by KateWild 138 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Science IMO does not have all the answers. When I discover gaps in science, it's easy for me, as a temporary measure to fill in the gaps with God. I do this until I have learnt something new.
What about you? Do you believe in the god-of-the-gaps? If so, why? If not, why not?
Kate xx
Why is it so difficult to say of a (so-called) gap in our knowledge, "We don't know (yet)?"
cliff, thats easy too. If you do that, and think we shouldn't fill the gaps with God, thats ok with me. But I want to know why not? Why is it bad if we do? Kate xx
I was never a JW so perhaps I don't understand your mind-set.
Replacing "I don't know" with "god did it" is an intellectual cop-out. There is no evidence for it.
For me there should be a reason to believe something.
I can think of a number of reasons.
Firstly, what does history teach? It demonstrates that science has filled the gaps with explainations based on logical and rational observations of the world around us. Science has never filled a gap in with anything that requires the supernatural intervention of a divine being. Logic therefore suggests that where we have gaps now then these will be filled in with answers that further reduce the space where a beleiver insists God might needs to be involved.
Secondly, science often predicts what will be in the gaps. Think of the periodic table. Think of the Higgs Bosun. The existince of elements that could not be proven experimentally were proposed by those whi could see where the chemical order led. The Higgs Bosun was predicted to exist and then proven to exist. No temporary act of God or nod to God required.
Thirdly, it's yet another area where JWs are trained to cop out. All my life I was trained to cop out of things:
- education: let others be the doctors, dentists, physiotherapists, lawyers, engineers, scientists. Who needs them when we have magazines to push on a Saturday am. Except when we need them to treat our wrecked backs from 40 years of window cleaning, negotiate multi-million pound property deals, develop all the technology that allows us to live just like everyone else.
- public service: don't think about being in the fire, police, ambulance, nursing service. Think of the meetings you'll miss with shift work. I know some do but it's not exactly common amongst Witnesses.
- charity works. Give a bit of money if it makes you feel better but don't waste your time travelling to volunteer in a famine ravaged nation or risk your life working to help civilians caught up in civil wars
- blood. You want to donate blood? Really? You'll be thrown out. Nothing could be more wrong. Except when pretty much every dub is quite happy to grab all the fractions the WTS says are OK that can only come from processed, donated blood.
As a religion, Witnesses are takers. Consumers but never producers. Leeches on the hard work of everyone else who then look down their collective nose at them because they don't beleive the same thing.
The God of the Gaps is just another cop out. Just another way of thumbing our nose at the work and dedication of those who are seeking to find the answers through logic, reason and experimentation. It's just another way of saying to all the scientists of the world "Thanks for all your hard work in bringing us answers that allow humanity to develop, but since you can't easily combine GR and QM you are a bunch of losers who just need to quit and praise God".
Science will never have ALL the answers. But it will never stop progressing and it will never stop explaining things that the faithful just want to park to one side with a "it woz God wot dun it."
Cliff, why is one who says "I don't know" intellectually superior to one who says "God did it"?
I cannot see the diiference in as far as intellect is concerned, we have atheists with a low IQ? We also have scientists with high IQ who say God did it? To me IQ has nothing to do with what one believes.
Kate xx
I don't have a problem knowing that I don't know. Often, it turns out later that the question had more problems than the rote answers provided by the questioner.
whenever somebody worked on a gap, did not yet know how X functioned , what formulae* applied,
and believed god** did it, and he* surely knew how it functioned, and then that somebody's research discovered it,
it was the A-HA moment: The GASP not the gap.
THAT is how it works, these equations govern the works.
THat is is HOW god DID
but not how he HID.
HE is CLEVER
forever.
*like the three laws of planetary motion of J Keppler, the laws of motion of I Newton, the equations of A Einstein, all three believers in a Creator and Eternity
and were not nobodies but SOMEBODIES with a high I.Q. believers in a creator, all.
**god not the one that gets a belly ache, walks in THE garden, but THE WORKER, MAKER, Creator.*he or she or both.
not a HA HA HA moment, it was a truly spiritual experience.
If we dont know yet how it works,
does not mean it is not WORK
if we discover how it works
does not mean it is not work
if you discover how it works,
wait for the call from Stockholm for the NOBEL PRICE
for YOUR work.
May be god is a wrestler, like the story goes about Isreal.
he invites the ones of us with a high IQ, the nobel laureates to
wrestle the secrets of his works from him,
one gap at a time.
Sorry Kate but IQ is a good predictor of religious belief.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence
The problem here is that we Witnesses of old have never been trained in proper logic and reasoning. I know we had all the "reasoning from the scriptures" bollocks but since the WT employs logical fallacies all the time then so do we. The use of educated people for personal testimonies in the recent Awakes is an example of this - in this case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority.#
I would really recommend reading up on logical fallicies - they cast a whole new light on WT reasoning and also how you can make your own propositions far stronger.
