What is your major paradigm?....

While still religious, I have background in sciences (mostly computational), and find that most everything is explained by science, although science cannot by itself can be taken as absolute, as many 'scientists' have been proven wrong, or proven deceitful (make their own proof based on false data).
 
Three different groups responded differently during the recent tsunami. One group of vacationers walked on the reefs while another group (tribal group) thought the spirit of the sea was becoming angry and from stories from the past they knew they should flee to higher ground. The third group realized displaced volume would return and ran for higher ground.
 
I voted "other" because I believe, first and foremost, that "I think, therefore I am." Both religion and science deny this principle - science says I am merely a bunch of mindless chemicals, and religion says that faith in God should take primacy over faith in oneself.
 
Religous, because , as an evangelical Christian, I look at creation's beauty and wonder and I praise God. Abraham Lincoln said it best:" I can understand how a man can look at this world and be an atheist, But how can anyone look down upon this earth and say there is no God?" :xangel:
 
Sceince. Because all science really is, is logic and critical thinking. Which I think are extremely important life skills. Any time someone ignores sceintific processes because they don't like the result, all they are doing is deluding themselves. And I choose to be as knowledgable and as enlightened as I can be.
 
Both science and religion are major factors in my outlook. Science has more say in the day to day things, but the larger conecepts in life (love, hate, fate, etc etc) I see as the realm of the goRAB. I believe fully that one can have both science and religion mix, as there wouldnt be science if the goRAB didnt allow or create it. Science is the set of tools we use to discover how the goRAB created the universe, and how they set it into motion. And before anyone asks, yes I believe in evolution, seeing it simply as a way the goRAB wish to see how their creations react to the elements of existence.
 
logic and critical thinking based on faith.

Religion is also based on faith...just one has a better track record then the other.
 
No, based on observable causality, from which likely explanations can be extrapolated.

I find that a lot of religious people are quite intelligent. Heck, my high-school chaplain was also the advanced biology teacher. But at the same time, I find these intelligent religious people to be self contradictory. They refuse to literally interpret some passages of the bible because of a lack of evidence, or contradicting evidence. But they freely believe heart and soul in other passages, which also have zero supporting evidence and/or contradicting evidence.
 
science has to come down to faith...there is no other choice. There is no way to know for 100% of anything you just have to assume somethings to be true in order to have science. I have yet to see an area of the Bible that contracdicts itself (that has been proven), however, I do not wish to argue this on this forum.
 
But science never claims to know anything. It simply claims to have a pretty good idea. Science deals in theories, not facts.



Sorry, I didn't mean to say the bible was self contradictory, I meant that the people who follow it often are. Take yourself, for example. You surely don't honestly believe that the Creation story, or the Ark story, are actually the literal truth, do you? Most rational Christians I've met treat them as myths, as possible evidence for intelligent design. But they don't really believe God created the world, and all life on it, in six days ten thousand years ago.
 
Theories are faith though.


Some suggest this to be imagery in the Bible. The Ark story is one I believe because every religion has that story and it seems very feasible. As for the 6 days...some say this means 6 million years for various reasons..I myself don't really know...and thats ok...We can't know everything.
 
A scientific theory is not based on "faith": you're using the word "theory" in a very loose colloquial sense.

Empirical observations of a natural phenomenon will suggest a number of possible ideas that might explain its behaviour. From these ideas a hypothesis can be formed which seems the best explanation of the behaviour being studied. But in order for this hypothesis to be considered valid, it must then pass the test of repeatable experiment. If the testing does validate the hypothesis, a theory is then formed.

This theory is a not a guess - it's the result of a rigorous scientific scrutiny of the available evidence.
 
What if someone did believe this?

As an aside: I find it quite odd that most of the Christians you know don't believe those stories, but most of the Christians I know do believe those stories. Perhaps that's for another thread though.
 
Well, without any further information, I would consider people that literally believe all the stories, or indeed any of the stories in the bible that aren't supported by other sources to be simple minded, overly trusting and gullible.



Indeed. Probably the Creation Vs Evolution forum.
 
but the things you observed and the ideas of measurement and observations exist based on faith. No matter what you come back to faith. This doesn't mean you belive in God...it just means you have faith in something. Faith in God, faith in numbers, faith in science.
 
The latter is more correctly described as "faith in reality". One has to assume that the universe exists and isn't an illusion for example. This is a form of faith. Science is built upon the assumption that reality is as it appears.
 
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