lucifer_sam

i don't think of evolution as an analog to Christianity. it might refute the whole "God created the Earth and everything in it within six days" part of the Bible, but as far as i can tell that's only the first chapter.

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first.am

Guybrush

I'm not really talking about one scientific theory replacing religion - like the theory of evolution or gravity or atoms. I'm talking more when you put them together.

Still as you write, one doesn't have to exclude the other in a direct sense. You can think of scientific theories as big pyramids where every building block is a publication, experiment, thesis or discovery that helps build up the theory itself. Similarly, religion could be seen as big pyramids with other building blocks like the idea that God created the earth so and so long ago, the world was flooded and Noah built an ark, bad people go to hell, good people go to heaven and so on.

You can't believe that the world was made 6000 years ago and believe that it's billions of years old at the same time. You have to choose between them and at that level, scientific ideas may exclude religious ideas or vice versa. To relate this to my pyramid metaphor, scientific ideas can remove building blocks from the religion pyramids.

When this goes on over some period of time, your religion pyramid becomes smaller and smaller. To use an extreme example, maybe "God created the universe" is the only building block that's left. If the bible is so full of things you no longer believe in, you might start to question the validity of all it's teachings - but you may not. On average, I think people do and so more science and more education means less religion.

edit :

Religion is deeply personal and I think every christian out there defines it for themselves. There's an X number of churches out there who do things differently and most religious people would accept that the bible is inconsistent with reality so you have to pick and choose what you want to believe in. They believe in different things and some accept science while others refute it.

If every scientist out there could just define for themselves what the different scientific theories really mean, then science wouldn't really work.

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Something Completely Different

Neapolitan

A person who is a Christian has no obstacles in accepting Cosmology, or even Evolution, whether or not the lattter is just a nice hypthesis is another matter, and the choice is up to the individual. The purpose of the Hexaemeron isn't to be a scientific thesis claiming God created everything in six days. I think what happens is non-Christian (maybe atheist) see small sects of Protestant Fundamentalist who are Biblical literalist and think "wow every Christian in the world believes the World was made in six days, 6000 years ago." But that isn't the case; that is just a misconception of Christianity.

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Scarlett O'Hara

There are many misconceptions of Christianity. Let's not forget that Musliums believe in the same God too.

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Guybrush

Okay, so instead of accepting that a huge part of christians in the world are more or less literalist, you just brush them aside and think that's ignorable.

Alright, let's pretend that makes sense at all. Tell me then what proper christians believe from the bible. Do they believe in anything from Genesis and how Adam and Eve were exiled from the garden of Eden? What about hell and the devil, do they exist? Do they believe in the story of Moses and how he eventually recieved the 10 commandments? Did Jesus ever walk on water or turn water into wine?

See, I don't know which one of the stories you have to believe in order to be a proper christian by your criteria. None of them?

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Something Completely Different

Barnard17

Ah, Neapolitan, ever with the moving goal posts. Christianity: defined by whatever aspect of it that would most aid your argument and all other sects can be immediately ignored.

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Neapolitan

The arguement Tore presented was that modern science particularly is in conflict with the Creation story Genesis, my point was to show that ancient Biblical writers presented a cosmogonical view that was not meant to be a scientific endeavor. And also to point out that science facts and Christianity do not conflict. Science says how long and what happen during the cretion of the Universe, all Christianity says is that God created the Universe. The most important part of the creation story is that God created the Heavens and the Earth not how long He took to do so. The writer of the first part of Genesis in presenting the creation story touch upon more things that are right then wrong if seen through a sceintific perspective.

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Guybrush

Really? My point was really more about popular opinion. I was writing something about the effect science and education has on religion because while you think science and religion goes very well hand in hand, I think you're part of a smaller minority of people in the world who honestly thinks and feels so.

I don't think this only has to do with the Genesis, I think it has to do with a lot of the important stories of the bible. Specifically stuff like the story of Moses with the plagues, the splitting of the red sea and how he recieves the ten commandments for example is a major thing in christianity because it's the basis for much of the morale. God in his clearest moment told man what he wanted from them. The story of Jesus who dies for our sins yet rises from death 3 days later is equally important and just as unbelievable. The story of the garden of Eden and how people were cast out when they ate the apple from the tree is also central because it was the first sin and from then on, a lot of christians have thought they have to earn God's favour.

The bible is full of these stories and people used to believe in these in a very literal sense. You don't have to go far back in time. All these stories are conflicted by observational evidence which is basically what science presents. If people don't believe in them as much as they used to, it means that christianity is changing.

I think that's the truth and in this country it hasn't just changed, it has deteriorated. 50 years ago, almost everyone here was a christian. Now I think it's less than 30%. What I was doing in my post was offer an explanation to why this is happening. I don't care if science and religion gets along fine in your head.

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Something Completely Different

SATCHMO

I don't necessarily believe that science and religion "get along" per se. I do believe however that they can and should be reconciled. For the most part this requires that adherents of western religion let go of their own fundamentalist attachment to view points that are simply outmoded or even just plain false.
I don't see anything wrong with allowing scientific inquiry and discovery to perpetuate the evolution of religion. Yes, man's relationship with "god", even our own concept of "god" should not be exempt from evolution, and it has been western religion's fear based attachment to narrow literalist view points that have perpetuated the low level of consciousness that western religious thought has been stuck in for too long now.

Neapolitan

I thought your point of veiw was formed by "Popular Science," anyway if you are going to proceed being a scientific person just forget about popular opinion - it's not formed by empirical methods.


ah, you didn't read what I wrote, I said 'science facts and Christianity do not conflict.'

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