Evidence for God from Science

cslewislover wrote:Lol, I was agreeing with you. But you're missing the point. Christians get killed for their faith in various places, even today. It is their true faith that gets people through torture and impending death. Anyway, you seemed to be cutting Christianity down in general because of as aspect of commercialism in it, without knowing the serious side.

I don't think that is the focus of this discussion (looking backwards). You may have brought it up, and I suspected that you intended to provide an example of Christians being persecuted, but I don't know why you brought that up relative to the main course of the dialog. So no, I did not miss this point. I don't think I would call that "the" point in this instance.

I think that there is a common misconception about education: that it is somehow distant and detached from "common-sense" or some kind of wisdom. I disagree, I believe that people underestimate the power of the learning process as a tool for achieving both self-insight and insight about the nature of reality. What I mean is that not only is there the primary situation of learning about the object of study, there is also an auxiliary form of learning about the self and one's misconceptions that occurs. In my mind, this is a profound experience. It's not that I think that sense derived from intellectual knowledge is somehow quantitatively superior to any practical knowledge, it's that I believe that there are qualitative differences between knowledge of different things (not "practicum" vs "intellectual study" either, I think that is too vague of a notion). What I am saying is that there exists an infinite number of possible "objects of knowledge", each with a substantial qualitative difference from all other things. Therefore, becoming familiar with new things (via any method) actually provides a new, first-hand experience.

It seems like adults try to discuss and argue away "right" and "wrong." This is just an example.

For this, I am not sure which situations you are referring to. It is worth noting that though you believe you have the most correct morality, not everyone shares those views. This attitude gets really annoying for those of us who do not share your beliefs. I understand why Christians are committed to it, but it definitely creates a sense of alienation. There is nothing that anyone can do about this.

To non-Christians, the Christian argument basically looks like this: "I have made an arbitrary decision to accept something as being the primary source of truth. It makes a host of claims that can never be refuted, because of the assumption that it is the primary source of truth and therefore we will use itself to support itself. You should join me in this arbitrary decision. You can't rationalize it, it's all a matter of faith". Well, if it is a matter of just feeling it or intuiting it, I just don't share those feelings or intuitions.

Pointing out the scientific "leap of faith" is not enough to address the "religiosity of atheists". Non-Christians aren't all solely empiricists, they may utilize a whole host of accounts for reality. Christianity does not hold a monopoly on / is not unique for ontological or metaphysical claims about reality.

Christians who speak with passion about good-will and peaceful discourse and that sort of thing are speaking righteously in my mind.

There are things we can "know" that are of the highest importance to us and are the most beautiful, without becoming super educated in certain subjects.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! This is a tangent, but one thing that seems funny to me about Christians holding an attitude of anti-"over-analyticism" is that it seems that much of Christianity dropped rosary-bead prayer after forking off from Catholicism. Prayer beads are utilized in a whole host of non-Christian religions. In Buddhism there is a form of meditation where one focuses on a single object of thought. Prayer beads are also sometimes utilized in Buddhism.

So, by virtue of some "cold, calculating, intellectual" rejection of the rosary on principle alone, mainstream Christianity lost a form of meditation that had a long history behind it. Because of this, there seems to be an air of irony to me anytime modern Christians promote an attitude of "don't get too intellectual about this or you will miss the point!"

It seems to me that the protestants got "too intellectual about their faith" and missed the point with meditation.