The Lemon Fool

colin wrote:

ReformedCharacter wroteYou may be right but where is the proof? If you cannot prove it then that is just a matter of opinion.

What's that got to do with the question asked in the OP?

It was a response to your comment, obviously.

RC

It was a response to your comment, obviously.

My comment is neither my belief or my opinion, it is my answer to the quiz question .
But if it were my belief then I would not need any proof to hold that belief as faith is imparted through the grace of God, if religions required proof then there would not be any .Obviously.

colin wrote:

ReformedCharacter wroteYou may be right but where is the proof? If you cannot prove it then that is just a matter of opinion.

What's that got to do with the question asked in the OP?

It was Santa Claus who developed the laws of the universe.And because it is clearly written in the Book of Glad Tidings that he evolved from the Tooth Fairy, the answer to the original question is clearly false.

colin wrote:

It was a response to your comment, obviously.

My comment is neither my belief or my opinion, it is my answer to the quiz question .

If your answer to the quiz question is based neither on your opinion or belief then what is it based upon?

RC

TUK020 wrote:It was Santa Claus who developed the laws of the universe.And because it is clearly written in the Book of Glad Tidings that he evolved from the Tooth Fairy, the answer to the original question is clearly false.

Devastating to hear Santa evolved from a psychopathic killer...

GrandOiseau wrote:This is a quiz question on the BBC website.

Without looking at what they say is correct, what do you think?

Is there a "correct" answer? Indeed, what exactly is the question?

Assuming the usual interpretation, that "Evolution" means the evolution of species by means of natural selection (Darwinism?), then isn't it a matter of opinion whether any one religious person considers it "incompatible" with their religion? Some do, some don't.

This is starting to remind me of the BODMAS thread.

If your answer to the quiz question is based neither on your opinion or belief then what is it based upon?

The question asked in the quiz, obviously. That is what the thread of this discussion is about.

XFool wrote
This is starting to remind me of the BODMAS thread.
Top

Oh No... not the dreaded BODMAS thread!

colin wrote:

XFool wrote
This is starting to remind me of the BODMAS thread.
Top

Oh No... not the dreaded BODMAS thread!

But seriously, what came first, multiplication or division? The established church of BODMAS says division came before, on the 3rd day, whereas multiplication was created on the 4th day, ending with subtraction on the 6th. On the 7th day, God rested and doodled in his exercise book while Satan created log tables.

I just wish we could lead simple lives like the agnostic insomniac with dyslexia who sits up all night wondering if there really is a Dog.

Steve

colin wrote:God created the laws of the universe

Which God?

What do you mean by "created"?

colin wrote:which would then allow evolution by means of natural selection to proceed.

So God created a framework and left us to it?

So God no longer exerts any influence over the universe?

GrandOiseau
you are going down a line which is not relevant to the question asked in the OP. Whether god exists or not does not matter all what we are concerned with is 'does religion exist?' Which it patently does, in many forms. The next question is are any of those religious beliefs compatible with evolution? well some are and some are not, clearly for those who believe in creationism then their particular form of religious belief is not compatible with evolutionary theory but for those who believe that God wrote the rules at the very beginning and pressed 'start' then their religion is compatible with evolutionary theory. One only needs to demonstrate one example of religious belief being compatible with evolution in order to answer the question in the affirmative.
Questioning along the lines of an assumption that those who hold religious beliefs are delusional is just not relevant to the question asked in the OP.
It's just very simple logic.

Brexit has replaced religion. True or false?

absolutezero wrote:Brexit has replaced religion. True or false?

Definitely.

ReformedCharacter wrote:You may be right but where is the proof? If you cannot prove it then that is just a matter of opinion.

It is a matter of faith which is why the question is 'What is your faith?' And that (faith) is much deeper than opinion or a proof.

Dod

Dod101 wrote:

ReformedCharacter wrote:You may be right but where is the proof? If you cannot prove it then that is just a matter of opinion.

It is a matter of faith which is why the question is 'What is your faith?' And that (faith) is much deeper than opinion or a proof.

Dod

Yes, I regret writing that. Out of interest I looked up Wikipedia's definition of religious faith.

In the context of religion, one can define faith as confidence or trust in a particular system of religious belief, within which faith may equate to confidence based on some perceived degree of warrant, in contrast to a definition of faith as being belief without evidence.

I wouldn't call myself an atheist but I find the concept of belief without evidence difficult and the concept of faith as imparted by the Grace of God equally difficult I must admit. But Christianity (I think) and other religions have practises and beliefs that teach other ways to reach God that do not emphasise the emotional response upon which faith seems to depend.

RC

The difficulty I have with this concept of ‘faith’ is that there are so many conflicting and different ‘faiths’ in the world that it is very very hard to understand why any rational person should be so convinced their own particular faith is true whilst all the others are false. It seems far more likely that they are all delusions than that one faith alone of the 10,000 or so out there is correct?

It is also so sad that so many faiths are so intolerant. Live and let live I say, but neither the Spanish Inquisition not the Revolutionary guards would take that view.

It isn’t just a question of not being able to believe something in the absence of any rational or objective evidence. You only have to look at the history of religion to see that a better explanation for it is that it is a label for things we don’t understand fully. When mankind couldn’t understand the sun or the weather, they had Sun gods or River gods etc etc. As our understanding of the world and the universe has developed, so the concept of God has been redefined and pushed back- a convenient cover for the gaps in our understanding, usually expressed in anthropomorphic terms.

As Xenophanes said:
“The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,
While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,
And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods
Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape
Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.”

As you may have guessed I’m firmly with Richard Dawkins on all this.

scrumpyjack wrote
As you may have guessed I’m firmly with Richard Dawkins on all this.

So what then do you think is the answer to the question asked in the OP?
neither you or ReformedCharacter has offered an answer one way or the other, you have both gone off on a tangent having decided to address a different matter which is clearly ' are religious beliefs rational' but that was not the question asked in the OP!!!

Agree they are clearly not incompatible.

As religion is by definition not based on reason, one can always invent some reason why one's faith does not conflict with accepted new scientific knowledge. eg the idea of 'intelligent design' or the suggestion that whilst God is claimed to have created everything in 7 days, as the sun did not exist for the first couple of days, those days could have been of infinite length.

But that doesn't make religion any more credible to me.

colin wrote:

scrumpyjack wrote
As you may have guessed I’m firmly with Richard Dawkins on all this.

So what then do you think is the answer to the question asked in the OP?
neither you or ReformedCharacter has offered an answer one way or the other, you have both gone off on a tangent having decided to address a different matter which is clearly ' are religious beliefs rational' but that was not the question asked in the OP!!!

I think I did answer the question earlier in the thread and gave the answer 'false'. But one problem (as I mentioned) is that taking Christianity for example, is the difference between doctrine and belief. Genesis describes creation and is part of Christian doctrine but the Archbishop of Canterbury (I'm pretty sure) believes in evolution.

Incidentally, I've been working my way through Jordan Peterson's Biblical lectures. JP is a Canadian psychologist who recently received attention due to being sacked from his post as a lecturer at the University of Toronto for refusing to comply with the legal requirement to use gender-neutral pronouns.

I think his lectures are fascinating - whatever you may believe - here's a link to the first, Introduction to the Idea of God.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-wWBGo6a2w

RC

Sir Isac Newton believed that God himself had decreed the laws of physics so clearly his religious belief was not incompatible with evolution even though he had presumably never come across the concept in his time.