Question for KevinSim- biblical gospel articulation request

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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Question for KevinSim- biblical gospel articulation request

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Philo Sofee wrote:
Wed Nov 23, 2022 2:59 am
Rivendale
Perhaps Dillahunty's common phrase "levels of confidence" would be a better statement of scientific claims and paradigms.
Yes, same thing. Faith from FIDES means trust, "Fidelity" is literally from the word. The universe has fidelity with its laws, and our measurements of them, so we trust it and we can do our science, trust it that it will not change drastically so we can continue to do our sciences.
We trust the chemicals of stars out there because the light spectral lines behaves the same at all times, we trust that, so we learn the chemistry of the stars form the light spectrum of chemical elements. If one day a star showed nitrogen, the next day just carbon and the next day just magnesium, we'd find a better method to trust, since we would lose faith in one that leads to chaos, not order as we have faith in. We have faith in the order we have discovered, because it is still working for us. That is not a religious faith, it is a normal everyday faith. Faith is not just a religious term. The New Atheists have done a lousy job in attempting to redefine it as a religious term only. They didn't succeed. Einstein did not have faith in religion or God, he had faith in the comprehensibility of the universe and it stunned him it was so, very properly.
Atheists haven't “redefined” the word faith at all. It’s theists who have used faith in a traditional religious sense for millennia. What in the world are you on about? Again, you said:
Faith in a God is no more idiotic than atheist faith in the Cosmos working coherently and intelligibly day by day so we can study it with our science. We all have faith of one thing or another, there is no other way.
And now you’re trying to weasel word the broadly accepted meaning of ‘faith’, a strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion based on spiritual notions rather than proof, at the feet of atheists? Absurd. You’re also trying to shoehorn a meaning onto ‘fides’ that’s debatable at best, and in bad faith at worst.

What’s your deal?

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
Chap
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Re: Question for KevinSim- biblical gospel articulation request

Post by Chap »

Philo Sofee wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 8:02 pm
[...] Faith in a God is no more idiotic than atheist faith in the Cosmos working coherently and intelligibly day by day so we can study it with our science. We all have faith of one thing or another, there is no other way.
This is where we started in on 'faith'.

In response it has been pointed out by more than one poster that the word " faith" used in a religious context has a whole load of associations and implications that it does not have outside those contexts. For example, in some versions of Christianity, faith is the thing you have to have to avoid an eternity of torment in hell-fire. And do not usually get that faith as a result of reasoning about facts observed, but through such mysterious experiences as "being born again".

Yet Philo Sofee just insists that this word simply means no more than 'trust', in the common everyday sense of that term (because etymology). And now it is all to be settled by invoking Einstein's usage of the word. Well, I have news for Philo Sofee. In some religions there are saints whose words are definitive for the believer, and what they say goes. Science, however, is not a religion. What Einstein wrote about the invariant speed of light in vacuo is not generally accepted because Einstein wrote it, but because so far all experiments to test it have produced consistently results.

So if Philo Sofee wants to argue that a scientist who says "So far the universe has turned out to be, in certain aspects at least, a place that appears to operate consistently; so I'll proceed on that assumption till it turns out not to work" has "faith" in the same way that religious believers use the term (which several of us have denied). he will have to do all the heavy lifting himself. And so far as I can see, that has not convinced many people here.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
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Re: Question for KevinSim- biblical gospel articulation request

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LOL....... I am not smuggling anything about Fides in, I am using it in its actual sense - "FIDES meant 'reliablilty', a sense of trust between two parties if a relationship between them was to exist. FIDES was always reciprocal and mutual, and implied both privileges and responsibilities on both sides."
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Re: Question for KevinSim- biblical gospel articulation request

Post by Philo Sofee »

Chap
So if Philo Sofee wants to argue that a scientist who says "So far the universe has turned out to be, in certain aspects at least, a place that appears to operate consistently; so I'll proceed on that assumption till it turns out not to work" has "faith" in the same way that religious believers use the term (which several of us have denied). he will have to do all the heavy lifting himself. And so far as I can see, that has not convinced many people here.
No worries, I have no need to convince anyone of anything, I have faith it wouldn't work anyway... :D
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Re: Question for KevinSim- biblical gospel articulation request

Post by msnobody »

Philo Sofee wrote:
Wed Nov 23, 2022 1:34 pm
Chap
So if Philo Sofee wants to argue that a scientist who says "So far the universe has turned out to be, in certain aspects at least, a place that appears to operate consistently; so I'll proceed on that assumption till it turns out not to work" has "faith" in the same way that religious believers use the term (which several of us have denied). he will have to do all the heavy lifting himself. And so far as I can see, that has not convinced many people here.
No worries, I have no need to convince anyone of anything, I have faith it wouldn't work anyway... :D
So true, Philo. It has to be an individual encounter for each of us.

Last night, I tried to find a YouTube video I had watched several weeks ago with Dr. Sy Garte. I went sound asleep and don’t know how many videos I slept through.

Dr. Garte’s bio:
“Raised in a militant atheist family, Sy Garte became a respected research biochemist with an anti-theistic worldview–and he had no intention of seeking a God he didn’t believe in. That is, until the very science he loved led him to question the validity of an atheistic worldview. These questions led him to wonder about the true nature of the world, and eventually the Holy Spirit guided him toward a belief in God, and in Jesus Christ as his redeemer.”
https://sygarte.com/

When I find the video I’m looking for, I’ll post it.
The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession... The LORD set his love on you and chose you... The LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery. Deut. 7
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Question for KevinSim- biblical gospel articulation request

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

msnobody wrote:
Wed Nov 23, 2022 2:14 pm
Philo Sofee wrote:
Wed Nov 23, 2022 1:34 pm


No worries, I have no need to convince anyone of anything, I have faith it wouldn't work anyway... :D
So true, Philo. It has to be an individual encounter for each of us.

Last night, I tried to find a YouTube video I had watched several weeks ago with Dr. Sy Garte. I went sound asleep and don’t know how many videos I slept through.

Dr. Garte’s bio:
“Raised in a militant atheist family, Sy Garte became a respected research biochemist with an anti-theistic worldview–and he had no intention of seeking a God he didn’t believe in. That is, until the very science he loved led him to question the validity of an atheistic worldview. These questions led him to wonder about the true nature of the world, and eventually the Holy Spirit guided him toward a belief in God, and in Jesus Christ as his redeemer.”
https://sygarte.com/

When I find the video I’m looking for, I’ll post it.
For the curious here is a quick and dirty FAQ:

https://sygarte.com/faqs/

He seems to have found a god that fits within his worldview. He links to this video as an argument on behalf of his belief in god. It’s four minutes long if you want to watch it:

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/kalam

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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Re: Question for KevinSim- biblical gospel articulation request

Post by Kishkumen »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Wed Nov 23, 2022 1:20 pm
Atheists haven't “redefined” the word faith at all. It’s theists who have used faith in a traditional religious sense for millennia. What in the world are you on about?
Or two millennia? Or one millennium? Has the definition of faith been that stable for so long? And are we talking about Christianity? People of the Book? Or just anyone who is religious in any way?
And now you’re trying to weasel word the broadly accepted meaning of ‘faith’, a strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion based on spiritual notions rather than proof, at the feet of atheists? Absurd. You’re also trying to shoehorn a meaning onto ‘fides’ that’s debatable at best, and in bad faith at worst.
What if people who seek a god consistently have certain kinds of experience as a result of the practices they use in order to find that god? Would it be absurd to say that their trust in the efficacy and fruits of that search were so different from other kinds of realia that people take for granted?

I don't see the big deal here.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: Question for KevinSim- biblical gospel articulation request

Post by Kishkumen »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Wed Nov 23, 2022 1:20 pm
Atheists haven't “redefined” the word faith at all. It’s theists who have used faith in a traditional religious sense for millennia. What in the world are you on about? Again, you said:
Since atheism in the modern sense is a modern phenomenon, their rhetoric couldn't help but be a new way of approaching older phenomena. I will say, however, that both atheists and theists have shifted in their views over time.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: Question for KevinSim- biblical gospel articulation request

Post by Chap »

Philo Sofee wrote:
Wed Nov 23, 2022 1:32 pm
LOL....... I am not smuggling anything about Fides in, I am using it in its actual sense - "FIDES meant 'reliablilty', a sense of trust between two parties if a relationship between them was to exist. FIDES was always reciprocal and mutual, and implied both privileges and responsibilities on both sides."
I'm sorry - we are doing Latin now?

Look, I'll let you into a little secret: modern English "faith" is indeed derived from a Latin word "fides". But it is an elementary philological fact that a word in language B that is derived from a root in language A may often be used in ways that are different from the usage of the root word in the original. Try for instance compared modern English "religion'" to Latin "religio". See:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/mor ... o0#lexicon

Same applies to "faith" and "fides". And a word cannot usefully be said to have an "actual sense": it just has the ways in which, at any given time and in any given society, it happens to be used. And I have been immersed in Christianity long enough to know that the way Christians use the word "faith" does not map onto the provisional commitment that scientists make to a scientific idea for just so long as it works, and no longer..
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
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Re: Question for KevinSim- biblical gospel articulation request

Post by dastardly stem »

What is a militant atheist household? I see believers attempt to marginalize nonbelievers by calling them militant. Why is not believing something militant but believing religion isn’t? Once you see someone claiming militancy for another because there’s disagreement you know they aren’t eager to converse in good faith.

Normally the most strident people for their positions or opinions are believers. When nonbelievers push back particularly when believers attempt to run over everyone else, believers cry something like militancy. Running over everyone else seems to be the most valiant way to religion these days. Speaking of…

Ah well…I’m also feeling nonplussed by philos use of the word faith. He also seems to think religion is just living, as it seems that’s what he’s offered in the other thread. To him believing is thinking there’s an undefined character bugging our insides, it seems, and religion is people living but not practicing religion. I’m guessing he’d be a fan of Jordan Peterson, or he at least is sounding more like Jordan everyday. The position that we ought not try and convince each other sounds terrible to me (and is probably not very j petersonesque). If we act the defeatist because it’s too hard I don’t see how we’re to get anywhere.

I suppose if we want to say religions good and god is there kinda, in a way, alright. Sounds a bit nutty and kinda unfalsifies everything, in a postmodernist way, but it also puts us right where religion would have us. We’d have less space to actually engage with each other attempting to work out a better world. But we also can’t convince people who adamantly reject reason in order to maintain their position. We can, though, keep trying rationality and hope it sinks in.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
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