Does science make belief in God obsolete?

I find some of the public responses to be just as poignant, intelligent and compelling as the articles themselves...and, like any good cross-section of humanity, some are pseudo-intellectual or arrogant religious tripe.

 

wow. that is quite a can of worms you've just opened Mal. i think you are right Ohio. this is subject that needs to be talked about. the notion of "God" is 2000 years old now, much older if taking other religions into account. instead of keeping "God" in that old reverence, maybe we should let "God" grow up too. give "God" a little more credit than we have.

 

And kudos to you for saying that...there are some who will insist that they "know".

 

oh believe me I know. But I'm not telling.

 

I don't think that will ever be the case.

I like to think of science as the study of finding out how god works or how Einstien said, "How good thinks."

 

For me it seems difficult to take a literal translation of the Bible if one believes in science and philosophy in the way discussed in the first example. I dont think that means that God is obsolete, but the Bible certainly becomes suspect.

 

You make a great point. I think many people believe that either the Bible is entirely true, or entirely false.

There's probably not a majority of people who would believe that only bits and pieces are true and vice versa. (I could be dead wrong there)

I'd be interested to know what the Christians on this board think of this notion. Has science disproved some of the things the Bible tells us? Or is at all fact regardless of what we've learned in the last 2000 years?

 

Yea...what he said.

 

Whether science leaves room for God depends on how big your definition of God is.
Science leaves little room for small, anthropomorphic gods who intervene via clumsy deus-ex-machina miracles, but still leaves plenty of room for gods big and smart enough to have created this universe with everything in place to unwind just the way They wanted it to.

 

this is truly amazing. thank you. who is to know exactly what was meant by what has been written, then translated and re-written. i think to exclude the Bible would be a mistake, but trying to understand it from when it was compiled would make more sense. weather or not the Bible is proved or disproved should not interfere with ones personal relationship with God. just the same, i believe that science and philosophy can serve much the same purpose as the Bible in helping us understand the essence we call God.

 

Thanks for making a very good point. Mind if I ask you a question? Since you are talking about literal and metaphorical interpretations, I'd like to know what you make of the biblical fall of man and its symbolical meaning. I've always found that passage of the Bible most telling (I'm not a believer, by the way). You have God forbidding man to eat from the Tree of Knowledge (why? isn't knowledge a good thing?) and subsequently you have man realizing his own nakedness, constituting a fundamental instance of self-awareness. Why would that be "The Fall"? What's so bad about man knowing and being aware of himself? Essentially, that passage of the Bible condemns man for being man which I find a rather peculiar idea of man, considering that God's creation is supposed to be inherently good and right.

 

if that's the case, then couldn't you go back to Constantine in the 300's ad when the original was reduced from some 66 books to what is known today at roughly 33, depending on sect? i understand that even in the Catholic organization their are several versions that include or exclude certain books based on particular beliefs.

 

aren't we finding that translating these languages though is more difficult due to the fact that the languages themselves have changed enough that words and phrases used then do not neccessarily have similar meaning today? if that is the case then aren't we just filling in the blanks so-to-speak?

that also marked the beginning of the Protestant movement in the 1500's didn't it? and in what regard is it less magnificent today? just curious, the way you worded this.

 

Science by itself is not incompatible with religion. The trouble comes in when the enemies of religion attempt to use science as a means to bludgeon religion.

Religion tells us that God created all. Science describes those creations. There is nothing incompatible there.

 

I'm not sure I see the causal connection. In my understanding, there's quite a bit of a semantic difference between being able to differentiate between good and evil and attempting a coup or trying to become like God. Especially if we take into account what man actually realized when he ate from the tree; I'm don't see becoming aware of our nakedness constituting a fundamental realization of the nature of good and evil.

As an aside, Luther translates the tree as "Baum der Erkenntnis" which in German has a somewhat different connotation than the English term "knowledge". "Erkenntnis" isn't actually the state of knowing or being aware of something but the fundamental process of ontology. To me, that appears to be more in line - metaphorically speaking - with what the Bible tells us: We aren't sinners because we disobeyed or tried to become God; we are sinners because we conceived reality. That's why I brought up the subject in this debate of science versus religion, because the Bible metaphorically tells us that man isn't supposed to comprehend. The very act of trying to understand ourselves or our reality constitutes a turning away from God (the mother of all sins, so to speak) and I find that a rather bleak and misanthropic idea of man, one that's not really in line with the idea of God.

Another very interesting point. But let me play the devil's advocate for a minute: If we're Frankenstein's monster ... doesn't that make God Frankenstein? Or to put it differently: I don't see how the idea of God as a vain creator who brings man into being to praise and worship Him fits with the idea of God as an inherently good and sinless entity.

You probably know the Bible a lot better than I do but didn't we already have immortality by that point? Didn't God only make us mortal after he cast us out? That would render eating from that tree rather pointless. But maybe I got some things confused here.

 

Actually, Luther's translation probably was. He didn't quite meet the same "scientific" standards of the King James Bible but it's a popular historic misconception that Luther translated the Bible alone. In reality, he worked together with quite a lot of esteemed theologians of that time. It's a bit of a pity that almost none of them is widely known nowadays, not even in Germany.

 

then why wouldn't Emperor Constantine's gathering of the major factions of the Catholic Church be considered here? obviously this was a translation and streamlining of the Bible as well as establishing the fundamental background of what we know the Catholic Church to be. his effort united the Church in a manner as well as deciding what was divinely inspired and what was basically unnecessary fluff. by doing that, the "story" of the Bible was changed.

 

Yes and no. Initially, Luther did indeed work alone on the New Testament. After that, his translation of the Old Testament (and the subsequent editing of his first translation) was pretty much a joint effort with, amongst others, Melanchton. The thing is that the Luther Bible, as we know it today, probably bears a lot more resemblance to the work he did with his fellow theologians than it does to the work he did himself in those famous 11 months - for example, he had access to a lot more source material in later years when his "revised"
translation of the New and Old Testament together was published in the 1530s. As to the prose ... as far as I know (it's been a while since I last tackled that subject so there may be new scientific knowledge I'm not aware about) it's considered to be Luthers prose but when it comes to the actual translations it's hard to pinpoint exactly whose they are.

You are, of course, right that this isn't anywhere near the commitee approach of the KJB but I was referring to the "peer review" statement first and foremost. Luther's translation underwent rather extensive peer review.

 

Nope, I live in the Frankfurt area. But I've been to the sites a couple of times now (a good friend of mine lives in Saxony) and it's gorgous. A bit too rural for my taste but well worth a visit. If you happen to be in the area again, let me know and we can have a coffee or beer together.

 

I see the problem as the other way around. It seems many religious people are the enemies of science. Religion, after all, does not scare science. However, many findings by science, scare religion. After all, the very nature of science is objectivity.

 

The problem I have with this, is that man decided, which books were to be kept and which were to be discarded. Which parts were kept, which were discarded. If the books of the bible are the word of god, then that ceases to be the case, once they've been edited by men. They were edited for a number of reasons, but man being fallible, some or a lot of those edits had to be for agendas beyond righteousness, like politics, control, personal gain, or just flat out wrong interpretations. Ultimately that is the problem, an entire set of religions, based around a book, whose authors we don't know for sure and edited, and re-edited by a group of people, who at best, their intentions were based around their own interpretations or at worst omitted or added sections to meet their own needs and agendas.

 

I think it's more a problem of rationalizing faith. Science is about rationality while religion is inherently about irrationality. A scientific finding cannot contradict a religious belief any more than a religious idea can contradict science. The problems arise when you try to mingle both and come up with a scientific religion which constitutes an oxymoron in itself. I'm really at a loss as to why people would attempt to prove or disprove faith ... it's per definition impossible and pointless. I'm not a believer but if I were, I certainly wouldn't be scared by a seemingly contradictory scientific finding. Why would I? How can a rational thing contradict an irrational idea? I tend to believe that humanity is largly and inherently decent. I'm not going to stop believing that because Hitler or my ancestors did what they did. There's so much hard evidence that humanity is anything but decent. I'm chosing to believe otherwise nevertheless. It's irrational and that's fine with me.

 

I will say "no" the two are not incompatable, Science is chasing God, God is not chasing science, the work is already completed, now science is trying to piece together what happened, Science as the study of and interaction with is not the instigator of creativity, that would be a natural part of mankind being made in God's image.

Ohiophinfan:

Sort of, "discarded" for what reasons makes a real difference, some of the unaccepted books were not Heretical, simply non cannonical, books like Clement and the Apocalypse of Peter only lacked a earlier provenance.

 

yes, but we still get to who decides what is divine and what is not. the will of God is shaky at best and anyone of authority could claim divine intervention. seems to me that when these "books" are discarded, the path of the story is altered. did God decide to alter this? or did a man with an agenda decide this? if God, then what was the purpose?

i don't see it. through translations, editing, further translations and diversions we have several different documents, all with slightly different paths to take. all stemming from one source. all believed by their followers to be the truth. i'm not so sure the message is clear any more.

 

Religion used to be the enemy of science, but hasn't been for a few hundred years. It's really not even worth discussing religion as antipathetic to science. It just doesn't happen that often, at least not in western civilization. I would describe Islam as highly antagonistic to science, though.

The point of science is indeed objectivity, but with the "global warming, oh wait that's not getting traction, okay climate change" issue, science is increasingly losing objectivity in favor of politicization.