Honestly, from where I sit, it matters little. I've spoken to fundamentalists of several religions, including Christianity. From where I look at things, the fundamentalist approach is a dead end. There are verbs, nouns, scribe marks and the like in the Hebrew Bible which we simply do not know the meanings for. An interpretive view is the only option.
Well, it does to me, because within Christianity there is a lot of bad theology going around.
Also, what would happen if you compared the events of Genesis to other parts of the Old Testament? For example the Psalms which are full of references to creation and other people mentioned in Genesis 1-11. For example Noah in Ezekial 14,14 and 20.
Most importantly, philosophy is about META-questioning: figuring out how to ask and answer specific questions, either physical or ethical in nature. At some point some natural philosophers (i.e. people asking questions about physics, as opposed to questions about ethics) came up with some axioms about reason and observation that provided a really efficient and reliable way of asking and answering physical questions about reality. These became the scientific method, and what was then called "natural philosophy" we now just call science.
Then this:
Religion, on the other hand, is not in contrast to science but in contrast to philosophy, because it is about dogma, authority, and NOT questioning things. Religion is about taking some set of specific things on faith, while philosophy is a personal quest for what things must be taken on faith to support everything else, e.g. the axioms underlying the scientific method.
Okay, since you're saying that there os no dogmatic way of defining reality (this is what I think you're saying), then why do we have to treat as dogma those axioms that those specific natural philosophers came up with? Why do we have to reat scientific naturalism as THE ONE AND ONLY form of science (don't take this as shouting)?
Another nifty question I would like to get input from you on: Why do we have to tie religion to theism, and the existance of God? Is every religion theistic? Therefore my question implies: just because you're not a Christian doesn't mean you're exempt from any dogma. Therefore everybody has "crutches".
Only by finding the natural ways of questioning and examining themselves, by opening their eyes and seeing the big picture, will the various blind religions of the world see the common elephant they're all striving to grasp,
My good freind, can you tell me how on earth you were capable of knowing that it's an elephant? Methinks it's rather quite like a walrus.
I don't know what you are referring to when you ask about Racial Implications.
Well, just to mention one thing, the Holocaust, Arian race, etc... Also Communism stemmed from the idea of evolution. I've written a 25 page chapter about Lysenkoism and therefore know how highly interwoven Marxist dialectic materialism is with evolution. Should know as a citizen of a former Eastern Bloc country.
I have spoken to a fair number of fundamentalists, cult members, and mystics, both here in the US and in Israel.
Hm, could you please name the denomination of the christian fundamentalists? It's important for me, I only accept mainstream Protestants as Christians (Reformed, Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian).
In a very abstract sense, the consistency of nature itself (the fact that the same natural laws seem to apply everywhere and all the time) is no small miracle. However, I do not expect an omnipotent being to screw around with natural laws just to fit my world view --or especially to change it.
Oh yes, true, but then again one must make a difference between operative science done in a lab and the extensions we make based upon measurements which we extend into the past. ID is not screwing around with natural laws, and trying to change what the distant past was like simply because we don't have direct evidence for it. To wit, when man went out into space they saw that the world was rwally round. Therefore the idea of a flat earth was debunked (this is not mentioned in the Bible), but we cannot do the same thing with evolution, we don't have a time machine.
But if we're discussing the scientific nature of ID (that is, if we want to make a verdict about it), then I don't understand why evolutionists would reject ID and still hold on to the SETI program (Search for Intelligent Life). you see, the basic principle of ID is when studying the world we assume that all this amazing complexity around us could only be due to the intelligence of a grand Designer, the Creator. If we churn millions and billions of our taxpayers money into SETI, (with no result yet), then I find it mind-boggling not to support Id. You know, I think it has a lot to do with pervasive materialistic ideology in our culture.
You cited the Book of Revelations as your authority.
I meant Revelation in general, in your case the Old Testament. In my case that plus the New Testament.
I'd like to see what will happen to proponents of ID, when the technology to compare entire gene sequences of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of related species becomes available.
1) The Catholic Church isn't stupid about this issue. They've learned a thing or two since they contradicted Galileo. Basically, The Bible is not a text to tell us what we can figure out for ourselves. It is a text for the purpose of telling us the appropriate morals upon which we can build a lasting society. To assign it a purpose other than that would denigrate the human race's image in God's eyes.
Okay, but still, the Catholic church's opinion isn't the final opinion, it is only just another group of people's opinion. How can we figure out for ourselves how the universe and all that began? We need an eyewitness. Therefore we have Revelation.
2) The real miracles are not physical. They are social. The miracles we should be thankful for are when a criminal develops a concience and turns him/her-self in; when a person finds a large sum of unmarked money and returns it to the owner; or when a person reveals the truth on the witness stand in a court of law. Those are the acts of faith that we should all take note of and be thankful for. If they didn't exist, our societies would not last long.
Again, I don't think you're quite getting it. Look at how sinful human beings have been for centuries and centuries. Why, even look at the Jews who made a golden statue of a bull and started idolizing it when Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive the law from the very hands of God. Look at how many times Israel was unfaithful to her God. The basic Ten Commandments which, if we abide to would guide our societies in moral questions. Yet it is this very same set of atheists, liberals and materialists who would take it out of our courtrooms and schools who propogate the ideas of evolutionism. I think that these basic mora values have to be stressed again and again, because basically, there are many people who don't quite get it when it comes down to "though shall not covet". Like those rioters in Paris...
About point number 3, why would we want to hinder God in making revelation about any part of reality He wants to?
About point number 4, I would like to ask you how many fundamentalist leaders do you know, have you ever been to such a church, how many people's lives do you know who are fundamentalist? Do you think they are so stupied not to have learned anything from the Middle Ages?
Also, as a Jew, what do you think about the racial implications about the theory of evolution? Also, I heard they don't teach evolution in Israel. What's the truth about this?
This makes sense, although one must be aware that there are also many many different exegetical traditions in Judaism. This I learned from a Rabbi in Budapest who teaches Genesis. He showed me tons and tons of books from all different kinds of authors who all exegesize Genesis differently.
Also, one must also be aware that it might be possible that Catholics buy rabbis and coxe them to declare that the creation account can't be taken literally. Just as an extremely funny and very embarassing anecdote for the Catholic church (iszonyat ciki as they would say in Hungarian) anecdote was when both a rabbi and a Catholic bishop came to the chromosome geneticist Gyula Hadlaczky to discuss wether it is genetically possible that a population of humans could arise from a single mother and father (meaning in the Biblical sense Adam anad Eve). The rabbi and the bishop were told by this famous academist scientist that bottom line, yes, it is possible. On the way out of the lab, the rabbi frustratedly told the Catholic bishop "See, I told you, that whenever you try to persuade us to alter the meaning of creation, it always turns out that we were right!"
Why don't we look at other parts of the Bible, since every Bible verse must support all other Bible verses. This is a very basic Protestant concept about the Bible. Let's see what other parts of the Bible have to say about the creation account. They mention Biblical people such as Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, the serpent, Noah, and a few people from the geneologies. If these people weren't real, then the Bible is just talking into thin air. No, the Bible talks about reality, real events which happened in space and time which affect the world we live in. Take a check, everyone!
For example take a look at how chock-full the Psalms and Revelation are with such verses! Until now I had thought that the Psalms were simply just poetry, but now I realize that since they refer back to creation many times, then what really happened when the authors of the Psalms wrote down their message was that they were referring back to the events of creation, and were referring to the glory of God as manifested in them.
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Well, it does to me, because within Christianity there is a lot of bad theology going around.
Also, what would happen if you compared the events of Genesis to other parts of the Old Testament? For example the Psalms which are full of references to creation and other people mentioned in Genesis 1-11. For example Noah in Ezekial 14,14 and 20.
Most importantly, philosophy is about META-questioning: figuring out how to ask and answer specific questions, either physical or ethical in nature. At some point some natural philosophers (i.e. people asking questions about physics, as opposed to questions about ethics) came up with some axioms about reason and observation that provided a really efficient and reliable way of asking and answering physical questions about reality. These became the scientific method, and what was then called "natural philosophy" we now just call science.
Then this:
Religion, on the other hand, is not in contrast to science but in contrast to philosophy, because it is about dogma, authority, and NOT questioning things. Religion is about taking some set of specific things on faith, while philosophy is a personal quest for what things must be taken on faith to support everything else, e.g. the axioms underlying the scientific method.
Okay, since you're saying that there os no dogmatic way of defining reality (this is what I think you're saying), then why do we have to treat as dogma those axioms that those specific natural philosophers came up with? Why do we have to reat scientific naturalism as THE ONE AND ONLY form of science (don't take this as shouting)?
Another nifty question I would like to get input from you on: Why do we have to tie religion to theism, and the existance of God? Is every religion theistic? Therefore my question implies: just because you're not a Christian doesn't mean you're exempt from any dogma. Therefore everybody has "crutches".
Only by finding the natural ways of questioning and examining themselves, by opening their eyes and seeing the big picture, will the various blind religions of the world see the common elephant they're all striving to grasp,
My good freind, can you tell me how on earth you were capable of knowing that it's an elephant? Methinks it's rather quite like a walrus.
I don't know what you are referring to when you ask about Racial Implications.
Well, just to mention one thing, the Holocaust, Arian race, etc... Also Communism stemmed from the idea of evolution. I've written a 25 page chapter about Lysenkoism and therefore know how highly interwoven Marxist dialectic materialism is with evolution. Should know as a citizen of a former Eastern Bloc country.
I have spoken to a fair number of fundamentalists, cult members, and mystics, both here in the US and in Israel.
Hm, could you please name the denomination of the christian fundamentalists? It's important for me, I only accept mainstream Protestants as Christians (Reformed, Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian).
In a very abstract sense, the consistency of nature itself (the fact that the same natural laws seem to apply everywhere and all the time) is no small miracle. However, I do not expect an omnipotent being to screw around with natural laws just to fit my world view --or especially to change it.
Oh yes, true, but then again one must make a difference between operative science done in a lab and the extensions we make based upon measurements which we extend into the past. ID is not screwing around with natural laws, and trying to change what the distant past was like simply because we don't have direct evidence for it. To wit, when man went out into space they saw that the world was rwally round. Therefore the idea of a flat earth was debunked (this is not mentioned in the Bible), but we cannot do the same thing with evolution, we don't have a time machine. But if we're discussing the scientific nature of ID (that is, if we want to make a verdict about it), then I don't understand why evolutionists would reject ID and still hold on to the SETI program (Search for Intelligent Life). you see, the basic principle of ID is when studying the world we assume that all this amazing complexity around us could only be due to the intelligence of a grand Designer, the Creator. If we churn millions and billions of our taxpayers money into SETI, (with no result yet), then I find it mind-boggling not to support Id. You know, I think it has a lot to do with pervasive materialistic ideology in our culture.
You cited the Book of Revelations as your authority.
I meant Revelation in general, in your case the Old Testament. In my case that plus the New Testament.
I'd like to see what will happen to proponents of ID, when the technology to compare entire gene sequences of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of related species becomes available.
Have you heard of mitochondrial Eve?
Okay, but still, the Catholic church's opinion isn't the final opinion, it is only just another group of people's opinion. How can we figure out for ourselves how the universe and all that began? We need an eyewitness. Therefore we have Revelation.
2) The real miracles are not physical. They are social. The miracles we should be thankful for are when a criminal develops a concience and turns him/her-self in; when a person finds a large sum of unmarked money and returns it to the owner; or when a person reveals the truth on the witness stand in a court of law. Those are the acts of faith that we should all take note of and be thankful for. If they didn't exist, our societies would not last long.
Again, I don't think you're quite getting it. Look at how sinful human beings have been for centuries and centuries. Why, even look at the Jews who made a golden statue of a bull and started idolizing it when Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive the law from the very hands of God. Look at how many times Israel was unfaithful to her God. The basic Ten Commandments which, if we abide to would guide our societies in moral questions. Yet it is this very same set of atheists, liberals and materialists who would take it out of our courtrooms and schools who propogate the ideas of evolutionism. I think that these basic mora values have to be stressed again and again, because basically, there are many people who don't quite get it when it comes down to "though shall not covet". Like those rioters in Paris...
About point number 3, why would we want to hinder God in making revelation about any part of reality He wants to?
About point number 4, I would like to ask you how many fundamentalist leaders do you know, have you ever been to such a church, how many people's lives do you know who are fundamentalist? Do you think they are so stupied not to have learned anything from the Middle Ages?
Also, as a Jew, what do you think about the racial implications about the theory of evolution? Also, I heard they don't teach evolution in Israel. What's the truth about this?
This makes sense, although one must be aware that there are also many many different exegetical traditions in Judaism. This I learned from a Rabbi in Budapest who teaches Genesis. He showed me tons and tons of books from all different kinds of authors who all exegesize Genesis differently.
Also, one must also be aware that it might be possible that Catholics buy rabbis and coxe them to declare that the creation account can't be taken literally. Just as an extremely funny and very embarassing anecdote for the Catholic church (iszonyat ciki as they would say in Hungarian) anecdote was when both a rabbi and a Catholic bishop came to the chromosome geneticist Gyula Hadlaczky to discuss wether it is genetically possible that a population of humans could arise from a single mother and father (meaning in the Biblical sense Adam anad Eve). The rabbi and the bishop were told by this famous academist scientist that bottom line, yes, it is possible. On the way out of the lab, the rabbi frustratedly told the Catholic bishop "See, I told you, that whenever you try to persuade us to alter the meaning of creation, it always turns out that we were right!"
Another good idea:
Why don't we look at other parts of the Bible, since every Bible verse must support all other Bible verses. This is a very basic Protestant concept about the Bible. Let's see what other parts of the Bible have to say about the creation account. They mention Biblical people such as Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, the serpent, Noah, and a few people from the geneologies. If these people weren't real, then the Bible is just talking into thin air. No, the Bible talks about reality, real events which happened in space and time which affect the world we live in. Take a check, everyone!
For example take a look at how chock-full the Psalms and Revelation are with such verses! Until now I had thought that the Psalms were simply just poetry, but now I realize that since they refer back to creation many times, then what really happened when the authors of the Psalms wrote down their message was that they were referring back to the events of creation, and were referring to the glory of God as manifested in them.
1Mos.=Genesis, 2Mos.=Exodus, 4Mos.Numbers, 5Mos.=Deutoronomy
1Mos. 12,1-1Mos. 50,26: 12,1-5; 14,19-22; 20,3-7; 23,3-20; 25,7
2Mos.: 1,1-7; 16,1-36; 31, 14-17; 34,21; 35,2-3
4Mos.: 13,21-29; 33,39
5Mos.: 4,32; 5,12-14; 9,2; 17,2-3; 31,1; 32,4.6.15
Joshua: 14,11; 24,29
Judges: 2,8
1Sam.: 2,8
2Kings.: 19,15
1Chron.: 11,1
Job: 33,4
Psalms.: 8,1-10; 19,2-3; 33,4-9; 35,4-9; 86,8-10; 90,2-10; 93,2; 94,2; 100,3.26-27; 105,23-24; 134,3; 136,5-9; 148,5-6
Prov.: 3,19-20; 14,26.31; 17,5
Eccl.: 7,29; 8,1-15
Is.: 43,1-7; 51,12-13
Jer.: 10, 10-16
Hos.: 6,7
Joel: 2,3
Hab.: 1,12
Zak.: 12,1
Matt: 13,24-30.35; 17,2; 19,4-8; 23,25
Mark.: 10,6-8; 13,19; 16,15
Luke.: 2,9; 11,40.50-51; 17,26-27
John.: 1,1-3.10; 17,5.24
Acts.: 3,21; 4,24; 14,17
Rom.: 1,20-25; 4,17; 8,19-22.39
1Chor.: 8,6; 11,8-9
2Chor.: 4,6; 11,3
Gal.: 6,16
Ef.: 3,9-10
Kol.: 1,15-17
2Tim.: 1,10
Heb.: 1,2-3.10-12; 4,3-4.13; 9,26; 11,3-7; 12,27; 13,25-27
Jak.: 1,18; 3,9
1Pt.: 1,10.20; 3,20; 4,19
2Pt.: 2,4-5; 3,4-7
Judas.: 6.11.14-15
Rev: 2,7; 3,14; 4,11; 5,13; 8,9; 10,6; 13,8; 14,7; 17,8; 21,1-6.23.25; 22,1-3.5