Conference lgp30::christian-perspective

Re:  148.0

  >Prejudice is the antithesis of science.  

Agreed.

I never could understand (long before I became a Christian) why the
"scientific method" *forces* one to create a hypothesis before the
results were in.  Given the nature of human beings, this plays on their
desire to interpret the later results in a way that they wanted them
to come out.  

  >However, the bias of creationists is central to their way of thinking, 
  >which is based on faith in the truth of their position.

I think this is an oversimplification of creationists and is not 
accurate from the evolutionist perspective.

Some creationists believe as a matter of faith in the Bible.  Some
creationists believe as a matter of faith in the "scientific evidence".

Some evolutionists believe as a matter of faith (or, if you prefer, lack
of faith in God).  Some evolutionists believe as a matter of faith in the 
"scientific evidence".

  >No, that's where I disagree with you.  Scientists, unlike creationists, 
  >are willing to modify their beliefs based on the evidence.  That's what 
  >science is all about.

Laugh, laugh, laugh.

I, too, am willing to modify my beliefs based on the evidence.  But,
somehow, some people think that I'm stubborn, stuck to believing things
from a very narrow focus, etc.  Nevertheless, I truly am committed to
believing that which is true, no matter what it is.  Because truth
is true.

To think that by calling someone a "scientist", the biases that we all
have built up over a lifetime are somehow cancelled out (or even that
most or many of them are cancelled out) is too optimistic for me.  How
many years have chiropracters been around without being accepted by
medical doctors as legitimate because of prejudice (to use doctors as
a form of scientist)?

Bob, I wish people really were as open-minded as you believe that they
are.  But, despite massive training to (in general) be open-minded, many 
continue in some of their prejudices.  And, on this issue, one of the often 
said things (that is quite misleading and quite untrue) that encourages 
prejudice is to say that there is no (or essentially no) evidence for a
belief in creationism.  This is simply wrong and is the result of the 
prejudice that *scientists* have against anything religious.

This prejudice is born out of the prejudicies that the religious had
in the past that reduced science to "proving" what was already known to
be true and rejecting results which disproved that.  There is, to my
knowledge, one body of people that scientists have MUCH reason to be
prejudiced against.  It is the religious who historically have wrongly
persecuted the scientist.  And the prejudice which was born centuries
ago continues today.

This is why we need to look at the facts and not claim that "scientists
are without bias".  In this area, both sides have their biases.

  >Historically it was very difficult for scientists to break through the 
  >limits imposed by faith and organized religion and to form theories that 
  >are based on a rational study of the evidence rather than on faith.

Agreed.

  >By the way, many scientists do believe in God, although I doubt that many
  >hold to the strict evangelical interpretation of the Bible.

By the way, scientists are near the bottom of the list in terms of
groups of people that believe in God.  I'm not making this up, although
the survey that I saw was years ago.  I do remember that, in terms of
scientists, astronomers were the most likely to believe in God.

Collis

    Re: .1 (Collis)
    
    Scientific method requires that evidence be collated and explained
    right from the start.  This is so further researches can be made with
    reference to a fixed point.  The idea is that as further data comes in
    the hypothesis is buttressed, modified, or discarded.  If no hypothesis
    were formulated, no one would ever know when "all the evidence is in"
    because no one would ever know what it is was being proved, or
    disproved. 

    I'm glad that you placed the phrase "scientific evidence" in quotes
    when using in in context with creationism, as I know of no significant
    body of scientific evidence that supports the creationist theory. 
    Let's face it, Creationism, by its very nature is a religious belief. 
    If it were true, there would be a significant body of evidence to
    support it.  So far, there isn't any.  

    As someone already pointed out, creation "scientists" seem to spend all
    their time disproving evolution.  Even if they were to ever succeed,
    that doesn't necessarily mean that creationism wins by default.  
                                   
    Mike

Re: .1 Collis

>Some creationists believe as a matter of faith in the Bible.  Some
>creationists believe as a matter of faith in the "scientific evidence".

How many creationists *don't* have faith in the Bible?

>  >By the way, many scientists do believe in God, although I doubt that many
>  >hold to the strict evangelical interpretation of the Bible.
>
>By the way, scientists are near the bottom of the list in terms of
>groups of people that believe in God.

Didn't someone in CHRISTIAN a while back claim just the opposite -- that
scientists are *more* likely to believe in God?  Your version does sound
more plausible.  It would certainly be no surprise to me that most scientists
do not believe in God, but I wouldn't conclude that most scientists must be
biased.  I'd conclude that the evidence for the existence of God must not
be very convincing.

				-- Bob

    Evolution is completely consistent with belief in God.
    
    -- Mike

    RE: .4
    
    Definitely!  "How marvelous are His ways!"

    And if God didn't want us to believe in evolution, she wouldn't have
    gone to all the trouble of constructing such a convoluted puzzle which
    covers the entire planet.

    Remember evolution is only a theory.
    
    For myself I believe what the bible says. I don't think God made a
    puzzle for us. He made the earth as He says in the bible. 
    Man has made it a puzzle...
    
    Peace,
    Bill

    The Bible is just chock full of interesting contradictions and
    ideas that make absolutely no sense, at least in the modern context.
    Maybe the author of the Bible didn't set out to puzzle us, but puzzled
    we are, else we wouldn't have so many Christian sects.
    
    Mike
    

    Mike,
    
    	You've raise an interesting point, and so have you!
    
    Richard

    For me the problem with evolution lies not in its status as a
    description of what happened, as in the religion that's grown up as to
    WHY it happened.  I don't know what Darwin thought, but there's a large
    group of scientists who think that the WHY of evolution is random
    chance.  It seems to me that one can view the evidence of what happened
    while assuming the possibility of other motivations.  
    
    I once propounded a theory about a "Cosmic Hacker" who happened on this
    neat system humming along nicely on planet Earth.  This entity decided
    to play a joke, and came up with humanity.  
    
    DR

    Some point out that the big unanswered question in evolution is not
    the *survival* of the fittest, but the *arrival* of the fit!! 
    Evolution tells us something about methodology, but nothing about
    origin or purpose.
    
    Nancy

    	The puzzle is there, like it or not. Go to an open rock surface in
    an area where fossiles are found and explain what you see there. If the
    creation theory is correct then God must have shaped a multitude of
    rocks so as to give the impression that something came before, God must
    have created the rocks as we find them. This is not impossible, though
    I think it an unlikely explanation. Another possibility is that God
    created the world and guided it through an evolutionary process which
    has arrived at our current state, fossils and all. This is not what the
    creationists propose yet it is one option left to us by the standard
    evolutionary explanation. If someone who does not believe in God says
    "random selection", cannot one who believes in God counter with "God
    sets the odds" ?  If one who does not believe in God says "survival of
    the fittest", cannot one who believes in God say "God decides who is
    fittest" ?  
    	Clinging to the "creation 'science'" explanation of how the world
    as we know it came about flies in the face of all the evidence to the
    contrary. The existence of suitable explanations which abide both the
    evidence AND the belief in the "primal cause" of God should sway all
    sensible people to the truth laid before them. Only if these options
    were not present would it make sense to cling to arguments that are
    clearly refuted by the known facts. 

    I read recently that science is *always* subject to question.
    When science is no longer subject to question, it is no longer
    science, but *religion*.
    
    ;-)
    Richard

     Re.11
    
     Nancy:
    
    
     The purpose of evolution, now that is an interesting idea.
  It does presuppose a couple of things. First that evolution
  has occurred and that it does in fact have a purpose.
     The former is an argument that I'll leave to others for the
  the time being. The latter is one that I find quite interesting.
  Whether one believes in evolution or not the idea of the purpose
  of the life on this planet is something that seems worthy of further
  thought.
      Is there a purpose to the existence of life on Earth ? If there
  is at what level and with what species is this purpose manifested ?
  Do some life forms have a purpose and others are devoid of purpose ?
  Could humanity as a whole lack purpose while individuals possess them
  or is it just the opposite ? Does the purpose have a purpose or is it
  simply and end in itself ? Clearly there are a vast number of questions
  that can be asked in pursuing this line of thought.
      Personally I am not sure that anything, anytime or anywhere has ever 
  had a purpose. People may have ascribed a purpose to something, but 
  this is a far cry from actually proving that a purpose exists. How can
  a purpose be proved ? It is mighty difficult if you think about it.
      Take that omnipresent fixture of of American life, the automobile.
  Clearly the purpose of this device is to get persons and property from
  point A to point B. Unless of course we are considering a vehicle owned
  or operated by a teenager. Then, of course, all bets are off as to what
  purpose, if any, the thing will be used for. Actually if you think about
  it an automobile has no purpose. It is merely a machine that humans use
  to perform a particular set of functions. The darn car doesn't even know
  it exists. 
      A good argument can be made that self-awareness is a prerequisite for
  something having a purpose. If indeed sentient creatures have purposes
  and as I have already stated I have my doubts about that. 
      Humans really do seem to be obsessed with the idea of things having
  a purpose. We spare no effort in constructing elaborate explanations,
  reasons and belief systems intended to imbue things with purpose. Unless
  things have a purpose, some kind of, "ultimate meaning" why we are just
  miserable. Well, some of use are. The rest of us could care less.
       What is really funny is that determining some purpose for a thing
  has become such an end in itself. Once we have arrived at what we think
  the purpose of something is we go away smug and satisfied secure in
  the knowledge that we, "understand" this thing.
       By this point you are probably wondering just what the heck I am
  rambling on so about and what does is have to do with "Scientific Bias".
  I rather think that once you start determining the purpose of things
  you have begun to rapidly leave the realm of science. "How", "what" and
  "when" are the territory of science. When we start getting around to "why"
  we are treading on thin ice as far as whatever we are doing being called 
  "science". If you start asking "why" you no doubt need to go back and
  do some more work on the "how", "what" and "when". "Why" may be a legitimate
  starting point for science; not a legitimate conclusion for it.
       With explanations about purpose and meaning there cannot help but
  be the introduction of bias. Maybe it'll be scientific bias or it could
  be religious bias and there are those who would say that there ain't a
  lick of difference between the two. There is also the possibility of
  cultural bias, racial bias and even good old fashioned personal bias.
       The purpose of things, if purposes exist, seems to be irrelevant
  to the reality of things. No soldier gives a damn about why a war started
  when someone is shooting at them. The same holds true for the one doing
  the shooting for that matter. Knowing the reason for things, supposing
  that they have a purpose is often quite useless. Knowing why the other
  soldier is shooting at you will not help you.
       For me the same holds true for the idea of the purpose of evolution.
  It purpose is irrelevant, assuming that it exists. If you could determine
  a reason for evolution, what use would this knowledge be ? Could you ever
  be reasonably sure that you answer was not a reflection of the various
  types of bias and prejudice that we all have. 
       Science, art, beauty, truth, religion or even good cooking do not
  need a reason. Hopefully in our modern imperative to "know why" humanity
  will find the time experience life in all it's diversity, both the pleasant
  and the unpleasant. Perhaps if we stop viewing "purpose" as goal rather than
  starting point this planet and it's inhabitants will have a brighter
  future.


                                                         Mike
   

    Re: .12
    
    A friend of mine explained this to me. He said "God created fossils to
    confuse the scientists".
    
    Pete.

    If there was no "purpose" to our presence, could it be that there is 
    nothing "wrong" with grabbing it all for yourself?  If somebody else
    has what you want, take it an any cost; for after all, what is this
    notion about cost, anyway.
    
    So, maybe we cannot agree with the above - so maybe there are some
    things that should be and others that should not be - so maybe there
    is something about our inner selves which knows and feels.  How could
    this be possible in a world created by chance and not by Go?
    
    	Ron
    

    How could this possibly be a world created by chance and not god?
    
    How could this possibly NOT be a world created by chance...???
    
    Tricky questions.
    
    Pete.

Re: .16  Ron

>    If there was no "purpose" to our presence, could it be that there is 
>    nothing "wrong" with grabbing it all for yourself?  If somebody else
>    has what you want, take it an any cost; for after all, what is this
>    notion about cost, anyway.
    
If everyone in a society acted that way, the society would soon disintegrate.
Thus, though natural selection, we are left with a culture that discourages
such behavior.  We think the behavior is wrong because we have been
programmed to believe that it's wrong.

				-- Bob

    Mike .14,
    
    Good reflections on the relationship between sentient beings and
    meaning/purpose.
    
    	"What an organism does is organize, and what a human organism
    	 organizes is meaning.  Thus it is not that a person makes
    	 meaning, as much as that the activity of being a person is 
    	 the activity of meaning-making."  -- William Perry 
    
    I agree with Perry, and would also go so far as to say human sentience 
    and meaning-making are impossible to cleave apart.
    
    Karen

    re: .14, 
    
    Mike,
    
    As usual, I enjoyed your note but was a bit puzzled that my note
    became a jumping-off place for your interesting essay...
    
    Purpose -- and whether or not there *is* purpose in the universe --
    is, as you say, not provable.  It is a matter of philosophical
    hypothesis (the teleological argument for God and personalism -- not
    identical, BTW) and/or a matter of religious faith.  My note was to
    show that accepting the scientific  evidence of evolution is not at all 
    incompatible with faith *because* different issues are addressed:
    faith addresses cause and purpose, science addrsses the "how"!
    
    It may be that the "purpose" of some things is simply to *be*!
    
    Peace,
    Nancy

    re .15
    
    Then God is the author of confusion.
    
    Gary

    Re.20

    Nancy:
            You note was a "jumping-off point" because it raised an
     interesting point. What I wrote was more or less thinking out
     loud. Which if you actually do causes people to wonder about you,
     but if you type your thoughts out and enter them in a notes 
     conference then it becomes a more acceptable form of behavior.

                                                   Mike

    Re.16

          By the same token one might also conclude that if existence
     is without purpose then "grabbing it all for yourself" is equally
     without purpose.  
          You seem to suggest that belief in God and ethical behavior
     have some kind of symbiotic relationship. Hard as it might be for
     some to accept, personal morality has nothing to do with belief 
     in God.
          I tend to believe that just opposite is true. People choose
     belief in God after establishing personal ethics and morals. For
     religious faith or belief in God to be deemed "good" or desirable
     one needs to first have defined concepts of "good" and "evil" and
     that which is desirable and undesirable within a set of personal
     ethics and morals.

                                                               Mike
                      
                
     

    I tend to view "good" as an *independent* characteristic of God.  In
    that sense, then, I agree with Mike S. that the concepts of good and
    evil do not require a belief in God.  That is why I am inclined to
    prefer the "realist" position over the "nominalist" view, as Nancy
    discussed in the situation ethics topic.  That is also probably why I
    am personally offended by the biblical portrayal of divinely mandated
    atrocities, which is accepted implicitly by fundamentalism.

    However, just because I tend to view "good" as not the contingent and
    capricious will of God, but rather an independent attribute of God,
    that does not mean that I therefore believe that God has no role in
    promoting reality in the world.  Because I am in sympathy with process
    theology, I tend to view God as a kind of "divine lure" towards greater
    enjoyment of what process philosophy calls "occasions of experience". 
    In that sense, then, I see God as a source of morality in the world.  I
    don't derive my belief in God's existence from any sort of moral
    argument, though.

    As for the "purpose" of our existence, I see it again in terms of
    process theology--the purpose of our existence is not only simply to
    exist, but also to maximize (as an expression of love), both our
    enjoyment and the enjoyment of others.  I see all occasions of
    experience as having an intrinsic value, although some occasions may
    have more value than others.  It is the connection with the other-ness
    in our lives that serves, at least in my own theological perspective,
    as the source of meaning and purpose for our existence.  Perhaps the
    processes of interaction between individual entities are then, in a
    sense, their own reward.

    -- Mike

In a recent class I took called Sociology of Religion, we had a lecture
which dealt with the need in people to have things make sense, which is
apparently unique to human beings.

Most people instinctively fear things they do not understand.  Their
anxiety increases with the possibility that *nothing makes any sense*.
This, some speculate, may be a contributing element in explaining the
universality of religion.

Religion attempts to address at least some of the "Big Questions" of
life.  (Why are we here?  What is life all about?  What is death all
about?  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Etc.)  The answers
which religions supply are sometimes called _theodicies_, a term I've
seen Valenza banty about a bit. (;^)  Theodicies work very well for
most folks, until something contradictory occurs, anyway.  Some people
immediately go into denial, however, rather than give up their theodicy.
(Known anyone like this? (;^})

Some people seem to grow and mature to the point where they do not
cling to their theodicies like a security blanket.  They become at ease
with all the incongruities, the inconsistencies, and the contradictions
that life offers.  Some even embrace it, and find great inner peace.

Peace,
Richard

    Why evolve a species that has such a need in the first place? :-)

    	That need would seem to be an inherent weakness in the basic
    process of thought. You are somewhat familiar with computers, for
    example, and they "think" in a truely rudimentary way. Computers are,
    for now, totally dependent on things "making sense", though perhaps not
    in the same way that some people are. Experiments in "Artificial
    Intelligence" are currently aimed at getting computers to think more
    like people do, to be less dependent on things having to make sense and
    better able to form their own rules (creating order from chaos) from
    the available information. This is still a step or two short of real
    intelligence, but it is closer to what we understand as thought. 
    	The question that remains must be: Are those who are less dependent
    on "things making sense" a less-developed evolutionary thread or a
    more-developed evolutionary thread ?  Do they lack the need because
    they have yet to evolve into a being possessing true thought or because
    they have evolved beyond the inherent weakness of the early model ? 
    This is an important question to me as I've given up worrying about the
    fact that not a lot of things make sense and decided to carry on
    regardless. It would be interesting to know if, compared to (for
    example) a Fundementalist, I'm a quarter step closer to a monkey or an
    angel.                   

    There is a difference between a search/need for meaning and a
    search/need for certainty.

    re: .26 (NSmith)
    
    I wonder if we are the final species of an evolutionary string or if
    Homo Sapiens Sapiens is merely a transition species.  All sorts of
    philosophical implications come to mind over this thought, but I'm too
    busy to explore them today.  Or maybe I'm just too lazy?
    
    By the way, has anyone else ever been struck by how immodestly we have
    named our own species?
    
    Mike

    re: .29
    
    Seems to me that even if we are a transition species, the question (in
    .26) is still applicable.  :-)
    
    Let's see now... the "next" stage will not only "need" meaning but will
    have it -- *and* have certainty along with it!  How's that! :-)
    
    

    The question is a VERY good one.  Unfortunately, it will take someone a
    whole heck of a lot smarter than I am to answer it!
    
    Mike