To Jews, pretty much most of Christian interpretation of their Scriptures is considered exactly what you are accusing the parent of.
Uh...I'm not sure you mean that, exactly.
I was accusing the grandparent of not trying. It looked to me like his extremely confident opinions were based on only a passing familiarity with the issues involved. If he just disagreed with me, I wouldn't have accused--I don't lose respect for people just because they reach different conclusions.
I doubt that's what you were saying about Jewish opinions of Christian interpretation. I suspect you were saying that Jews think Christian interpretation of their[1] Scriptures is childish and wrong. Sure.
And to that, I would say...So what? All it means is, "Someone out there disagrees with you." That tells us nothing about who's right.
[1] It's so odd when people say that modern-day Jews have more claim to the Old Testament than Christians. They trace their lineage back to the Jews of the Roman Empire and beyond...and so do we. Saying the OT belongs to "the Jews" over against Christians seems no different than saying it belongs to one modern sect of Judaism over against another.
From what I know of its original, historical definition, I might be a fundamentalist. (It comes from a document call "The Fundamentals", discussing various theological positions and views of what the Bible is. I haven't actually read it, so I don't know to what extent I might disagree with elements of it, but from what I do know, I generally agree.)
The original movement did have an element of social isolationism--a "bunker-down" mentality. That connotation has pretty much taken over the term entirely, so that it now denotes a closed-minded, uneducated approach. I've had to interact with that kind of person, and it's very frustrating. (Particularly when that kind of person is a proud "skeptic" or atheist.) By that definition, no, I'm sure fundies don't bother to read Hebrew. But in that case, you're pretty much defining "fundamentalist" as an anti-intellectual. It gets a bit circular.
Are you asking whether theologically conservative, evangelical, Biblical inerrantists bother to read the original languages?
If so...My goodness, of course yes! If you have to ask that, it suggests to me that you're very unfamiliar with that segment of Western culture--going from caricature, however well-intentioned you may be. I would be shocked to hear of a conservative seminary that left out coursework in the original languages. Being able to exegete from the Greek is like...major cool points. The best pastors are those steeped in the languages.
What a great example of what the GP was talking about. You have to read those VERY creatively for there to be any difference.
What are you talking about? Homosexuality is said to be "tow`ebah". Elsewhere, in a list of dietary laws, certain foods (like shrimp) are said to be "sheqets".
So, on what basis are you deciding that we have to read them "creatively" for them to be different? What do the two words mean? What's their usage?
The distinction could be effectively meaningless (if the words are equivalent & interchangeable), or it could make a world of difference (for instance, if the latter is used primarily or exclusively in contexts of ceremonial "uncleanness").
The problem is, everyone jumping on the Bash the Fundie wagon--yourself included, apparently--doesn't care about discerning what the Hebrew Scriptures--the Torah, the Mosaic Law--actually mean. You have your easy excuses for dismissing, demonizing, or denigrating Christians. You don't have to know whether your criticisms have actual merit before leveling them; you don't have to know if your simplistic, at-first-glance readings will bear up to the facts. Since you're a "skeptic", the facts are obviously going to be on your side--you don't have to actually check them.
For example, there is no real prohibition against abortion in the Christian Bible.
There is also no real prohibition against shooting people in the Christian Bible.
For another example, the selective interpretation of Leviticus as condemnation of homosexuality while ignoring the condemnation of poly-cotton blends and Red Lobster.
Far be it from me to interrupt your game of "Bash the Fundies", but...
The "condemnations" of homosexuality on the one hand and shrimp on the other are not the same, using entirely different words. (Just because the 400 year-old language in the KJV uses the word "abomination" in both passages, doesn't mean the Hebrew is the same.)
That raises the question, why do you make the peculiar assumption that every command in the OT law is of the same type, for the same kind of reason? Do you allow no distinction between ceremonial rules, and rules involving inherent moral/ethical concerns? Do you think that ancient Hebrews viewed dietary laws (prohibition of shrimp) and the command about mixed fabric as moral issues, in the same sense as murder, adultery, theft, and injustice? If so, why? If not, why base your arguments on absurd equivocation?
I don't have any kids and my tax dollars go to public schools. If I have to help pay for them, then parents with kids in private school have to help pay for them.
If you want to send your kids to private school, that's your right. That doesn't mean that you get to take funds away from public schools.
Grandparent provides an argument that vouchers would improve the quality of education. You respond with a non sequitur. You didn't give an argument against vouchers.
1.) The GP didn't try to argue that it's "not fair" that he should have to pay for public schools.
2.) You argued from "If I have to pay for public schools..." Why? You could just as easily take the perspective that your tax dollars are going to support "education", or "publicly-funded education". (I assume that's our purpose in tax-supported schooling. Not to have a "public school system" that looks exactly like the current system, but to ensure that every child can get an education.) Why should things staying in the status quo matter to you, as long as kids are getting good education?
3.) You might have an answer. You might have a reason that vouchers would be bad for the education system. But you haven't given it.
You trademark Mickey Mouse. You copyright particular examples of work containing him.
I believe that both of those are correct, as far as they go--i.e., you can trademark Mickey Mouse, and you would copyright particular examples of work containing him.
But, I think that might be incomplete. AFAIK, you don't have to do anything extra to protect individual characters. The copyright on the Firefly series protects the character River Tam--any work that features her would be a derivative work for which you need Joss Whedon's permission (or the permission of whoever owns the copyright).
Is that right? Can someone chime in who knows the situation better than me?
Im pretty sure it doesn't say anything about the nation of Israel building any pyramids.
Bingo. Exodus says they built store cities (Pithom and Raamses) and worked worked hard service in mortar & brick and in the fields. You can bet that if the Jews claimed to have built the pyramids, they would say so explicitly.
Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, "Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land." Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves./blockquote.
I figure that the Jews should copyright Ethical Monotheism, license it to the Christians with a disclaimer,
Ah, but then the legal battle would get tricky. We would need a court ruling on whether the Christians started a new derivative religion, or whether the Jews left the original religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when they rejected Jesus as Messiah. Or whether both should be legally regarded simply as sects of Judaism, with neither group having priority in their claim to originality.
I bet a court would wind up ruling the latter--otherwise judges would have to rule on whether Jesus was really the Messiah. I doubt they would want to do that.
Uh, that doesn't seem remotely persuasive. If you're saying a tech-illiterate judge might buy it, well, OK, maybe. But still, I doubt it. Weren't those judgments predicated on the idea that Kazaa & Napster were gaining revenue based on the conscious promotion of or dependence on their users' infringing behavior? What would they come back with? Something like, "Look, judge, we told people how our software works!" Why on earth should that affect the judges' reasoning?
Now, if someone else had taken the source code and made a forked-off project, and people were copying music using that other project, I could see an argument. Without that, I'm having a hard time seeing the slightest rationale to support the idea that making source code available would have affected any of the basis for their liability.
I don't even have to point at an analogy, just at parallels - Napster. Kazaa. Both were very successfully litigated against for complicity in copyright infringement, no?
Are you suggesting that Napster and Kazaa could have avoided liability by simply making their software open-source?
Actually, faith does not require belief without proof.
That is not what your Bible says.
"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."
--John 20:29
I hope you'll take a couple minutes to read this. Your reply was very brief, and I'm guessing you're not that interested. But I hope you'll take a couple minutes and really consider what I'm saying. Compare the backhanded way you were looking at John 20:29 and assuming a meaning with the way I go about figuring out what was the viewpoint of the people who wrote the Bible--what they meant when they talked about faith & belief.
You missed a better one. The first verse of Hebrews 11 would make a stronger case: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."
I pointed you to an essay for a "positive" Biblical case for my view. That is, it points out that knowledge based on good evidence is a major theme in the Gospels and letters of the New Testament. I also said it wasn't exhaustive. I meant that it doesn't deal with criticisms. Specifically, I had in mind that it doesn't address Hebrews 11:1 and Jesus' words to Thomas. I don't think it's at all hard to see why they do not contradict my view, but that essay didn't go through those issues.
Here's the problem: Did you actually read John 20:29? What does it say? That Thomas saw, and believed. Thomas believed. Notice that. He believed. Look at it again. Did Jesus say that his faith wasn't real faith because he wanted justification? No! Did he criticize Thomas? Well...Maybe. Not directly. He praised others who had been willing to believe without seeing him directly. That's either indirect criticism of Thomas' skepticism (as people usually assume), or it's praise for people willing to believe without the level of proof Thomas had. But neither means that faith must be blind.
Jesus' point may have been that it will be harder for people to believe who don't get to see the resurrected body, so they deserve praise. But if he was criticizing Thomas, I'd say it was because his skepticism was not reasonable. It bordered on paranoia. John 20:29 doesn't happen in a vacuum, and it wasn't addressed to you. It was addressed to Thomas, after 20 chapters of Jesus demonstrating divine power, walking on water, raising a dead man, then predicting his own death and resurrection. (I don't care if you don't believe it happened. We're talking about the meaning of the events and the claims. We're defining the Biblical worldview, not talking about whether it's true. You're free to disbelieve, but you're not free to redefine what they said and meant.) After what Thomas had seen, his insistence to see and feel Jesus' hands and side was not reasoned caution, it was a bitter spirit of forgetfulness and disbelief.
As I said, Hebrews 11:1 is stronger--if you read it as a sentence in a vacuum. But keep reading the rest of the chapter. It's often called the "faith hall of fame"--it lists a bunch of Old Testament people who showed great faith. And in many (most?) of those examples, the faith for which they are being praised was exhibited after they had spoken directly with God or seen demonstrations of divine power. Their belief was warranted, and the fact that they had seen proof of God did not make "faith" an empty thing. If you read 11:13, it's more clear. "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar". They had faith that God would deliver on his promises, even though they died before seeing those promises fulfilled. That's the context. The context does not bear out the idea that 11:1 means faith is only faith if it's blind.
On the basis of these observations, I'm rather confident that the Bible does not ask for blind faith. You may not believe that the evidence is good, but that doesn't mean the Bible is asking for belief without warrant.
You miss the point. Faith isn't scientific. If having faith brings you joy and peace, congratulations. But don't try to bring it into science, for faith requires belief without proof, and science requires proof before belief. Taking the concept from Carl Sagan, faith is usually prejudice and science is postjudice.
Actually, faith does not require belief without proof. Not in Christian terminology--i.e. not in the Hebrew or Greek of the Bible--and not even in English. I realize that in contemporary culture it has taken on that connotation, but it's actually not inherent to the word.
First, notice the way you had to qualify your definition, i.e. "belief without proof". You recognize that the word "belief", anyway, just indicates that you accept something to be true. It doesn't say anything about the justification for your belief, only that you have the belief. Well, in our translations of the Bible, "believe" and "faith" are both used to translate the same root word, in verb or noun form (pistis, pistia, etc.).
The actual meaning of "faith" is complex. It has more than one sense, both in the Biblical languages and in English. It can mean fidelity, loyalty, faithfulness. "I made the promise in good faith." "He has been a faithful companion." It can mean conviction of the truth of something. It can mean trust in something, or reliance on it. There's an interesting verse in Paul's letter to the Roman church, with three different uses: disbelieve, unbelief, and faithfulness--where the third use is referring to God's own "faith". That's right, God is said to have faith--and in that case it obviously has nothing to do with a blind leap. (Here's the verse, if you're curious, along with the language resources.)
An illustration. Most people will say that Christian faith is more than simple intellectual assent; it involves a trust component. Trust? Aren't I talking about blind faith now? No, not necessarily. As I said above, there's a sense of trusting in something, relying on it. I would compare it to trusting in the skill of a pilot and the construction of an airplane to take you safely where you're going. Your trust might be blind--perhaps if you're from an isolated tribal culture with no familiarity with modern technology. Or it might be extremely well-founded, based on a familiarity with the engineering of the manufacturer and the maintenance procedures of the airline and the training & experience of the pilot. Or it might be slightly less researched--maybe you just know that the airline has a good track-record, and so you just trust in all the rest. In other words, your faith can have different levels of warrant. And the more research you've done, the stronger your faith will be.
And that is precisely how I view Christian faith--made stronger by better evidence. I trust in the promises of God and the work of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. I judge them to be trustworthy, and I judge myself to have good enough reason to exercise that trust.
If you want to read a defense of the idea that the Bible does not ask for a blind leap, but trust in a reliable source, you can check out this essay by Greg Koukl. (He makes a good positive case, though it's not exhaustive.)
The creationist zealots will likely take this bit of news, and embrace it as evidence that the scientific community is trying to be deceitful by withdrawing a "clearly correct" paper, for political reasons.
The amount of confirmation bias that people can exhibit when their passions are challenged is incredible.
Hmm. Out of curiosity, on what basis are you determining that such a slant would be incorrect? Obviously, you're right that confirmation bias would lead to that slant, but that doesn't say anything about whether it's correct--nor would your own biases to view such a slant as zealotry.
Where is your own opinion here coming from? Do you have the knowledge & understanding of the facts of the situation to know that such a slant would be wrong? Or does it just fit your own nice package of preconceived notions?
So, in my opinion, the post that you're defending actually committed the same sin of not paying attention to the point actually being made.
That could be. To be honest, I hadn't read your post--I'd been skimming. Looking back, I think you're right. You had a point that mstone didn't quite deal with. You said:
My comment had to do with the mental gymnastics required to work god back into the model, and the general trend that it's heading. I said that it could be a clue or a hint. I never said that it constituted proof or disproof.
In general, I agree with you that consistently-required mental gymnastics tend to indicate that a theory isn't so good. At least, that's how I take it as a rule of thumb. In an Occam's Razor sense, the theory that requires fewer gymnastics is better.
I also agree that the person to whom you were responding was doing some gymnastics when he talked about this as a mechanism God gave us for detecting his presence. However, I'd like to offer you another Christian perspective. I'm a Protestant, without a strong denominational attachment. You would probably classify me as evangelical--though I would want to know what you associate with that term before signing off on it.
The article has to do with euphoric feelings of mystical presence. I've never had that kind of experience. I've gotten emotional from time to time in a religious context, but nothing I would call mystical--I've gotten similarly emotional about my niece, or a friend. I don't particularly expect ever to have this kind of mystical experience. I may, I may not. That has little or nothing to do with what I think about the historical reality (or lack thereof) of what God did with the Jewish people--the covenants & promises & prophecies--or with the reality of a 1st century Palestinian Jew named Jesus who did some impressive things and gave some "deep" teachings and made some significant claims about his identity before being crucified and then showing up alive later, with all the understanding of the significance of what he did. That is the object of my belief.
I don't view mystical experiences as particularly significant. I have no idea whether they correspond to any kind of spiritual reality. Within my worldview, I would expect that some of them probably do, but I certainly don't regard those feelings as demonstrating anything about anything. I expect that it's not too hard or unlikely for someone to work themselves into a religious frenzy of some kind and have all sorts of entirely subjective, basically meaningless feelings. The idea that there's a physical mechanism for those feelings isn't surprising.
So I look at this research, and I think it's interesting--but I don't see any significance for Christianity. I don't see a need to try to fit God into the picture presented by the research.
P.S. As a sidenote, given the above, my church life is interesting for me at the moment--I'm a member of a somewhat charismatic church. More charismatic than I necessarily give credence to.:)
I'm really having a hard time relating what you say about his post to what I actually see in the post.
His thesis, from the beginning to the end, is that it's silly to talk about science "disproving" God--that science doesn't say anything about God.
Then you say this:
Well yes, the whole posting consists of the same hand-waving that has gone one since the first medieval proofs of the existence of god. The final remark about feeling offended was the only novel argument in the story.
Printing your profession in bold and regurgitating extensively refuted special pleading for the status of religion on the basis of pseudo-mathematical assertions warrants a lot more than just snide remarks, but I was feeling mild today. [bold added]
You almost say that you think his post is an attempted proof of God--that he's positively arguing for the status of religion. (If that's not what you meant, please clarify.)
If that was his point, then I agree with you that it was a terrible argument.
But it wasn't. The problem is on your end--you did not pay attention to the point actually made: That some people should stop with their pseudo-intellectual philosophical assertions about what "science has shown" when it has shown nothing of the kind (and by its very nature it will never even address the question.)
Interesting. As a non-mathematician, is it a practice for you to make snide remarks that bear little or no relation whatsoever to the meaning of the person to whom you're responding?
Was it really possible for you to read through that entire post, reach the last sentence, ignore everything that had gone before, and decide that the GP was using his feeling of offense as his argument?
Using the term "evolutionary rate" is pretty misleading: whats happening is that the genomes are changing faster, but almost all of that change isn't from any selective pressure. Its mostly "neutral drift", things changing randomly in a way that does not impact the fitness of the organism.
Thank you -- I'd mod you insightful if I had points. My biggest pet peeve with the so-called debate around evolution is the notion that there is some sort of directionality to it. Popular media tends to reinforce this by using phrases like "more evolved."
Your point and the GP's point don't have much to do with one another.
Your point has to do with the lack of an ultimate goal of evolution. We are not evolving toward anything. In the long run, we are not even necessarily evolving toward greater fitness. The relevant fitness in evolution is not some absolute measure; it is measured relative to the ecosystem in which we live. It's entirely possible that 10,000 years down the line, we'll actually be less fit due to changes in the environment or some such. We move up-hill, but the hill can drop underneath us.
His point, on the other hand, is that the type of evolution being measured in this article does not have anything to do with fitness--even relative fitness--as "normal" evolution does. It does not have to do with changes in the genome from any selective pressure, but rather changes due to neutral genetic drift.
Slashdot Mirror
I was accusing the grandparent of not trying. It looked to me like his extremely confident opinions were based on only a passing familiarity with the issues involved. If he just disagreed with me, I wouldn't have accused--I don't lose respect for people just because they reach different conclusions.
I doubt that's what you were saying about Jewish opinions of Christian interpretation. I suspect you were saying that Jews think Christian interpretation of their[1] Scriptures is childish and wrong. Sure.
And to that, I would say...So what? All it means is, "Someone out there disagrees with you." That tells us nothing about who's right.
[1] It's so odd when people say that modern-day Jews have more claim to the Old Testament than Christians. They trace their lineage back to the Jews of the Roman Empire and beyond...and so do we. Saying the OT belongs to "the Jews" over against Christians seems no different than saying it belongs to one modern sect of Judaism over against another.
Yes.
Or no, depending on what you mean by "fundie".
From what I know of its original, historical definition, I might be a fundamentalist. (It comes from a document call "The Fundamentals", discussing various theological positions and views of what the Bible is. I haven't actually read it, so I don't know to what extent I might disagree with elements of it, but from what I do know, I generally agree.)
The original movement did have an element of social isolationism--a "bunker-down" mentality. That connotation has pretty much taken over the term entirely, so that it now denotes a closed-minded, uneducated approach. I've had to interact with that kind of person, and it's very frustrating. (Particularly when that kind of person is a proud "skeptic" or atheist.) By that definition, no, I'm sure fundies don't bother to read Hebrew. But in that case, you're pretty much defining "fundamentalist" as an anti-intellectual. It gets a bit circular.
Are you asking whether theologically conservative, evangelical, Biblical inerrantists bother to read the original languages?
If so...My goodness, of course yes! If you have to ask that, it suggests to me that you're very unfamiliar with that segment of Western culture--going from caricature, however well-intentioned you may be. I would be shocked to hear of a conservative seminary that left out coursework in the original languages. Being able to exegete from the Greek is like...major cool points. The best pastors are those steeped in the languages.
Right. Because translation is a one-to-one process, right? Other languages never express distinctions that English words ignore.
Brilliant.
Sorry, did I blow one of your prejudice gaskets? :)
So, on what basis are you deciding that we have to read them "creatively" for them to be different? What do the two words mean? What's their usage?
The distinction could be effectively meaningless (if the words are equivalent & interchangeable), or it could make a world of difference (for instance, if the latter is used primarily or exclusively in contexts of ceremonial "uncleanness").
The problem is, everyone jumping on the Bash the Fundie wagon--yourself included, apparently--doesn't care about discerning what the Hebrew Scriptures--the Torah, the Mosaic Law--actually mean. You have your easy excuses for dismissing, demonizing, or denigrating Christians. You don't have to know whether your criticisms have actual merit before leveling them; you don't have to know if your simplistic, at-first-glance readings will bear up to the facts. Since you're a "skeptic", the facts are obviously going to be on your side--you don't have to actually check them.
The "condemnations" of homosexuality on the one hand and shrimp on the other are not the same, using entirely different words. (Just because the 400 year-old language in the KJV uses the word "abomination" in both passages, doesn't mean the Hebrew is the same.)
That raises the question, why do you make the peculiar assumption that every command in the OT law is of the same type, for the same kind of reason? Do you allow no distinction between ceremonial rules, and rules involving inherent moral/ethical concerns? Do you think that ancient Hebrews viewed dietary laws (prohibition of shrimp) and the command about mixed fabric as moral issues, in the same sense as murder, adultery, theft, and injustice? If so, why? If not, why base your arguments on absurd equivocation?
Grandparent provides an argument that vouchers would improve the quality of education. You respond with a non sequitur. You didn't give an argument against vouchers.
1.) The GP didn't try to argue that it's "not fair" that he should have to pay for public schools.
2.) You argued from "If I have to pay for public schools..." Why? You could just as easily take the perspective that your tax dollars are going to support "education", or "publicly-funded education". (I assume that's our purpose in tax-supported schooling. Not to have a "public school system" that looks exactly like the current system, but to ensure that every child can get an education.) Why should things staying in the status quo matter to you, as long as kids are getting good education?
3.) You might have an answer. You might have a reason that vouchers would be bad for the education system. But you haven't given it.
I believe that both of those are correct, as far as they go--i.e., you can trademark Mickey Mouse, and you would copyright particular examples of work containing him.
But, I think that might be incomplete. AFAIK, you don't have to do anything extra to protect individual characters. The copyright on the Firefly series protects the character River Tam--any work that features her would be a derivative work for which you need Joss Whedon's permission (or the permission of whoever owns the copyright).
Is that right? Can someone chime in who knows the situation better than me?
Exodus 1:8-14
I figure that the Jews should copyright Ethical Monotheism, license it to the Christians with a disclaimer,
Ah, but then the legal battle would get tricky. We would need a court ruling on whether the Christians started a new derivative religion, or whether the Jews left the original religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when they rejected Jesus as Messiah. Or whether both should be legally regarded simply as sects of Judaism, with neither group having priority in their claim to originality.
I bet a court would wind up ruling the latter--otherwise judges would have to rule on whether Jesus was really the Messiah. I doubt they would want to do that.
I didn't know that the population of robots was big enough in South Korea for this place to attract enough to stay in business!
Uh, that doesn't seem remotely persuasive. If you're saying a tech-illiterate judge might buy it, well, OK, maybe. But still, I doubt it. Weren't those judgments predicated on the idea that Kazaa & Napster were gaining revenue based on the conscious promotion of or dependence on their users' infringing behavior? What would they come back with? Something like, "Look, judge, we told people how our software works!" Why on earth should that affect the judges' reasoning?
Now, if someone else had taken the source code and made a forked-off project, and people were copying music using that other project, I could see an argument. Without that, I'm having a hard time seeing the slightest rationale to support the idea that making source code available would have affected any of the basis for their liability.
Whoops. The first line should be split:
"Actually, faith does not require belief without proof. That is not what your Bible says."
I said the first sentence, you replied with the second. Sorry.
You missed a better one. The first verse of Hebrews 11 would make a stronger case: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."
I pointed you to an essay for a "positive" Biblical case for my view. That is, it points out that knowledge based on good evidence is a major theme in the Gospels and letters of the New Testament. I also said it wasn't exhaustive. I meant that it doesn't deal with criticisms. Specifically, I had in mind that it doesn't address Hebrews 11:1 and Jesus' words to Thomas. I don't think it's at all hard to see why they do not contradict my view, but that essay didn't go through those issues.
Here's the problem: Did you actually read John 20:29? What does it say? That Thomas saw, and believed. Thomas believed. Notice that. He believed. Look at it again. Did Jesus say that his faith wasn't real faith because he wanted justification? No! Did he criticize Thomas? Well...Maybe. Not directly. He praised others who had been willing to believe without seeing him directly. That's either indirect criticism of Thomas' skepticism (as people usually assume), or it's praise for people willing to believe without the level of proof Thomas had. But neither means that faith must be blind.
Jesus' point may have been that it will be harder for people to believe who don't get to see the resurrected body, so they deserve praise. But if he was criticizing Thomas, I'd say it was because his skepticism was not reasonable. It bordered on paranoia. John 20:29 doesn't happen in a vacuum, and it wasn't addressed to you. It was addressed to Thomas, after 20 chapters of Jesus demonstrating divine power, walking on water, raising a dead man, then predicting his own death and resurrection. (I don't care if you don't believe it happened. We're talking about the meaning of the events and the claims. We're defining the Biblical worldview, not talking about whether it's true. You're free to disbelieve, but you're not free to redefine what they said and meant.) After what Thomas had seen, his insistence to see and feel Jesus' hands and side was not reasoned caution, it was a bitter spirit of forgetfulness and disbelief.
As I said, Hebrews 11:1 is stronger--if you read it as a sentence in a vacuum. But keep reading the rest of the chapter. It's often called the "faith hall of fame"--it lists a bunch of Old Testament people who showed great faith. And in many (most?) of those examples, the faith for which they are being praised was exhibited after they had spoken directly with God or seen demonstrations of divine power. Their belief was warranted, and the fact that they had seen proof of God did not make "faith" an empty thing. If you read 11:13, it's more clear. "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar". They had faith that God would deliver on his promises, even though they died before seeing those promises fulfilled. That's the context. The context does not bear out the idea that 11:1 means faith is only faith if it's blind.
On the basis of these observations, I'm rather confident that the Bible does not ask for blind faith. You may not believe that the evidence is good, but that doesn't mean the Bible is asking for belief without warrant.
First, notice the way you had to qualify your definition, i.e. "belief without proof". You recognize that the word "belief", anyway, just indicates that you accept something to be true. It doesn't say anything about the justification for your belief, only that you have the belief. Well, in our translations of the Bible, "believe" and "faith" are both used to translate the same root word, in verb or noun form (pistis, pistia, etc.).
The actual meaning of "faith" is complex. It has more than one sense, both in the Biblical languages and in English. It can mean fidelity, loyalty, faithfulness. "I made the promise in good faith." "He has been a faithful companion." It can mean conviction of the truth of something. It can mean trust in something, or reliance on it. There's an interesting verse in Paul's letter to the Roman church, with three different uses: disbelieve, unbelief, and faithfulness--where the third use is referring to God's own "faith". That's right, God is said to have faith--and in that case it obviously has nothing to do with a blind leap. (Here's the verse, if you're curious, along with the language resources.)
An illustration. Most people will say that Christian faith is more than simple intellectual assent; it involves a trust component. Trust? Aren't I talking about blind faith now? No, not necessarily. As I said above, there's a sense of trusting in something, relying on it. I would compare it to trusting in the skill of a pilot and the construction of an airplane to take you safely where you're going. Your trust might be blind--perhaps if you're from an isolated tribal culture with no familiarity with modern technology. Or it might be extremely well-founded, based on a familiarity with the engineering of the manufacturer and the maintenance procedures of the airline and the training & experience of the pilot. Or it might be slightly less researched--maybe you just know that the airline has a good track-record, and so you just trust in all the rest. In other words, your faith can have different levels of warrant. And the more research you've done, the stronger your faith will be.
And that is precisely how I view Christian faith--made stronger by better evidence. I trust in the promises of God and the work of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. I judge them to be trustworthy, and I judge myself to have good enough reason to exercise that trust.
If you want to read a defense of the idea that the Bible does not ask for a blind leap, but trust in a reliable source, you can check out this essay by Greg Koukl. (He makes a good positive case, though it's not exhaustive.)
Where is your own opinion here coming from? Do you have the knowledge & understanding of the facts of the situation to know that such a slant would be wrong? Or does it just fit your own nice package of preconceived notions?
I also agree that the person to whom you were responding was doing some gymnastics when he talked about this as a mechanism God gave us for detecting his presence. However, I'd like to offer you another Christian perspective. I'm a Protestant, without a strong denominational attachment. You would probably classify me as evangelical--though I would want to know what you associate with that term before signing off on it.
The article has to do with euphoric feelings of mystical presence. I've never had that kind of experience. I've gotten emotional from time to time in a religious context, but nothing I would call mystical--I've gotten similarly emotional about my niece, or a friend. I don't particularly expect ever to have this kind of mystical experience. I may, I may not. That has little or nothing to do with what I think about the historical reality (or lack thereof) of what God did with the Jewish people--the covenants & promises & prophecies--or with the reality of a 1st century Palestinian Jew named Jesus who did some impressive things and gave some "deep" teachings and made some significant claims about his identity before being crucified and then showing up alive later, with all the understanding of the significance of what he did. That is the object of my belief.
I don't view mystical experiences as particularly significant. I have no idea whether they correspond to any kind of spiritual reality. Within my worldview, I would expect that some of them probably do, but I certainly don't regard those feelings as demonstrating anything about anything. I expect that it's not too hard or unlikely for someone to work themselves into a religious frenzy of some kind and have all sorts of entirely subjective, basically meaningless feelings. The idea that there's a physical mechanism for those feelings isn't surprising.
So I look at this research, and I think it's interesting--but I don't see any significance for Christianity. I don't see a need to try to fit God into the picture presented by the research.
P.S. As a sidenote, given the above, my church life is interesting for me at the moment--I'm a member of a somewhat charismatic church. More charismatic than I necessarily give credence to.
His thesis, from the beginning to the end, is that it's silly to talk about science "disproving" God--that science doesn't say anything about God.
Then you say this: You almost say that you think his post is an attempted proof of God--that he's positively arguing for the status of religion. (If that's not what you meant, please clarify.)
If that was his point, then I agree with you that it was a terrible argument.
But it wasn't. The problem is on your end--you did not pay attention to the point actually made: That some people should stop with their pseudo-intellectual philosophical assertions about what "science has shown" when it has shown nothing of the kind (and by its very nature it will never even address the question.)
Interesting. As a non-mathematician, is it a practice for you to make snide remarks that bear little or no relation whatsoever to the meaning of the person to whom you're responding?
Was it really possible for you to read through that entire post, reach the last sentence, ignore everything that had gone before, and decide that the GP was using his feeling of offense as his argument?
Your point has to do with the lack of an ultimate goal of evolution. We are not evolving toward anything. In the long run, we are not even necessarily evolving toward greater fitness. The relevant fitness in evolution is not some absolute measure; it is measured relative to the ecosystem in which we live. It's entirely possible that 10,000 years down the line, we'll actually be less fit due to changes in the environment or some such. We move up-hill, but the hill can drop underneath us.
His point, on the other hand, is that the type of evolution being measured in this article does not have anything to do with fitness--even relative fitness--as "normal" evolution does. It does not have to do with changes in the genome from any selective pressure, but rather changes due to neutral genetic drift.
The Vogons could make a killing (hah!) with a simple change in branding!
(We claim to be forgiven & improving, not necessarily better than others.)