Religious Threadjacks

[RTH10260]

James Talarico Exposes The Billionaire Christian Nationalist Pastors In Texas

OuttFoxed
3 Aug 2024

Uncover the truth about the two billionaire mega donors, Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilkes, who are driving the defunding and privatization of public schools in Texas. Discover their ties to far-right churches and their goal of replacing public education with private "Christian" schooling.

[RVInit]

Um, using science to search is using faith, because you are using your faith in science to trust it will reveal the truth at some point. If you don't have faith you wont commence a search for anything.

... because you are using your faith in that the scientific method is getting a correct representation of aspects of nature, better than some two thousand year (and more in the OT) old fabulation.

One of my favorite Tim Minchin poems:

...
Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved

...

[zekeb]

Yup. U.S. Christianity. It's unlike any other.

[roadscholar]

Science is not faith, dogma, or opinion. At the core of science is evidence based on reproducible results.

A scientist in Moscow or Chicago doing the same experiment, or if it’s done by a robot on Mars, now and again in a thousand years, the results will be the same all else being equal.

Reproducibility. Not belief.

And the institution of science is self-policing. A scientific author can garner acclaim by proving a theory wrong. So they are always trying to. If the theory is correct, it will withstand any test.

Fortunately, the Biblical principle “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” can be applied: Faith, spirituality, belief, belong in the realm of things which cannot be verified by science. And Science should only apply in the realm of things which can be proven or disproven.

This is why Science is actually no threat to Religion whatsoever. I will never understand why anyone thinks it is.

[johnpcapitalist]

This is why Science is actually no threat to Religion whatsoever. I will never understand why anyone thinks it is.

To you, the first sentence is self-evident. But not to Christian evangelicals.

Fundamentalist and literalist faiths are always fragile, whether Christian, Zoroastrian or anything else. They're built on the lazy man's idea that every single word in the holy book is infallible and correct. That's laziness because it excuses one from the need to think critically in grappling with any of the contradictions in the holy text. As a side effect, people who start with the belief in literal and infallible truth have to give up on trying to sort things out and then end up relying on preachers who can only skirt the contradictions by "prooftexting," quoting stuff out of context and not dealing with any sort of nuance. In that morass, anything that disproves even one thing in the book is a threat to the whole edifice of faith that they have constructed.

If the book says "God made the world in seven days" and you come along with repeatable science experiments that prove that the Earth evolved over billions of years and they are threatened. When we discovered that the sun is one of billions of average stars in the Milky Way and that the Milky Way is one of trillions of galaxies in the universe, the proposition that the Earth is the center of the universe is fatally wounded. That one is hard to unsee and to deny.

[roadscholar]

This is why Science is actually no threat to Religion whatsoever. I will never understand why anyone thinks it is.

To you, the first sentence is self-evident. But not to Christian evangelicals.

Fundamentalist and literalist faiths are always fragile, whether Christian, Zoroastrian or anything else. They're built on the lazy man's idea that every single word in the holy book is infallible and correct. That's laziness because it excuses one from the need to think critically in grappling with any of the contradictions in the holy text. As a side effect, people who start with the belief in literal and infallible truth have to give up on trying to sort things out and then end up relying on preachers who can only skirt the contradictions by "prooftexting," quoting stuff out of context and not dealing with any sort of nuance. In that morass, anything that disproves even one thing in the book is a threat to the whole edifice of faith that they have constructed.

If the book says "God made the world in seven days" and you come along with repeatable science experiments that prove that the Earth evolved over billions of years and they are threatened. When we discovered that the sun is one of billions of average stars in the Milky Way and that the Milky Way is one of trillions of galaxies in the universe, the proposition that the Earth is the center of the universe is fatally wounded. That one is hard to unsee and to deny.

To me, the tragedy of literalist idiocy is that it means they are missing the tremendously valuable stuff in the Bible that is couched in metaphor & allegory. It is mythic, in the best sense.

The seven days of Genesis, now that you mention it... the book is fascinating to me (as are the ideas in the ancient Vedas) because seen metaphorically, a bit loosely, they are pretty impressively insightful. The World (the neonatal universe) was without form and void. Inchoate space, the dark Waters. And Light didn't happen at first; how interesting, considering what the current thinking is about the earliest moments of Creation.

My friends who have studied ancient Hindu and later Taoist thought, a lot more than I have, tell me they at times seem to suggest a basis of the material world that resembles quantum mechanics. But only if you dig for treasure in metaphors.

Take "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Yes, they're literally stoning a 'harlot' but that is just the dry bones of the allegory. Obviously. And this misprision handily blinds many American evangelicals to the damn message: that the only sins that are your business are your own. Judge not, lest ye be judged? Not so fast. They can be horribly, toxically judgmental in their daily lives because they don't understand, or ignore, the meaning of their own Book.

The literalists, ironically, have no apprehension of literature. They have neutered and dishonored their Scriptures. They argue about cubits and floods and where Mt. Ararat is, while the message of the story of Noah is neglected... and it shouldn't be, for people of Faith. They suggest that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs. Good grief!

The Prodigal Son. Death and Rebirth. Bread on the Waters. Pearls before Swine.... Unless the Text is interpreted like a poem is, the reader is bogged down in literal minutiae, and its value is forfeit.

[roadscholar]

This is why Science is actually no threat to Religion whatsoever. I will never understand why anyone thinks it is.

To you, the first sentence is self-evident. But not to Christian evangelicals.

Fundamentalist and literalist faiths are always fragile, whether Christian, Zoroastrian or anything else. They're built on the lazy man's idea that every single word in the holy book is infallible and correct. That's laziness because it excuses one from the need to think critically in grappling with any of the contradictions in the holy text. As a side effect, people who start with the belief in literal and infallible truth have to give up on trying to sort things out and then end up relying on preachers who can only skirt the contradictions by "prooftexting," quoting stuff out of context and not dealing with any sort of nuance. In that morass, anything that disproves even one thing in the book is a threat to the whole edifice of faith that they have constructed.

If the book says "God made the world in seven days" and you come along with repeatable science experiments that prove that the Earth evolved over billions of years and they are threatened. When we discovered that the sun is one of billions of average stars in the Milky Way and that the Milky Way is one of trillions of galaxies in the universe, the proposition that the Earth is the center of the universe is fatally wounded. That one is hard to unsee and to deny.

To me, the tragedy of literalist idiocy is that it means they are missing the tremendously valuable stuff in the Bible that is couched in metaphor & allegory. It is mythic, in the best sense.

The seven days of Genesis, now that you mention it... the book is fascinating to me (as are the ideas in the ancient Vedas) because seen metaphorically, a bit loosely, they are pretty impressively insightful. The World (the neonatal universe) was without form and void. Inchoate space, the dark Waters. And Light didn't happen at first; how interesting, considering what the current thinking is about the earliest moments of Creation.

My friends who have studied ancient Hindu and later Taoist thought, a lot more than I have, tell me they at times seem to suggest a basis of the material world that resembles quantum mechanics. But only if you dig for treasure in metaphors.

Take "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Yes, they're literally stoning a 'harlot' but that is just the dry bones of the allegory. Obviously. And this misprision handily blinds many American evangelicals to the damn message: that the only sins that are your business are your own. Judge not, lest ye be judged? Not so fast. They can be horribly, toxically judgmental in their daily lives because they don't understand, or ignore, the meaning of their own Book.

The literalists, ironically, have no apprehension of literature. They have neutered and dishonored their Scriptures. They argue about cubits and floods and where Mt. Ararat is, while the message of the story of Noah is neglected... and it shouldn't be, for people of Faith. They suggest that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs. Good grief!

The Prodigal Son. Death and Rebirth. Bread on the Waters. Pearls before Swine.... Unless the Text is interpreted like a poem is, the reader is bogged down in literal minutiae, and its value is forfeit.