How will Religion cope???

Thank you, yodajazz, for your thoughtful post.

Suppose it is the case that most humans recognize the utility of adopting universal moral laws. Some might think that such a moral code will inevitably, over time, evolve out of our continued social contact. Others might think such a code is already hardwired by evolution into most human DNA. Others might think such a moral code is embedded in the fabric of the universe as laws of nature. Still others think such a moral code would be a set of commandments laid out by a god, or the gods. As an aside, I see no a priori reason to accept any of these explanations of moral law. But my real question is: Why would one wish to call any of these conceptions of moral law God? If for example, human beings eventually evolve a universal moral code simply for sociological reasons (all the better to get along without bloodshed and conflict), why would they want to call that common moral law God? Isn't that just calling something that isn't a god, God for the sake of having a god? Isn't akin to what some religions call idolatry? I think that would be one conception of god that would be easy to dismiss on the grounds that it's an empty conception. It's just renaming something that's not a god, God.

Moral law would not be called god. But law, or Law, is one of the two greatest aspects of how God is defined. But since God is defined as the creator of the physical universe, by many, or the creator of the world, then physical laws too would be part of God. Some may view physical laws as separate, but a supreme intelligence would know how to use laws, at its will. But in my philosophy, physical law is an aspect of God.

The other aspect of God is Love. So someone defined, the entire universe as, either law or love. The funny thing, is that there should be not much conflict with people who do not believe in god, and those who do. Any sane person should understand that there are laws in the universe. Also any sane person, should know there is a moral code, even if the details are in dispute.

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Originally Posted by JamesHunt

If we find evidence of life on other planets?

Will they just bend and twist the words, and generally bullshit as they usually do, or will they eventually give in to the truth?

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Theologians have already been working on how to respond to E.T.'s if humanity ever discovers their existence or learns of them. At least I have been told that.

To become a theologian you have to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy. That is no small task. One of the branches of philosophy is logic and logic is very much correlated with mathematics. Of course, logic does not equate to truth as much to validity of argument.

"Truth" is something elusive. Take life on another planet - and I'm not talking about single cell life but multicellular, complex life forms. It's all speculative and belief in it is predicated on faith.

Most people I encounter that believe there is life on another plant usually offer this explanation: "Man! The universe is so big you can't honestly believe we are the only ones in it?"

The problem with that used as a logical defense is it is as much a logical fallacy as the notorious God of the gaps defense, i.e., science can't explain X therefore God must be the explanation for X.

When I was a child I believed in aliens possibly visiting the earth. While I know it is possible (almost anything is possible - it's possible some man can punch through a concrete wall) alien can or have visited the earth, I don't believe they have or do, even assuming they exist.

Personally, I believe in God. I have reason too. One of which was almost being knocked unconscious by the gentle touch of a Priest that supposedly has received gifts from the Holy Spirit (from healing to reading people). He alluded to some things about myself it would have been impossible for anyone to know. Utterly impossible, because it had to do with my thoughts and heart with respects to something that occurred in my personal history.

Now, having said that, it would not surprise me if there is life on another planet. I'm not sure what that means. If one has ever taken a course in environmental science the notion and possibility of "invasive species" species should pop in mind. The Great Lakes in the Midwest are dealing with an invasive species problem right now. Be careful the door you open because you might not be able to close it back.

By the way, a number of stars are named after Jesuits for a reason. A year or so ago I was reading a book by a Jesuit who is both a theologian and a cosmologist (meaning he's a little bit better educated than most students graduating from U.S. public high schools, a number of whom are functionally illiterate, but no doubt believe in aliens). The Catholic Church actually operates two observatories in the Vatican and here in the United States. They also run an association of some of the worlds top scientists (regardless if they are atheist or of another religion). And Catholic theologians are by far the leaders in bioethics throughout the world. Reason being they began philosophical work on case studies, by the hundreds, before most secular people or any other religions began setting pen to paper in this area.

So "truth" and even "his-story" is a bit elusive. More often it is the case that people just have different perspectives. And some of the most hostile opinions are between scientists themselves with their competing theories. Richard Lewontin (a pioneering geneticist) and Richard Dawkins (evolutionary biologist) for example, have some pretty strong opinions. Aside from Dawkins great intellect and his popular fame, I'm not much moved to believe is view of genes in relation to natural selection is the "truth." Frankly, I think it's at least partly B.S.

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Originally Posted by trish

..."profiteers" are the people whose lives have been saved by or bettered by the researches of academic bio-physicists, academic medical researchers and epidemiologists. The profiteers are you who are now enjoying the benefits of quantum field theory as it applies to the engineering of ever tinier computer chips. The profiteers are you who have thrown away your road atlases and navigate by GPS (a device that depends on the General Theory of Relativity for its proper functioning), or who text your friends umpteen times a day, or you who waste your days in front of video games, or you who fly to visit distant friends and family. The profiteers include those of you who simply enjoy peering into the night sky at a universe that's 13.7 billion years old and attempt to relate to the myriad of galaxies whose light has journeyed for eons to reach our eyes at just the moment we look up.

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What does any of that have to do with God. Humans have intellect? Yes, and?

The Republic of Venice was an great engineering feat before the secular Republic of the United States (aside from the fact the U.S. did not become a democracy until 1920 when women gained federally protected right to vote) and the city of New Orleans came into existence.

Belief in God or the lack of does not stop human intellectual achievements from occurring.

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The best argument against the gods is that they're useless. God theory has just never produced any testable consequences which have withstood the scrutiny of observation.

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LOL. Scientific methodology and peer review is but one form of attempting to know and understand. Mind you, it's perhaps one of the best if not the best method when it comes to knowing the natural world. But it is a bit fallacious to leap to the conclusion science and peer review (or that is to say the majority opinion by a few elitist) only ever approaches truth and that philosophy and its sister theology is dead.

Industrial technology also helped screw up the environment through capitalism and communism. Pueblo Indians and their belief in a Great Creator didn't do that.

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So someone defined, the entire universe as, either law or love. The funny thing, is that there should be not much conflict with people who do not believe in god, and those who do.

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__yodajazz
I agree that if god were defined to be the universe, or defined to be law or love there should be no conflict with people who don't believe in the other gods(i.e. the ones who are not so defined) as long as the universe doesn't now become encumbered with the usual baggage and assumptions associated with "God".

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What does any of that have to do with God. Humans have intellect? Yes, and?

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__LaCosa.
It has nothing to do with god or the gods or "God." The quote to which you refer was made in response to the remarks of another poster.

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Scientific methodology and peer review is but one form of attempting to know and understand. Mind you, it's perhaps one of the best if not the best method when it comes to knowing the natural world. But it is a bit fallacious to leap to the conclusion science and peer review (or that is to say the majority opinion by a few elitist) only ever approaches truth and that philosophy and its sister theology is dead.

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As I've said several times in this thread, I don't know what "truth" is. We have no operational definition of truth and no way of deciding for certain whether a single claim to knowledge is true. I prefer to stick to the more humble goals. I would be the last to conclude that theology is dead. I simply claim that it has so far proved useless for producing testable consequences, not only in the domain of science but also in law, morality, ethics, politics and other domains where humans seek publicly accurate understandings. I'll stick my neck out and offer as a hypothesis that this will continue to be the case.

I do find it a little odd that you should call scientific methodology and peer review "the majority opinion by a few elitist." The Jesuit cosmologists whom you celebrate belong to that "majority." The people to work their way through college and earn degrees of higher learning in <pick your field, biology, physics, English literature, art history etc.> come from all walks of life. Some are humble about their mental prowess, some are not. Just because a group of people have extensively studied and contributed to a subject of shared interest doesn't make them elite in any pejorative sense.

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The Republic of Venice was an great engineering feat before the secular Republic of the United States (aside from the fact the U.S. did not become a democracy until 1920 when women gained federally protected right to vote) and the city of New Orleans came into existence.

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Industrial technology also helped screw up the environment through capitalism and communism. Pueblo Indians and their belief in a Great Creator didn't do that.

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Yes, and?

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Originally Posted by trish

As I've said several times in this thread, I don't know what "truth" is. We have no operational definition of truth and no way of deciding for certain whether a single claim to knowledge is true.

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You mean... almost akin to the vague concept of a "gene" which Richard Dawkins wants to resharpen the definition of because no scientist is entirely certain what a gene is? That vagueness of what a gene is does not stop academia from producing geneticist or stop research on the human genome. We still have a fairly good idea what a gene is... however inaccurate to whatever degree, that idea.

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I prefer to stick to the more humble goals. I would be the last to conclude that theology is dead. I simply claim that it has so far proved useless for producing testable consequences, not only in the domain of science but also in law, morality, ethics, politics and other domains where humans seek publicly accurate understandings. I'll stick my neck out and offer as a hypothesis that this will continue to be the case.

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You may possibly be right. I don't know, and partly because I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "testable consequences" as it applies to law, morality, ethics, or politics.

German Jesuit economist from the late 1800's, Heinrich Pesch (who's work has recently been translated into several volumes of English) influenced Popes and Catholic thought on it's now current principle of solidarity. Which is one of the principles in the body of work (which began in the late 1800's) the Catholic Church calls its Social Justice Teaching. The concept of solidarity in Poland had some consequences (testable I don't know but historical for sure) as it brought down Communism across Europe. Former head of the Soviet Union Mikhal Gorbechev (spelling?) credits John Paul II and solidarity for the fall of the Soviet Empire. I'll also stick my neck out, like you, and speculate that Tony Blair's lobbying for high-income-nations to forgive the debts of low-income-nations (many in Africa) was influenced by John Paul II (he worked diplomatically for that), the Catholic principle of solidarity, and his Catholic wife. http://www.newoxfordreview.org/revie...id=0205-storck

As for law... several European monks are credited with helping give birth to international law. And while U.S. law (excepted Louisiana) derives its law system from English common law, they all have some degree of origins or roots in Catholic Canon Law, albeit Catholicism derived that from the law system of the ancient Romans.

But... I will cede maybe you are right. It's possible I'm misunderstanding you or looking at this from the wrong angle. Certainly individuals within a religion don't make up the sum of the religion. Copernicus and Galileo Galilei are examples of that. Both were devote Catholics. Galileo was a Third Order Franciscan (a lay order) I believe.

But religion - at least as it is expressed in a Catholic sense of that - is more about the concept of sacramentalism. The sacraments of the Church. A sacrament being an outward sign that reveals a greater unseen truth. In that sense a sacrament is a combination of the material and extra-material reality. Assuming of course, there is a reality beyond the material.

The transsexual in a certain sense, can be thought of as a model of the concept of a "sacrament." Blood that has the accidents of wine, or in this case a girl that has the accidents of a boy.

So, in the sense of catholicity, religion is not merely reducible to "morality" nor are the greater spheres of secular life (e.g., politics, laws, economics etc.) it's primary domain. It's primary domains are the sacraments.

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I do find it a little odd that you should call scientific methodology and peer review "the majority opinion by a few elitist." The Jesuit cosmologists whom you celebrate belong to that "majority." The people to work their way through college and earn degrees of higher learning in <pick your field, biology, physics, English literature, art history etc.> come from all walks of life. Some are humble about their mental prowess, some are not. Just because a group of people have extensively studied and contributed to a subject of shared interest doesn't make them elite in any pejorative sense.

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I don't mean to dismiss scientists or peer review. I'm only suggesting that majority opinion does not equate to truth. For example: the majority of scientists during the life time of Galileo believed Aristotle was correct and that the sun rotated around the earth. Enter the 1930's and the majority of scientists in Europe and throughout the America's believed Eugenics was absolutely correct. Eventually that scientific concept would embroil the earth in its Second World War.

It strikes with irony that when the Nazi's rose to power, America's middle-class was reading comic books, their peers in Germany the great European classics and Germany had the most educated society on earth at that time. Yet they would burn Europe to the ground. And it wouldn't be the intellectuals and scientists of the United States to stop Adolf Hitler. It would be young boys barely educated with rifles in their hands. But scientists gave us the atomic bomb. So, hey! why stop with genocide when you can obliterate all humanity along with many other species on earth.

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You mean... almost akin to the vague concept of a "gene" which Richard Dawkins wants to resharpen the definition of because no scientist is entirely certain what a gene is? That vagueness of what a gene is does not stop academia from producing geneticist or stop research on the human genome. We still have a fairly good idea what a gene is... however inaccurate to whatever degree, that idea.

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Yes I mean exactly that. I gave the example of energy conservation earlier. The meaning of energy is refined with each generation of researchers. And with each generation conservation of energy is tested with greater accuracy in both greater and smaller regimes. It may fail anytime. If the failure can be repeatedly reproduced, and if it can be shown the failure is not due to experimental error, nor to misapplication of understood theory, then fundamental physics will undergo a major rewrite. In the regimes where the concept worked, it will still be used with the caveat that its not correct in all regimes. What would it take to falsify the hypothesis that at least one god exists?

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I'm only suggesting that majority opinion does not equate to truth. For example: the majority of scientists during the life time of Galileo believed Aristotle was correct and that the sun rotated around the earth.

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And today our view is that both Galileo and Aristotle are correct on that point, for these days the laws of physics are thought to be covariant and consequently any coordinate chart is as "valid" as any other. Yes I agree, majority opinion doesn't have dibs on the truth. No one does. If there were gods, no one of them would have certain knowledge either, nor could they define for us what ultimate truth is.

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...European monks are credited with helping give birth to international law.

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...scientists gave us the atomic bomb. So, hey! why stop with genocide when you can obliterate all humanity along with many other species on earth.

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Science gave us the bomb, religion gave us the crusades, science gave us nerve gas, religion gave us 9/11, science gave us industrial pollution, religion gave us child rape, science gave us the cure for polio and religion gave us the golden rule. I don't think this game goes anywhere, do you?

:) It's all good, Trish. You certainly are an intelligent woman. You may be right on some of your points, I don't know. You certainly are correct that science (when not corrupted by political or religious interests) is self correcting. Religion has dogmas.

(Doctrines and dogmas are not necessarily one and the same, the former are plenty the latter are few, the former evolves or can evolve, the latter really does not)

I'm not a practicing Catholic, but I do believe in God, very much so, I also believe in the "communion of saints."

I'm also not that well educated in the sciences. But then most Americans (and most humanity) aren't well educated in the sciences even if they profess faith in every sensationalized news article espousing something related to science.

But science is the new language of power (even over that of English) and religious or not, one has to begin to learn how to speak and understand that language if they are to adapt in this new world.

By the way, Trish, is that you in your profile pic, and are you transsexual? The only next question would be, is your butt as round as the moon? If so then this -> :Bowdown:

Well looky here. My girl has a new admirer!

Hi hippiefried ;)

To answer your questions, LaCosa: no, yes and almost.:oops: