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As one or two of you have seen, I am extremely interested in the affect science has on decisions we make in a religious setting. I am merely curious as to how many would state science as a large factor in religious decisions. I am not trying to accuse or be tricky at all.

I probably define an atheist as someone who has decided to live his life as if there were no God, and a theist as someone who has decided to live their life as if there were a God.

If science has affected your religious views in a moderate or large way, and would like to list the scientific information that was integral in that decision making, that would be doubly interesting.

This is my very first poll, so if none of the categories fit very well, you can state why not, but these categories are intentionally broad.

Oops, It looks like the last option got left out. It was supposed to read

"I have made no decision about God, and science had little or no affect on my position."

Oh well, sorry if that is what you would have voted for.

To quote the guy on Nacho Libre:

"I believe in science."

Hmmm...

It depends what you mean by God! LOL!

The poll doesn't really work for me but let me just say that science/personal observation/real word understanding, plays a very important role in my spiritual beliefs, the way I experience the world, and how I live my life.

:-)

~dancer~

truth dancer wrote:Hmmm...

It depends what you mean by God! LOL!

The poll doesn't really work for me but let me just say that science/personal observation/real word understanding, plays a very important role in my spiritual beliefs, the way I experience the world, and how I live my life.

:-)

~dancer~

True, I should mention that by science, I don't mean just logic, or individual perception. When I say science, I mean the theories that the scientific community proposes as an explanation of natural phenomena.

Hi Physicsguy... :-)

True, I should mention that by science, I don't mean just logic, or individual perception. When I say science, I mean the theories that the scientific community proposes as an explanation of natural phenomena.

I understand this and as I mentioned science (which in my opinion, is another way of discussing the real world, concrete, observable) plays a very big part in how I live in this world.

What doesn't work for me in terms of the poll, is the God part! :-)

If by belief in God you mean a person/man/being/intervening/controlling type of God, living near Kolob, then no I do not believe in such a being.

If, OTOH, you mean God as Source/Essence/Potentiality/Creative Nothingness/Zero Point or something along these lines, then yes I am right there!

But, I hold to the idea that humans are not even remotely clever enough to know the reality, or understand the totality of our universe so go with a more pantheistic/agnositc sort of idea!

So, in terms of your poll... science plays a big part in how I understand the world/universe/life.

~dancer~

I have made no decision about God, but science had a moderate to large affect on my position.

This is the choice I voted for, though I have the same issue as TD. Science has definitely had an effect on the way I perceive the world. I'm much more skeptical now than I was as a TBM.

truth dancer wrote:Hi Physicsguy... :-)

True, I should mention that by science, I don't mean just logic, or individual perception. When I say science, I mean the theories that the scientific community proposes as an explanation of natural phenomena.

I understand this and as I mentioned science (which in my opinion, is another way of discussing the real world, concrete, observable) plays a very big part in how I live in this world.

What doesn't work for me in terms of the poll, is the God part! :-)

If by belief in God you mean a person/man/being/intervening/controlling type of God, living near Kolob, then no I do not believe in such a being.

If, OTOH, you mean God as Source/Essence/Potentiality/Creative Nothingness/Zero Point or something along these lines, then yes I am right there!

But, I hold to the idea that humans are not even remotely clever enough to know the reality, or understand the totality of our universe so go with a more pantheistic/agnositc sort of idea!

So, in terms of your poll... science plays a big part in how I understand the world/universe/life.

~dancer~

Hello,

Yes, I guess I should have defined terms more. By God, I probably mean a personal God of some sort that is consciously aware of human beings. This would lean more towards traditional types of gods, and away from the Source/Essence type.

Well, science has always been a large influence in my life, and has been a factor when deciding what I think about all things, not just those related to the existence of a god.

I will say, however, that I was agnostic for many years until reading what Dawkins had to say on probabilities, which was something to the effect: what's more likely, that the first form of life was an extremely simple single-celled organism or a being of ultimate complexity, omniscient and omnipotent?

Obviously, the simple is far more likely. The only way the hypothesis of god works is by forgetting about (or, at least, downgrading the importance of) the observable natural and accepting the supernatural, and since I don't, atheism it is!

Through science, as a teenager and later, I was able to realize, and come to accept, that the church leaders were simply dead wrong about things like the Flood of Noah, death existing in the world before the time of Adam and Eve. I learned that, notwithstanding a lot of resistance from a lot of the churchmembers I knew, as well as from past church leaders, evolution was in fact the real explanation for how the species developed, not special creation by God in their current form. Science thus opened my eyes to the idea of the church actually being wrong about things and not knowing what they're talking about, which eventually, many years later, lead me to accepting the possibility that the church wasn't actually true. Without the contradiction of Noah's flood, death in the world prior to the Fall, etc. I don't know that I ever would have gotten to this point.

Part of it was a blow to the credibility of the leaders. If they're wrong about these things, why should I trust that they were right about so many other things? Part of it was the slow realization and even slower acceptance, which took me years and years to reach, that these guys aren't any more "inspired" by God in the ways of truth than anyone else.

Of course, it took the realization that I could no longer negate or excuse away, that the LDS apologists were playing word games, blowing smoke, and rationalizing and excusing away problems in a most egregious way, before I finally let all of the stuff I mentioned above finally have its full reign. But without these early science-based doubts, I don't know that I would have gotten where I'm at now.