Science, and, with one or two exceptions, scientists themselves, have no issue with religion except when it tries to suppress science.
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”
- Martin Luther
What do you mean by this? There's a very strong, very cerebral theological subculture in Christianity. I think they'd raise their eyebrows to be told they aren't analytical enough. And their works aren't widely read, but they produce memes that filter through popular Christian sermons and books as time goes on.
Or do you mean something specific by "analytical theology"?
In Christianity specifically (and perhaps many other religions) there is also the tenet that faith trumps reason, which is what I think Luther was going on about in this quote.
Somewhat, but how many people watch Transformers versus read the latest cryptocurrency paper?
And there are many styles of preachers that teach and talk much like an enthusiastic college lecturer. They are very erudite and draw large audiences once a week. To talk about philosophy, ethics, morality, and critical analysis, basically. And it's really common for congregations to break out into smaller groups throughout the week to have similar self-lead conversations.
> ...there is also the tenet that faith trumps reason...
That may be a cultural disposition among some, but it's not a tenet. In fact, Christ himself used reason, for example, when saying, "...[a] house divided against itself will not stand." He was using deductive logic in that case to refute that he was exorcising demons as an agent of the devil.
Luther's quote (as is the case of many popular quotes of the founder of Protestantism) was a direct reaction against a view opposing the quote held by the Catholic Church at the time (and, in this case, still today), not expressing a general and unifying belief of all or most religious (or even Christian) people.
So, yes, he would differ, but many religious people and institutions would differ with him on that point. The upthread quote shows Luther's attitude toward reason, but it's offering as illustrating the attitude of religion to reason fails.
Does it help to replace 'philosophers' with 'philosophically-minded theologians'?
It has been corrected.
I'd argue you can generalize pretty much most organized religions from that, but not everything spiritual or peoples actual believes.
Imho religion is merely a institutionalized form of spirituality, enforced on a whole community trough dogma. But dogma is never a good thing especially not for the seeking traveler because by it's very nature it's unreasonable and incapable of change.
The human mind most certainly needs a place to channel it's fascinations for the unknown and unanswerable, I'm just not sure that institutionalized religion is really a healthy way to "fulfill" that need.
What you call dogma is largely a body of knowledge that has been passed down the same way scientific knowledge has been passed down. Ignoring it isn't very different to ignoring the body of published scientific literature and insisting on rediscovering everything for yourself.
How can you generalize about organized religion from a quote whose thesis was specifically a disagreement with the largest organized religion in the world?
Contrary to popular believe Luther was not that flawless shining beacon of reformation he's often made out as, he and his believes came with their very own issues. Like him being a rampant anti-Semite and his views held a lot of weight with the German people. His influence on those matters can in large parts be directly followed to what happened in the Third Reich where a majority population of Christians (96%+) ruthlessly hunted down all "undesirables".
If nowadays anybody would publish a book called "On the Jews and Their Lies" you'd be hard pressed to defend such a thing without coming across like a total asshole with Neo-Nazi tendencies. For Luther is was merely one publication among many showcasing his deep hatred for Jews, yet this barely gets mentioned when his person is discussed, like it never happened.
Even in Germany, it's a rather recent development for people to shine a light on the questionable past of the "big reformer". During the last German Protestant Church Congress a protest group (they protested to stop government subsidies for churches, yes that's an actual thing in Germany) put up a large statue of Luther with some of his most distasteful quotes [0].
Organizers called police, police declared that these quotes are "Volksverhetzend" aka "hate speech/incitement of the masses" and with that they could ban the protesters from the premises. Mind you: Police declared Luther's quotes as hate speech, not statements made by the protesters.
[0] https://hpd.de/artikel/luther-polizeilich-attestierter-volks...
Contrast that quote from Luther and the attitude it expresses toward reason with, e.g., the Catechism of the Catholic Church (para. 159; footnotes excluded):
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Faith and science: "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth." "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are."
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1...
Where Science finally converges with Spirituality because Spirituality is just really really advance science?
As far as I know, believers in telepathy are not attempting to suppress science, they simply believe in something that has no scientific support.
I know some do, but I think most Christian people don't actually believe it took god 6 days or 144 hours to create everything. I think the accept that it's a metaphor, that doesn't try to explain it.
While I don't believe in any religion, I still think these two things can coexists. For instance the originator of the Big Bang theory was both a scientist and priest.
Also religion is not only concerned with what happened, yet often very active in prescribing what has to happen: abortion, divorce, homosexuality,...
The follow on questions are usually, "But how would God have done that and why?" Good questions, but not ultimately scientific ones. They are metaphysical and theological, respectively.
EDIT: Do downvoters care to comment with their thoughts?
But more generally it's a little weird asking someone outright why they belong to a particular religion. It's not something you're meant to litigate. We rightly feel irritated when fundamentalist Christians proselytize to strangers; this is another instance of the same thing.
Even in a thread whose whole point is a discussion of religious belief and why people are religious?
> We rightly feel irritated when fundamentalist Christians proselytize to strangers; this is another instance of the same thing.
When people proselytize for their religion they are implicitly if not explicitly telling you that your current beliefs in that area are wrong and that theirs are right. I agree that is irritating.
I don't think that asking someone why they believe their religion is the same thing.
I wasn't trying to compare to animism. I included the Wikipedia link because I said that there were hundreds of creation stories and thought that if I didn't give some link to a bunch of them someone might get testy over the number. (I'm kind of surprised that hasn't happened anyway, as the Wikipedia list only has 40 or so).
But, to narrow things down, the Genesis account is dislike most of those in that:
1. It's ex nihilo, so it doesn't leave loose ends out there like, "Yeah, but where did the giant turtle come from?" I'll point out that atheist philosophy has this problem at least with respect to matter and energy.
2. It's monotheistic, so complications about where the many gods come from, what rules they have to follow, and how they die are moot.
3. It doesn't make clearly-not-true claims about the nature of reality (great beasts, corpses of giants, etc.). I know people disagree on this point, but I think most people who reject the Genesis account haven't fully deliberated on this question.
Now, I didn't start at genesis and work my way through the Bible to my current beliefs. I don't find that people generally convert to Abrahamic religions that way. But I do find that people mistakenly think there's a contradiction between science (evolution, astronomy) and the Genesis story, which is why I said something.
I didn't say or imply that they are all false. You are reading more, I think, into my question than was there.
I was trying to point out (for the lurkers if not you) that atheism doesn't get a free pass just because there are all sorts of creation stories to consider. A materialist story is a story nonetheless.
No, it's not.
> so it doesn't leave loose ends out there like, "Yeah, but where did the giant turtle come from?"
How is “Yeah, but where did God come from?” not a loose ends almost exactly like that?
> It's monotheistic, so complications about where the many gods come from, what rules they have to follow, and how they die are moot.
It has a single creator (like many polytheistic creation myths), and multiple supernatural entities raising the same type of questions (even if you literally interpret the serpent as just a really smart snake with an unexplained defiant streak, by the end of Gen 3 you’ve got the cherub with the flaming sword.) That the supernatural entities besides the creator in the Judeo-Christian tradition are called something other than gods doesn't actually eliminate any of the issues they raise.
Where is a question that can only be asked if there is a coordinate system.
What do I mean by this?
Okay, so you know the room God is sitting in? That room is also God. It's just a part of him that he turned into a room. Okay, but what about the thing outside of God? The thing outside of God is just God himself too. Because there is nothing outside of God. God already includes that everything outside and inside. Because there really is no outside and inside. To have an outside or inside, God have to split himself into two part, an outside part, and an inside part. At that point, the outside part and the inside part are still just parts of God. Also, a coordinate system doesn't even exist until God split himself into some kind of plane, and then separate that plane from the other unlimited part of himself. This is why they say God is truly unlimited, in every way.
But what about the guy that created God? Technically doesn't exist. However, God can split himself into some guy and pretend to create himself, if that's what he wants. Doesn't matter. In the end, it's all still just God himself. Just another part of God that he himself split into. All him. There is nothing else. Just God.
The universe? Just a part of God that he himself splits into, then afterward, he lay down some rules and laws for that part of himself to obey. He call these rules the Laws of Physics. Earth? Formed from the universe through the Laws of Physics that God set. Human? Evolved from evolution, which are rules naturally occurring in a natural environment in a universe bounds by the rules God had set.
Note that it is also meaningless to ask when God was created or when God first appeared, since time is an artificial restriction God created to bound our universe and to force our universe to play by. God is not bound by this rule. Which is why they say God is eternal. Because time is only an artificial restriction that God set upon our universe.
EDIT: most Christians I've heard talk about this say that God put natural laws into place but of course that is itself a theological point.
In other words, it's extremely rewarding and useful to know how things work assuming no miracles. Just because you believe in miracles doesn't mean all the science is pointless.
Which one? The one (Gen 2:4-) where the order of creation is man, then plants, then animals or the one (Gen 1:1-2:3) where it is plants, then animals then man?
>Which one? The one (Gen 2:4-) where the order of creation is man, then plants, then animals or the one (Gen 1:1-2:3) where it is plants, then animals then man?
Both.
They both are true, and they both are talking about two different events.
In Gen 2:4-, it is talking about men (men here = Adam and Eve) inside the Garden of Eden, while the Earth is still bare.
In Gen 1:1-2:3, it is talking about men (men here = Homo-sapians) outside of the Garden, on Earth.
So basically, God created men (Adam and Eve) inside the Garden of Eden at a time when the Earth was still bare. God then created the plants and the animals inside the Garden of Eden too (remember that outside, the Earth is still bare at this point).
Then, outside of the Garden, on a bare Earth, God created the plants. Then the animals. Then Homo-sapians, who will roam the Earth and evolve to eventually "have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
Adam and Eve, who are inside the Garden of Eden, are NOT the same as the Homo-sapians who roamed the Earth, though by the time Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden, the Homo-sapians will have already evolved to look like humans too.
In other word, in the Garden, Adam and Eve were created as perfect humans beings already. Meanwhile, outside the Garden, primates had go through an evolution process over millions of years to reach the point where they look like humans.
No, it's not.
'Homeopathy' doesn't do anything. It posits a rational framework that is simply invalid.
Religions ultimately deal in matters of the 'soul' or whatever word you want to use that describes the nature we have beyond the material. If you want to accept the current 'Scientific Materialist' premise to it's full extent, then you must accept that you are a 'bag of random particles' and that there can be no 'live' 'love' 'culture' 'thought' or even 'intelligence' - after all none of those things can exist in pure randomness.
We all (well, almost all) believe that we are 'alive' - implying that life is something beyond the crude material, and it's the obvious 'fail' of materialism as a workable world view.
The 'trunk' of the tree of science as posited by Descartes is 'physics' - but the 'root' is metaphysics. Sometimes we forget the roots because they don't fit well into equations :) :)