It's 2 am here, so I apologize for my brevity.
I must disagree in several regards. One, I disagree with your definition in a religous context. Religious faith is not beyound scrutiny, it may be beyound proving or even understanding, but since humans are only human, everything is open and intended to be examined, questioned, and put under the brightest most scrutinizing light we can find.
Let me explain it this way: according to J/C, god is beyond human understanding. One can never fully know god or comprehend god. While you may argue that religion is fair game for scutiny, god is not. Faith in this context means the acceptance of positions that can never be tested and can never be understood.
Science doesn't work on this basis - it is quite the opposite. A position only becomes a tenable position
after it has been scrutinized and has been vetted through human understanding. That isn't to say it is infallible. Nor do we deny that one must, at some point, "accept" a conclusion. But "faith" under these terms is completely different.
To put it in judaochritian terms, God did not intend us to follow along like blind little sheep, we are ment to question, learn, and grow. We must only have Faith that there is a purpose and that we should all do our best to be the best little cog we can be.
But this requires presupposition - you must begin by accepting 1) the existence of god, 2) the characteristics of his nature, 3) the limitations of your knowledge as defined by 2.
In other words, the scope of that which you can question excludes the largest question of all and the one that most heavily depends upon faith. Yes, you can question and test the world around you. But you cannot question and test the existence and nature of god, because by design it is not open to such tests.
That is the purpose of Freewill, the making of choices, and we can only make the right choices by analizing and scrutinizing all that is around us, religious doctrine, rules, and philosophies included.
Ah! But you have already accepted a position of faith
prior to analyzing and testing! You have accepted the existence of free will as creation of god, and you have accepted that a purpose to it exists. Once you accept these - based solely on faith - you have "poisoned the well" for every observation made afterward.
Many people discount evolution, not because it contradicts with our observations and predictions, but because it contradicts the presupposed position that god created man as described in Genesis.
Faith is being held in higher regard that science. One is chosen over the other. This is an example that demonstrates the difference between the two.
But on a more topic related note, I was not speaking of the specific object of religous faith, I was meaning the generalized definition of a human mental action of believing in somthing that you don't have firsthand, in-your-face proof of, ie "I have faith the next episode of Dr. Who will be a good one." I don't have a script, I havn't seen the preview, but I believe it will be true without any proof being required.
Fair enough. But the key difference is that in religious faith, no one claims to understand the mind of god (well...some fringe figures might, but in mainstream Christianity, this is not the case). With scientific "faith", as you describe it, your faith is being placed in the conclusion of experts whom you trust have indeed acquired firsthand knowledge. (like my mechanic, who may be screwing me, or my doctor, who I hope isn't!)
Peoples belief in evolution, the big bang, ancient history, dinosaurs, life on mars, hollow earth theory, the kennedy conspiracy, how they get all that cheese into such a little slice, the way a combustion engine works, that blood carries oxygen to their body, and even that the earth is round. All these things are believed by people on a daily basis. Even though most of them will never see direct proof of any of them they believe it.
Agreed. But to be fair, most people do dole out their trust based on some reasonable measure. 99% of the relevant scientific community recognizes evolution. That alone makes that trust reasonable. (not infallible, not "true", but reasonable). You'd be hard pressed to get that level of consensus on the "hollow earth theory", making that trust a lot less reasonable.
In other words, not all beliefs are of equal merit. You believing the sun will rise tomorrow is a lot more sound than me believing vampires will attack me in my sleep. (BTW, if I'm not around tomorrow, you'll know what happened)
Beyond that, they never even consider requireing first hand proof to beleive it, they simply have faith that it is true. While there may be philisophical differenses between the two ideas, the mental action is the same, believing somthing is true without knowing it first hand...And thus they must simply have faith that the science is correct.
As above. People, by and large, still make rationale decisions. If we needed first-hand knowledge of how something worked before we trusted it did, we'd spend an inordinate amount of time checking our brakes. But not requiring first-hand knowledge does not mean we do not recognize the need that
someone requires it. Like my mechanic, for instant. And the car manufacturer.
Ah, but what you just stated is contradictive, a theory can not be fact.
Yes, it can. The layman's understanding of the word theory is quite different than the scientific understanding of the word. To the latter, theory can represent our best explanation of what we see. But it also refers to that explanation to the point of confidence where it would be unreasonable to believe elsewise. (I'll expound on this below)
All of science is theory. All of it. To say that theory cannot be fact is to say that facts do not exist - nothing is factual beyond
ergo cogito sum, and even that will drive comments from the Philosophical docs on the board (if there are any).
Now obviously nothing can be proven 100 percent, to use the gravity example, my pencil can drop to the floor 1000 times, but that doesn't prove that the next time it rolls off my desk it will do the same. Unless you can see the future, it is true, everything is technically a theory.
As above - to take this position is to say that nothing is factual, not even your review of this reply. That makes any statement meaningless.
At some point, the individual must accept a position - even the position that they exist. When a large group accepts a position that withdtands scrutiny, fulfills predictions, and remains internally consistent, then that position - that theory - because a fact as certain as any fact can be.
But to the point, there is no such thing as the fact of evolution occuring, there is only evidense that suggests it occured. After all, there is no proof reality didn't just pop into existance 6,000 years ago with everything just how it is, dna, fossils, all of it.
There is no proof that dogs barking sound like the Glen Miller Orchestra to everyone but you, either. But it isn't a reasonable position. Nor is it reasonable to even posit that things popped up 6000 years ago, based on what we know of the world. The *only* basis for even putting that forward lies in presupposed positions surrounding the nature of god and the inerrancy of the bible.
And that, my friend, is why faith is different than reason, and why the acceptance of Christianity is different than the acceptance of evolution.
I would love to show you a couple of neat developments from recent years that demonstrate why evolution is so strong as a theory. Not because I'm trying to be pushy or trying to "coax" you, but rather because they're so neat! Seriously.
And that brings us to the all important, Evidence. You are wanting to give the belief structure of science more weight because of the imensive amount of empirical data it produces, but this is a biased view point, the equivalent of a Islamic sighting the Koran or a Tolkien quoting some obscure line from the Samarilian.
No, no, no, no. Not similar at all. The Muslim accepts certain positions
a priori - god is perfect and pure. The Qu'ran is the word of god. Therefore, the Qu'ran is perfect and pure.
Once he accepts that position, everything else within the book can be used as evidence. But it
cannot be used as evidence until he accepts this.
Again, science works backwards. A theory may be developed with our without a strong basis, but a standing theory - a tested theory that becomes an accepted fact - is developed
a posteriori.
But saddly, christians didn't see god mold adam from clay, we don't have video of the big bang, and no evolutionist ever saw the world's creatures evolve to what they are now. We all have faith that what we believe is true and all of us can provide evidence to prove those beliefs, atleast to ourselves.
If we needed to see something firsthand to confirm it, we wouldn't have nuclear power. We have never seen an electron. We have never seen a nucleus. We know those things are there based on other senses - other ways we are able to conclude their exstence and make some notes on their nature.
The same is true for the Big Bang - it's background radiation, mass spectrometry, etc. that lend proof to the Big Bang. Same for evolution - it's embryological pathway analysis (how related structures develop in different organisms), DNA comparisons, etc. that supply evidence.
And for Christians, it's faith - faith that the story they're being told (a story that contradicts much of what we know - and accept - of the world around us) is true and inerrant and unchanging.
I'm sure you can quote evidence for evolution all day long, sighting this research project and this scientist, and if you ask a christian to prove god they will quote this verse in this chapter, and both of you will believe just as strongly that you are right.
Except that the science can be replicated - even by the Christian, if he so choses. The science will withstand the test of what we know of the world around us.
The Christian must introduce a "new" way of acquiring knowledge - not by test or observation or even inferrence - but by faith: the presupposed position that a perfect being exists, and that this perfect being has imparted inerrant knowledge to us. And when that "knowledge" - the bible - is proven inconsitent or incorrect, the Christian will resort to Special Pleading.
When the nature of god is shown as impossible or inconsistent or illogical, the Christian must once again resort to Special Pleading.
The scientist can never resort to Speacial Pleading. If they do (like Pons and Fleischman), they certainly cannot claim it to be such and their case will fall apart and disappear.
Now look at it from a third person's perspective that has no bias either way. He has merly two peoples words to base his belief on. The christian quotes line after line from a book written thousands of years ago and you give theory after theory that you telll is based on this fossil and this genetic experiment, ect. However, to our third guy, both aruments have the same value, both are words from a person. Our guy can't call god on the phone any more then he can pick up a bone and do genetic tests on it or bred fruit flys for a few hundred generations to see dna mutation. Both are just ideas, philosophys, and second hand information.
But what you describe is limitations in the acquisition of knowledge of
one person. Sure, I can fool a lot of people on matters with which they are not well acquainted. But that isn't really the issue here. The issue is whether knowledge can be obtained at all. We do not have to show that all knowledge can be obtained by all people. Rather, the issue is whether any knowledge obtained by some people can be deemed reliable.
The key, of course, is in the rules for acquiring knowledge. When is something considered knowledge? We are pack to empiricism versus faith. One can be held to account, and the other cannot.
The difference you describe is not in the requirement of faith to believe in somthing, the only difference is the availabilty of empirical evidence behind the belief. Ask an islamic, they have as much faith that alah exists as they do that rock will fall when dropped.
But not based on the same rationale - one on faith, the other on science. Which is why I hold to a difference between the two. I may be just as sure that I won't suddenly sink through the floor as I am that the moon is made of green cheese. But reason is not subject to the level of my personal certainty.
Now I'm sure our example islamic would hold his faith in alah and his evidence for it to be much more reliable and correct then any research paper written by a heathen,
Yes, but he'd be mistaken.
...just as most scientist would hold any research paper as more relavent then any holyman's vision, but both hold an equal amount of weight to an outside viewer.
For starters, I'm not sure they would. If so, let me know the next time you can't start your car. I'll do a tea leaf reading and 'Joe the mechanic' will look under the hood. If I'm as certain as Joe that I am right, will you lend each of our findings an equal amount of weight?
Secondly, though, even if they did - in your eyes - it does not make your position (to accept both equally) a reasonable one.
Well, no, I wouldn't put gravity here, and really I don't think gravity is a good comparison, people see gravity working all the time and is somthing that anyone, anywhere, can test and show happening.
Jeckell, as sure as I am sitting here - and if you do not believe me ask any scientist you know or can get a hold of - we understand evolution to a greater degree than every other scientific theory, save QM. We understand evolution far, far more than gravity, and even more than atomic theory or electromagnetism.
We understand the
relationships in gravity, and the effects of objects with regards to gravity. But we still don't know what causes gravity, or how it relates to any of the other 3 forces.
However, evolution, atomic theory, cellular resperation, continental drift, molten earth core, these are all things that most people never see for themselves to be true. However, just as religious people believe what is said by their priests, those who put their stock in science except what is said and held to be true by their scientists and researchers.
Again, based on the
qualified acceptence that
someone does indeed understand these things. I trust that the doctor understands physiology. I don't need to do all the research myself. But his understanding is based on firsthand knowledge.
A holyman's understanding of god is - by his/her own admission - fundamentally lacking, and must be. His/her words come with no greater firsthand knowledge than my own. Sure, they may have greater theological, philosophical and maybe even historical understanding, but at the end of the day NONE OF THESE MATTER because they are all inconsitent and must, always, 100% resort to Special Pleading.
In other words, at the end of the day all the holyman can say to me is "it's god's will" (or similarly, "who are we to question god?"/"man cannot comprehend god")
A person doesn't hear that X number of mutations occur in Y generations of the south american fruit fly, and then run out and get fruit flys and see for them selves that it is true, they just take the word of those their system holds to be the wise.
Agreed. But no need to repeat myself here.
No probs, I am seriously lacking in intellecual conversation in RL and am always up for a lively discussion.
Good man.
My main two points are these:
One. Religion, science, making money, raising horses, hunting deer, watching nascar, they are all belief structures that we use to order and define our lives. To say that one is more important because it is a religion based on gods or because its a science based on experimentation is belittling to all of them.
Funny, though, I think that to equate them all is to belittle all of them. Just a different perspective on it.
Two, and more related to civ. The religous screen and game system is just that, a screen and a game system. If NikNaks93 wishes to represent peoples belief in evolution, I don't see why it is such a big deal to use the religion game system. It isn't as if the religous system is exclusionary, it would just be another icon on your city bar. You could see, O that city believes in Judyism, Islamic, and Evolution.
The problem, IMO (and probably others) is that it implicitly equates accepting evolution to accepting a religious position. And the two are nothing alike. If NikNaks had put "NASCAR" or "hunting deer" in the list (to give two examples from your list), would you not...would many people not...ask what on earth...?
Have a cool button with the different stages of mans' development from preape to modern hommonid.
But bottom line, people are being a little stalinish on what can be termed a Civ4 Religion and added to the religious system. There is a little to much realismizing going on in the community over all, but especially when it comes to religion. I like realism as much as the next person, even to the point of personally liking a good portion micromanagement in my Civing, but I see to many times people being talked into leaving stuff our of their mod or adding in extrenuous things because of the "realism" factor. I am NOT saying that was done here, just in the community as a whole. This is just a game and if someone wanted to add evolution, atomic theory, and even gravity as new religioninfos there is no good gaming reason they shouldn't. They may not get much of the realismite demographic, but if they used the new religioninfos right in their mod i sure those of us that like playing civ no matter the rules or changes would still play it.
I won't disagree with that, for the most part. If someone wants to make an Atlantean civ or make Treebeard a leader, they should be able to. And no, I'm not being sarcastic.
).![Impaler[WrG]](https://civfanatics-data.community.forum/avatars/m/73/73222.jpg?1475248346){kind=avatar}
![[pissed]](/images/smilies/pissed.gif "Pissed [pissed]")
It checks all the files, then, before the main menu, it crashes. Any ideas on what it is?
