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Philosophy Religions, schools of thought, matters of importance and navel-gazing

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Old 01-24-2009, 04:37 PM   #1
regular.joe
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From a religious stand point, saving my everlasting soul from damnation is a fairly sound premise. I guess this only counts if I have a soul.

Quantum mechanics does present confusing data, there most certainly are rules that we don't understand. The observations of quantum mechanics are by nature counter intuitive. What we are left with are not concrete answers to the the nature of the universe. We are only left with our interpretation of the observations. In my mind we are left with a deeper appreciation of our lack of understanding, even as we think we understand more. It can and should be humbling.

Richard Feynman described it best when he compared our knowledge of the universe to a game of chess. We may know the rules, how the pieces move. But to watch two masters play we will be lost to the depth of their moves. What seems logical to one of them, will seem counter intuitive to me the novice on the side line. I liked that analogy.

We have such sophisticated notions of who we are in these modern ages. Based on mountains of scientific observation. We use this mountain of observation and our sophisticated notion of who we think we are to disprove the existence of God? I think this is laughable.

I do think I should qualify a few things now. I am only participating in this discussion honestly. I do not think that anyone should believe the same things I believe. Nor do I feel compelled to save anyones, including my own everlasting soul. (the lawyer on my shoulder made me put that last statement in)
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Old 01-24-2009, 05:26 PM   #2
Phage0070
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Quote:
Originally Posted by regular.joe View Post
From a religious stand point, saving my everlasting soul from damnation is a fairly sound premise. I guess this only counts if I have a soul.
I think you are confusing a conclusion with a premise. A premise is basically where you set up the ground rules for the argument. To steal an example, we have the argument: "Since all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, it follows that Socrates is mortal." The premises of the argument is that Socrates is a man, and that all men are mortal. This argument is both valid and sound.

Your conclusion is basically "Religion will save my everlasting soul from damnation." This requires many premises, one of which would be "I have an everlasting soul." Even one premise being false leads to the entire argument being unsound, and your conclusion is based on many extremely questionable premises.

Quote:
Originally Posted by regular.joe View Post
We have such sophisticated notions of who we are in these modern ages. Based on mountains of scientific observation. We use this mountain of observation and our sophisticated notion of who we think we are to disprove the existence of God? I think this is laughable.
Science does not try to disprove the existence of God; scientists are acutely aware of their lack of all-encompassing data. Science simply requires a logical reason or empirical observation to support a belief. What puts religion and science at odds is that science is so darn SUCCESSFUL! Look around you at all the things you are thankful for, and even those you don't usually consider. Your family is healthy, you have plenty of food and shelter, and you have all these nifty gadgets. None of that came about by someone kneeling and praying to a god, or beamed down like mana from heaven. All of that, every single scrap, came from people going out, looking at the world, and figuring out how it works so it would work for them. The process is painstaking and difficult but it WORKS. What has religion given us?
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