Letters to the Editor
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Actually, Geraldo,
It was 10:31. Be careful, or Elizabeth will call you to task for your error. She is relentless.
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Going further. . .
See where we might go next.
Skim the summaries of
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Thinking_And_Moral_Problems.
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Religious belief
RE: HISTORICAL CHRIST
The issue of whether or not there was an actual man named Jesus is one for historians/archaelogists to answer. And it is distinct and separate from the issue of whether that man Jesus 1) was the son of God; 2) was miraculously conceived; 3) died and was resurrected; and 4) became divine. Those issues are matters of religious belief and religious faith. If you believe these things, then proof of an actual Jesus would simply bolster your faith. It does NOT, however, follow that proof of an actual, historical Jesus is also proof of these articles of faith. Nor does it follow that such proof would cause a non-believer to believe.
RE: ABSOLUTE TRUTH
You do not need God to be good - you can be good on your own. One can be a very good person and not believe in God. One can be a very bad person and believe in God. Neither believers nor non-believers have a monopoly on good or on evil. What you believe is not nearly as important as how you live and what you do in this world. OPEN QUESTION TO BELIEVERS: if you suddenly lost your faith do you really think that you would - cheat on your husband or set up a meth lab in your home or murder your neighbors or steal from your employer or defraud your customers or commit armed robbery or neglect your children or neglect your parents or shoot heroin into your veins?? Do you really think that without your faith you would not be able to figure out that these things are WRONG and you should not do them??
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Absolute Truth? Nope.
On the other hand, you find a HUGE problem with anyone even suggesting that "science" is NOT Absolute Truth
That's a false statement. I think the scientific method is a good process for figuring things out in the physical world. The narratives that result can be useful for making predictions about how aspects of the physical world will behave in different circumstances. Scientific language reflects this, most prominently by describing narratives as "theories."
Do I believe in absolutes or absolute truth (or Absolute [Moral] Truths)? Interesting questions, almost self-referential, and all different. It looks like there's been at least two hundred years of discussion and debate behind them, where the increasing effect of the Enlightenment was to reduce the absolutes available from the Bible.
Keeping this discussion more bounded- do I believe there are absolutes in the physical world? Well, probably, though it's hard to tell what they might be at this point (I'm thinking in terms of what's next after quantum mechanics).
Do I believe in the concept of Absolute Truth? No. Are there pragmatic absolutes or absolute truths in a human sense? Maybe, though I don't really know. A statement like "thou shall not kill" seems like a pretty good candidate for one, but we as a society (including the major religious parts) seem to have a hard time showing we really believe it. Do I believe the Bible is absolute truth? No. I'm not rejecting it as a source of ideas in a postmodern world, but there are other sources of guidance (Zen and modern Buddhism) that are making more sense to me at the moment.
It's a hard problem, which the original article discussed (worth re-reading after all this). I think we as a modern society have painted ourselves into yet another corner- we had various spiritual structures that worked to provide truths about how to live one's life and exist as a society, as long as we remained ignorant of the physical world. The human drive to eliminate ignorance, though, has stripped a lot of that away, leaving us scrambling to figure out what to do about a spiritual life. I think we need something; a dogmatic, inflexible Christian (or Muslim) approach doesn't feel like the right thing.
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Thanks to David Hockey and AllTooHuman for the references. Also found Richard Rorty and the idea of a progressive, pragmatic left interesting, along with a Christian critique of his ideas:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty
Richard Rorty and the Postmodern Rejection of Absolute Truth http://www.leaderu.com/aip/docs/geuras.html
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a microcosm
If you read the latter half of this discussion you'll see the way that people who defend science as absolute, unwavering truth have been able to handily control the discussion and prevent the real issues from being discussed. You've got a religious person, a parent, who takes on the role of the "anti-science" camp. His or her arguments are pretty poor and ellide perfectly with the stereotype of an ignorant religious nut. Despite arguing against you, he or she is saying exactly what you want to hear, because it provides you with so much fodder to easily tear down, and declare science the victor.
But, of course, there are many many problems with our current views of science that have nothing to do whatsoever with religion. But as long as religion exists, science will criticize it, because it presents the opportunity for an easily defeated foil.
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Knowledge and faith
Science is a discipline, a method of finding truth, finding proof.
Faith is a belief beyond proof. We must have FAITH that God exists. It is not something we know, it is something we BELIEVE.
If you must have proof that God exists, then you have no faith. If you have no faith, then why bother to believe?
Science is for everyone... it is for the world around us. Good or bad, it is how e=we can change the world. It is how we can care for ourselves and our fellow man. It is how we can care for the world. Science helps us to understand how the world works, and the consequences of our actions.
Faith is for our soul. We cannot even prove we have a soul. Nor should we have to. Again, if you have proof, there is no need for faith.
I have no clue what waits for us when we die. I agree with that an afterlife of just being me sounds pretty dull. Then again, I am not God, and none of us knows what lies for us in the great beyond. So, I will continue to use science as my tool for rational behavior while I am here, and I will continue to have faith in what is to come.
Just my $0.02
Dave