3 ms·

Here's my (simplistic) take: Believing in God (this word is problematic because it has many different uses) is an axiom, it doesn't need to be, or indeed can be

by Jun8 8y ago

Here's my (simplistic) take: Believing in God (this word is problematic because it has many different uses) is an axiom, it doesn't need to be, or indeed can be, "proven". You just accept it as given as see what logical conclusions can be drawn from it. Think of it as similar to Euclid's fifth postulate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_postulate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_postulate), you can accept or leave it and build a system around either choice. This is actually a fun activity to do, e.g. try to see if whatever definition of God you use imposes limits on the entity, e.g. "Can God create an equal" (if you've read Weaveworld this is how Shadwell tempts the The Scourge, but I digress) I don't think the above approach clashes with science, many scientists have held religious beliefs. However, organized religion is quite a different thing from the above approach, which is probably what you are referring to in your question. It seems humanity has needed religion as a bulwark against life's tragedies/evil/etc. from the earliest times (see Gobekli Tepe, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe) and it seems this inherent need is still going strong, although many attempts have been made to stamp it out. Depending on your deposition this may be a sign of the great Truth or an evolutionary bug in our brain's wetware.

le-mark 8y ago
This is the path I took, as well as asking myself the question "Why am I here?" I choose to believe I am a created being rather than a product of random chance, which leads to "there is a God" to be a true statement and hence religion follows from that. I get that there is some comfort in increasing entropy and all things returning to dust. But IMO there is too much unimaginable complexity in so many things; the biosphere in which we live, the metabolic pahtways in our own cells, the spark that gives rise to consciousness in the standing waves of bio-electricity in our brains. Sure we've learned a lot but there's so much we don't, or may never know about the natural world. Some would say we just haven't learned about those things yet. I claim some things are unknowable, indeed the science of computation is all about what's computable and what's not. For myself, I chose to become Catholic as an adult. Catholics don't give a damn about "Creation Science" and other such nonsense. Georges Lemaître was priest who first proposed the Big Bang theory. The fact that the Church doesn't try to explain the how of creation is very appealing to me.

by Jun8 8y ago

le-mark 8y ago

This is the path I took, as well as asking myself the question "Why am I here?" I choose to believe I am a created being rather than a product of random chance, which leads to "there is a God" to be a true statement and hence religion follows from that. I get that there is some comfort in increasing entropy and all things returning to dust. But IMO there is too much unimaginable complexity in so many things; the biosphere in which we live, the metabolic pahtways in our own cells, the spark that gives rise to consciousness in the standing waves of bio-electricity in our brains. Sure we've learned a lot but there's so much we don't, or may never know about the natural world. Some would say we just haven't learned about those things yet. I claim some things are unknowable, indeed the science of computation is all about what's computable and what's not. For myself, I chose to become Catholic as an adult. Catholics don't give a damn about "Creation Science" and other such nonsense. Georges Lemaître was priest who first proposed the Big Bang theory. The fact that the Church doesn't try to explain the how of creation is very appealing to me.