9 ms·

I have found that once you grasp that they are not all biblical literalists you can get along fine with Christians. The literalists are noisier but I think a mi

I have found that once you grasp that they are not all biblical literalists you can get along fine with Christians. The literalists are noisier but I think a minority. I married into a Christian family and they value science and logic as much as anyone.

maroonblazer 13y ago
And yet they believe in an invisible "creator" who takes a personal interest in their daily lives. How should we weigh their valuation of science and logic relative to someone who doesn't believe such things?
- exo762 13y ago
  > invisible "creator" who takes a personal interest in their daily lives Yet again, very literal interpretation.
  - disputin 13y ago
    Religionists show no consistency in what they consider literal or not. I was raised catholic, am quite seriously offended by religion, and have had more arguments with religionists than I care to remember. What is literal to one person is not literal to the next. Further, when cornered a person will change their mind as it suits them. Discussion of religion is a quagmire, and the pursuit of fools.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      You must be fun at parties.
    - disputin 13y ago
      "You must be fun at parties." (No reply link) Religious discussion is party fun? "You must be fun at parties."
- kirse 13y ago
  Science works best when it studies the here and now, the observable. That's the basis for confidence in empiricism, and that's where solid empiricism ends. Belief in a designer motivated many great men of science to understand this marvelous design, Newton himself being one of many. There's an unlimited world to be studied in the present, all with a high degree of confidence because it can be subject to strictly empirical testing. Quantum theory, understanding DNA, figuring out sleep, curing diseases, the list is really infinite. When science tries to take what it knows in the here-and-now and extrapolate those present-knowns billions of years into the past, that's where confidence should drop. At that point it's trying to take a hard-won confidence in present observations and borrow it for explaining the past. But it's not justified there. It's like trying to say you could observe a stock for 40 years and extrapolate that tiny slice of price history billions of years into the future -- and then proceed to claim to confidently know not only what the price was at the end of those billions of years, but also the price action along the entire way.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    Thanks to the speed of light and Cosmic Microwave Background, billions of years ago is here and now. Observing light from the past is quite different from predicting a stock in the future. For one thing, the laws of physics are inherently stable, while stock price fluctuations are inherently chaotic. Any attempt at an alternate explanation of the history of the universe must do a better job of explaining all the current observations (CMB, red shift, dark matter gravitational lensing, stellar formation and lifecycles, novae, fossil records, multi-isotope dating, plate tectonics, etc.).
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
    I think you might want to read up on both the philosophy of science as well as science itself. Your notions of empiricism/testability as well as the scientific process strike me as a bit naive. For example, you seem to have some concept of "testing" that involves the observer having to cause the observed phenomenon in order for it to be empirical. On that basis you might have to classify the existence of the sun as a mere hypothesis without empirical backing, though. Also, you should be aware that a lot of cosmological knowledge very much comes from the here-and-now, in that the light we capture with our telescopes is actually here right now - otherwise, we could not capture it with our telescopes. If you think we should discard those observations because the light we captured has been traveling for a while, you probably also would have to consider it a mere hypothesis that your computer screen showed this text one nanosecond ago. Cosmology does not somehow mysteriously extrapolate the temperature of the microwave background - it's something you can measure, and which has been measured, a lot. Of course, there are some assumptions - in the case of cosmology, the probably most important one would be the cosmological principle ("the laws of physics are the same everywhere"). But note that any cosmologist will tell you that that is an assumption, not something that is necessarily true. Also, you may want to consider that looking back billions of years is what allows us to derive laws of nature which would be a lot harder to figure out by only observing recent events, which then can be used to understand things that are of more immediate concern to us here and now. For example, the principle of evolution by natural selection was derived from observations of the past and its effects (that is, the biological landscape on the planet), and now is useful in order to explain an predict the development of antibiotics resistance.
- Joeri 13y ago
  It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion. And therefore as they would understand the frame of the world must endeavor to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so must it be in seeking to understand these visions. -- Isaac Newton
  - wglb 13y ago
    Later, the invented Chaos Theory.
- BellsOnSunday 13y ago
  > takes a personal interest in their daily lives. Says who? Not all Christians think of god that way. You write as if you haven't thought about this much or spoken with many believers. Atheists aren't automatically entitled to the moral and intellectual high ground you know. I'd judge their "valuation of science and logic" the same way I'd judge yours (critically and carefully), and you don't get a pass because you believe in science. /An atheist.

maroonblazer 13y ago

And yet they believe in an invisible "creator" who takes a personal interest in their daily lives. How should we weigh their valuation of science and logic relative to someone who doesn't believe such things?

exo762 13y ago
> invisible "creator" who takes a personal interest in their daily lives Yet again, very literal interpretation.
- disputin 13y ago
  Religionists show no consistency in what they consider literal or not. I was raised catholic, am quite seriously offended by religion, and have had more arguments with religionists than I care to remember. What is literal to one person is not literal to the next. Further, when cornered a person will change their mind as it suits them. Discussion of religion is a quagmire, and the pursuit of fools.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    You must be fun at parties.
  - disputin 13y ago
    "You must be fun at parties." (No reply link) Religious discussion is party fun? "You must be fun at parties."
kirse 13y ago
Science works best when it studies the here and now, the observable. That's the basis for confidence in empiricism, and that's where solid empiricism ends. Belief in a designer motivated many great men of science to understand this marvelous design, Newton himself being one of many. There's an unlimited world to be studied in the present, all with a high degree of confidence because it can be subject to strictly empirical testing. Quantum theory, understanding DNA, figuring out sleep, curing diseases, the list is really infinite. When science tries to take what it knows in the here-and-now and extrapolate those present-knowns billions of years into the past, that's where confidence should drop. At that point it's trying to take a hard-won confidence in present observations and borrow it for explaining the past. But it's not justified there. It's like trying to say you could observe a stock for 40 years and extrapolate that tiny slice of price history billions of years into the future -- and then proceed to claim to confidently know not only what the price was at the end of those billions of years, but also the price action along the entire way.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  Thanks to the speed of light and Cosmic Microwave Background, billions of years ago is here and now. Observing light from the past is quite different from predicting a stock in the future. For one thing, the laws of physics are inherently stable, while stock price fluctuations are inherently chaotic. Any attempt at an alternate explanation of the history of the universe must do a better job of explaining all the current observations (CMB, red shift, dark matter gravitational lensing, stellar formation and lifecycles, novae, fossil records, multi-isotope dating, plate tectonics, etc.).
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
  I think you might want to read up on both the philosophy of science as well as science itself. Your notions of empiricism/testability as well as the scientific process strike me as a bit naive. For example, you seem to have some concept of "testing" that involves the observer having to cause the observed phenomenon in order for it to be empirical. On that basis you might have to classify the existence of the sun as a mere hypothesis without empirical backing, though. Also, you should be aware that a lot of cosmological knowledge very much comes from the here-and-now, in that the light we capture with our telescopes is actually here right now - otherwise, we could not capture it with our telescopes. If you think we should discard those observations because the light we captured has been traveling for a while, you probably also would have to consider it a mere hypothesis that your computer screen showed this text one nanosecond ago. Cosmology does not somehow mysteriously extrapolate the temperature of the microwave background - it's something you can measure, and which has been measured, a lot. Of course, there are some assumptions - in the case of cosmology, the probably most important one would be the cosmological principle ("the laws of physics are the same everywhere"). But note that any cosmologist will tell you that that is an assumption, not something that is necessarily true. Also, you may want to consider that looking back billions of years is what allows us to derive laws of nature which would be a lot harder to figure out by only observing recent events, which then can be used to understand things that are of more immediate concern to us here and now. For example, the principle of evolution by natural selection was derived from observations of the past and its effects (that is, the biological landscape on the planet), and now is useful in order to explain an predict the development of antibiotics resistance.
Joeri 13y ago
It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion. And therefore as they would understand the frame of the world must endeavor to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so must it be in seeking to understand these visions. -- Isaac Newton
- wglb 13y ago
  Later, the invented Chaos Theory.
BellsOnSunday 13y ago
> takes a personal interest in their daily lives. Says who? Not all Christians think of god that way. You write as if you haven't thought about this much or spoken with many believers. Atheists aren't automatically entitled to the moral and intellectual high ground you know. I'd judge their "valuation of science and logic" the same way I'd judge yours (critically and carefully), and you don't get a pass because you believe in science. /An atheist.