I remember that I was eight years old or thereabouts when my older brother first introduced me to the concept of the world as dream, or the idea that everything you experience might be false in some ways to what we think of as reality.

I like to think that he contributed in a positive way to my philosophical growth, enabling me to think about metaphysics in some manner that is alogical.

Mostly, though, I remember being thoroughly appalled at the time.

Incidentally, when I was in high school I had a teacher who was trying to introduce the concept of Socratic questioning to our class by demonstrating it... on me.

He was a little surprised at how I avoided actually answering his questions... having been drilled in such manner in the past by the aforementioned brother.

That brother is now a rocket scientist, and worked on the probe that is going to Pluto.

"...science itself is a faith. It rests on the assumption that the natural world it studies is "real." Is not a dream or an illusion. But science cannot ever prove that this is so."

No system of belief can ever do better than this. Check out Gödel's incompleteness theorems, the most famous of which states that for any self-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe integer arithmetic, there are true propositions about integers that cannot be proven from the axioms.

Generalised, this means your complaint about science applies universally to all belief systems and is therefore pointless and unproductive.

The virue of science over, say, religion, is that it requires a very much smaller leap of faith (or accptance of axioms) than all alternatives.

However religion is at the other extreme. If there are, let us say, 1,000 religions in the world all claiming to speak the truth, it follows inevitably that at least 999 of them are not speaking the truth, and there is no way to determine which is the one in a thousand, the exception that is true. Indeed, statistically the logical conclusing is that in fact it's possible none are true, and that is by far the most likely outcome.

Therefore the leap of faith required to accept a religion is utterly vast compared with what science asks for -- espcially as all scientific beliefs (theories) are provisional and based on evidence, while religious beliefs (dogma) are absolute and based on no evidence but just assertions.

JEM

JEM,
"the leap of faith required to accept a religion is utterly vast compared with what science asks for -- espcially as all scientific beliefs (theories) are provisional..." The "faith" of science is NOT in the theories, but the underlying assertion that the natural world is what it appears to be to our senses. And that is dogma, something you must accept in order to create scientific theories.

(You might say this is comparable to the way churches (mine at least) separate dogma and theology. Dogma, or creed, is what you must believe, theology is an attempt to explain the creed, and is allowed to be provisional.)

And religious beliefs also are usually supported by evidence. I would guess that you would look at that evidence and say "It's not scientific so it's useless." (I would tend to do the same--it's in our culture) But that is as logically fallacious as dismissing scientific evidence because it contradicts scripture. Both positions privilege one faith in criticizing another.

The "leap of faith" in science is not any smaller than in religion, it is just easier...at least if you have been raised in a culture that accepts it.

B, I love your story about the socratic questioning.! But I would guess your brother is either a planetary scientist or a rocket engineer.

The popular phrase "It's not rocket science" always bugs me. Rockets and missiles are built by engineers...

John, what makes the 'leap of faith' so much greater in religion than science is that axiomatically in a world of (say) 1,000 religions, you have at least a 99.9% certain chance of making the wrong leap.

Science makes no such demands on your credulity. All it asks is that you believe the evidence of your own senses. Indeed it can co-exist with religious faith for many people, which on the other hand is the rejection of the evidence of your own senses in favour of imagination, and someone else's imagination at that: the triumph of fantasy over objectivity, you might say.

JEM

Rockets and missiles are built by engineers base on scientific theories. Without more predictively accurate scientific theories there would be very little progress in engineering and much less economic growth.

JEM, your axiom is false, because you are privileging science in advance, by assuming that it is in a different category than religions. But in it's underpinnings it is just another faith. You could call it a religion, using the word in a broad sense.

And, far from being a different kind of thing from religion, it fits comfortably on the spectrum of religious beliefs. For instance, the Deist faith is almost identical to the scientific one. It posits that God created the universe, but assumes that thereafter the universe runs by the same rules that scientists assume.

Science makes no such demands on your credulity... Oh yes it does. It's only because we are steeped in the scientific world-view from an early age that we don't see it.

When you "accept" the information about another planet that you see in a telescope, you are making a leap of faith. When Christians "accept" the testimony of the disciples who saw Jesus after he was resurrected, they are making a leap of faith. But you and I have been so immersed in "science" all our lives that we can't see the leap involved in believing what photons tell us.

John writes:

"The 'faith' of science is NOT in the theories, but the underlying assertion that the natural world is what it appears to be to our senses. And that is dogma, something you must accept in order to create scientific theories."

There's no dogma involved, John. The laws of physics exist, whether we believe in them or not. Don't believe me? Hold a large rock at waist-height above your foot, and then let it go. The resultant pain exists, regardless of your belief. :)

Similarly, the physical world exists, and consequences flow from that existence, whether we like them or not. And the world at least seems to obey what we call "the laws of physics", and those laws appear to be discoverable by human beings.

Now, you may not like some of the freakier implications of post-1900, non-Newtonian physics (and I'm not comfortable with some of it, either), yet those physical theories have immense *predictive* power about the physical world. And they've acquired that predictive power through a process of trial-and-error: If the theory is discovered to have a flaw because it makes false predictions, it's discarded. A new theory is then put together that takes into account the facts that pointed out the flaws in the discarded theory. And that new theory is used ONLY until it, too, gets disproved. In short, scientific theories work because they're falsifiable.

What predictive power do the world's various religions have about the world? (I'm thinking about creationism, and "scientific creationism" in particular.) Absolutely none. They can't-- they're not improvable (is that a word?) through trial-and-error. They're not falsifiable, because they're DOGMA.

And I think that's what JEM is driving at, John. It's in that sense that religion requires a greater "leap of faith" that science does-- mostly because of religion's miserable track record at describing the hows and whys of the world.

No "faith" is required to foresee the pain that large rock is going to give you when it strikes your foot. One Hell of a lot of faith is required to believe that one is going to meet St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. Or wind up in Paradise with 72 virgins, or what-have-you.

Don't get me wrong-- I'm not hostile to religion. I guess you could call me a Deist. But being a Deist, more or less, I'm acutely aware of the difference between science and religion, and get irritated when people try to mix them, or put them on the same philosophical footing.

"The resultant pain exists, regardless of your belief".

No. That is, ultimately, a statement of faith. You have no way to prove that the pain is not a hallucination. You have no way to prove that the natural world is not a dream you are having, or that the laws of physics are not hoaxes perpetrated by demons.

Science rests on faith. You are just so drenched in that faith that you can't see it.

You say you are "acutely aware of the difference between science and religion," but you are not. You are not standing outside and looking at them side-by-side. When you write: "What predictive power do the world's various religions have about the world?", you are looking at the question from within the viewpoint of science. That is a question that science asks.

And none of this is a matter of being "hostile to science" or "hostile to religion." It's about clear thinking. I share with you the belief that the rock is real, and the sore toe is real. But it is important to be aware that this belief rests on faith, and not to close-mindedly assume that "truth" is a settled matter.

"What predictive power do the world's various religions have about the world?"

You could re-phrase that and write: "I can't believe in religions because they don't produce good science." That's what I mean by saying you are looking at questions "from within the viewpoint of science."

"JEM, your axiom is false, because you are privileging science in advance"

Uh, no. I'm priviliging common sense over fantasy. (Not that I mean to offend the religious when I say that; it's just a statement fo fact.)

"For instance, the Deist faith is almost identical to the scientific one. It posits that God created the universe..."

In fact Deism is utterly distict from science. It makes an untestable hypothesis that is not necessary.

In other words, we cannot prove the existence of God (believe it perhaps, but NOT prove it) and his existence does not explain anything; Occam's Razor makes it clear why the proposition is superfluous and explains nothing.

For if God created the universe, the obvious next question is, who or what created God?

There's the story of the little old lady tackling the famous astronomer after his lecture: "You don't convince me, professor. The world is not a ball but flat, and it rests on the back of an elephant."

"But what does the elephant sit on, madam?"

"That's obvious, young man. It's elephants all the way down."

You are with the elephant party, it seems.

JEM

JEM, I'm not arguing for any party. I'm pointing out that your positions are philosophically false.

And now you have added another one, by referring to "common sense." Your common sense is just whatever you were taught as a child, and what you have inferred from your experiences in life. But it rests on faith. You can't prove that it is not an illusion.

You write: "Deism...makes an untestable hypothesis". But science also rests on an untestable hypothesis, namely that reality is "real." Philosophically, neither has an advantage. And you write that the hypothesis of Deism is "unnecessary." But the judgement that it is unnecessary is based on your scientific faith--you don't have any independent ground for it.

Occam's Razor doesn't prove anything either. Its preference for simple answers is a philosophical tool, but it doesn't claim that the simplest answer is always the right one. And if it did that in itself would be an "untestable hypothesis."

And the "elephants" argument is sophomoric. It is based on the faith that our common-sense perception of time is true, and that everything started at some point in time, and must have been preceded by some other event. But you can't prove that that is true.

(Most religions do not argue elephants, but rather that God is outside of time, and that time is a characteristic of the universe which he created. Which actually fits rather well with the speculations of many physisists about time.)

Again, I'm not appearing as an advocate for any party here, just pointing out that your thoughts are muddled by unjustified assumptions.

John, I'm not advocating a particular party either, but AM making the proposition that if you can't believe the evidence of your senses, then all bets are off and this discussion together with all discussions on any subject under the sun are pointless and futile.

It is just not possible to get anywhere if nothing whatever can be taken as true.

This does not mean that what you sense is necessarily real, but that is the minimal assumption, and as Gödel proved, some sort of axiom(s) is unavoidable -- but the less the better, and this one is the least and therefore the best.

Therefore science wins hands down over religion. It makes that minimal demand on your assumptions, while religion makes the most -- and what's more it is objectively sure to be wrong at least 99.9% of the time, as already set out.

"Most religions do not argue elephants, but rather that God is outside of time"

Of course they don't argue elephants. But something like that is implicit in their belief systems. Naturally they try, successfuly most of the time, to bury this consequence of their stated beliefs, as exposed it shows them up to be ridiculous.

And at least Chritianity, Judaism and Islam does NOT argue that God is outside of time, but rather worked his act of creation within it. If you doubt this, read Genesis again. However if time exists only inside the universe, it would have been impossible for such a god to have created it as he would be part of what he was creating.

For a cause to be meaningful it must lead to an effect. But outside of time, cause and effect just does not apply, so a creator god has to exist inside time... and hence the universe itself; a logical nonsense.

So, to take this more seriously than elephants:

Modern cosmology does indeed appears to show that space and time are part of the universe and do not exist outside it -- in other words they began along with everything else, at the Big Bang. If there was no spacetime outside that event, then 'before' is meaningless as there was no earlier time and therefore there could not have been an external cause or creator.

This ties in with the evidence of vacuum energy, or quantum mass-energy fluctuation. Or to put it another way, the universe is a random quantum event. God does not play dice, in the words of Einstein, but rather, God IS a dice, if you insist on using the term "God'.

The universe and everything in it is the result of pure random chance, in this theory. God is an unnecessary hypothesis. That takes us back to Occam's Razor, which by the way is a useful logical tool and not of itself part of the evidence.

Now I don't say the quantum universe way of looking at things is correct, but it does have the considerable virtues of (a) self-consistency and (b) evidence, at least in part.

Religion has neither of these.

JEM

"..as Gödel proved, some sort of axiom(s) is unavoidable -- but the less the better, and this one is the least and therefore the best."

"the less the better" is just a part of your (and my) belief system--It is not an objective criteria for choosing one system over another.

And your 99.9% argument still doesn't work. You have created arbitrary categories (science in one set, the 1000 religions in another.) But there is no reason to separate them that does not derive from science itself.

" ...but it does have the considerable virtues of (a) self-consistency and (b) evidence, at least in part.

Religion has neither of these."

Sure it does. The self-consistency of, say, the Summa of Aquinas certainly rivals anything in the scientific world. And there are mountains of evidence--People hear the voice of God, or saints, or see miracles all the time. You have just decided, from your scientific viewpoint, to deny the validity of non-scientific data. Which is fine, but you should stop fooling yourself that you have any philosophical grounds for considering your system to be more valid than others.

""the less the better" is just a part of your (and my) belief system--It is not an objective criteria for choosing one system over another."

Rubbish.

There is no other sensible way to proceed. To assume more than you absolutely must is just a sure fire way to draw the wrong conclusions.

"And your 99.9% argument still doesn't work."

Of course it does.

In a 'pantheon' of 1,000 religions all insisting they are the sole depositories of the truth it is self-evident and inescapable that at least 999 of them are wrong -- and therefore most likely all 1,000 are wrong. Science, on the other hand actually makes no claim to be the sole depository of the truth (although you seem to imagine so) so the catagories are not arbitrary and do not in any way derive from science; they derive from the blatent contraditions of multiple religions.

"The self-consistency of, say, the Summa of Aquinas certainly rivals anything in the scientific world."

You jest. This work is nothing more than a collection of unsubstantiated (in terms of evidence) and separate assertions. Many may be valid, many are just twaddle. If this is the best there is for religion, the situation is even worse than I thought.

"And there are mountains of evidence--People hear the voice of God, or saints, or see miracles all the time."

This is not evidence for religion, but for the doubtful mental state of the hearers of voices and seer of visions.

"Which is fine, but you should stop fooling yourself that you have any philosophical grounds for considering your system to be more valid than others."

But I don't. On the other hand, it sounds very much like what you are doing.

JEM

John writes:

"'The resultant pain exists, regardless of your belief'.

"No. That is, ultimately, a statement of faith. You have no way to prove that the pain is not a hallucination. You have no way to prove that the natural world is not a dream you are having, or that the laws of physics are not hoaxes perpetrated by demons."

Two things, John:

1) Whether I believe the pain is a hallucination or not is irrelevant-- the pain is a signal that bodily damage has taken place, and that further drops of large rocks on one's feet are not desirable.

2) Similarly, whether this world is a hallucination or not is irrelevant-- this is the world we live in, and no amount of wishing or philosophical hair-splitting will change that. Bearing that in mind, asking whether the laws of physics are truly real or merely the invention of demons is pointless, so why bother? One might as well ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin-- it's a meaningless question.

John writes:

"'What predictive power do the world's various religions have about the world?'

"You could re-phrase that and write: 'I can't believe in religions because they don't produce good science.' That's what I mean by saying you are looking at questions 'from within the viewpoint of science.'"

John, I won't (and can't) rephrase it, because predictive power goes right to the heart of the difference between science and religion.

Science and religion are two different things.

Science is a process of asking questions about the physical world, gaining knowledge by finding answers to those questions, fitting those answers into a coherent framework (a theory, if you will), and then testing that theory against reality by seeing if predictions made by the theory are actually true. If they're true, great-- more knowledge is gained, holes in the theory are filled in, and the theory is tested again.
If the theory fails, great-- more knowledge is still gained, and a new theory is erected on the ruins of the old. And then the new theory is tested, etc. Dogmas about the physical world get slaughtered all the time-- it's science's stock-in-trade, its very purpose.

Religion, on the other hand, is not (or properly, should not be) about the physical world. Its proper business is the world of the human heart-- mankind's hopes, dreams, and fears. I grant you that it does have something to do with the physical world-- after all, what we do in the physical realm, for good and ill, has a great deal to do with what is in our hearts. But what one believes about God (or the Gods, or Chairman Mao) has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with how the physical world actually operates. NO amount of prayer, or casting of magical spells, or recitations from The Little Red Book will prevent that rock from crushing one's foot. Religion has nothing to do with science-- they're two separate realms, not least because no self-respecting religion can tolerate its dogmas being questioned. Indeed, far from slaughtering dogmas, the very business of religion is the PERPETUATION of dogmas. Sometimes those dogmas are beneficial (as with Christianity and Judaism, for example), and sometimes they're malignant cancers (as with Wahabbist Islam, or Communism). But it's still all about dogma.

So if my faith in conventional Christianity seems weak, John, it's not because I can't believe in religion because it can't produce good science. Christianity has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with science-- it can't, because its knowledge-base is NOT about the physical world but is instead about the world in our hearts.

If I recall correctly, the Greeks centuries ago had a term for that dichotomy: the Inner Learning and the Outer Learning.

If I can pick on the creationists for a moment....

Creationists try to shoehorn the physical evidence of the fossil record into their pet theories of divine intervention in the beginnings of the Earth. (That would be fair enough, IF they actually used ALL the physical evidence at hand. Instead, they cherry-pick the facts that bolster their case, and sweep the inconvenient facts which explode their case under the rug.) Usually, their theories are made in conformance with the Book of Genesis-- that is, they try to show that the Earth was created in six days about 6,000 years ago.

Watching their antics, I have to wonder what God thinks of it all. In their zeal to "prove" the literal truth of the Book of Genesis, they completely miss its point. They're like a fifteen-year-old who still believes in Santa Claus-- so attached to the idea of Santa and his generosity that he can't see the true source of that generosity-- his parents. And the parents would have to be torn between irritation at their child's obtuseness and fear for his mental acuity.

I wonder if God feels the same way about the creationists. No doubt He knows that the creationists aren't stupid (at least, no more so than the rest of us are), but I think He would be irritated with them for clinging to a puny storybook version of Him, while the true (and frightening, really) story of His Power and Majesty is all around us, and can be read if one would only have an open mind.

And that's why the creationists get all fouled up: they try to mix the Inner Learning with the Outer Learning, and wind up making a hash of both.

And that's your mistake too, John, as near as I can figure. You're trying to put on the same footing two very different things, things which are different both in purpose and in their operation.

My fifty-seven cents' worth, anyway. :)

P.S. to JEM: Easy, dude, easy. I think John's mistaken too, but back off on the high-handedness. And if you aren't meaning to be high-handed, tone down the sharpness of your words a bit-- it's all too easy to take our words here the wrong way due to the lack of non-verbal cues here, which would modify and even soften what you're trying to say.

JEM,
It's pointless to keep discussing this, because you keep sliding away from my points, and acting as if I am arguing for-or-against science, or for-or-against religion. My point is that there is no objective philosophical basis for choosing one faith (including science) over another.

For an instance of not meeting my point: Whether or not the Summa is "twaddle" has no relevance to my argument. I said it was self-consistent. And it is. It may be twaddle, but a work can be nonsense and still be perfectly self-consistent. YOU had used "being self-consistent" as if it were an objective argument for science, so I gave you a counter-example.

Presenting a counter-example is a normal method of philosophical discussion. But you skittered away from my point, and pretended that I was presenting a pro-religion argument.

Similarly you dismiss my point about evidence for purely subjective reasons. That's not a philosophical argument, just an opinion. It was a counter-example to your point, but you failed to either refute or acknowledge it.

So this is just a waste of time.

Hale, you are not even slightly denting my point, which is that science ultimately rests on faith. (Which is actually a philosophical commonplace, too well accepted to even be debatable.)

"...is pointless, so why bother?" It's not pointless to MY argument, it's germane. But if the argument is not interesting to you, that's OK, because most of us go through life just fine without questioning the philosophical under-pinnings of what we think and believe. I won't pursue it.

I would like to make one thing clear however (nothing to do with my previous argument.) It is NOT true that "Religion...is not (or properly, should not be) about the physical world." Few or no Christian theologians would agree with that. Aquinas, for example (I'm not learned on this stuff--I just happened to hear a cool lecture on him recently) believed that everything in the cosmos manifested God's divine goodness. And that the natural world was worth investigating not just because it would teach us about the creator, but because it was intrinsically worth studying. (He disagreed with Bonaventure, who taught that the world was a symbol of God, and valuable only in that respect.) In fact the idea that the natural sciences should have autonomy from theology, and were worthwhile things in themselves, starts with Aquinas.

The notion that religion should only deal with inward things is something often pushed by leftists, who want to keep the public sphere for themselves--hence my leaping to express my disagreement....

John writes:

"Hale, you are not even slightly denting my point, which is that science ultimately rests on faith."

Well, I guess I must not fully grasp the meaning of the word "faith", John. I'm willing to concede a certain cluelessness on that point. :)

I don't blame you for wanting to shoot down the idea of Christianity (or religion generally) being confined only to inward matters, given how that idea has been hijacked by the leftists for their own purposes. My point was only to make clear that religion does not and CANNOT say anything of any practical value about the origin of life millions or billions of years ago, or how the Sun operates, or how a radio works, and so on. Certainly, religion should say something about how we put such knowledge and technology to use. It just can't say anything about their workings, that's all.

Just so I'm not misunderstood:

By "It just can't say anything about their workings, that's all", I mean to say that any statements made by the Church on such topics is utterly beyond its competence, NOT that it is not permitted to make statements on such topics.

Gah, I'm getting tired.....

John, please substitute the phrase, "the workings of the Sun or of radios" for the phrase "such topics".

Thanks!

I don't agree that science ultimately rests on faith, certainly not in the sense that religion does. Science deals with things that are measurable and predictable in principle, and rejects measurements that can't be duplicated by multiple scientists.

God, on the other hand, is non-provable in principle, and religious revelation is personal. Religion does a fine job of providing people with meaning and rules to live by, but when it comes to curing strep throat I choose antibiotics over the laying on of hands.

And it doesn't really matter to the scientist whether the world is an illusion as long as it's an illusion that follows regular laws and has measurable properties. In some ways it certainly would be preferable for it to be an illusion, but the evidence doesn't tilt that way.

Jeez guys, this isn't philosophical rocket science. Down underneath the level of "evidence" and "Strep Throat" and rocks-dropped-on-toes, science makes some assumptions that it can't prove. You know that.

There's nothing wrong with this; every concept or system that doesn't claim to explain everything is in the same boat. Science doesn't claim to explain everything, therefore it can't be sure that the things outside its purview don't invalidate it.

YOU are in the same boat. You can't prove that you yourself exist. You could be, as the Chinese poet put it, a butterfly dreaming you are a man. Or a butterfly dreaming you are a man dropping a rock on his toe.

Don't worry about it. It makes zero practcal difference in daily life--the Strep Throat still gets cured. But it's a good thing to know, in case you are in an argument, so you won't look foolish.

On religious consistency (1):

A thousand different religions, all claiming a monopoly of the truth? It's difficult to imagine anything less consistent.

On religious consistency (2):

The Summa of Aquinas is internally inconsistent on a massive scale.

-- Theology is a science, the greatest of all the sciences, and the most certain (since its source is from God who knows everything.

But by this very definition, theology is NOT a science, because it is not grounded in objective evidence but subjective non-evidental belief.

(One example among many, of internal contradiction.)

-- It is always a good thing to become a monk or a nun and it is easier than being married.

Really? Did Aquinas ever meet any normal people?

(One example among many, of what I earlier called twaddle.)

I don't agree that science ultimately rests on faith, certainly not in the sense that religion does. ... God, on the other hand, is non-provable in principle, and religious revelation is personal.

Thank you Richard. That sums the whole thing up so neatly. To put this another way, we're trying to compare apples and bananas here.

The conflicts between science and religion happen when they stay onto each others territory.

Creationism/Intelligent Design (C/ID) is a classic example of religion moving into territory it is not competent within, while questions of the existence or otherwise of God is outside the realm of science.

C/ID because it flies in the face of the overwhelming evidence.

Indeed, talking about religious consistency, it logically require a god who lies. Why? Because C/ID means that the overwhelming evidence for the age of the universe, for example, from geology and astronomy among other places must have be put there as a sort of trap by a vindictive and deliberately deceiving creator.

Alternatively, the geological and astronomical evidence is correct and the Word of God -- in this case, the Book of Genesis -- is a pack of lies. Either way, by straying into this territory, C/ID ends up with a liar god. I don't think that was their intent, but it is the ultimate conclusion of their belief.

And if we have a deliberately lying god, all bets are off.

The existence or otherwise of God.

This question is outside the realm of science because it is not a matter that can be answered in terms of the physical world, and that is all that science can consider. As set out earler, God is not necessary to explain the universe in scientific terms, but that does not mean he does or does not exist.

In summary, science is concerned with the physical and religeon with the metaphysical, which of course means 'beyond the physical'.

Apples and bananas, apples and bananas.

John - I'll grant that your interlocutors are showing a tendency to be a tad thick on the, as you say, philosophical commonplace being discussed here. In their defense, however, I'll point out that "science, like faith, makes some assumptions that it can't prove" and "science is a faith like any other" are not equivalent statements - unless you're keeping the latter strictly in context of the former, and it's not really clear from your responses that you are.

When that gets muddied people start talking about seventeen different things at once. As I'm going to do - I'm not sure where you're going with the Aquinas/Bonaventure example. I'd think the point is that, if with Aquinas we begin to say that the cosmos is intrinsically worth knowing, then we are beginning to move natural science toward the separate, and yes, privileged, space that it occupies in the West today. Likewise, I don't know that it's correct to say that few or no Christian theologians believe(d) that religion has nothin' to say about the physical world. (Didn't Ockham have a snit with Aquinas about that?)

The above paragraph is phrased tentatively because I know less than squat about Christian theology. That's not going to stop me from quibbling with JEM about God not being outside of time. Christians think God exists within time? Doesn't sound right to me. I paid as little attention as possible to whatever theology was presented to me, but I vaguely recall the retelling of some big argument about that very point, that came down squarely on the "outside of time" side.

"Don't worry about it. It makes zero practical difference in daily life," wrote John.

Unfortunately, John, this "practical life" of which you speak is all many of us have - as we experience in it in our dozy, scientific, possibly-a-butterfly-dreaming way.

And the "practical" application of certain fantasy dogmas to my butterfly-dreaming existence can have a great deal more than zero impact. A ground zero impact, if you like.

Jody, I'd guess you are referring to science, and of course it has an impact on you--but science goes on the same whether or not anyone thnks about it's metaphysical underpinnings. In fact some people do good scientific work without believing in science at all--for instance holding religious beliefs that contradict the science they are practicing..

Moira, I brought up Aquinas just because I really dislike the idea that religion is required or supposed to confine itself to a limited and private realm. I'm perfectly aware that in day to day life most modern up-to-date faiths do just that. But that's not the "nature" of faith, just an adaptation in one time and place.

I guess that I'm a medieval soul at heart, but I'm not prepared to go with the times...

"unless you're keeping the latter strictly in context of the former, and it's not really clear from your responses that you are." Got distracted. But it's hard, when you are arguing with people who can't even see the different layers...

Christians think God exists within time? Doesn't sound right to me.

Moira, just read the first chapter of Genesis. There it is in black and white.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." .... "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." ..... and so on until .... "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made."

It's unavoidable: the Christian (and Jewish, and Islamic, for it is the same one) God exists within time.

Period.

(To be fair, when God inspired the guy who wrote this stuff, he forgot to mention quantum cosmology and relativity and the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics... never mind evolution. An example of Not-Particularly-Bright-Design, perhaps?)

Ho hum.

By the way, I like the notion that this universe of ours was created by a trainee god who screws up really bad.

It would explain so much.

JEM,
Quoting Genesis doesn't earn you any points in the question of what Christians believe. Even those denominations that believe that God literally created the world in 7 days do not believe that the language of that passage somehow limits the nature of God.

That God exists outside of time is fairly common in Christian thought; I've encountered it several times without having studied the subject.

(It's a useful concept when dealing with cracker-barrel philosophers who like to pose conundrums that they think will demolish Christians. "If God is X, then he can't possibly do Y." 'If God can see the future, then he created the Universe knowing what was going to happen, therefore we do not have Free Will.")

It is, as they say, "Ho hum."

Uh, JEM, that passage does not settle at all whether, according to Christians, God exists in or out of time (exists before time / creates time along with the universe / whatever). My own quickie strict literal reading of the passage given says they're talking about the beginning of the universe, not the beginning of God (and obviously God goes on godding at the same time time is timing la la la), but at any rate what you or I interpret Genesis to mean about the nature of God isn't germane to my question. I just think you might be wrong on a simple point of fact about what some people do or do not believe. Like John, I've encountered the contrary of your assertion in casual exposure. If I could infer Christian theology from the Bible, I wouldn't have to ask the question in the first place.

To forestall tedium, I'll add that whether Christian belief on this point is internally inconsistent, moronic, or just plain batshit crazy is also irrelevant to my query.

To John:

"If God can see the future, then he created the Universe knowing what was going to happen, therefore we do not have Free Will." ... It is, as they say, "Ho hum."

Perhaps, but it's also Calvinism, which traditionally believes in predestination, the absense of free will, and that those who are to be saved are already chosen.

And Calvinism or Presbyterianism (basically the same thing) is a reasonably major sect of Christianity. I ought to know; that's where I started out from, so to speak.

(You may say Presbyterianism is wrong. Fine. That's one down, 999 to go... of course a strict Calvinist - or Puritan or Pilgrim, it's all the same thing - would say you were predestined to reject Calvinism.)

To Moira:

...that passage does not settle at all whether, according to Christians, God exists in or out of time (exists before time / creates time along with the universe / whatever). My own quickie strict literal reading of the passage given says they're talking about the beginning of the universe, not the beginning of God...

Perhaps God existed before the universe (except that in terms of modern science that is a nonsense statement) but what this passage is quite clearly describing is God creating the universe within time and that means, in scientific terms, inside the universe. That is an obvious absurdity and there is no escaping it. The words are quite clear on this.

The only way a Christian can say different is to say, "The Bible lies on this." In that case, I dispute that person is still a Christian.

(By the way, you don't have to say the Bible lies to accept evolution. What that requires only, is an elastic concept of how long a day - undefined there - is in the Genesis story of creation. But however long or short a day is, it's all happening within time; that is inescapable and so much more fundamental.)

Geez, this comment thread sure got noticed, didn't it? :)

Moira writes:

".....In their defense, however, I'll point out that "science, like faith, makes some assumptions that it can't prove" and "science is a faith like any other" are not equivalent statements...."

Bingo!! Thank you, Moira, for spotting the problem for me, and articulating what I couldn't see.

John, if you want to say that science makes assumptions it can't prove, fine-- I can't argue with you. But if you want to say that science is a faith like any other, well-- JEM and I are just going to have to agree to disagree with you.

And the heart of that disagreement is this: because science and religion are each not competent to address matters in the other's area-of-competence, they CANNOT be the same thing, and cannot operate by the same rules, as the creationists are finding out to their chagrin.

Only two cents' worth, this time, and thanks for the soapbox.

JEM, I think it's generally true in Christian denominations that theology keeps evolving, and so you can't bump a church off your list (except to your own satisfaction) if you find an error in theology. Dogma is different, and if you could prove an error in, say, the Nicene Creed, you might have accomplished something.

For peoples' general information, the Roman Catholic view of Scriptural Inerrancy (I only know about this because I just heard a lecture, not because I am learned) is that scripture is true in whatever the author intended to say. The Genesis creation story was compiled by priestly writers who were presenting a lesson about the goodness of God's creation, and the deep importance of the Sabbath. They were not trying to present a factual history, and so the Catholic Church has nothing invested in whether or not the world was created in 7 days.

John,

JEM, I think it's generally true in Christian denominations that theology keeps evolving, and so you can't bump a church off your list (except to your own satisfaction) if you find an error in theology. Dogma is different, and if you could prove an error in, say, the Nicene Creed, you might have accomplished something.

Indeed. Is that not what I've just done with this matter of creating the universe from within the universe? That sounds a lot more like doctrine than theology to me.

...the Catholic Church has nothing invested in whether or not the world was created in 7 days.

Excepting that I refered to the elastic length of a day rather than the number of days in the Genesis creation story (which I suggest is immutable without demolishing the whole edifice) the Roman Catholic Church and myself sound as if we are surprisingly close to agreement here.

Wow...who knew Philosophy 101 stuff could be so controvertial...

JEM, if we substituted, say, "world view" for "faith," would you acknowledge that a religion is a world view, and that science is a different world view?

And step two, that a person who whole-heartedly believes in the truth of, say, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, as the Catholic Church teaches, would see the fact that religion cannot predict the behavior of light waves as being completely irrelevent to its other truth claims? And that similarly, a person who understands quantum mechanics and cladistics will find the fact that they say nothing regarding how to feel fulfilled and at peace - that this failing is completely irrelevent to its truth claims?

Personally, after two years in the seminary, I'm a confirmed athiest - but that's because I've decided that a materialist point of view is a more accurate way of approaching the world...nonetheless, I understand that this was a choice I made, not a truth that was revealed, as it were...

Oh, and a great St. Thomas Aquinas story:

One day a Friar in a jovial mood cries out: "Friar Thomas, come see the flying ox!" Friar Thomas goes over to the window. The other laughs. "It is better," the Saint says to him, "to believe that an ox can fly than to think that a religious can lie."

http://www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/thomas1.htm

Ethan,

If I were to be pedantic about this (Heaven forfend!) I would object that a 'world view' is more like a 'philosophy' in meaning than a 'faith', which in turn is more akin to an 'axiom' or 'set of axioms'.

But no matter: as I said before, science and religion are like apples and bananas. To lay them side by side and compare one with the other in terms of each other is a frustrating, fruitless (sorry, couldn't resist!) and ultimately meaningless task.

And you know, that is what drew me into this exchange in the first place; John's assertion that "...science itself is a faith..." and is on a par with religion is that sense. In other words, that science and religion are apples and apples.

In that he is wrong.

-------

By the way, at least the Calvanist variety of Christianity that I was born into would contend (in its purest form at least) that although man may not be able to predict the behavour of a light wave (particle? .... OK, photon) God could. It is however a fundamental understanding of modern physics, in the shape of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, that such foreknowledge is intrinsically impossible at even the most fundamental level. This was what Einstein was fighting against when he famously said, "God does not play dice", but by now it is quite evident that in this respect, Einstein was wrong -- along with the Calvinists. Because God, if indeed He made the universe, made it in such a way that that knowledge does not even exist for Him.

Yet of course, science has little or nothing to say on matters of morality or feeling... except for the frankly worrying (to me) trend towards more and more 'chemical' solutions to emotional or mental or spiritual problems these days. By this I mean not illicit drug-taking or over-use of things like prosac, but the way in which more and more of what had formerly been assumed to be mental or spritual areas of concern and councilling turn out to be ameanable to cure-by-pill. More and more of what we had always supposed was spiritual about human nature turns out to be chemical.

Seems kinda unfair to say apples 'n oranges, and then say that the laws of physics constrain what God can do... ;-)

As it happens He just sent an angel to tell me that Fenyman was right---there is only one electron in the universe moving back and forth in time.

Well, I suppose God can do whatever He darn well pleases, but I suspect (as He is supposed to be all-knowing) he set the laws of physics up as they are in this universe for a reason. Now just what that reason is, only He knows. But I think it pleases Him to see how things turn out when they are left to themselves, and be surprised, instead of monkeying with them all the time to arrive at some boring, predetermined result.

Of course, it is fair to ask how an omniscient God can be surprised. :)

As for Richard Feynman's hypothesis about there being only one electron in the whole universe, busily going back and forth in time..... Maybe the reason there doesn't seem to be enough mass in the universe to halt its expansion is that that one electron hasn't had a chance to cycle back and forth through time enough times to make up for the missing mass!

I've been watching the evolution of this thread with fascination, and have finally decided to weigh in with my own tuppence.

JEM, you are not competent to argue religion, although you speak quite well for science. Your understanding of religion, and Christian theology in particular, is quite primitive, and you'd really do better to leave it alone, as your obvious ignorance tends to make people, quite unfairly, I'm sure, doubt your competence elsewhere.

For instance, it has been a commonplace of both Christian and Jewish theology, going quite a ways back (farther back than Christianity has existed, in fact), to understand the timeline of Genesis as symbolic. You cannot conclude from that story that God exists or creates within time. In doing so, you are committing the same error as the fundamentalists who proof-text Leviticus as a bludgeon against homosexuals: taking one piece of Scripture in isolation from all other pieces. Remember that the Bible is not God talking to humanity, but a portion of humanity talking about God, and its meaning is only deducible from the whole.

You are right that science and religion are two very different things, and quite correct that science is the proper way of dealing with the material universe. You are wrong, however, to assume that the difference between the two lies in empiricism: that is, that science is empirical, while religion is not. That is quite untrue. Many religions are empirical, and all mysticism is. Two good examples are some varieties of Buddhism (e.g. Tibetan, as exemplified by the Dalai Lama), and my own faith community, the Quakers (those of the "unprogrammed" tradition, anyway), for whom every act of worship is a quest for truth. (The Quakers are also a good falsification of another assertion of yours: that religions are about dogma. Quakers have no dogma, and do not claim to be in possession of the one and only truth about the divine.) The mode of knowledge in religion is of course quite different from that of science, and it is by nature non-consensual and personal. Something of the religious experience can be communicated in words, but not its essence; it can only be known by experience.

No, the real difference between science and religion lies in something else you highlighted: reproducibility. Scientific experiments rest on reproducibility for their usefulness; religious experiments do not. (It is interesting to note that George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, called his knowledge of God experimental, meaning by that what we would call experiental today.)

As someone noted upstream, religion concern the human heart, and it is not concerned with reproducibility. Religion comes at phenomenality from a different perspective, and its predictive capabilities are of a different nature. One does not go to a mystic to learn how to build an iron bridge. Neither does one go to an engineer to learn how to love one's neighbor as oneself. Both kinds of knowledge are necessary for a human life.

Frankly, I think you stray perilously close to scientism (that, John, is the term you were looking for), which I'd define as the belief that only phenomena that are consensual and reproducible are real. This is, of course, nonsense: as even the most cursory look at human history will demonstrate, unreproducible and personal events are often more determinative of reality that any scientific demonstration. The problem with such a philosophy is that it cannot deal with that which cannot be reproduced on demand--in other words, with most of what makes us human. I could be wrong about your belief, since you do not state it in so many words, so enlighten me if I err.

However, John, while I am more sympathetic to your position in this debate than JEM's, I have to laugh at seeing you defend religion, and Christianity in particular. Anyone reading most of your posts, with their vituperative dismissal of fellow human beings as "termites" and "vermin" and similar phrases and your enthusiastic support of war and capital punishment, to name but two indiciae, would be hard put to believe that you know anything of what Christ teaches, as opposed to knowing what some men say and have said about what He teaches. Knowing you personally, I can say that I believe you to be a better person than your words would indicate, but you are most definitely not the person I would choose as defensor fidei.

Scientism, yes. You put this stuff much better than I can.

As for your last paragraph, neither Jesus nor anyone in the New Testament seems to have spoken about what to do when you are put in charge of things. They were, interestingly, sympathetic to various Roman officers, but never thought about what they would do if they were the commanders. They did not think about waging war, so they can't give us much guidance on the subject.

However, many later Christians have wrestled with these problems, a necessity once we were no longer an oppressed minority. And they usually concluded that war can and should be fought for the right reasons and with right intentions. Of course we could argue about those all night, but I feel able to conclude that supporting a war does not disqualify one from being a defender of the faith. (Which is precisely what I was trying to avoid being in this thread, but JEM kept swerving away into attacks on religion.) Likewise capital punishment. You are just taking the teachings of your particular denomination and claiming they are what Jesus taught. I don't accept your premise.

I don't remember using vermin, but the "termites" comment was not about how we should feel, but how we should comport ourselves so as to avoid giving terrorists the importance and prestige they crave. This is a war of perceptions and propaganda. The enemy is small in numbers, but will use any perception of prestige or "martyrdom" to help recruitment. They want us to jump up and down and say they are giants. But if we do do so it will help make them giants in fact.

Treating this sort of enemy with cool contempt--like "vermin" if you will--is a tactic. This is an enemy that slaughters civilians not for any military advantage, but just for the impression it will make in the world's news media. In fact they are known to time attacks to fit the Western news cycle. To give them any glory or attention or respect is to give them what they want, and give them what will lead to more murders. Treating them like "termites" is a tactic that will tend to break that cycle and save lives. If you really cared about people rather than theory you would be thinking along the same lines.

Dave:

An interesting and useful contribution. Thank you.

(To start with an aside: I don't know John personally of course, but however self-contradictory he may be in these matters, I doubt he exceeds that of the first 'official' defensor fidei, Henry VIII.)

Now, to the meat:

" ...it has been a commonplace of both Christian and Jewish theology ... to understand the timeline of Genesis as symbolic."

Sorry, I thought that was exatly what I was doing when I observed that the concept of the length of a day was highly elastic in Genesis. The 'trick' is to make what the Bible has to say, and what things like the Theory of Evolution -- to say nothing of the origin of the universe in a singularity ("Big Bang") or the consequence evolution of the universe or the geological history of the earth -- have to say, able to live together.

That can be done along the lines I described. However, there are certain aspects of the Genesis story of creation that are both irrelevant to the likes of evolution yet immutable (at least not without destroying the whole edifice) and one is this very point being discussed, namely that here we find God creating the universe within time and hence, by modern understanding, from within the universe itself.

One would suppose the reason why the story is of God acting within time, is that the imagination of the author(s) of Genesis did not extend to the notion that time was itself a component of the unverse rather than an absolute that existed externally, like God Himself was presumed to. As you say (and I agree) the Bible is "a portion of humanity talking about God" but to go on to say "its meaning is only deducible from the whole" sounds like a gigantic and possible fatal side-stepping of the fundamental issue.

For maybe you are right on this, but if the Bible's meaning can only be considered as a single entity, then this is tantamount to saying 'Take it or leave it, either it's all true or all false". If that really is our choice -- if we are forced to take one view or the other -- then it's difficult to see how any other alternative to rejection is tenible in the light of what is known today.

Granted, I don't think that's really what you mean, but it is the implication of what you say. So perhaps your own theology is on less strong grounds than you suppose.

Now for empiricism. I don't believe I had previously brought this up, but anyway...

My undertanding is that it is the principle of the belief in knowledge based on observation and experiement rather than theory or supposition or wild imaginings. In science, such knowledge can and is used to construct a theory which is then tested to destruction, modification or acceptance against further objective empicical evidence, commonly produced by experiments. In the case of religion it would seem that events largely occur the other way around: one starts with a theory (that is, dogma) and proceeds to see the world through that prism, often in defiance of the empirical evidence.

And so on to reproducibility. This is the heart of the matter.

You would expect a scientist to say that evidence which cannot be reproduced is worthless. And indeed that is so. Yet this is, in the broadest sense, true not just of science but all human experience.

Consider a witness in a court, or talking to the police about a crime. The unreliability of witnesses is well established. Multiple witnesses to the same event report quite different versions to the police or in court. They are not deliberately lying, but the human powers of observation and recall are depressingly poor. Thus two witnesses may see people of different height or build, with different characteristics such as accent, hair colour, etc., or wearing different clothes, commit the same crime, at different times and even at different places. Ask any police officer or criminal lawyer. This is why corroboration evidence (from more than one person, or from a TV camera, or forensics) is considered so useful.

Yet now you would have us believe that "...unreproducible and personal events are often more determinative of reality that any scientific demonstration." Sorry, I don't think so. I've just explained why, on the contrarty, these are well-nigh worthless, except perhaps subjectively to the experiencer or the supposed experiencer -- and how this is not scientism, but just general human nature and the way life is.

And you know, that brings us back to the 1,000 religions once more. Consider each one as a 'witness', all disagreeing to a greater or lesser extent with each other. Clearly at least 999 are mistaken witnesses; most probably all are. And none are reliable witnesses. Sincere no doubt, but mistaken and unreliable.

So there we are: I do not say that a philosophy can only deal with that which can be reproduced on demand, but that one which claims to deal, perhaps exclusively, with that which cannot be reproduced on demand, is on very weak grounds; very weak indeed. To the point of worthlessness I'm afraid. And this is all quite besides the question of science.

Sorry.

To pick a nit, the correct form is fidei defensor, not defensor fidei

The letters FD (the abbreviated form) still appears on British, Canadian and New Zealand coinage around the image of Queen Elizabeth II to this day.

Sorry to self-quote - To forestall tedium, I'll add that whether Christian belief on this point is internally inconsistent, moronic, or just plain batshit crazy is also irrelevant to my query, but I see my efforts to forestall tedium were in vain.

JEM - Dude! Space-time is an attribute of the universe! God can't be outside my handbag!

OK, two unbelievers arguing about a Bible passage is amusing, but I'd better clear out before JEM hauls out the comfy chair, wields the cushy pillows, or crushes me with that rock too big for God to move.

John says: Down underneath the level of "evidence" and "Strep Throat" and rocks-dropped-on-toes, science makes some assumptions that it can't prove. You know that.

OK, there are limits to proof. In order for something to be proved, there has to be a standard for proof, and we can't ever prove that the standard for proof is correct because there would be a circularity there. But science doesn't actually rely on "proved facts" and doesn't really have a uniform standard of proof. We can certainly disprove hypotheses, mainly by finding contradiction between predicted and measured phenomena, but we never actually prove anything to be true in science. We accept certain utilitarian assumptions, and we use them to get to certain provisional theories. It's a provisional enterprise from top to bottom, and every scientific explanation is subject to replacement by a more complete or more elegant one. Science doesn't actually offer up a complete, absolute, and final body of explanation, just closer and closer approximations of the presumed laws of the universe and stuff.

So the assumptions on which science operates are of an entirely different character than the dogma underlying religion. Every new scientific theory supplements most of previous science, and replaces a small part. So physicists understand and use both Newtonian and Relativistic theories, and those who find one more applicable than another to their fields of research don't meet in separate universities and denounce each other as blasphemers and heretics. Scientists don't burn each other at the stake, they argue and discuss.

So as I said, scientific assumption has a different character than religious faith: one is a means to an end, the other is the end in itself.

I'm reminded of a saying of that great Quaker president, Richard M. Nixon on the family: "before we can have respect for the family we need to have families we can respect." To paraphrase, before we can have respect for religion we need religions we can respect. The present-day trend in American religion is to provide narcissistic excuses for bad behavior. That sort of thing isn't worthy of respect, and that's why religion is dying. It can't compete with Oprah, and it may as well not try. Nixon's religion of personal revelation justified multiple acts of deception, and as far as anyone knows each was guided by his Inner Light. Phooey.

"...we can't ever prove that the standard for proof is correct because there would be a circularity there."

Indeed. That's essentially a restatement of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, which is where I at least started on all this.

(And we never even discussed the observation that mathematics -- or more exactly logic - is aboves science and above religion and even above God. If there is a God who is illogical or inconsistent, then He is unpredictable and unfollowable and actually unworthy of worship, because there is no way of knowing what He wants from us. Why, He might take offence at being worshiped today, but insist upon it tomorrow! It's why miracles, creationism, intelligent design -- all varieties of the 'god of the gaps' -- is ultimately self-destructive for religion as they describe a God who breaks the rules. Thus even God is limited, so to speak. Inside or outside spacetime.)

John--you said:

"As for your last paragraph, neither Jesus nor anyone in the New Testament seems to have spoken about what to do when you are put in charge of things. They were, interestingly, sympathetic to various Roman officers, but never thought about what they would do if they were the commanders. They did not think about waging war, so they can't give us much guidance on the subject."

Perhaps that's because Jesus didn't intend his followers to be "in charge." He intended them to live in a covenant community focused on God and reflecting His nature. And he said very, very plainly that if you wish to reflect the nature of God in your life, you must not not resist evil violently and you must love your enemy.

In my view, every one of the Christian churches in existence today, except for the peace churches such as the Quakers, the Mennonites, and the Brethren, are apostate as regards war. Constantine took the Church up on a high mountain in 313 AD and offered her all the kingdoms of the world if she would support the State. She did not resist the temptation, and spent the next centuries laboriously reinterpreting the plain speech of Jesus against war and violence to justify her apostasy.

And that is why, in an odd way, I celebrate the secularism of Europe. Only if the Church loses the support of the state, only if Christendom is finally overthrown, can the Church regain her soul and once again truly follow her Lord. In that regard, the American churches are much farther from repentance than those of Europe, for here we still enjoy the Constantinian illusion. But illusion it is, for there can be no peace between the Church and the Powers, anymore than between Jerusalem and Babylon.

As for capital punishment, I don't have to argue from my own faith community's beliefs--I direct your attention to the teachings of your own church, which you defy in that regard.

JEM--

You say "I observed that the concept of the length of a day was highly elastic in Genesis."

It's not a matter of being elastic, it's a matter of being entirely symbolic. Genesis is not an account of the creation of the universe in the same way that the Big Bang is, and for a very long time there have been people who understood that. There is therefore no need to "harmonize" Genesis and science.

You also misunderstand what I meant by "[the Bible's] meaning is only deducible from the whole." That does not mean you have to take the whole thing or leave it, and it is not a matter of it all being true or false--I'm not even sure what that would mean in the context of an inspired document. What I meant is that the fundamental assumption for a faithful Christian approaching the Bible is that in some way the people who wrote it were acting under God's urging. And that therefore there is a cohesiveness to it that gives it a total meaning that cannot be seen in any one part. That is what makes it, and any holy scripture, so rich.

Of course, if you deny that "inspiration", then there's nothing there for you to see. As George Fox said: "as the Spirit of God was in them that gave forth the Scriptures, so the same Spirit must be in all them that come to understand the Scriptures." He insisted, as do I, that without that Spirit, one cannot know the Scriptures.

Furthermore, the Bible (or any holy scripture) must be read as John Wyclife suggested in the 13th century:

It shall greatly help ye to understand Scripture,
If thou mark
Not only what is spoken or wrytten,
But of whom,
And to whom,
With what words,
At what time,
Where,
To what intent,
With what circumstances,
Considering what goeth before
And what followeth.

Going on, wWhat I meant by "...unreproducible and personal events are often more determinative of reality that any scientific demonstration" can be illustrated by any one of thousands of historical examples. For instance, who knows what Constantine really saw at the Milvian Bridge in 313 AD? Very likely no one else saw it, despite the legendary embellishments of the story. And yet that personal and unreproducible experience determined the course of Western history for centuries to come.

You needn't apologize for your opinion, nor will I apologize for thinking a philosophy that does not take such things into account, with their due weight as demonstrated by centuries of experience, is a pretty poor excuse for a philosophy.

(And I though this thread was all over.... oh well, never mind.)

Dave, if you want to take a holistic view of the Bible, or the Koran, or the New York Times, or Bugs Bunny cartoons, you either accept them entire or not at all.

It is as simple, and as inconvenient for you, as that.

That which is to be viewed as having meaning only perceptible as a whole is a pure 100% straightforward case of take it all or leave it all. There is no middle way in that ... and that's your choice and your problem, not mine. I would respectfully suggest that all you say to avoid this inconvenient and awkward little fact boils down to no more than weasel words (in the nicest possible way, of course!)

On inspired documents:

(A qualification: I assume you mean divinely inspired. The works of Shakespeare, or Mozart, or Einstein, may be considered to be inspired, but are rarely considered divinely inspired in the manner of the Bible, or Koran, etc., for example.)

(For the moment we will ignore the awkward fact that Bible, or Koran, etc., all divinely inspired we are told, flat out contradict each other on numerous points.)

Really, the only reason for supposing that the Bible, or Koran, etc., is an inspired document is because the Bible, or Koran, etc. tells you it's an inspired document. So if this post of mine were to say it was an divinely inspired document, you would believe that too? No? Then why believe it of another document, just because it's written in fancy language, contains obvious nonsense (on creation, for example) and is a bit longer that the typical e-mail?

On unreproducible and personal events:

(There used to be spoof scientific journal called "The Journal of Unreproducible Results".)

That an almost certainly fictional vision by Constantine led to the adoption of Christianity as the official religion by the Roman Empire has got absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the objective reality or otherwise of what Constantine claims he saw. And may I remind you that it was the objective reality, not the consequences, of such events that we were considering until now.

As it happens, the history and archeology of the Roman Empire is a particular hobby interest of mine. And I'm afraid I must tell you that to see divine visions and to be in communication with the gods was a common device employed by all emperors from the very beginning, as a way to persuade their populations in general and their armies in particular that they were divinely inspired and had to be obeyed.*

It was a particularly common device before battle, and lived on in Europe in the form of the Divine Right of Kings until the 17th century at least -- it's what the English Civil War was largely about. (The king lost, of course, and the Divine Right of Kings died, at least in Great Britain and her colonies.)

Constantine almost certain contrived his vision and conversion as a deliberate and conscious political act, as the population in general and his legions in particular (there was nothing particularly pacifist about Christianity at this time) were becoming increasingly Christian anyway and he had to devise a way to latch on to what he saw as a popular movement. But for us now to suppose that this was a genuine vision or conversion would be unhistorical and naive in the extreme.

So I think you'll have to come up with a better example, from your list of thousands of historical examples, of an unreproducible and personal event than this one.

And as for apologizing for my opinions?

Uh, I wasn't. I was commiserating with you for trying to hold on to such untenable ones.

JEM

* The 'mapping' of Christian forms on pagan practices was very considerable at the time. Most of us know, for example, that Christmas is really just the Roman mid-winter festival of Saturnalia re-branded. Less well appreciated is that the 'Community of Saints' is a direct re-branding of the Roman Pagan pantheon of gods, and the Christian God is a shoe-in for Jupiter, the 'Father of the Gods' while the Virgin Mary is Minerva and even Christ himself is Apollo under a new name. (Augustus Caesar chose Apollo as his own god, and attributed his victory over Antony and Cleopatra to Apollo’s superiority over monstrous Egyptian and oriental deities. Remind you of anything we've just been discussing?) One could go on, matching feature after feature, including the concept of the afterlife in either Heaven or Hell, being Roman. Or that, despite numerous Hollywood movies giving the opposite impression, the concept of monogamous marriage being the sole legitimate basis for sexual love was originally a Pagan Roman, not Christian, ideal.

And yes, I admire the Romans.

They did a lot that was evil and despicable, but still...

The most inspiring poetry taught to me in my youth, at the age of ten or so by my father, described events of the year CCCLX AUC

(AUC = ab urbe condita : from the founding of the city. Rome, of course. CCCLX = 360. Rome is considered to have been founded in 753BC, so we are dealing with events of 393BC here.)

How Horatius Kept the Bridge
(by Thomas Babington Macauley, Lord Macauley, from his 'Lays of Ancient Rome')
(Extracts -- it's a very long poem. You can find the whole thing here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Horatius )

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods?

******

“Oh, Tiber! father Tiber!
To whom the Romans pray,
A Roman’s life, a Roman’s arms,
Take thou in charge this day!”

******

When the goodman mends his armour,
And trims his helmet’s plume;
When the goodwife’s shuttle merrily
Goes flashing through the loom;
With weeping and with laughter
Still is the story told,
How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.

I know Macauley was a Victorian Englishman. But he captures the spirit, the essence of what Rome was, so perfectly. And would you really want this to be in Latin here?

Before his great speeches, Churchill used to absorb himself in Macauley, reading his speeches and poems aloud to put himself into the right frame of mind and way of expressing himself so as to deliver the results we all know about.