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Religion Christianity: Conceptions and misconceptions

"For the scientist who has lived by faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Robert Jastrow
God and the Astronomers

"The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation ... His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."
Albert Einstein


Just a comment on that whole religion meeting science thing...not at all the suggestion to subject one to another or produce either bad religion or bad science...
 
Nice quotes there !! I am familiar with the top one, but the bottom one is completely new. There perhaps could be more to comment on, but not here, and not now. I enjoyed those...thanks for sharing !!
 
Another view of 'inspired' which is less strict than the view mentioned on the previous page, is the one that those writings were done by humans, as humans (and thus have mistakes in them and disagreements among them) but have the approval of the god that those writers had been talking about.

This appeal seems to be the 'good book'-like idea, but with a little more. I don't what arguments are used to demonstrate how one can know that the god those documents speak of approves of those same documents. I would need further research here.

Also, this is what 03Cobra--I think his forum name was--had been talking about, in a way. Kaminari san, who we lost at the end of this past year, also basically followed this line of thought it appears. (at least to an extent)

This line of understanding what 'inspired' means, is not really handled by the 'Biblical Texts' thread yet.
 
So, in taking it as one of the possibilities, a person could argue that the information recorded in the NT (for now) is largely (or entirely) from the minds of humans alone, but that it has approval (from that god-model).

Then, the next step would be to test the basis for that assumption, and see if or to what degree it can hold up.

In this manner, it is good to set things down, look them over and test them. Not only is this true for science. (but in keeping with the original essence of the word 'science' [to know]it is almost a matter of fact.)

What pieces of data and evidence would be relevent might be a hurdle to get over.
 
I have recently come across this site:-) that I feel doen't really help the Christian cause. While it is amusing in some detail, especially the WISDOM meter, but it does carry a certain about of darkness about it. It is these type of people that are causing concern for non-christians in the world. What is more worrying is the fact that G.W.Bush is actually supported by these types and even subscribes to some of their views. I don't know if it just me but the days of the inquistion are something that these people would like to see back. I am sure that most, if not all, our christian members will find this site amusing, but remember these are representing a darker side to christianity in the same way that the hate preaching imans of Islam are doing. Comments anyone?
 
I had a classmate in grade 8 that was convinced his church was right (all of our churches were quite wrong). I forget what was currently popular at that time, but he confidently told us it was satanic. I do also remember him saying that synthesizers were also satanic, describing how the fact that the sounds were made with metal sheets and weren't natural sounds made them satanic. He belonged to a very small church that was boycotting a local bookstore for selling occult books. That site would've been right up that churches alley.
 
And, looking over that again, I noticed that that group could actually be much farther out in left field than even the Watchtower Society people.

Also, they seem to be stuck in the KJV world. Another thing that can create problems.
 
There is a sola-scriptura bilboard along the 10 freeway near Beaumont... gives me a little chill every time I pass it.
 
Those guys (or someone like them) are responsible for the ridiculous information on film certificates. My new Rugrats DVD is certificate 'U - features mild nudity' - i.e. cartoon babies in nappies. Insane!!!
 
LOL WOW !!! And I wonder how something like Casper the friendly ghost would rate? 'He' wears no clothes at all !! hee, hee,.....
 
To me their are a lot of misconceptions about the bible. I mean. Let's say the bible was written by God. (which I disagree with). Hasn't it been revised thousands of times? How can we tell if it's Gods word of wisdom or a Humans word, which is an attempt to control a group.

Especially since they (some catholic priest, a mormon bishop, and a protestant priest on TV) say that the followers of the apostles are the ones who wrote it. They say that the followers had to remember the teachings that were taught to the apostles from christ. There could be a lot of misconceptions there. People do tend to exaggerate too, subconsiously and consciously.

That's why I think of the bible as a book of morals rather than real.
 
Well, as I had been trying to kind get some thought going on the idea earlier, and which I again picked up on in posts #403 and 404 above, the concept of where the information came from is important in a lot of ways.

There have been several views espoused in this thread, and I think it reasonable to present all of them so those who ARE searching for data and information on that concept can get a broad picture of all data and related information.

I may recap the several possibilities again, later, in hopes of getting a good outlay of the conceptions of 'inspired'.
 
This is in reply to #90 on the 'World Without Religion' thread.

I hope I can get the words right this time, at least. In my #89 post on that thread, I had mentioned how the basic tenents of Islam would rule out those of Christianity; those of Christianity, Judaism, and so on. I had pointed out how the statement portion made in post#88 reflected the truthfulness of that point as I had tried to bring it out in an earlier post on that thread.

In that earlier post, I had used a quote which had come from Pope John Paul II (#81), namely, that "Truth cannot contradict Truth" to emphasize the concept that two true facts do not contradict each other. (I'm leaving the uncertainty principle on the side here as it is not appealed to by the basic tenents of these belief-systems.)

A basic tenent of Islam takes the person Iesou (Jeshua) as being a prophet not surpassing Mohammed in any way. A basic tenent of the Christian canon takes Iesou as being divine in some manner--if not the true god (as Judaism taught), a divine creation of that same god who became a human. Both tenents cannot be true. Christianity claims that only by admitting faith in that figure, a person can be reconciled with god. Islam denies that. The two claims cannot both be true.

That is the point I had been getting at. I apologize for causing misunderstanding.
 
That would mean that you cannot be a muslim and a christian simultaneously. Those particular truths would exclude each other.
 
Firstly, I did it again. Oh no...in my #414 post I worded it so that one could take me as saying that Judaism taught that Jesus was the true god. That is not what I had wanted to say.

The Hebrew writings have a true god (YHWH) as opposed to all the other non-true gods. It could be said that a degree of dualism is allowed by the earlier writings of the Christian belief-system, meaning that they may have considered Jeshua as having had something to do with the being of that true god which is found in the earlier (compared to Christianity) Jewish works.

Yes, it means that one could not simultaneously be a bonifide believer in both systems, which means that both systems claims' to know the true reality of the historical personages contradict, which means that they cannot both be true reality.
 
That would be essentially correct- if the "Truth" is absolute and exclusive, then any other version by definition is not the truth. So simply because they exclude each other doesn't mean that both are false, it only means that in the world of absolutes, only one is true and the other has to be false...
 
I agree; that's what's behind the 'they cannot both be true reality' statement. (please do note that it was not 'they both cannot be true reality')

If you recall the quote I used on either my first or second post on the 'Biblical Texts' thread, I think you can see where I am coming from when saying that the next question would surely be--'can we know which model is the true reality?'

And then, I would apply the questions and reasoning on all available and observational data for all belief-systems and compare them all against what is known by humanity today through the test of time and observationally derived knowledge.
 
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