Prominent Scientists and their religiosity

[Interbane]

Yet in this discussion, you've put forth a variety of reasons why personal experience of God MUST be false... without actually listening to the evidence.

No I haven't Doulos. I haven't put forth a variety of reasons why personal experience of god MUST be false. I've put forth a variety of reasons why personal experience of god MAY be false. This variety of reasoning is to be taken into account with other evidence of course, but I don't remember typing that the conclusion we'll arrive at after considering the evidence is a certain conclusion. Doulos, it may be helpful for us both that you understand my position and all it's nuances, because you've misinterpreted a number of things I've posted.

As for the evidence, I will listen. I have been listening. Which evidence specifically am I not considering? Re-post it so that I may consider it. Explain what you're referring to, with enough detail that I won't misunderstand. Unfortunately, misunderstanding is often the result of posts that are too short, lacking information.

Furthermore, you say, "There is more than enough evidence that says you didn't speak with god." You talk of bias and confirmation bias... are you able to see evidence of these in your own views?

Yes, there is bias in my own views as well, but I do everything I can to keep it from influencing my conclusions. It's a difficult thing to do. Everytime we search for something on Google, we are actually complying with bias, in that Google will turn up anything you search for. If you search for an argument that supports the reality of Hercules, you will find it. If you search for anything at all, you will find it. I am able to see the bias of my own views, yes. I'm also able to redirect my beliefs accordingly, in spite of what I want to believe. The question for all of us is; how consistent are we in combating our own bias?

It's not a one-time thing Doulos, it's on-going. It has to do with how we search for new information. I'm aware of the bias that crops up within my mind during investigations of various claims. The awareness of that bias is precisely what we need to educate people on, because false beliefs are rampant, and harmful. Bias is the primary factor in influencing false belief.

So rather than, "God did it," you would suggest, "It just happened" is superior?

No, of course not. We need to dig into the details, and try to understand how it happened. I'm NOT claiming that "it just happened". There are reasons, but they are not free-floating. They are abstractions of the mechanical processes that were involved in abiogenesis. I want to know what happened, and claiming that "goddidit" is merely a placeholder for ignorance. That claim is true by the definitions of the concepts(a conceptual definition is quite a bit more involved than a dictionary definition). Even if I were to align with your beliefs, the question still remains of HOW god did it. It is a placeholder Doulos, by definition.

Do you not have enough information, or do you have 'more than enough'?

Both, we're speaking of two different things, if you follow the posts. In one instance, I'm speaking of the information that supports a deity. In the other instance, I'm speaking of the evidence that I use to determine if you've actually heard the voice of a god. These are distinct claims. Distinct, but related and correlated in various ways. Still distinct.

[DWill]

They are not advanced understandings.

I must have been thinking of "advanced'"as roughly equivalent to the word you did use, "enlightened." I think instead of tediously repeating the problems I have with the historical basis of your claims, or of asking again how "cosmic wisdom" or deep understanding of nature results from astronomical knowledge, I'll echo Dexter on the Bible fixation. Let's say that I had no objections at all to any of your views. Why would that give me reason to see the Bible as scriptural, as you clearly want it to be seen? It's a book, has no divine authority behind it. Why should we worship its words or see it as uniquely stating the truths of existence?

[ant]

Robert Lanza, MD says it best;

"We have failed to protect science against speculative extensions of nature, continuing to assign physical and mathematical properties to hypothetical entities beyond what is observable in nature"

We are pure, subjective creatures, limited in our understanding of the grandness of nature.
There is so much we will never observe or understand. It is the arrogance of milititant scientific atheists who proclaim "god is dead" with so little to work with as human beings that are sorely overestimating our understanding of existence.

[Dexter]

We are pure, subjective creatures, limited in our understanding of the grandness of nature.
There is so much we will never observe or understand. It is the arrogance of milititant scientific atheists who proclaim "god is dead" with so little to work with as human beings that are sorely overestimating our understanding of existence.

OK, but do you want to defend deism or the Christian God?

Again, even Dawkins and Hitchens said if you want to be a deist, that's fine, although it doesn't answer anything.

[ant]

We are pure, subjective creatures, limited in our understanding of the grandness of nature.
There is so much we will never observe or understand. It is the arrogance of milititant scientific atheists who proclaim "god is dead" with so little to work with as human beings that are sorely overestimating our understanding of existence.

OK, but do you want to defend deism or the Christian God?

Again, even Dawkins and Hitchens said if you want to be a deist, that's fine, although it doesn't answer anything.

As our understanding of nature continues to evolve, so to does our understanding of a Creator.
I would defend the evolution of religion, and soundly condemn hate, justified by Man, by any means, including militant religious ideologists.

I love science and its awe inspiring achievements.
I honor our search for something that gives our lives meaning in the cosmos by unifying us all.
Our routes are different, but maybe our desires are the same at the core - our quest for meaning. It is not over.

[Robert Tulip]

So you're saying that sources 400 years after an event are more reliable to you than sources written within the lifetime of an event?

For the time of Christ we have almost nothing, except
- the 27 books collected in the New Testament, written by 9 different authors
- Roman sources from 2 of the 4 known sources for the period
- Rabbinic sources
- non-cannonical sources (though most of these are from about 100 years after the death of Christ)

The basic point I'm making is that normally history treats writing earlier to the source time and location as more reliable. Number of extand sources is also a consideration.

Doulos, we have nothing about Jesus written within a generation of his supposed lifetime. No one clearly cites the four gospels by name as a collection until the late second century. So your attribution of the New Testament to the time of Christ is completely wrong. It is like saying Tolstoy's 1869 book War and Peace is from the time of the Napoleonic War in 1812 because it is set then. And anyway, all the sources you mention about Jesus are fiction. You have to believe in miracles to think any of it might be history.

My point here is to explore how the fantasy writings we have in the Gospels could have arisen from a source that based its symbolic language on actual observation and logic. The best way to explain this is to see Jesus as allegory for the connection between history and the cosmos, and to explore how this symbolism was misunderstood and altered to creat a historical fable on the basis of political interests and emotional beliefs.

The cosmic allegory within the New Testament is clearer than the later Gnostic writings, which read to me as a somewhat degraded interpretation of the original mystery ideas. In the New Testament the cosmic meaning is hidden, but fairly clear if you look.

[Robert Tulip]

They are not advanced understandings.

I must have been thinking of "advanced'"as roughly equivalent to the word you did use, "enlightened." I think instead of tediously repeating the problems I have with the historical basis of your claims, or of asking again how "cosmic wisdom" or deep understanding of nature results from astronomical knowledge, I'll echo Dexter on the Bible fixation. Let's say that I had no objections at all to any of your views. Why would that give me reason to see the Bible as scriptural, as you clearly want it to be seen? It's a book, has no divine authority behind it. Why should we worship its words or see it as uniquely stating the truths of existence?

The Bible is a far more sophisticated political text than is credited either by believers or non-believers. The starting point is the big question of what is wrong with the world and how it can be fixed. This leads to complex ideas such as grace and salvation, which have been badly corrupted by believers. Yet, if we wish to formulate a narrative about what is wrong with the world and how it can be fixed, ideas such as grace and salvation, and also Paul's steadfast ethical trinity of faith, hope and love, deserve to be considered.

If the original idea of salvation is about human life restoring a sense of contact with the direction of the universe, so that our lives match to our long term best interests, then here we find a real natural meaning for grace. It is not about metaphysics, but rather what philosophy calls phenomenology, looking at the actual phenomena behind a complex concept like grace and asking what it could really mean. If grace means being in tune with the universe, then the question arises whether the Bible advocates this.

I believe the Bible does advocate a natural vision of grace, but that politics has concealed this message. Understanding and reconstructing it requires study of another rather complex topic, Christology. This is traditionally the investigation of how the historical Jesus can be one and the same as the eternal Christ. Christology can also be understood as a metaphor for the big philosophical question of how our changing temporal reality can be understood within a constant cosmic universal whole, the question of saving grace of how we can be in tune with the cosmos. My view is that this question is well explained by reference to astronomy, by seeing the real cycles of time as the grounding framework for myth.

From very early times, the stars are the paradigm for eternity. That is why there is such exact correspondence between the symbolic vision of Jesus and the perceived shift of the heavens seen in precession. I should repeat that last sentence, but instead I will just say that the correlation between the Alpha Omega vision of Jesus Christ and the structure of the zodiac ages is precise. The correlation does not in itself demonstrate some ultimate causal relationship, but what it does show is that the authors saw one. The Biblical intent was to use the central idea of the Lord's Prayer, that God's will should be done as in heaven so on earth. This intent is directly reflected in the Christological symbols of death and resurrection, virgin birth, miracles, parables and eschatology, as ways to connect our shifting historical world to an unchanging ultimate truth.

[Doulos]

So you're saying that sources 400 years after an event are more reliable to you than sources written within the lifetime of an event?

For the time of Christ we have almost nothing, except
- the 27 books collected in the New Testament, written by 9 different authors
- Roman sources from 2 of the 4 known sources for the period
- Rabbinic sources
- non-cannonical sources (though most of these are from about 100 years after the death of Christ)

The basic point I'm making is that normally history treats writing earlier to the source time and location as more reliable. Number of extand sources is also a consideration.

Doulos, we have nothing about Jesus written within a generation of his supposed lifetime. No one clearly cites the four gospels by name as a collection until the late second century. So your attribution of the New Testament to the time of Christ is completely wrong. It is like saying Tolstoy's 1869 book War and Peace is from the time of the Napoleonic War in 1812 because it is set then. And anyway, all the sources you mention about Jesus are fiction. You have to believe in miracles to think any of it might be history.

"we have nothing about Jesus written within a generation of his supposed lifetime"
FALSE

Jesus was crucified roughly 33 AD:
- Gospel of Matthew (Date 40-140 AD)
- Gospel of Mark (Date 55-70 AD)
- Gospel of Luke (Date 62-63 AD)
- Gospel of John (Date 80-95 AD)
... I could go through the rest of the NT, but you get the point. These were definitely written 'within' a generation' (rather obvious since several were written by people who walked with Jesus!).


"No one clearly cites the four gospels by name as a collection until the late second century."
FALSE (Nice 'as a collection' equivocation though )

- Ignatius (30-110 AD) quotes Matthew, John, Acts, Romans, I Corinthians, Ephesians, Phillipians, Galatians, Colossians, James, I and II Thessalonians, I and II Timothy, and I Peter.
- 'Epistle of Barnabas' (dated 70-130 AD) cites Matthew, and Mark
- 'Shepherd of Hermas' (dated 80-90 AD) cites John, the synoptic Gospels, Ephesians, 1 peter, Hebrews, james and the Book of Revelations.

I'm afraid your assertions are without factual merit.

My point here is to explore how the fantasy writings we have in the Gospels could have arisen from a source that based its symbolic language on actual observation and logic. The best way to explain this is to see Jesus as allegory for the connection between history and the cosmos, and to explore how this symbolism was misunderstood and altered to creat a historical fable on the basis of political interests and emotional beliefs.

The cosmic allegory within the New Testament is clearer than the later Gnostic writings, which read to me as a somewhat degraded interpretation of the original mystery ideas. In the New Testament the cosmic meaning is hidden, but fairly clear if you look.

The fantasy seems to be your desire to ignore historical evidence to chase after your own fancies.

[Doulos]

Yet in this discussion, you've put forth a variety of reasons why personal experience of God MUST be false... without actually listening to the evidence.

No I haven't Doulos. I haven't put forth a variety of reasons why personal experience of god MUST be false. I've put forth a variety of reasons why personal experience of god MAY be false. This variety of reasoning is to be taken into account with other evidence of course, but I don't remember typing that the conclusion we'll arrive at after considering the evidence is a certain conclusion. Doulos, it may be helpful for us both that you understand my position and all it's nuances, because you've misinterpreted a number of things I've posted.

As for the evidence, I will listen. I have been listening. Which evidence specifically am I not considering? Re-post it so that I may consider it. Explain what you're referring to, with enough detail that I won't misunderstand. Unfortunately, misunderstanding is often the result of posts that are too short, lacking information.

My desire is never to misrepresent the views of the people I speak with.

My whole critique has been where I felt you were pre-judging a conclusion without looking at evidence. If that's not the case, you have my heartfelt apologies.

[Doulos]

Yes, there is bias in my own views as well, but I do everything I can to keep it from influencing my conclusions. It's a difficult thing to do. Everytime we search for something on Google, we are actually complying with bias, in that Google will turn up anything you search for. If you search for an argument that supports the reality of Hercules, you will find it. If you search for anything at all, you will find it. I am able to see the bias of my own views, yes. I'm also able to redirect my beliefs accordingly, in spite of what I want to believe. The question for all of us is; how consistent are we in combating our own bias?

It's not a one-time thing Doulos, it's on-going. It has to do with how we search for new information. I'm aware of the bias that crops up within my mind during investigations of various claims. The awareness of that bias is precisely what we need to educate people on, because false beliefs are rampant, and harmful. Bias is the primary factor in influencing false belief.

And on this I would be in full agreement with you.

What we believe is not really the issue, since invariably there will be people who disagree with us (even when the evidence is 100% the same).

I would simply desire that truth be made evident, and may people decide as they will.

I would question why you feel that this rigorous self-awareness of bias only exists in Atheists however. Might I suggest that this is bias?