\"Bleached Faith\" (Religion)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Sunday, October 04, 2009, 18:37 (5324 days ago)

I recently came across this book, written by a devout Jewish Lawyer with the above title. His rejection of "Intelligent Design" is actually based on religious reasons, and some of his points echo with my previous couple of postings. -In regards to Intelligent Design, (Not "Design"), he has this to say: "Intelligent Design puts God in a witness protection program, speaking of an unnamed intelligent agent, who limits himself to performing minor tasks, such as the construction of a bacterium's flagellum. By reducing the Almighty to "the God of the gaps," it removes religion from the realm of faith and values, the precise area where science is inadequate." -Connecting to my previous postings where I talk about my own path of winding though mythos, the God preached by ID is one stripped of everything that in my opinion, makes religions great and inspiring. Though one might argue that studying the world is unraveling the "secrets of the master," I've essentially seen both dhw and David dismiss the "hocus pocus" of religion. [EDIT] What do we have left after we dismiss the "hocus pocus," and what actually remains when this dust settles? And how can we tell "hocus pocus" from something real? If we can describe something via materialistic means, it is no longer "hocus pocus." We all however agree that there is no way to discern where God ends and where we begin; so clearly God is securely held away from materialistic scrutiny; so why do some people insist on justifying God in a materialistic fashion? (ID)-What do we do with this weakened God? Part of my Teutonic heritage stems from a time when the gods were fierce and terrible; they were real and touchable entities that one could commune with. The one presented by ID gives us no validation for any of our religious traditions; it is a different philosophical viewpoint, but it does nothing to justify our existence, tells us nothing about each other that we didn't already know, and still--doesn't actually answer any question about our origins. Its a religious skepticism that doesn't seem to know what it wants outside of replacing our culture's focus on materialism; except that all of its arguments are an attempt to use materialism to justify God--which when you think about it, is an internal contradiction. "We want to destroy materialism, but to do so, we have to use materialism." We have our asymptote again; you can't pick and choose the parts of materialism you want to have and don't want to have. Religion and science approach the boundary of human existence but they will never meet. I don't mean this in the manner that says you can't be a religious materialist as Newton or Galileo, only that there is a discrete boundary and role for science and religion, and that these two entities do not study the same things.-[EDITED]

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"