So you write, "Few, if any scientific jobs are threatened by a scientists religious beliefs" Are you serious? Watch the movie.

Then you write,"You need to learn some history. Go read about Galileo."

Hmm....here is a quote from the Wiki page that you provided, "Although a genuinely pious Roman Catholic".

Galileo had a problem with a man not his Religion. History shows he never recanted his Faith.

 

Do you REALLY want me to list all the Christian scientists? Let alone all the scientists with other Faiths? It will be a LONG list

Oh and let me provide you with this, a quote from Mr. Einstein in Wiki:

Einstein also stated: "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth." He also said in a conversation with Hubertus, Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, "In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."[3]

 

I hope your not alluding to Christianity verses Atheism in world evil?

Oh and here is another quote from Mr Twain: "Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand."

Looks like he believed in the Scriptures

 

STOP THIS.

You're free to believe what you do, as am I, and as is everyone else.

We're all talking past each other and this has been reduced to an embarrassing shouting match. I didn't start this thread to debate the merits of any given worldview. I thought it would be fun to have a place where non-theists and agnostics could connect, share lighthearted thoughts/ideas/comments, and build a stronger NAM community. Guess I was wrong.

 

I only responded to a asked question, my post #193, and have then been defending myself. I will quit when they quit asking questions, it's all cool

 

Why does it always have to be X versus Y?

Hard to say what Mr. Twain believed in. For all I know, he might be having tea with Oscar Wilde and Pope Urban II... and perhaps the big Man himself at the moment. They're laughing at us fools down here on earth arguing the meaning of the meaning of the meaning...

Religious works/texts of any tradition have many things one could learn from but I don't feel compel to prescribe to the litmus test of faith. That's when the mind game begins and armies are formed.

Thomas Jefferson was a clever dude. Besides penning the Declaration of Independence, he also took the Bible, tore out those sections that had to do with divinity, prophecy and miracles. The things Jefferson (a Renaissance man himself) couldn't quantify and therefore could not learn from. It's often referred to as "The Jeffersonian Bible". He signed letters to friends with whom he discussed religion: "Thomas Jefferson, a Christian of my own Sect."

Religions aren't unique in and of themselves... although they all claim to be because as religious beings we all want to be unique, numero uno, loved and adored by all. Religions are evolutions of ideas, moral philosophies, prejudices, psychological tendencies, fears, hope and our relation as humans to the world we live in.

Let's take a hard left turn, lighten up the mood and discuss economics...

Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.
It doesn't work... lets those banks collapse !!

 

How did all of you arrive at your current beliefs?

I probably have a less interesting story than most of you. I did not go through rejection of previously held beliefs or other inner conflicts. I grew up in a largely non-religious family and community, and it was very natural that I developed a secular sensibility and stayed with it. My parents are from the countryside in southern China and emigrated to the U.S. when the Communists took over. Among my extended family, there was a small proportion of Christians but the prevailing philosophy was Confucianism, which doesn't really fit in as a religion by Western sensibilities. My parents were suspicious of any and all organized religions, like they were all weird cults. Evangelists who came to our door didn't exactly change that view. I grew up as a nerd with insatiable appetite for science and math.

 

Now this is a better direction.

I grew up in a Christian (Episcopalian, specifically) household, and while never fully convinced of the Christian belief structure, I was always deeply spiritual.

I double-majored in Religion and Philosophy during college and was fortunate enough to be at a university where religious studies were critical, not theological. My "deconversion" was gradual, but it probably reached critical mass while studying a text titled The Elementary Forms of Religious Life by Emile Durkheim, which is a fantastic study of religion as a social phenomenon. Convinced that religion began as - and for the most part, still is - a way for communities to gather around a central belief, I found it hard to justify all the potentially negative consequences of religious institutions if I couldn't be sure that a supernatural entity did indeed exist.

At the same time I was beginning to focus on Philosophy of Mind on the other side of my double major. The central debate is whether or not the mind is an entirely physical phenomenon - that is, whether all mental processes (e.g. thoughts) can be described entirely by physical ones (e.g. neurons firing in the brain). This is central to physicalism, a philosophical position I found to be extremely attractive and which is entirely incompatible with the existence of a God (unless that God is constricted to the physical laws of the universe).

On a side note, if anyone is curious why Physicalism isn't just a given in the philosophical space, check out this argument against it (the "Black-and-White Mary" argument).

 

Woah! Jim's back. Everyone sit down and have a beer!




I am not shouting... I am speaking calmly while sipping my beer.

Jim, you still have not responded to my question. Please think about it, discuss it among your friends: Beyond saying that something is created, what testable predictions does creationism provide? This is the criterion for determining if something is in the realm of science or not.

That's fine. The point of the Galileo affair is that the Church was suppressing the evidence that Galileo had that showed the Earth was not the center of the Solar System. Yes, Galileo still believed in God, but why did the Church suppress Galileo's statements about the Earth not being the center? Because unfortunately, people often have a problem when hard evidence comes out that goes against their long-held beliefs.

I have no problem with this. I agree that many scientists have religious personal beliefs. Many of my friends do. (Here's another beer for you, Jim.) But again---that fact doesn't make any of their personal beliefs any more believable? Why? Because, again, they cannot be tested.

I think the point of Twain's statement here is that he is bothered by scripture.

Cheers!

 

I was raised by Secular Humanists, but grew up in a Roman Catholic environment.

But I have to say what really got me to where I am today is actually looking at how the world is. Observation rather than pre-held notions----and a good class in statistics and probability.

 

Via toothpastefordinner:

 

I grew up in a Roman Catholic environment. I started questioning things about the church and Christianity in general at an early age, only to be disappointed with the answers I've gotten. I separated from organized religion pretty much by the time I graduated from high school, and officially declared myself "agnostic" when I got into college.

My feelings are fairly well summed up with what Cadenza stated, "Religious works/texts of any tradition have many things one could learn from but I don't feel compel to prescribe to the litmus test of faith. That's when the mind game begins and armies are formed."

Ofioliti - I'll have a beer with you!

 

Cheers!

 

You do realize that quote is an criticism of the bible, not a support of it's merits?

Just out of curiosity, how old do you think the earth is JIMINNI?

 

Starting a few pages back, this thread has gotten very off course from the original idea and it has become a debate of topics better left off of NAM.