[QUOTE="NEStorianPriest"]
[QUOTE="GabuEx"]
Whether or not we have evidence that God exists, we are still making a conclusion based on the evidence available. How does presenting evidence in favor of something constitute a deprivation of free will for those who see it?
Derek240
I think he's saying that once you provide proof that God exists, and he exists in the way your particular religion declares, you remove the possibility of his being nonexistent and ineffectual, therefore no faith is required. God becomes as electricity, or magnetism. Do you choose to believe in the power of electricity? No, you just accept that it exists because it is a proven natural force. No effort is required on your part to do so.
Human history stretches back 35,000 years. We started looking into the nature of things close to 4,000 years ago (Xia dynasty, I Ching, etc.) The modern scientific age didn't begin until about 300 years ago, and all that time your ordinary citizen couldn't explain most of what made the world tick. No all of a sudden we shouldn't do anything unless it has the seal of approval by modern scientific scrutiny?
Science hasn't always been dead on, or without its flights of fancy. Don't forget that we wouldn't have modern chemistry if it weren't for hundreds and hundreds of years of alchemical experimentation. Heck, Newton was an alchemist. Even Darwin couldn't figure out how heredity worked and made up a reason, then published Origins. Wasn't until Mendel ( a monk, ironically) came along and figured it out that it could really be given any sort of scientific credibility. Then there is Schrodinger's Cat. This was the best mind puzzle they could come up to represent the multiverse theory and it was FLAWED from the get go. Even a community college student like myself reading about it 15 years ago realized that.
To the point, science is not infallible. Scientists are human, and their methodology, their intelligence, imagination, where they get their funding from, the level of technology at their disposal all play a part in the end result. Even the current political and social climate has an effect on the direction of scientific thinking. Often times it has been the person who has gone against the grain that started a the next trend in scientific thinking. Take F. Buckminster Fuller. He didn't even finish college, he was considered an outside thinker and not taken seriously, now his ideas are being used to develop carbon nano-structures and space stations. His work Synergetics, and many other of his works were based on intelligent speculation and and creative thinking, not hard scientific research.
As I said before, most of the human experience is governed by perception and personal bias. What you haven't experienced in the universe far exceeds what you have. No one here has been inside a black hole to see how it works, yet you accept it as fact when you read about it in a book. When you accept something without experiencing it, you are believing in it, and that is the same thing Christian's and others choose to do.
You forgot about the part where non-religious people base their knowledge on tangible things...unlike religious people. It's the fundamental difference after all. Tangiblity vs Faith
The point is that science gets things wrongs a lot, even though they are working from evidence. The process of understanding takes place in the human mind. Humans make the connections. Humans are fallible, therefore science is fallible. It's not like I;m arguing the existence of the atom or anything, I'm just saying that if you;re going to apply a a criticism to religious believers, you should also look more closely at how easily you accept "evidence" from others. You've never seen a quantum tunnel, yet you believe it exists because you read about it in a book. How do you know, and I mean absolutely know a quantum tunnel is tangible? You don't.
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