\"Bleached Faith\" (Religion)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, October 08, 2009, 00:08 (5524 days ago) @ dhw

dhw, 
> You have yourself made a distinction between Design and ID, because ID is sometimes used as a cover for Creationism and Christianity. When this happens, ID illustrates the exact opposite of the above. Its proponents use Design to "prove" the existence of God, and from there they proceed to their religious agenda, which provides all the faith and values you could ask for. ...-A strong misconception on the ID movement: the majority of its writers are members of traditional monotheisms, Behe--Catholic, Dembski--Baptist. In most cases when you analyze the movement as a whole it is a group of people that are trying to reconcile the deep problems about God that started during the Enlightenment, and the resulting secularism that grew around it. Darwinism, as they call it, is the linchpin of secular thought and without it materialism falls. It is just the opposite as you say: Few, if any started out as atheists or agnostics, but simply are trying to find material evidence that would justify belief in a God. More on that later...-> However, this is only the first step. If you do not exclude a designer, you can speculate about its nature. This, of course, is where culture plays its part, since different cultures have different concepts, but in my neutrality I'm not prepared to accept any culture on trust. Here I depart from some of your premises, because I'm not concerned with validating religious traditions, or with justifying our existence. I'm only concerned with what might be the truth. The three main monotheistic religions, for instance, emphasize the almighty power and ultimate benevolence of God. I look at the world he/she/it may have created, and I see random suffering everywhere. I can't reconcile this to benevolence. I can, however, associate it with Deism, and so if I did believe in some kind of designer, it would probably be a deistic one. I would see no point, however, in worshipping such a God.
> -As I said previously: religion is about human experience, not about the material world. Bbella's view is more similar to mine; I don't think there is a beginning or end to the Universe at large. Even the Big Bang wasn't the beginning of all time. All religions are about how to deal with human suffering. Material explanations were never really as important. Genesis was only one of how many books? Most religions spend time discussing how we should act towards each other as a people; God(s) is/are typically only the central glue to this picture. A UI-type of deity doesn't do the same thing religion-wise that all these other things DO perform. It's only a mediocre explanation for how life and our universe came to be. -> It's true that Design (but not necessarily ID) takes religion out of the realm of "faith and values". For me, faith and values do not provide truth, but I suspect that we are unlikely in our lifetime, or maybe in any lifetime, to find the truth. If people are able to take the leap of faith either in a designer of their conception or in the creative skills of chance and natural laws, good luck to them. I would only plead that since no-one "knows" the truth, they should be tolerant towards one another. As far as values are concerned, I don't trust the religious people who claim to know God's will. I'm all for humanistic values. As for science and religion not studying the same things, I agree, but in my view religion should not run counter to the findings of science ... and that is what gives the design argument its important role in religion: it helps to make what you call the "two entities" compatible. 
> -You... sort of missed my mark. Science and religion aren't compatible but complimentary. They both describe parts of the human experience; religion, that esoteric and immeasurable part of ourselves that defies outside attempts to understand it, and the outer, exoteric, material world by science. At the center, lies man.

--
\"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.\"