by dark angle 239 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Pause for thought . . .
If I heavily scrutinise a religious belief . . . compare it with the latest scientific knowledge and then question it's validity. If I openly criticise it's weaknesses, and seek explanations that make sense. If I decry what is demonstrably false. Am I refuting religion?
I could just as likely be attempting to prove it . . . think about it.
The problems arise when one attributes evil to motive . . . as you have done above.
The more we rely on science in everyday life the more we come to understand that taking extraordinary claims on faith is worthless and that the only reason to trust in things is by testing them with reliable methods.
Even with very simple things like buying a new phone or watching a new movie you can now wait until millions of others have bought that phone or saw that movie and can see if it's any good. It's very different from the past where you maybe had two or three wise persons in your social circle that you trusted and that you went to for advice, or maybe the newspaper or the store clerk and they all believed in god.
Also, the more religion is forced to move beliefs and ancient writings into the "it's symbolical" category, the less relevant they become.
Further, religions can no longer cover up the mistakes of those in power, because technology empowers the individual and this results in many people leaving because they lose faith in their leaders and in organized religion in general.
As far as science goes, it doesn't really care about religion, it only cares about finding facts and finding the best explanation for those facts. So this conflict is pretty much one-sided.
Religion likes to attack science for not having all the answers, like "why are we here" and stuff like that. But think about it. If you had two persons to go to for advice, and one would claim to know everything about everything, and the other would acknowledge that there are limits to what he knew and that even the knowledge he had could be open to change, whom would be more trustworthy?
Now you've not yet made the decision on who to trust more but you talk with these two persons and start asking a lot of questions about how they know so much.. and one of them shows you a book and tells you that all the answers are from that one book and that he understands the complicated things written in there because he talks with an invisible being in his head, while the other can explain for each answer that he knows how he found out about it through repeated experiments and can even demonstrate these experiments to you? Who would be me trustworthy?
After all this talk you go to person X and tell him that you doubt one of the things that he told you, because you saw that it wasn't true from your own experiences. Now person X tells you that you are wrong and that what you saw is wrong and he says if you keep telling people about it, his invisible friend in his head will kill you and maybe even torture you for eternity in a lake of fire.
You go to the other guy and tell him that he's wrong and he says "well great, that's the only way that we can learn more about the universe" and he goes with you and wants to see and understand why exactly he's wrong. After you've convinced him, he tells everyone else about what he learned from you and he encourages you to come back again if you find something else that wasn't right.
Who is more trustworthy, do you think?
Science has grey areas; for example have you ever had the feeling that you are being watched? And you find out that you were, science cannot explain that feeling we have when we are being watched, almost like a six sense. If you think science has an explanation for this, it doesn't.
As for religion, let me change the question to can religion prove science? Hell no, they failed right on the first chapter of Genesis, if you consider the creation account to an allegory then you face the problem that original sin never existed, but you don’t have that problem if you convert to Judaism, circumcision anyone?. There is no point of thinking that the bible is its own stand-alone complex as it touches on history and miracles, and things that don’t add up. Many Muslims think that their holy books are correct, it’s just that science has not caught up to it, hey who knows maybe the earth really is flat after all lol.
In all science does not have all the answers but it's all we have, we can believe on what we know, religion on the other hand is quite the opposite, it’s a leap of faith, may the force be with you.
The Illuminator touched on some of this, but I just had a thought that I hope I can express.
For a long time, religion had a profound affect on science. Scientists often started with the assumption that god did certain things, or the stars told a story. So they started from a false point. Then if a scientist did disregard what religion insisted was true, like the earth was the center of the universe, he/she made powerful enemies and risked his/her life.
Science progressed to the point that certain facts could no longer be disputed. Who changed? Religion. Science is now shaping religion.
Suddenly scriptures that have been proven wrong are merely 'misunderstood' and the understanding of them are updated. Science moves forward. Soon it becomes more than simple misunderstanding, because even the reinterpretation is at odds with science. Now these scriptures are simply allegorical, symbolic, dispensing some lesson not facts. Is Genesis wrong? No need to bin Genesis---it now becomes sybolic.
Science has reconstructed all religions, but religion has no impact (or very little--we are still working on it) on science. And every time, science has turned out to be correct, or at least more correct, forcing religion to change its path.
Some of us just choose not to have our science filtered through relgion's slow moving sieves anymore. Religion has never disproved science---even when science gets things wrong, that is learned through more science, never religion. Religion, on the other hand, has been at the mercy of science for quite some time now, and she got slapped around.
Fundamental religion has changed too. Science changed it. They have become more dogmatic, shrill and power hungry. The only way they can hold onto their religion is to enforce intentional ignorance---which they do regularly among their own and try to prevent science from being taught to others. They cannot abide by science correcting their relgion. The fundie movements are pretty new, and if I remember correctly, really didn't make a significant appearance until after Darwin came up with his theory. But these people are at increasing odds against the enlightened world, and that gap will continue to grow. It's an epic struggle that I don't think they will win. But until they give up, they will come out of their caves now and then and poke science with sticks and lob rocks at it.
But for the more reasonable believer, science will change your religion every day. It is no longer recognizable as your religion even 200 years ago. There seems to be something incredibly faulty or false about a god that is so suseptible to science. His story much change with each new discovery. Rather than defining himself, he leaves it up to scientists, and then believers to process what science has found and do some damage control.
Science is not religion, but it has rendered many scriptures completely irrelevant or simply false. Those who wish to believe, are on the job constantly patching up the damage and reworking their beliefs to stay relevant. I suspect there will be another tipping point. There will come a time when people wonder what value there is in hanging onto beliefs that fall and change at the whim of science. They will wonder about the substance behind these beliefs. They will see them as fragile and in need of constant maintenance and repair. And like any beloved possession, eventually upkeep becomes so difficult, it needs to be put aside.
But then humans are not rational. So they may hang on for much longer than anyone would expect. The real danger is science, through no fault of its own, is breeding fundamentalists who are becoming more angry and hostile. And they got stones.
NC
But science and the internet are breeding people who support no religion.
| category | Number of followers (in millions) | Cultural tradition | Main regions covered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christianity | 2,000–2,200 | Abrahamic religions | Predominant in the Western world (Europe, the Americas, Oceania), Sub-Saharan Africa, the Philippines, and East Timor in Southeast Asia. Minorities worldwide, see Christianity by country. |
| Islam | 1,300–1,650 | Abrahamic religions | Middle East, Northern Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, Western Africa, Malay Archipelago with large population centers existing in Eastern Africa, Balkan Peninsula, Russia and China. [ 17 ] See List of countries by Muslim population. |
| No religion | 1,100 | Secularism | Predominant in the Western world. Minorities worldwide, see Irreligion by country. |
This is a compelling drift away from organized religion that really started with the advent of science. As science began to make sense religion began to be seen as senseless. I would also say that the no religion category is larger. 'No religion' people are not hiding the fact that they are secretly in a religion (Under communism back when....... yes). Now however people are more then likely to hide the fact that they don't believe in their traditional religion. Islam for instance has severe penalties for non belief. Today In some countries over 50% of the population profess no religion.
Today In some countries over 50% of the population no religion.If the trend continues we should see a rejection of organized religion reach the 50% level world wide in a relatively short period of time.
Bravo! Ecellent remarks everyone. love this debate, it forces our remarkable & valuable mind to produce excellent points in beautiful narative!
Another Bravo to NewChapter's last post.
Like Dark Angle said...
I especially enjoyed the-illuminator81 and NewChapter's last posts...
Science has grey areas; for example have you ever had the feeling that you are being watched? And you find out that you were, science cannot explain that feeling we have when we are being watched, almost like a six sense. If you think science has an explanation for this, it doesn't.
That doesn't mean there isn't one . . . just that it hasn't been determined yet.
Science doesn't explain everything and probably never will. The day it does, it will no longer be science . . . just facts.
As Einstein said . . . "Of course I don't know what I'm doing. If I did, it wouldn't be research would it?"
Suddenly scriptures that have been proven wrong are merely 'misunderstood' and the understanding of them are updated. Science moves forward. Soon it becomes more than simple misunderstanding, because even the reinterpretation is at odds with science. Now these scriptures are simply allegorical, symbolic, dispensing some lesson not facts. Is Genesis wrong? No need to bin Genesis---it now becomes sybolic.
This is assuming the author of those verses and books meant for them to be taken literally to begin with; or that they even WERE taken literally... past the times that some 'christians' took hold of the Jewish writings and determined how they would be read.
The bible was never meant to be taken literally as a whole. It is filled with allegory, and symbolism.
To state otherwise is to show very little knowledge beyond the fundamentalist literal view... which in the grand scheme of things is both new and few.
The most that science really has ever done is disprove a literal rendering of some books/verses.
Side note to the above, but on line with the thread:
Genesis got it right about the universe having a beginning, rather than being eternal. Scientists didn't even consider it as a possibility for a while, because it was too close to the biblical version. But that was the scientists' bias, and not the bias of science itself, and science tends to win out over bias in the long run.
Peace
tammy
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