Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[Belinda]

I don't quote St Teresa from any intention to quote from authority but because St Teresa makes sense.

What an interesting statement!

What “makes sense” has authority. That when sensible ideas are realized their authority is revealed. That authority definitely exists.

It is curious then to examine “rebellion” against “authority”.

But even common sense is not popular. Many if not most people prefer to be told what to do and to believe by some charismatic other who to his followers has far more authority than common sense has.
Examples:
* Mr Trump

*Herr Hitler

* Commercial image makers.

* The popular media

* Leaders of sundry pseudo -religious cults.

*Own Romantic or narcissistic beliefs which are become false idols.

[popeye1945]

I most often agree with you Popeye and am sorry to disagree but compassion can happen in the absence of any warm sympathetic feelings. There is a limit to one's emotional energy, but reason, and reasoned faith which has been cultivated in solitude, can act to carry on the good work.

Can you expand upon reasoned faith?

Socrates, Jesus, Nietzsche, Confucius, Spinoza, Marx,

From my own introspections, reasoning from personal experience tells me when I think about effects of causes I find that effects do follow causes. e.g. the parables of Jesus are life enhancing personally and politically. In these parables, effects followed causes ,they are narratives. I also enjoy the example of Jesus who had the courage of his convictions, I mean his compassion never wavered even while his friends failed him and his emotional energy was dying. I think many completely obscure individuals behave likewise. The medics who work in Gaza hospitals come to mind.

By "reasoned faith" I positively don't mean a dogma swallowed whole administered by a magisterium. For instance, Unitarians are teased about being the worst congregations at hymn -singing because individuals refuse to sing a line before thinking about the truth of it.
[/quot

You'll have to give me time to ponder this for a while. I never thought of Socrates, Nietzsche, and Confucius as the faithful. You obviously have a differing slant on faith, meaning belief without evidence. What most people consider faith. You seem to be talking about the continuity of one's thoughts and actions. This is unusual to term it reasoned faith, which sounds like an oxymoron.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You'll have to give me time to ponder this for a while. I never thought of Socrates, Nietzsche, and Confucius as the faithful. You obviously have a differing slant on faith, meaning belief without evidence. What most people consider faith. You seem to be talking about the continuity of one's thoughts and actions. This is unusual to term it reasoned faith, which sounds like an oxymoron.

Faith, when examined cross-culturally, or in a comparative-religion sense, takes on a different sense, doesn’t it? than what we think of when we think of Christian faith.

I wonder if Socrates (or Plato) had a sense of “providence” in the Christian and Catholic sense?

Certainly Nietzsche could not had had such an idea given his atheism. The “world” was a random ball of energy, nothing more.

It requires a “distributive power”, something above or outside of “the world”, that assigns either benefit or deficit (punishment let’s say).

That would be “karma” in the generally Eastern sense. But who distributes or assigns karma and “karmic reaction”?

Something like “Brahma”. A god-force behind all manifestation.

How Confucius conceived of “the Cosmos” I have no idea …

Is faith ‘belief without evidence’? It must be much more than that. In the Occident, yes, that is the atheist’s doubt-position : that a Christian “believes without evidence”. But few Christians will say that their belief has no basis in evidence. Their evidence is simply not recognized by doubters and scientistic rationalists.

Faith is bound up in the sense that the world operates according to rules and “logic” which can be perceived, worked with.

[Belinda]

Can you expand upon reasoned faith?

Socrates, Jesus, Nietzsche, Confucius, Spinoza, Marx,

From my own introspections, reasoning from personal experience tells me when I think about effects of causes I find that effects do follow causes. e.g. the parables of Jesus are life enhancing personally and politically. In these parables, effects followed causes ,they are narratives. I also enjoy the example of Jesus who had the courage of his convictions, I mean his compassion never wavered even while his friends failed him and his emotional energy was dying. I think many completely obscure individuals behave likewise. The medics who work in Gaza hospitals come to mind.

By "reasoned faith" I positively don't mean a dogma swallowed whole administered by a magisterium. For instance, Unitarians are teased about being the worst congregations at hymn -singing because individuals refuse to sing a line before thinking about the truth of it.
[/quot

You'll have to give me time to ponder this for a while. I never thought of Socrates, Nietzsche, and Confucius as the faithful. You obviously have a differing slant on faith, meaning belief without evidence. What most people consider faith. You seem to be talking about the continuity of one's thoughts and actions. This is unusual to term it reasoned faith, which sounds like an oxymoron.

I'd not call Socrates, Marx ,Nietzsche, and Confucius "the faithful"! The phrase is usually applied to church -going Christians. Those men are not "the faithful" but spectacularly quite the opposite------ all very independent thinkers.

In order to discover for oneself a reasonable faith it's best to discover the thought of better thinkers than I .

Jesus was a faithful Jew, but he was not one of the Jews who complied with political authority because political authority was the safer option.


I was using the word 'faith' in the sense of a body of doctrine.(But not 'faith' in the sense of a belief that does not stand up to reason) .A reasoned faith therefore is a body of doctrine that makes sense. Christianity is no longer reasonable when its doctrine includes that souls/minds are immortal substances and separate substances from bodies.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Christianity is no longer reasonable when its doctrine includes that souls/minds are immortal substances and separate substances from bodies.

Oh dear …

Jesus was a faithful Jew, but he was not one of the Jews who complied with political authority because political authority was the safer option.

Judaism, at its essence, is totally political.

Actually he was a counter-faithful Jew. His notions destroy “Judaism” and “Jewish identity” and for that reason were, and are, resisted.

He overturned Judaism. And to round out the entire affair God-the-father then exiled the Jews from Judea as a result.

Good Lord, Belinda! Get things straight!

[Belinda]

Christianity is no longer reasonable when its doctrine includes that souls/minds are immortal substances and separate substances from bodies.

Oh dear …

Jesus was a faithful Jew, but he was not one of the Jews who complied with political authority because political authority was the safer option.

Judaism, at its essence, is totally political.

Actually he was a counter-faithful Jew. His notions destroy “Judaism” and “Jewish identity” and for that reason were, and are, resisted.

He overturned Judaism. And to round out the entire affair God-the-father then exiled the Jews from Judea as a result.

Good Lord, Belinda! Get things straight!

I am afraid you have been indoctrinated by anti Jewish propaganda. If you understood The Bible you would see that Jesus was a true Jew and Christianity was originally a sect of Judaism.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Nonsense.

First, Christianity is certainly a sect of Judaism, but a rebellious, redefining one. And one rejected by conventional and historic Judaism.

Second, Judaism is not defined by the Bible alone, as one unfamiliar with Judaism would likely think, but rather through millennia of written tradition that is “extra-biblical”.

Practicing, religious Jews in history, and now, pay no attention to the Christian Gospels.

Christians made Jesus into the “true Jew” you are talking about. Judaism envisions a very very different figure.

Your view, when carefully examined, is itself counter-Judaic! So please let up with that “anti-Jewish” line!

[popeye1945]

You'll have to give me time to ponder this for a while. I never thought of Socrates, Nietzsche, and Confucius as the faithful. You obviously have a differing slant on faith, meaning belief without evidence. What most people consider faith. You seem to be talking about the continuity of one's thoughts and actions. This is unusual to term it reasoned faith, which sounds like an oxymoron.

Faith, when examined cross-culturally, or in a comparative-religion sense, takes on a different sense, doesn’t it? than what we think of when we think of Christian faith.

I wonder if Socrates (or Plato) had a sense of “providence” in the Christian and Catholic sense?

Certainly Nietzsche could not had had such an idea given his atheism. The “world” was a random ball of energy, nothing more.

It requires a “distributive power”, something above or outside of “the world”, that assigns either benefit or deficit (punishment let’s say).

That would be “karma” in the generally Eastern sense. But who distributes or assigns karma and “karmic reaction”?

Something like “Brahma”. A god-force behind all manifestation.

How Confucius conceived of “the Cosmos” I have no idea …

Is faith ‘belief without evidence’? It must be much more than that. In the Occident, yes, that is the atheist’s doubt-position: that a Christian “believes without evidence”. But few Christians will say that their belief has no basis in evidence. Their evidence is simply not recognized by doubters and scientistic rationalists.

Faith is bound up in the sense that the world operates according to rules and “logic” which can be perceived, worked with.

Christianity, like all desert religions, is an example of one mythological theme. Of course, believers claim they have evidence, but nothing that would stand up in a rational discourse. The evidence that they claim is of subjective experience, a little soft shoe if you please, and we dance. I am reminded of a statement of the renowned comparative mythologist. the late Joseph Campbell," Mythology is the other man's religion." Your last statement above, you should be ashamed of, did you think that would fly? According to which faith is then rational----lol!!

[attofishpi]

Christianity, like all desert religions, is an example of one mythological theme. Of course, believers claim they have evidence, but nothing that would stand up in a rational discourse. The evidence that they claim is of subjective experience, a little soft shoe if you please, and we dance. I am reminded of a statement of the renowned comparative mythologist. the late Joseph Campbell," Mythology is the other man's religion." Your last statement above, you should be ashamed of, did you think that would fly? According to which faith is then rational----lol!!

Poppy, unfortunately I'm not so certain that you have the intellect or the knowledge to base that intellect upon to reasonably analyse the evidence when presented (www.androcies.com) to come to the conclusion...that GOD exists.

[popeye1945]

Christianity, like all desert religions, is an example of one mythological theme. Of course, believers claim they have evidence, but nothing that would stand up in a rational discourse. The evidence that they claim is of subjective experience, a little soft shoe if you please, and we dance. I am reminded of a statement of the renowned comparative mythologist. the late Joseph Campbell," Mythology is the other man's religion." Your last statement above, you should be ashamed of, did you think that would fly? According to which faith is then rational----lol!!

Poppy, unfortunately I'm not so certain that you have the intellect or the knowledge to base that intellect upon to reasonably analyse the evidence when presented (www.androcies.com) to come to the conclusion...that GOD exists.

attofishpi

Have a nice day.

[attofishpi]

Christianity, like all desert religions, is an example of one mythological theme. Of course, believers claim they have evidence, but nothing that would stand up in a rational discourse. The evidence that they claim is of subjective experience, a little soft shoe if you please, and we dance. I am reminded of a statement of the renowned comparative mythologist. the late Joseph Campbell," Mythology is the other man's religion." Your last statement above, you should be ashamed of, did you think that would fly? According to which faith is then rational----lol!!

Poppy, unfortunately I'm not so certain that you have the intellect or the knowledge to base that intellect upon to reasonably analyse the evidence when presented (www.androcies.com) to come to the conclusion...that GOD exists.

attofishpi

Have a nice day.

Impossible, read below!!

No worries Poppy - sorry to sound like an arrogant chump - but I get really really annoyed at fervent atheist talk as if ONE KNOWS there is no GOD, where from my POV the truth is - GOD divine or "GOD" as AI simulation exists - an intelligence operates our perceivable reality (*other than merely our own brains )

If it's any consolation, I am having a really really really really bad day - some fraud transaction has locked my banking when I am in the middle of organising an overseas thang in a few weeks - uurrrgh!!!! luckily i keep an amount of cash in wallet - cos I need to do some farking shopping...!

Love ya Poppy - just ease off with the certainty of your atheism..and we'll get along just fine


...AND you have an awesome day - I know you're a very intelligent bloke - ya just screwed on the atheism v theism angle.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Your last statement above, you should be ashamed of, did you think that would fly? According to which faith is then rational----lol!!

Yes indeed, a properly organized religious practice (avoiding the term “faith” which is contaminated) is definitely rational, and obviously much depends on the quality of the man himself.

However, this practice, based on sound principles, is not a reason-function comparable with mathematical reason or science-experimentation. Because the practice has to do with a far wider sphere: how one stands in the phenomenal world. The ‘vehicle’ being operated is the self-in-the-world.

For people like you who I surmise are sort if locked up within weird, modern category errors, what I attempt to describe floats into your ears as “gibberish” and trust me, I understand.

Don’t stress it!

See for example The Grammar of Assent by John H. Newman:

An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (commonly abbreviated to the last three words) is John Henry Newman's seminal book on the philosophy of faith.

Completed in 1870, the book took Newman 20 years to write, he confided to friends.
Newman's aim was to show that the scientific standards for evidence and assent are too narrow and inapplicable in concrete life. He argued that logic and its conclusions are not transferable to real life decision making as such. As a result, it is inappropriate to judge the validity of assent in concrete faith by conventional logical standards because paper logic is unequal to the task. "Logic is loose at both ends," he said, meaning that the process of logic initially depends on restrictive assumptions and is thus unable to fit its conclusions neatly into real world situations.

If smoke begins to emit from your ears please! stop right there! Relax. Keep talking with Belindo.

[Belinda]

Christianity is no longer reasonable when its doctrine includes that souls/minds are immortal substances and separate substances from bodies.

Oh dear …

Jesus was a faithful Jew, but he was not one of the Jews who complied with political authority because political authority was the safer option.

Judaism, at its essence, is totally political.

Actually he was a counter-faithful Jew. His notions destroy “Judaism” and “Jewish identity” and for that reason were, and are, resisted.

He overturned Judaism. And to round out the entire affair God-the-father then exiled the Jews from Judea as a result.

Good Lord, Belinda! Get things straight!

I am afraid you have been indoctrinated by anti Jewish propaganda. If you understood The Bible you would see that Jesus was a true Jew and Christianity was originally a sect of Judaism.

There's truth in both our interpretations. What is life enhancing is to show how Judaism and Christianity are alike . And in important respects they are alike. Divisive interpretations are deathly.

In any case by their fruits you shall know them.

[Alexis Jacobi]

There's truth in both our interpretations.

What is life-enhancing is to show how Judaism and Christianity are alike. And in important respects they are alike. Divisive interpretations are deathly.

In certain senses you can definitely say that Christianity and Judaism are “alike”. But it does not work across the board.

I am more interested in the separation of Christian outlook and Jewish outlook. In fact in many senses these are antithetical. But I do agree that this is a dangerous intellectual area.

The notion of an “avatar” who descends into the mire of the world can be taken in a Platonic sense (the divine guide out of the prison of the cave) and also in the sense that Vishnu is that aspect of God that “rescues” the lost soul by providing knowledge. It is a metaphysical concept. And if it is true in our world, the concept must be valid in all worlds.

To worship a Jew is absurd, and God as a Jewish father is also really absurd. The historical localization of both Judaism and Christianity is also absurd. In this sense these metaphysical concept must be extracted out of the picture so it can stand on its own two feet.

Furthermore, to the degree that Judaism and Christianity both reject, or really dismiss pagan concepts, is the degree which both are imperious. And this is also “deathly”.

It is certainly a tough area to work through, and one fraught with many perils, but I assure you it is not unfruitful and can be carried out with a balanced attitude.

In any case by their fruits you shall know them.

Yes! I am come. I am that ripe fruit . Delicious, life-giving, wonderful!

Start here

[popeye1945]

Your last statement above, you should be ashamed of, did you think that would fly? According to which faith is then rational----lol!!

Yes indeed, a properly organized religious practice (avoiding the term “faith” which is contaminated) is definitely rational, and obviously much depends on the quality of the man himself.

However, this practice, based on sound principles, is not a reason-function comparable with mathematical reason or science-experimentation. Because the practice has to do with a far wider sphere: how one stands in the phenomenal world. The ‘vehicle’ being operated is the self-in-the-world.

For people like you who I surmise are sort if locked up within weird, modern category errors, what I attempt to describe floats into your ears as “gibberish” and trust me, I understand.

Don’t stress it!

See for example The Grammar of Assent by John H. Newman:

An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (commonly abbreviated to the last three words) is John Henry Newman's seminal book on the philosophy of faith.

Completed in 1870, the book took Newman 20 years to write, he confided to friends.
Newman's aim was to show that the scientific standards for evidence and assent are too narrow and inapplicable in concrete life. He argued that logic and its conclusions are not transferable to real life decision making as such. As a result, it is inappropriate to judge the validity of assent in concrete faith by conventional logical standards because paper logic is unequal to the task. "Logic is loose at both ends," he said, meaning that the process of logic initially depends on restrictive assumptions and is thus unable to fit its conclusions neatly into real world situations.

If smoke begins to emit from your ears please! stop right there! Relax. Keep talking with Belindo.

Will do sir!!