texts.

Great. What would that evidence look like: the stuff you would accept today. Give a very practical example of how God could convince you...

[Immanuel Can]

Immanuel Can has become the subject of examination...

Wouldn't you like that?

I rather think that it is inevitable.

Well, I think your question about "evil" deserves a serious answer. But apparently, you can't define your own term. If you would, I'd like to provide you with an answer, if I can.

Deflection to pretending your on some sort of sociological study of the person who has asked you the question really doesn't get us anywhere with the question itself. But if you have the courage to clarify, and actually say what you mean, then I'll answer.