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> 93.9% of Icelanders younger than 25 believed the world was created in the big bang, 6.1% either had no opinion or thought it had come into existence through s

> 93.9% of Icelanders younger than 25 believed the world was created in the big bang, 6.1% either had no opinion or thought it had come into existence through some other means and 0.0% believed it had been created by God. Why are those exclusive? Once you believe there is an omnipotent god, and basically not understandable by the human mind, then his delivery mechanisms can be anything. Big Bang can be just "the way" god created the Universe. I would say religion is compatible with anything: since it is not based on reason, it can not conflict with any other human discipline. Which is (if you ask me), by design.

Svip 10y ago
They are not exclusive. But 0.0% of Icelanders 25 or younger believe that God had anything to do with the creation of the universe. Additionally - as I'd like to argue - is that it might be a divine being or a being of sorts that ignited the Big Bang, but it is very unlikely to be God, i.e. the Christian God. So the Icelanders' opinion seem very reasonable to me. Particularly if the survey was this simple.
- gonvaled 10y ago
  The way they put it in the survey is exclusive: 93.9 + 6.1 + 0.0 = 100.0
  - Camillo 10y ago
    And so we see how picking the right question is important to get the results one wants.
thaumasiotes 10y ago
This is kind of weird. Most people I know would distinguish between "the world" (not created in the big bang) and "the universe" (also not created in the big bang -- it's an expansion event -- but at least related to the big bang). > I would say religion is compatible with anything: since it is not based on reason, it can not conflict with any other human discipline. Which is (if you ask me), by design. That isn't by design; it's what remains after religion lost a bunch of conflicts ("where did the water from Noah's Flood go?").
- gonvaled 10y ago
  > This is kind of weird. Most people I know would distinguish between "the world" (not created in the big bang) and "the universe" (also not created in the big bang -- it's an expansion event -- but at least related to the big bang). Dont't get you there. What is the world, and what is the universe in your definition? > That isn't by design; it's what remains after religion lost a bunch of conflicts ("where did the water from Noah's Flood go?"). I would say that religion is always, by design, outside the realm of reason. That "design" was badly done when humankind knew less things, so that the religion "designers" made mistakes thinking that they could get away with stuff which was later on taken over by other human disciplines, so that lots of subjects can now be reasonably debated. But the aim of all religion is to be outside rational discussion. As human knowledge progresses, religion is forced to become more and more metaphorical: since the actual facts that it can claim are dwindling, it must relegate itself to the emotional, and accept the facts we know about the universe as god way of expressing himself.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    >But the aim of all religion is to be outside rational discussion That's pretty revisionist. Religion certainly was not like that in the past. People 100% truly believed things were literal fact. Religion was an actual thing that "happened" in day-to-day life. It's only in more modern times, with more investigatory powers that people claim that all of religion is out of reach, and that if you try to claim it to be literal, then you're interpreting it wrong.
    - gonvaled 10y ago
      > That's pretty revisionist. Religion certainly was not like that in the past. "There is a teapot orbiting the sun, between Venus and Mercury". That is a very concrete fact, and in principle verifiable. I am anyway making a claim outside of rational discussion, because I know that with out current knowledge and technology, it is impossible to discuss this fact. That's how religious facts work: they make concrete claims, but unverifiable with the knowledge and technology of the period when the claim is made. That those claims are unmasked by the progress in human knowledge is just a design flaw of religion, not a prove that they anyhow want to take part in the rational discourse.
esailija 10y ago
Because the world being created by the Christian God implies the creation story which is pretty different from big bang.
- zorked 10y ago
  Only if you are a fundamentalist. Catholics, for example, are ok with the big bang. One random source: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2014/10/31/pope-franciss-comments-on-the-big-bang-are-not-revolutionary-catholic-teaching-has-long-professed-the-likelihood-of-human-evolution/ http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2014/10/31/p...
  - wowoc 10y ago
    Big Bang theory was proposed by a Catholic priest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Because the world being created by the Christian God implies the creation story which is pretty different from big bang. No, the world being created in accord with a literal reading of either of the two mutually conflicting creation stories in Genesis implies something pretty different than the big bang, but literalism as an essential doctrine is, within Christianity, restricted to a particular minority -- though one that is extremely politically active and very well represented in the US -- subset of Protestantism.
ImTalking 10y ago
If 'god' did not create the universe but allowed the Big Bang to take place then it would be impossible to 'anthropologise' this deity. 'god' would just be an energy completely unlike how the religious view he/her/it.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  Do you think that all religious people imagine God as a man with a long white beard who lives in the sky? Many are just fine with the idea of a non-anthropomorphic God. It's funny what strange things some atheists believe about all theists. (The reverse is also true, of course, but frankly I'd expect better of the atheists.)
  - Cheapshot1 10y ago
    No, you are misrepresenting what he was saying. If god created the universe, but did not interact with it after it's creation then you can't claim him to be one of the many mythical figures people make him to be. Second, if god does interact with our universe he is than testable to some degree.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > If god created the universe, but did not interact with it after it's creation then you can't claim him to be one of the many mythical figures people make him to be. Sure, you can, since the watchmaker god precisely is one of the many mythical figures people make him out to be. > Second, if god does interact with our universe he is than testable to some degree. Not really; if you have a complete model of all interactions within our universe, you can test whether there is anything else acting on our universe (though that's indistinguishable from a gap in your model of what goes on in our universe). OTOH, if you have a predictive model of how God interacts with our universe (which mythical portrayals disagree on whether this is even in principle possible) you could test if that particular model seems accurate.
      - Cheapshot1 10y ago
Houshalter 10y ago
You are right that they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. But I really dislike the idea that religion is somehow "beyond science". That's a very modern idea that isn't really compatible with most real religious beliefs through most of history, or even the present day. http://lesswrong.com/lw/i8/religions_claim_to_be_nondisprovable/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/i8/religions_claim_to_be_nondisprova... >Back in the old days, there was no concept of religion being a separate magisterium. The Old Testament is a stream-of-consciousness culture dump: history, law, moral parables, and yes, models of how the universe works. In not one single passage of the Old Testament will you find anyone talking about a transcendent wonder at the complexity of the universe. But you will find plenty of scientific claims, like the universe being created in six days (which is a metaphor for the Big Bang), or rabbits chewing their cud. (Which is a metaphor for...) >Back in the old days, saying the local religion "could not be proven" would have gotten you burned at the stake. One of the core beliefs of Orthodox Judaism is that God appeared at Mount Sinai and said in a thundering voice, "Yeah, it's all true." From a Bayesian perspective that's some darned unambiguous evidence of a superhumanly powerful entity... The vast majority of religions in human history - excepting only those invented extremely recently - tell stories of events that would constitute completely unmistakable evidence if they'd actually happened. The orthogonality of religion and factual questions is a recent and strictly Western concept. The people who wrote the original scriptures didn't even know the difference. ... >The idea that religion is a separate magisterium which cannot be proven or disproven is a Big Lie... It is a wild distortion of how religion happened historically, of how all scriptures present their beliefs, of what children are told to persuade them, and of what the majority of religious people on Earth still believe.
- gonvaled 10y ago
  Religion was at the center of everything when human knowledge was very limited, and religious claims could not be proved or disproved. While knowledge progresses, religion is still in the business of making claims about non-falsifiable things, but the amount of things non-falsifiable has been dramatically reduced; they have been pushed out of the center to the margin, where they can still keep on making non-falsifiable claims. They have been in a slippery slope since immemorial times: once they are caught red-handed, they adapt the message, even accepting newly established facts as an expression of their god of choice. So yes, religion can not be disproved, since once you find out a fact which could disprove it, they basically say "you did not understand what we meant, we meant exactly this, and this how our god is responsible for this newly found fact".
olavk 10y ago
> I would say religion is compatible with anything: The is only the case for the particular religion called Deism, which believes the creator god created the universe (including natural laws and all) but apart from that is totally hands-off. Most religions are not like that, but believes God or gods influence the world. Deism is practically indistinguishable from atheism. It was popular among 18-century thinkers because it was believed religion was necessary for the good of society. Deism allows you to justify religions institutions and rituals without really believing in anything supernatural.
- gonvaled 10y ago
  Well, I would say most religions have been forced then to become more and more "Deistic", since the influence of god in the world has become less and less easy to sustain. Current religions still claim that god takes part in the daily works of men and nature, but have taken a less outspoken attitude, since making open and concrete claims open them to ridicule.
- lomnakkus 10y ago
  I wonder if any significant proportion of the religious community these days actually seriously identifies as a deist. (I've always found deism weird -- at least outside the historical context -- if a god doesn't influence the world in any way whatsoever... what would be the point? At that point it seems to just be a placeholder for "I don't know".)
  - olavk 10y ago
    I think the point of deism is you can still justify religion as an institution, so it was favored by "conservative" thinkers who believed religion was necessary for morality and for society. Atheism has historically been associated with opposition towards religious institutions.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      Prominent deists tended to also be major detractors of religious institutions (not just particular religious institutions, but the idea of religion and religious institutions), and very often were liberal rather than conservative thinkers, so I find the idea that deism was somehow a conservative response to justify religion as an institution to be rather hard to swallow.
jorangreef 10y ago
"I would say religion is compatible with anything: since it is not based on reason," That view is not compatible at least with the actual history of 1st century Christians. For them, Christianity was about the historical person of Christ. See Paul, a former persecutor of Christians, writing to Christians in Corinth, circa AD 55: "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead." - 1 Corinthians 15:14-15 Christianity is about the person of Christ, it's a historical claim, and therefore open to investigation by reason, according to the historical method. For an ancient historian's understanding of the historical method as applied to Jesus, see Paul Barnett's "Jesus and the Logic of History" (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-History-Studies-Biblical-Theology/dp/0830826033 http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-History-Studies-Biblical-Theolog...)
- gonvaled 10y ago
  > Christianity is about the person of Christ, it's a historical claim, and therefore open to investigation by reason, according to the historical method What investigation? That there was a person called Christ living in that period, in that area? Probably hundreds of them ... That he performed the claims attributed to him? How are you going to verify that? Little written records, general superstition abounded, populace was illiterate and easy to fool ... The historical facts have been scrutinized for centuries, and each time findings have contradicted biblical facts either the bible itself has been adapted (there are lots of versions), the message has been turned into a metaphor, historical records have been tampered with, ... The remaining message is largely metaphorical, and unverifiable. Besides: on the one hand you have a small and powerful establishment in control of the message, the historical facts and all secrets which could help in falsifying all christian claims; on the other hand you have those who would be able to unmask the plot, but do not have the access, or even the interest, in doing so.
  - jorangreef 10y ago
    You raise some good questions, "That there was a person called Christ living in that period, in that area? Probably hundreds of them ..." Christ was not a surname, but a title for the expected Jewish Messianic King promised throughout the Old Testament (Isaiah 52-53, Psalm 22 are a few accessible descriptive examples). In the 1st century, given Roman control of Judea, any claim to be "the Christ" risked death. It was not a title that one would take to oneself lightly. Despite this, there were a few false messiahs of the period. Their mission and memory have faded in comparison to that of Jesus of Nazareth. "Little written records," If you're keen to investigate further, you actually couldn't ask for better, more reliable written accounts (incidental vs biographical etc.) concerning Jesus. The historicity of the New Testament documents merely as historical documents is stunning. "general superstition abounded, populace was illiterate and easy to fool ..." I would not agree that that is an accurate description of the time period. It may be tempting for "modern" man to underestimate the culture and learning of earlier civilizations. If you dig deeper on this point, I think you would be impressed as to the intelligence, education, capability and common sense of 1st century Jews. "each time findings have contradicted biblical facts" I am not aware of any historical details in the New Testament documents which have been contradicted by historical findings? On the contrary, historical details (social, political, geographical, cultural, nautical etc.) in the New Testament documents tend to have been corroborated over time. "the bible itself has been adapted (there are lots of versions)" There are many translations of the canonical Bible into different languages, but there is only one version of the Bible, and if one is not sure of this, one can always read the extant MSS copies in the Greek. Textual criticism has shown that what we read today is what they wrote then, with no significant differences, as early as the 40s, no later than the 90s. "on the one hand you have a small and powerful establishment in control of the message, the historical facts and all secrets which could help in falsifying all christian claims" Are you referring to claims made by Dan Brown? The followers of Jesus were a motley crew at best, hardly powerful, hardly establishment. Furthermore, what they wrote, mostly independently and at great personal cost, their "testimony" (what we know as the New Testament), was in wide circulation by the end of the 1st century. If you have any more questions, feel free to drop me an email: joran@ronomon.com
curiousgal 10y ago
Yeah this. Growing up I took Islamic studies courses at school (mandatory), the teacher explained it like that, God created the universes via the Big Bang. Even cited verses from the Quran that confirmed it. I was young and fascinated by the idea of the Big Bang. I am not religious now but I would love to see people study the Quran with the same scrutunity they did to the Bible in order to refute it because many issues people have with the Bible aren't even mentioned in the Quran and it seems hasty to discard the existence of God solely on the inconsistencues of one book.
- lomnakkus 10y ago
  > I am not religious now but I would love to see people study the Quran with the same scrutunity they did to the Bible in order to refute it [...] They do: http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Contra/ http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Contra/ (Well, alright, if you want to be pedantic these people claim to not actually having done so specifically to refute it, but let's just say that there are a lot of contradictions...)
  - curiousgal 10y ago
    I haven't come across that before. Thanks. That's really good nonetheless.
    - lomnakkus 10y ago
      Glad to hear it. It was literally the first hit when I searched for "inconsistencies quran" on Google. (Of course, what with personalized searches who knows what Google thinks of me and wants me to find...)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
kiba 10y ago
I would say religion is compatible with anything: since it is not based on reason, it can not conflict with any other human discipline. Which is (if you ask me), by design. Or as some of us like to think of it: religion is a bunch of poppycock. Compatible or incompatible, what's that?
harperlee 10y ago
I think the other replies to this post miss the point that gonvaled was making (or at least my interpretation for it!): that, by giving such available options, there are tainting the results. If someone believes in God to some extent, but they are more sure that the Big Bang occurred, with this poll you are polarizing the answer of that person. That is, if you don't get multiple choice in that question, the results are tainted. That's a possible reason for the absolute 0 responses of "God created the world", where "of people who were 25 years or younger [...] only 42% said they were Christian". "only" for almost half of them sounds a little biased, by the way!
masklinn 10y ago
> I would say religion is compatible with anything: since it is not based on reason, it can not conflict with any other human discipline. Which is (if you ask me), by design. You can trivially compare Genesis to scientific knowledge and see that nothing fits.
- gonvaled 10y ago
  Genesis is metaphorical.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    > Genesis is metaphorical. A metaphor for what? Because it certainly isn't a metaphor for the origin of life, the universe or anything.
    - thedaemon 10y ago
      I take Genesis as an answer. An answer to a big question. Why? So there is an answer and people can move along.
joesmo 10y ago
That's like saying schizophrenia is compatible with anything because it's not based on reason, which is obviously not true as some people who have it cannot navigate the world at all.

Svip 10y ago

They are not exclusive. But 0.0% of Icelanders 25 or younger believe that God had anything to do with the creation of the universe. Additionally - as I'd like to argue - is that it might be a divine being or a being of sorts that ignited the Big Bang, but it is very unlikely to be God, i.e. the Christian God. So the Icelanders' opinion seem very reasonable to me. Particularly if the survey was this simple.

gonvaled 10y ago
The way they put it in the survey is exclusive: 93.9 + 6.1 + 0.0 = 100.0
- Camillo 10y ago
  And so we see how picking the right question is important to get the results one wants.

thaumasiotes 10y ago

This is kind of weird. Most people I know would distinguish between "the world" (not created in the big bang) and "the universe" (also not created in the big bang -- it's an expansion event -- but at least related to the big bang). > I would say religion is compatible with anything: since it is not based on reason, it can not conflict with any other human discipline. Which is (if you ask me), by design. That isn't by design; it's what remains after religion lost a bunch of conflicts ("where did the water from Noah's Flood go?").

gonvaled 10y ago
> This is kind of weird. Most people I know would distinguish between "the world" (not created in the big bang) and "the universe" (also not created in the big bang -- it's an expansion event -- but at least related to the big bang). Dont't get you there. What is the world, and what is the universe in your definition? > That isn't by design; it's what remains after religion lost a bunch of conflicts ("where did the water from Noah's Flood go?"). I would say that religion is always, by design, outside the realm of reason. That "design" was badly done when humankind knew less things, so that the religion "designers" made mistakes thinking that they could get away with stuff which was later on taken over by other human disciplines, so that lots of subjects can now be reasonably debated. But the aim of all religion is to be outside rational discussion. As human knowledge progresses, religion is forced to become more and more metaphorical: since the actual facts that it can claim are dwindling, it must relegate itself to the emotional, and accept the facts we know about the universe as god way of expressing himself.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  >But the aim of all religion is to be outside rational discussion That's pretty revisionist. Religion certainly was not like that in the past. People 100% truly believed things were literal fact. Religion was an actual thing that "happened" in day-to-day life. It's only in more modern times, with more investigatory powers that people claim that all of religion is out of reach, and that if you try to claim it to be literal, then you're interpreting it wrong.
  - gonvaled 10y ago
    > That's pretty revisionist. Religion certainly was not like that in the past. "There is a teapot orbiting the sun, between Venus and Mercury". That is a very concrete fact, and in principle verifiable. I am anyway making a claim outside of rational discussion, because I know that with out current knowledge and technology, it is impossible to discuss this fact. That's how religious facts work: they make concrete claims, but unverifiable with the knowledge and technology of the period when the claim is made. That those claims are unmasked by the progress in human knowledge is just a design flaw of religion, not a prove that they anyhow want to take part in the rational discourse.

esailija 10y ago

Because the world being created by the Christian God implies the creation story which is pretty different from big bang.

zorked 10y ago
Only if you are a fundamentalist. Catholics, for example, are ok with the big bang. One random source: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2014/10/31/pope-franciss-comments-on-the-big-bang-are-not-revolutionary-catholic-teaching-has-long-professed-the-likelihood-of-human-evolution/ http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2014/10/31/p...
- wowoc 10y ago
  Big Bang theory was proposed by a Catholic priest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Because the world being created by the Christian God implies the creation story which is pretty different from big bang. No, the world being created in accord with a literal reading of either of the two mutually conflicting creation stories in Genesis implies something pretty different than the big bang, but literalism as an essential doctrine is, within Christianity, restricted to a particular minority -- though one that is extremely politically active and very well represented in the US -- subset of Protestantism.

ImTalking 10y ago

If 'god' did not create the universe but allowed the Big Bang to take place then it would be impossible to 'anthropologise' this deity. 'god' would just be an energy completely unlike how the religious view he/her/it.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago
Do you think that all religious people imagine God as a man with a long white beard who lives in the sky? Many are just fine with the idea of a non-anthropomorphic God. It's funny what strange things some atheists believe about all theists. (The reverse is also true, of course, but frankly I'd expect better of the atheists.)
- Cheapshot1 10y ago
  No, you are misrepresenting what he was saying. If god created the universe, but did not interact with it after it's creation then you can't claim him to be one of the many mythical figures people make him to be. Second, if god does interact with our universe he is than testable to some degree.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > If god created the universe, but did not interact with it after it's creation then you can't claim him to be one of the many mythical figures people make him to be. Sure, you can, since the watchmaker god precisely is one of the many mythical figures people make him out to be. > Second, if god does interact with our universe he is than testable to some degree. Not really; if you have a complete model of all interactions within our universe, you can test whether there is anything else acting on our universe (though that's indistinguishable from a gap in your model of what goes on in our universe). OTOH, if you have a predictive model of how God interacts with our universe (which mythical portrayals disagree on whether this is even in principle possible) you could test if that particular model seems accurate.
    - Cheapshot1 10y ago

Houshalter 10y ago

You are right that they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. But I really dislike the idea that religion is somehow "beyond science". That's a very modern idea that isn't really compatible with most real religious beliefs through most of history, or even the present day. http://lesswrong.com/lw/i8/religions_claim_to_be_nondisprovable/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/i8/religions_claim_to_be_nondisprova... >Back in the old days, there was no concept of religion being a separate magisterium. The Old Testament is a stream-of-consciousness culture dump: history, law, moral parables, and yes, models of how the universe works. In not one single passage of the Old Testament will you find anyone talking about a transcendent wonder at the complexity of the universe. But you will find plenty of scientific claims, like the universe being created in six days (which is a metaphor for the Big Bang), or rabbits chewing their cud. (Which is a metaphor for...) >Back in the old days, saying the local religion "could not be proven" would have gotten you burned at the stake. One of the core beliefs of Orthodox Judaism is that God appeared at Mount Sinai and said in a thundering voice, "Yeah, it's all true." From a Bayesian perspective that's some darned unambiguous evidence of a superhumanly powerful entity... The vast majority of religions in human history - excepting only those invented extremely recently - tell stories of events that would constitute completely unmistakable evidence if they'd actually happened. The orthogonality of religion and factual questions is a recent and strictly Western concept. The people who wrote the original scriptures didn't even know the difference. ... >The idea that religion is a separate magisterium which cannot be proven or disproven is a Big Lie... It is a wild distortion of how religion happened historically, of how all scriptures present their beliefs, of what children are told to persuade them, and of what the majority of religious people on Earth still believe.

gonvaled 10y ago
Religion was at the center of everything when human knowledge was very limited, and religious claims could not be proved or disproved. While knowledge progresses, religion is still in the business of making claims about non-falsifiable things, but the amount of things non-falsifiable has been dramatically reduced; they have been pushed out of the center to the margin, where they can still keep on making non-falsifiable claims. They have been in a slippery slope since immemorial times: once they are caught red-handed, they adapt the message, even accepting newly established facts as an expression of their god of choice. So yes, religion can not be disproved, since once you find out a fact which could disprove it, they basically say "you did not understand what we meant, we meant exactly this, and this how our god is responsible for this newly found fact".

olavk 10y ago

> I would say religion is compatible with anything: The is only the case for the particular religion called Deism, which believes the creator god created the universe (including natural laws and all) but apart from that is totally hands-off. Most religions are not like that, but believes God or gods influence the world. Deism is practically indistinguishable from atheism. It was popular among 18-century thinkers because it was believed religion was necessary for the good of society. Deism allows you to justify religions institutions and rituals without really believing in anything supernatural.

gonvaled 10y ago
Well, I would say most religions have been forced then to become more and more "Deistic", since the influence of god in the world has become less and less easy to sustain. Current religions still claim that god takes part in the daily works of men and nature, but have taken a less outspoken attitude, since making open and concrete claims open them to ridicule.
lomnakkus 10y ago
I wonder if any significant proportion of the religious community these days actually seriously identifies as a deist. (I've always found deism weird -- at least outside the historical context -- if a god doesn't influence the world in any way whatsoever... what would be the point? At that point it seems to just be a placeholder for "I don't know".)
- olavk 10y ago
  I think the point of deism is you can still justify religion as an institution, so it was favored by "conservative" thinkers who believed religion was necessary for morality and for society. Atheism has historically been associated with opposition towards religious institutions.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Prominent deists tended to also be major detractors of religious institutions (not just particular religious institutions, but the idea of religion and religious institutions), and very often were liberal rather than conservative thinkers, so I find the idea that deism was somehow a conservative response to justify religion as an institution to be rather hard to swallow.

jorangreef 10y ago

"I would say religion is compatible with anything: since it is not based on reason," That view is not compatible at least with the actual history of 1st century Christians. For them, Christianity was about the historical person of Christ. See Paul, a former persecutor of Christians, writing to Christians in Corinth, circa AD 55: "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead." - 1 Corinthians 15:14-15 Christianity is about the person of Christ, it's a historical claim, and therefore open to investigation by reason, according to the historical method. For an ancient historian's understanding of the historical method as applied to Jesus, see Paul Barnett's "Jesus and the Logic of History" (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-History-Studies-Biblical-Theology/dp/0830826033 http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-History-Studies-Biblical-Theolog...)

gonvaled 10y ago
> Christianity is about the person of Christ, it's a historical claim, and therefore open to investigation by reason, according to the historical method What investigation? That there was a person called Christ living in that period, in that area? Probably hundreds of them ... That he performed the claims attributed to him? How are you going to verify that? Little written records, general superstition abounded, populace was illiterate and easy to fool ... The historical facts have been scrutinized for centuries, and each time findings have contradicted biblical facts either the bible itself has been adapted (there are lots of versions), the message has been turned into a metaphor, historical records have been tampered with, ... The remaining message is largely metaphorical, and unverifiable. Besides: on the one hand you have a small and powerful establishment in control of the message, the historical facts and all secrets which could help in falsifying all christian claims; on the other hand you have those who would be able to unmask the plot, but do not have the access, or even the interest, in doing so.
- jorangreef 10y ago
  You raise some good questions, "That there was a person called Christ living in that period, in that area? Probably hundreds of them ..." Christ was not a surname, but a title for the expected Jewish Messianic King promised throughout the Old Testament (Isaiah 52-53, Psalm 22 are a few accessible descriptive examples). In the 1st century, given Roman control of Judea, any claim to be "the Christ" risked death. It was not a title that one would take to oneself lightly. Despite this, there were a few false messiahs of the period. Their mission and memory have faded in comparison to that of Jesus of Nazareth. "Little written records," If you're keen to investigate further, you actually couldn't ask for better, more reliable written accounts (incidental vs biographical etc.) concerning Jesus. The historicity of the New Testament documents merely as historical documents is stunning. "general superstition abounded, populace was illiterate and easy to fool ..." I would not agree that that is an accurate description of the time period. It may be tempting for "modern" man to underestimate the culture and learning of earlier civilizations. If you dig deeper on this point, I think you would be impressed as to the intelligence, education, capability and common sense of 1st century Jews. "each time findings have contradicted biblical facts" I am not aware of any historical details in the New Testament documents which have been contradicted by historical findings? On the contrary, historical details (social, political, geographical, cultural, nautical etc.) in the New Testament documents tend to have been corroborated over time. "the bible itself has been adapted (there are lots of versions)" There are many translations of the canonical Bible into different languages, but there is only one version of the Bible, and if one is not sure of this, one can always read the extant MSS copies in the Greek. Textual criticism has shown that what we read today is what they wrote then, with no significant differences, as early as the 40s, no later than the 90s. "on the one hand you have a small and powerful establishment in control of the message, the historical facts and all secrets which could help in falsifying all christian claims" Are you referring to claims made by Dan Brown? The followers of Jesus were a motley crew at best, hardly powerful, hardly establishment. Furthermore, what they wrote, mostly independently and at great personal cost, their "testimony" (what we know as the New Testament), was in wide circulation by the end of the 1st century. If you have any more questions, feel free to drop me an email: joran@ronomon.com

curiousgal 10y ago

Yeah this. Growing up I took Islamic studies courses at school (mandatory), the teacher explained it like that, God created the universes via the Big Bang. Even cited verses from the Quran that confirmed it. I was young and fascinated by the idea of the Big Bang. I am not religious now but I would love to see people study the Quran with the same scrutunity they did to the Bible in order to refute it because many issues people have with the Bible aren't even mentioned in the Quran and it seems hasty to discard the existence of God solely on the inconsistencues of one book.

lomnakkus 10y ago
> I am not religious now but I would love to see people study the Quran with the same scrutunity they did to the Bible in order to refute it [...] They do: http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Contra/ http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Contra/ (Well, alright, if you want to be pedantic these people claim to not actually having done so specifically to refute it, but let's just say that there are a lot of contradictions...)
- curiousgal 10y ago
  I haven't come across that before. Thanks. That's really good nonetheless.
  - lomnakkus 10y ago
    Glad to hear it. It was literally the first hit when I searched for "inconsistencies quran" on Google. (Of course, what with personalized searches who knows what Google thinks of me and wants me to find...)
deleted 10y ago
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kiba 10y ago

I would say religion is compatible with anything: since it is not based on reason, it can not conflict with any other human discipline. Which is (if you ask me), by design. Or as some of us like to think of it: religion is a bunch of poppycock. Compatible or incompatible, what's that?

harperlee 10y ago

I think the other replies to this post miss the point that gonvaled was making (or at least my interpretation for it!): that, by giving such available options, there are tainting the results. If someone believes in God to some extent, but they are more sure that the Big Bang occurred, with this poll you are polarizing the answer of that person. That is, if you don't get multiple choice in that question, the results are tainted. That's a possible reason for the absolute 0 responses of "God created the world", where "of people who were 25 years or younger [...] only 42% said they were Christian". "only" for almost half of them sounds a little biased, by the way!

masklinn 10y ago

> I would say religion is compatible with anything: since it is not based on reason, it can not conflict with any other human discipline. Which is (if you ask me), by design. You can trivially compare Genesis to scientific knowledge and see that nothing fits.

gonvaled 10y ago
Genesis is metaphorical.
- masklinn 10y ago
  > Genesis is metaphorical. A metaphor for what? Because it certainly isn't a metaphor for the origin of life, the universe or anything.
  - thedaemon 10y ago
    I take Genesis as an answer. An answer to a big question. Why? So there is an answer and people can move along.

joesmo 10y ago

That's like saying schizophrenia is compatible with anything because it's not based on reason, which is obviously not true as some people who have it cannot navigate the world at all.