Collins: How a scientist can believe in God

[Irvine511]

So much reason in the universe...but no reason for the universe?

why the need for meaning?

i am totally sympathetic to this, and it causes me to lie awake at night -- what if when we die it's just blankness, not even blackness, would you be aware of it? etc. -- but i also think this need for meaning, this need for invisible friends, this need for omniscent parents, this need to have something care about us, is all a response to the inherent absence of meaning, human meaning, to the universe. it's all very sentimental, even childish.

and i'm not sure i'm with that 100%, but in my darker, more rational moments, that does seem to be the only explanation.

as always we can turn to the Sopranos:

[q]AJ: What's the purpose?

Livia: Of what?

AJ: Being... Here on our planet. Earth. Those kids are dead meat. What's the use? What's the purpose?

Livia: Why does everything have to have a purpose? The world is a jungle. If you want my advice, Anthony, don't expect happiness, you won't get it, people let you down. And I'm not naming any names, but in the end, you die in your own arms.

AJ: You mean alone? [/q]

 

[nathan1977]

^ Said the kid who crashed Carmela's car while driving without a license; got caught smoking pot at his confirmation party; skimmed Nietzsche and Camus and declared life meaningless; went to gym class drunk on stolen Communion wine; broke into the school and vandalized the swimming pool; and, finally, was expelled for cheating on a geometry test. One has to consider the source of this wisdom.

The book of Ecclesiastes in the Scriptures is a really interesting book on this subject of whether (or not) life has meaning. Generally believed to have been written by the wisest man who ever lived, Solomon, the book begins with the phrase "Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless," and ends with the insight, "here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." His journey from meaninglessness to meaningfulness is worth reading.

 

[Vincent Vega]

"here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."


Well then... I'm doomed.

 

[nathan1977]

Have you read the book?

 

[Irvine511]

^ Said the kid who crashed Carmela's car while driving without a license; got caught smoking pot at his confirmation party; skimmed Nietzsche and Camus and declared life meaningless; went to gym class drunk on stolen Communion wine; broke into the school and vandalized the swimming pool; and, finally, was expelled for cheating on a geometry test. One has to consider the source of this wisdom.

the quote i was thinking of was from Livia.




[q]The book of Ecclesiastes in the Scriptures is a really interesting book on this subject of whether (or not) life has meaning. Generally believed to have been written by the wisest man who ever lived, Solomon, the book begins with the phrase "Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless," and ends with the insight, "here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." His journey from meaninglessness to meaningfulness is worth reading. [/q]


so fear and unquestioning obedience gives life meaning? sounds like a great way to rule a kingdom, to be sure, but is this how sentient beings are to live their lives?

 

[Vincent Vega]

Have you read the book?

I've read parts of the bible, but didn't get interested.

 

[nathan1977]

so fear and unquestioning obedience gives life meaning? sounds like a great way to rule a kingdom, to be sure, but is this how sentient beings are to live their lives?

Have you read Ecclesiastes either? It's full of questions. Actually, so is the whole Bible -- so God must be okay with questions.

I'm sort of surprised at the willingness to regard what something says without even taking a look -- very un-FYM.

 

[Irvine511]

Have you read Ecclesiastes either? It's full of questions. Actually, so is the whole Bible -- so God must be okay with questions.

I'm sort of surprised at the willingness to regard what something says without even taking a look -- very un-FYM.

i'm sorry, in the past 2 hours i haven't had time to run to the book store and then read Ecclesiastes.

i haven't criticized the book, i've only asked a question about a specific quotation you've brought up yourself as well as the conclusions you've stated.

could you address my question in response to your quotation? is the message obedience?

 

[Vincent Vega]

Well, I don't fear God, but that doesn't mean that I live a life apart from what the commandments say.

 

[Irvine511]

i also question the logic of using the Bible as some sort of authority as to the question of whether or not life has any meaning.

we already know what it's agenda is, and we already know it assumes several starting points (there is a God, for example) that not everyone agrees with.

if we're going to genuinely address the idea of "meaning" in life, i think we'd be best served moving away from religious texts.


ETA: i suppose what i'm saying is that The Bible (and other text) is a symptom of this maladie, not a cure.

 

[A_Wanderer]

It is a cure for thought about those existential questions, leaving way for speculation upon the nature of God.

 

[nathan1977]

i'm sorry, in the past 2 hours i haven't had time to run to the book store and then read Ecclesiastes.

I didn't mean to imply that you had. However, it might behoove you to avoid writing off the perspective of someone who has until you've actually read it. (You have to admit, your response was a bit pointed.)

could you address my question in response to your quotation? is the message obedience?

The message is not obedience. The message is relationship. Ecclesiastes basically walks you through the life of a wise teacher who evalutes life on its own terms -- wealth, wisdom, love, work etc -- and finds them all meaningless without the unifying thing that ties them all together -- a relationship with God.

It's impossible to obey without trust. It is impossible to trust without love. "Fear" of God is more accurately defined in this text as "reverence" (which is where the wisdom book Proverbs also starts, with "fear -- reverence -- of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom").

I also find it interesting that it's become casually easy to tar Christians with the non-thinking brush.

i also question the logic of using the Bible as some sort of authority as to the question of whether or not life has any meaning.

Why? Wasn't it set down by men (and perhaps women) who had the same questions we all do? The Psalms are full of poignant questions about the intersection of the present and the eternal. Ditto for the Book of Job and the aforementioned Ecclesiastes. The stories of the OT prophets and NT disciples are full of people on a quest for meaning.

 

[Irvine511]

[q]I didn't mean to imply that you had. However, it might behoove you to avoid writing off the perspective of someone who has until you've actually read it. (You have to admit, your response was a bit pointed.)[/q]


i'm sorry if you took it that way, but that was the point i took from the quotation you provided.



[q]The message is not obedience. The message is relationship. Ecclesiastes basically walks you through the life of a wise teacher who evalutes life on its own terms -- wealth, wisdom, love, work etc -- and finds them all meaningless without the unifying thing that ties them all together -- a relationship with God.[/q]

but, again, this is predicated upon the existence of God. i thought -- and maybe i've misread -- but when we're talking about the universe having "meaning," we can't assume God. we can't assume anything.



[q]It's impossible to obey without trust. It is impossible to trust without love. "Fear" of God is more accurately defined in this text as "reverence" (which is where the wisdom book Proverbs also starts, with "fear -- reverence -- of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom").[/q]

i understand the distinction, and i think it's an important one.


[q]I also find it interesting that it's become casually easy to tar Christians with the non-thinking brush.[/q]

it's a stereotype, as i've mentioned in the thread about the girl who passed out the "lake of fire" fliers, and i've said, repeatedly, that you, and others, are some of the most thoughtful people in here.

but i don't think we can get away from the fact that there's a certain logical leap to faith, and i don't think we can get away from the fact that many publicized beliefs in the more fundamentalist streets of Christendom are for the unthinking -- whether it's creationism or praying for jesus to help you on the algebra test or that Bono is precisely your stripe of Christian. there are people who don't think in all walks of life. and there are people who do. but when we're talking about religion in the West, even if through sheer population, Christianity and it's discontents are inevitably going to come up.


[q]Why? Wasn't it set down by men (and perhaps women) who had the same questions we all do? The Psalms are full of poignant questions about the intersection of the present and the eternal. Ditto for the Book of Job and the aforementioned Ecclesiastes. The stories of the OT prophets and NT disciples are full of people on a quest for meaning. [/q]

and here i thought the claim was that it was written/inspired by God.

am just questioning the reliability of the narrator. he seems to think a whole lot of himself.

my big point is that we have to get beyond God, we have to understand a universe that is devoid of meaning, of this paternalistic force that, frankly, i don't think exists. i am not saying that i don't think god exists, i just resent the personification of whatever God might be. or, it's not that i resent it, but to me, that's the first evidence we have that we create our own meaning, that it's not there independent of us. think about it -- if we can only talk about God in our own people-centric terms (father, relationship), haven't we already begun to fashion him in our own image?

 

[Ormus]

The book of Ecclesiastes in the Scriptures is a really interesting book on this subject of whether (or not) life has meaning. Generally believed to have been written by the wisest man who ever lived, Solomon, the book begins with the phrase "Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless," and ends with the insight, "here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." His journey from meaninglessness to meaningfulness is worth reading.

Well, allow me to draw from my own Christian heritage:

http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/ecclesiastes/intro.htm

The moral teaching of the book is imperfect, like the Old Testament itself (Hebrews 7:19), yet it marks an advance in the development of the doctrine of divine retribution. While rejecting the older solution of earthly rewards and punishments, Ecclesiastes looks forward to a more lasting one. The clear answer to the problem was to come with the light of Christ's teaching concerning future life.

"On the one hand, a former commandment is annulled because of its weakness and uselessness, for the law brought nothing to perfection; on the other hand, a better hope [Jesus] is introduced, through which we draw near to God." - Hebrews 7:18-19

Ecclesiastes is not a great book to quote from, morally, because of how overtly cynical it is. I say this with some irony, because I read Ecclesiastes 3 during both my Catholic grade and high school graduation masses. My high school religion teachers, in particular, weren't terribly surprised that I chose that chapter either, because I was really quite cynical in those days.

As such, I don't believe that our entire existence is dependent on fear and subservience to God. We are a species capable of great things and we have been granted many gifts in which to achieve greatness. If God wanted us to merely be miserable slaves, then he could have just kept us like the animals, who live, day in and day out, solely out of instinct.

 

[U2Bama]

Ecclesiastes is not a great book to quote from, morally, because of how overtly cynical it is. I say this with some irony, because I read Ecclesiastes 3 during both my Catholic grade and high school graduation masses. My high school religion teachers, in particular, weren't terribly surprised that I chose that chapter either, because I was really quite cynical in those days.

Would they have been surprised if you had shown up with a Rickenbacker 12-string guitar and performed The Byrds' "Turn! Tutn! Turn!"? Much like U2's "40" to Psalm 40, the Byrd's song is a musical recitation of Ecc. 3:1-9. Our Methodist youth group sometimes sang it at weekend retreats.

~U2Alabama

 

[INDY500]

As far as science goes it is a philosophy of investigation that should make an observer strive for objectivity, it is far removed from faith; which is at least in part emotional and subjective - problems don't arise from non-overlapping theology and reason but from theology that requires the material world to be twisted around it to be affirmed.

Aren't you ruling out in advance, solely on philosophical grounds, the possibility that scientific observation and evidence could ever point to a designer as the origin of life and the laws of the universe? Not undirected natural forces and processes?
That science is energy and matter and nothing else, even in the grandest and most complex question we seek to answer.

 

[INDY500]

why the need for meaning?

i am totally sympathetic to this, and it causes me to lie awake at night -- what if when we die it's just blankness, not even blackness, would you be aware of it? etc. -- but i also think this need for meaning, this need for invisible friends, this need for omniscent parents, this need to have something care about us, is all a response to the inherent absence of meaning, human meaning, to the universe. it's all very sentimental, even childish.

Why, because only humans know of their pending death. When you think about it, that's a terrible burden to carry around. Religion puts death into context. We developed philosophy to helps us deal with it, and science and medicine to help us delay it. None of which I believe to be childish reactions to said knowledge.

 

[dazzlingamy]

I don't see why we have to go on beyond the circle of life to understand what death is about? We live in cycles, the wind, the waves, the seasons, the revolutions of a day, the path around the sun etc, it is all cycles counting down, so why should life not be the same?

I understands man's quest - to give our lives meaning. Who wants to accept that we could just possibly be an evolution speck in a magnitude that we can't even comprehend. It's much nicer and cosier if we were "made" by some God, live our lives trying to follow his word and please him, for him to give us eternal salvation. I understand this, and can see why it would be nice and comforting to be religious for people who have this need to feel like there is a reason we are here. For me, I'm ok with being an occurance, a granule of sand on the long beach of the history of the universe, I focus on my life HERE on earth, its the only thing I know for real, that i am living, and i need to make the most of my time here. Of course its human nature to questions our lives, but on the whole im pretty happy with how mine is turning out, and im not going into some exinstential crisis right now (who knows in future though!)

 

[maycocksean]

why the need for meaning?

i am totally sympathetic to this, and it causes me to lie awake at night -- what if when we die it's just blankness, not even blackness, would you be aware of it? etc. -- but i also think this need for meaning, this need for invisible friends, this need for omniscent parents, this need to have something care about us, is all a response to the inherent absence of meaning, human meaning, to the universe. it's all very sentimental, even childish.

Well, Scripture does talk about having the faith of a child. . .

The thing is I don't really worry too much about death. To me belief "frees me up" from having to spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating my mortality. My faith tells me there's something beyond this life, which for me, paradoxically perhaps, at least helps me to fully embrace the life I have now and makes my eventual death less frightening. (I find the pain and grevious injury far more frightening a prospect than death. Having not even ever had a broken bone, my experience with severe pain is pretty limited).

Course if I believed in hell like many Christians do, I bet I'd worry a whole lot more about the afterlife.

 

[Vincent Vega]

^Oh you'll feel so fine when the pain is gone.
I've never had a bone broken, either, but as I wrote in another thread there was something more painful.

I'm not much of a philosopher. I don't worry about death, I don't think about the universe too much, I've never asked myself about the meaning of life, and I feel fine.

I don't believe in any God or deity or higher force or whatever. For me, death is death, and there is nothing to follow.
The exact reasons for universe are yet to be found out, but I can live with uncertainties and things we don't know for sure.

I'm living a happy, fulfilled live (well, more or less) and managed to get through without any God.

I'm not evil, don't live a life of sin and am not responsible for all the bad in the world.

 

[maycocksean]

Ecclesiastes is not a great book to quote from, morally, because of how overtly cynical it is.

Awww, come on. Ecclesiastes always gets such a bad rap. Maybe I'm just being perverse, but I kinda like the book. . .always have. People say it's depressing. They say its cynical. You want to get fundamentalist Christians talking like liberal scholars, get them into Ecclesiastes (or the book that comes after it--the sexiest book in the BIBLE!!!). 'Well, we shouldn't take this literally.' and 'We need to keep in mind the perspective of the author.' It always makes me chuckle (though I'm not referring to you Ormus, just to be clear. I know you're not remotely a fundamentalsit). We just spent the last 12 weeks studying Ecclesiastes in our Saturday morning Bible study group and I think I was the only one in the group who consistently stood up for the book.

But I like Ecclesiastes. I don't find it morally suspect, or depressing. I find it bracing, interesting, thought provoking.
The message of Ecclesiastes when read as a whole is difficult to boil down to an easy to swallow platitude, which is what makes it perhaps so unpopular.

As such, I don't believe that our entire existence is dependent on fear and subservience to God.

I don't think so either. But then I don't think that is what God want's out of us either.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Aren't you ruling out in advance, solely on philosophical grounds, the possibility that scientific observation and evidence could ever point to a designer as the origin of life and the laws of the universe? Not undirected natural forces and processes?
That science is energy and matter and nothing else, even in the grandest and most complex question we seek to answer.

If the evidence did point in that direction then I may be so inclined, but given the sheer elegance of evolutionary theory in not only explaining the "perfection" of systems but also the imperfection at a multitude of scales there is no need for a God based explanation.

There is no reason to entertain the idea of God from any rational standpoint, such an entity is completely irrelevent at this time.

Answering an question with an unknown element doesn't answer anything.

 

[A_Wanderer]

I don't see why we have to go on beyond the circle of life to understand what death is about? We live in cycles, the wind, the waves, the seasons, the revolutions of a day, the path around the sun etc, it is all cycles counting down, so why should life not be the same?

Cycles, cycle - life, doesn't

 

[Ormus]

But I like Ecclesiastes. I don't find it morally suspect, or depressing. I find it bracing, interesting, thought provoking.
The message of Ecclesiastes when read as a whole is difficult to boil down to an easy to swallow platitude, which is what makes it perhaps so unpopular.

Well, I did read from it in both of my Catholic school graduation ceremonies. That has to count for something.

 

[Ormus]

Cycles, cycle - life, doesn't

Actually, I'd say that we are quite cyclical in our chemistry and behavior. We are walking concoctions of science, with the added twist of conscious thought.

 

[Ormus]

Would they have been surprised if you had shown up with a Rickenbacker 12-string guitar and performed The Byrds' "Turn! Tutn! Turn!"? Much like U2's "40" to Psalm 40, the Byrd's song is a musical recitation of Ecc. 3:1-9. Our Methodist youth group sometimes sang it at weekend retreats.

They would have been surprised if it had come from me. We did have our musical classmate who had a contemporary outlook on Christian music, and he performed in church fairly regularly when I was in school.

 

[AEON]

There is no reason to entertain the idea of God from any rational standpoint,

creatio ex nihilo

Until science can explain how "something" came from "nothing" - there is room for God in the discussion. As we've discussed before, the Big Bang Theory favors the notion of a singular moment when matter came into existence. Only something "other than matter" could "cause" this to happen. Any other proposition is a non-rational viewpoint (if there was a Big Bang).

 

[Irvine511]

Why, because only humans know of their pending death. When you think about it, that's a terrible burden to carry around. Religion puts death into context. We developed philosophy to helps us deal with it, and science and medicine to help us delay it. None of which I believe to be childish reactions to said knowledge.

i agree with you, totally.

and this, if anything, makes god even less objective and more subjective. it's the grasping to feel good-ism in the face of what might well be blankness, non-existence, nihilism, is what i consider childish.

it doesn't surprise me that religious people tend to be happier; the truly gut-wrenching questions about existence are answered for you. accepting the given answers is surely a more pleasant way to go through life.

 

[Irvine511]

and this is a nice discussion, all.

 

[yolland]

it doesn't surprise me that religious people tend to be happier; the truly gut-wrenching questions about existence are answered for you. accepting the given answers is surely a more pleasant way to go through life.

This seems like a rather highfalutin explanation for why religious people tend to be happier; thinking one has certain answers to "the truly gut-wrenching questions" isn't the only attribute commonly associated with a "religious lifestyle" which might positively affect mood. Do you really think existential crises are typically the Big Thing burdening people you've known who are generally unhappy?