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| Science vs Religion | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 20 2014, 03:18 AM (7,731 Views) | |
| EMIYA | May 21 2014, 01:26 PM Post #16 |
"I am the bone of my sword."
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Free will is a mentally understandable and mentally tangible ideology that can be easily understood. Free will is essentially the complete opposite of instincts. Instincts are uncontrollable by you, they're ingrained into your DNA and force you to do what must be done. Free will allows me to make choices without, once more, being hindered by factors that force me to do anything. I get up in the morning and I want some cereal. I'm not eating because I'm being forced to eat and I could easily eat a poptart or not eat at all. I have consciously made my choice under as noted...free will. Free will is something that can easily be understood because its literally that conscious effort of choice without factors. Almost any animal can make a choice, whether that's own choice or instinct is questionable. Humans though are one of the few creatures that have a concept of free will. Here is the definition of Free Will by Webster
@CheckMateIzGod: This is why your gun analogy doesn't work here. Whether I shoot you or not I have made my own choice. This is free will and whether its because I don't want the law on my hand or sinning doesn't change the fact that its still free will. It ceases from being free will when you add in things like pre-destination or fate which foresees your actions before they even happen. There is a huge difference in being controlled and being influenced. I can be influenced to choose one option over the other but that's still free will as long as nothing has pre-destined that choice. Because no matter what we're going to make choices based upon reason. This is the logic of rationality and the way our world works. Every single thing we do, be it by choice, instinct or something else is done for a reason. Your government point isn't a good example either. I could be a slave to my government, pay high taxes and have a gun to my head and keep working in fear of death and repercussion. However I still have free will because though I'm being influenced, I still have the ability to make my own choices without factors of pre-destination, fate or God. I could easily stop and get shot for my troubles and again that's free will. |
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May 21 2014, 01:56 PM Post #17 |
 
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@Brofist Your points are right.But they only prove that my example as failed in only the "Religious Constraint" part.But my example is correct for the "Social Constraints" and "Physical Constraints" aspects. let me quote you the definition of "Free Will"
So when you consider the concept of "Free Will" you have to consider all the constraints.You are right in the "Religious" part.But why I consider the fact that humans can not understand or harness the concept of "Free Will" is because they are bound to fall to any one of the above different types constraint. |
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| POOHEAD189 | May 21 2014, 05:53 PM Post #18 |
 
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I think Science and religion can walk hand in hand. Both can be used for great evil but that is not their purpose. For 2500 years scientists thought the universe had always been or was formed after a long period, whereas the bible describes the creation of the universe as a flash of light, which is precisely how scientists today describe the big bang. My point is, I believe science and religion are not opposing forces. People just like to set things against one another. |
| Tha gaol agam ort. <3 | |
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| EMIYA | May 21 2014, 09:04 PM Post #19 |
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"I am the bone of my sword."
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I'm just saying that you can have free will while also having influence. Things will influence us regardless, our rumbling stomach may influence us to eat. The consequences of prison or execution may influence us to obey the law. A lot of things will influence us and we'll follow them because we like it or we don't want to face the consequences. Fate is like a program in a machine. Everything a machine does is literally programmed into it, including any mistakes or bugs it might make. It has no consciousness of awareness to it. Probably why Artifical Intelligence is such a popular topic. It's fun to think about what would happen if that which doesn't have free will suddenly got it. If you believe in Fate or Pre-Destination, that's the equivalent of the human programing. Fate automatically decides everything we do from the start and was put into motion before our actions. The Greeks themselves were heavy on the idea of fate and they believed everything was pre-destined before. But now a days, especially in fiction people love that idea of "fighting against fate." People don't like the idea that they're forced into something without control, especially if its relatively bad and the idea that you can choose your own fate and break away from the so called "program" is very interesting for people. This is why Free Will can't exist in Religion. You can have free choice for sure but if you're already pre-destined than it doesn't matter. To change this you have to deny things like pre-destination and God's omniscient or you need the capability to deny God's fate...which is of course a contradiction to logic because if you do that, it means God is no longer omnipotent or omniscient. And unfortunately religious people I believe are mistaking free choice with free will. God may give us a choice but if it was already ordained prior, it's not free will. You can imagine the problems that would occur if you suddenly found out that your entire life is a program that has been ordained the moment it started. Imagine a guy gets told that he's automatically ordained to go to Heaven or even Hell. He could get up, bring out his gun and just start killing people left and right just because he knows where he's going. He either kills a hundred people and gets rewarded...or he kills a hundred people and gets tortured. He can't change his fat anymore so it's almost like saying "what's the point of life?" This is the difference between religious fate and what I believe your trying to bring out with social constrictions. Fate is a force that cannot be changed...because if it does its no longer fate. Social Constrictions are forces that can be changed. It might be difficult and you might end up in a worst state than before. But you're allowed a choice to change that force that, as long as you don't believe in fate, is not ordained beforehand. |
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| POOHEAD189 | May 22 2014, 03:08 AM Post #20 |
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I don't think God knowing what we will do alters the fact that its our choice. Scientists have actually developed some theories that take away the illusion of freewill more than religion. Some theorize that the big bang has happened millions if not billions of times before, expanding and then retracting back before it expands again. Under the assumption that its the case, and under the assumption that all things have a pattern/chain/ripple effect and that the same actions yield the same results, I could have written this message and been born and died millions of times already, doing the exact same actions in every life. Edited by POOHEAD189, May 22 2014, 03:15 AM.
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| Tha gaol agam ort. <3 | |
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| + Steve | May 22 2014, 06:36 PM Post #21 |
Greetings. I will be your waifu this season.
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That sounds pretty morbid  Towards the end any and every intelligent race would be doing whatever they could to stop it but always fail... Or conversely they always get to the same point and destroy the universe creating the Big Bang again... I like to think of Science and Religion as almost parallel zig zags. Always going away from each other but occasionally meeting in the middle. Just for me the middle is the truth and Religion zig zags furthest from it. The idea of pure freedom is still impossible anyway, free will is there but not freedom if all laws and police forces were gone that doesn't mean people wouldn't be punished anymore, if someone in that world killed your baby you and your family would damn well punish them. So it's a pointless concept, it could only work in a world without emotion where nobody cares what you do, and then what would the point in anything really be? |
 Definitely not a succubus, fear not | |
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| Meowth | May 23 2014, 07:41 AM Post #22 |
=._.=
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Science is about discovering why and how things work, what we can do and generally investigate everything, science often knows it can be wrong and continues to grow from that point, another scientist will come along and improve or add to an existing piece of work. Without science, we wouldn't even be having this discussion over computers, we wouldn't be able to travel the seas with accuracy and our life span wouldn't be nearly as high. Religion is often conservative in nature, not willing to change, there are many advancements that are held up by religious arguments of how it's "unnatural" or how a woman isn't allowed to have an abortion, in fact a fair bit of religion in the world is quite sexist, where rape can be seen as the womans fault. Religion has done a lot to hold the world back while science tries to improve our way of thinking, not all religious people are going to extremely conservative, it would be wrong to assume that. |
 
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| EMIYA | May 23 2014, 01:10 PM Post #23 |
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"I am the bone of my sword."
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Religion refuses to be incorrect and it will do anything to keep going even if it means murder, lies and deceit and try to hide by a very thin veil. This is why debating between science and religion is nearly pointless. Science will always admit that its wrong and do thing to change itself. this is why science has actually advanced throughout the decades. Religion on the other hand refuses to change and refuses to accept that it could be wrong. Science might not be able to prove everything but religion has yet to prove anything. |
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| POOHEAD189 | May 23 2014, 10:21 PM Post #24 |
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Blaming religion for lies, deceit, and murder is like blaming the car in a car wreck instead of the driver. Same with blaming science for things like the atom bomb. Edited by POOHEAD189, May 23 2014, 10:21 PM.
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| Tha gaol agam ort. <3 | |
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| EMIYA | May 23 2014, 10:46 PM Post #25 |
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"I am the bone of my sword."
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Religion is still the total objective point that people follow and thus it the thing that is blamed because it is the most prominent source for it. This isn't like one person shot the gun and we say "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." Religion is composed of the thoughts and patterns of ideas created by people and held within the minds of millions of others. So yes, religion is the one who lies, deceits and murders. The same way that the atomic bomb murders, or that the atomic bomb is created by science and thus science is responsible for murder. I can put it down ther ejust like that and be correct. It's no different from me saying that the Bible lies or that people who the bible lie, its the same thing becaue it leads to the same point in the end. Lies come from the Bible, The Bible comes from people...the bible lies...people lie. Death comes from the atomic bomb...the atomic bomb is made from Science...Science is responsiblef or the bomb and thus responsible for death. Lies and Death can both be drawn back to different and one could say later sources. |
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| Vertical | May 24 2014, 12:15 AM Post #26 |
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To be fair, I do not usually venture outside the Dragon Ball section of the forum... and I have also very briefly read the contents of this topic... but this quote screamed to be discussed. If this is how you define "free will", then "free will" simply does not exist. Here's the very simplified version of my thoughts on the matter (as I only have a minute or two): A persons ability to choose comes from their life experiences. What they see, smell, hear, taste, touch... who they interact with, who they learn from... etc etc. All of these things are determined by what some would call "random chance" but... random chance doesn't exist. For example: many believe when you flip a coin you have a 50% chance of heads and a 50% chance of tails (generally speaking)... but in reality, what the coin will land on was decided when the Universe began (if not before). Every factor that could affect the outcome has lineage. Every variable has a past. The coin is destined to land how it will land... and always has been. Perhaps this is the same train of thought as the thing OFG mentioned regarding God knowing you before you're born. NOTE: I am not religious. If I had to define my beliefs it would be something akin to agnostic. Edited by Vertical, May 24 2014, 03:41 AM.
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| lunar2 | May 24 2014, 01:01 AM Post #27 |
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you really should learn to differentiate between religion as a whole and fundamentalist american christians. after all, the big bang theory was originally proposed by a catholic priest, and the pope personally congratulated robert wilson (who happens to be my 3rd cousin) and arno penzias for corroborating the big bang theory, because it proved the universe had a beginning. in fact, it was originally christians who supported the big bang theory all around, and atheists who rejected it. atheists believed in the steady state model of the universe, believing that it had just always been here, and was not created. gregor mendel was a monk who noticed some interesting trends in his pea plants. the catholic church supported darwin ever since they first made a statement about his theory of natural selection (with the caveat that mutation and natural selection was not random, but divinely guided, which can't be proven either way, so it's irrelevant) roughly 50 years after it was published. even some of the "anti science" stances of the catholic church are not what they are normally made out to be. galileo, for example, was not forbidden to advocate heliocentrism because it was thought to be heretical, as is commonly believed, but because at the time he had no evidence. he was teaching heliocentrism as fact when at the time it was nothing more than an unsupported hypothesis (and in fact contradicted the available evidence). despite this, he had had the support of the pope and the jesuits at the time (it was the roman inquisition, not the church proper, that had censored him), until he wrote a book pissing them off. and of course, much of the roman knowledge that was lost in europe was preserved in the middle east because of islam, so even they have made their share of contributions to science. this is why i dislike topics about "science vs. religion" or similar. there is no versus to be had. the two cover separate realms of knowledge. the real issue is science vs. fundamentalist christianity, especially in america. as for my personal beliefs, i do believe in what i call the "divine cause". an original creative entity or force that was not itself created. this is because it is simpler to say "something broke the rules", then it is to say "the big bang created the universe, and something created the big bang, and something created that something, and on and on for eternity". while it is pretty clear that the big bang itself is not that divine cause, it's certainly plausible that the next step back is. now, i make no assertions as to what that divine cause is, or if it even still exists, just that it is the original source of everything that exists, has existed, and will exist. so i guess the best description of my religious beliefs would be deist. good thing albert einstein agreed with me, huh? |
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list of canon sources: the DB manga, and the Dr. Slump manga as it applies to the crossover during the rra saga. list of non canon sources: everything else, regardless of origin, format, or quality. for those that blindly follow word of god | |
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| EMIYA | May 24 2014, 01:47 AM Post #28 |
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"I am the bone of my sword."
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But I am talking about religion as whole. While Fundamentalist Christianity is definitely vocal my points don't just refer to fundamentalism but to the entirety of religion. The point that religion, yes religion not just a fundamentalism, but all religion even the ones that are more humble, never seem to rely on giving us evidence to support themselves in their cause. Science is the one that revolves around logic and evidence because it literally has to. The basic point of all science is of course the Scientific Method. You need to be able to support your claims. I have yet to see many religions both offer supporting evidence that couldn't be proven otherwise by science and perhaps more importantly, admit to their own mistakes. Not once have I seen religion get to the point where they said "yes, we could be wrong on this..." instead they tweak their own words to benefit themselves. I'm not speaking of Fundamentalism here...that's just one of them many points of religion I'm talking about. This is what we have the issue with religion. It relies on information that it can't support either by a point that it refuses or the fact that it literally can't because it interferes with the natural world. Things like God and the definition of him that we give are just contradictive to our natural law. Which is probably why people can't explain or support their religion or concept of an omnipotent deity. Omnipotent is such a powerful and overwhelming word that in our universe it literally cannot exist without contradicting given definition. Which is why at some people it would be better if religious people could admit that their so called deity is imperfect. Powerful and intelligent perhaps but imperfect like everything else in the universe is. It would lead to a far more accepting reality for both sides because that's exactly what science is. It's powerful, its intelligent but its vastly imperfect and changes through time. There's a far...far...far better chance of an imperfect God existing...than a perfect one. Far more chance than a merely vast, strong and intelligent God exist than an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God. It would appear that the idea of God, especially Christianity stepped away from a humanistic deity and tried to become something beyond that and it honestly hurts it more I think. I go back to the Greek Pantheon. The Gods there and Gods before, in Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc. had very humanistic qualities to them. They had powers beyond humanity but their ideology was very much human. They were emotional, happy, grief stricken, easy to anger, hedonistic, jerks, saviors, etc. They were essentially glorified humans. Compare Zeus to God because they're both highly related to each other. They both control the heavens and all around and even images of Zeus as this large bearded man is often associated with the idea of God being this bearded man as well in Heaven. But the difference here is that Zeus essentially was given what we might think of as "Character development" you have a character that actually a story around him and that makes him far easier to understand than God. God is merely an idea, the brainstorm of a character you create but don't flesh out. Zeus while incredibly powerful was also very humanistic in his portrayal. This makes the idea of Zeus much easier to accept and understand because as humans we can understand something that is given human meaning. It also meant that Zeus was a very imperfect being, whether anyone else would agree or not. Zeus had flaws to him, very human flaws that makes him the kind of character that we can understand. We can't understand a flawless God and because of this God has no development to him. We can understand Zeus and his actions because we've been given development on Zeus while we can't understand why God does something because frankly, they contradict each other. This is again why its better to think that God is a flawed being than trying to force yourself in wondering why God is so contradictive. |
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May 24 2014, 03:28 AM Post #29 |
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That entire paragraph really has nothing to do with anything. We're talking about today. And today I can't even get up and go to work without hearing something about God and Jesus. Obviously our arguments are going to be mostly geared toward Christianity since that's what completely permeates American culture; however, these arguments can still apply to any other religion. Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are all extremely similar and promote the same set of crazy, harmful ideals. Those are the three biggest world religions, and the majority of people on this planet subscribe to one of those three belief systems. You can apply the argument to religions outside of those three as well, but I won't get into that. I don't care what contributions religious individuals have made to science - that is an individual contribution. Religion as a whole is harmful to society, and I have yet to see proof otherwise.
I agree that the main focus of the argument has been science vs. fundamental Christianity; however, the argument still applies to other religions as well. I don't mention those other religions because typically my fight is against Christianity. I do live in the bible belt, after all.
I don't see a reason to believe in a "divine cause" at all. It sounds like just a placeholder explanation to me, which is why I've never labeled myself a deist.
Yay? lol |
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| * Ketchup Revenge | May 24 2014, 04:21 AM Post #30 |
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!"
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In addition to this argument, proving God exists is a nearly impossible feat, but not nearly as difficult as proving that the God as worshiped by a specific religion is the one that exists. Even if you can prove God exists, that's only step 1. The debate rages on because you need to prove that your religion and the way in which you worship that God is the correct way of doing things. This is the reason why theistic religion itself is so fragile. Religion itself has so many specifics about how to live, and theistic religion has so many specifics about a God's wants and needs, but is this really accurate? Edited by Ketchup Revenge, May 24 2014, 04:33 AM.
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 The vengeance is her's for as long as she stands by Him. | |
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