Many of us think it would be a great accomplishment to live up to them but that is not the point. God created us to live at a much higher level. But agin the goal is NOT to keep from breaking one of the big ten. The goal of faith in God is to allow your heart to be shaped and changed and to become the kind of person that lives above that base line.

I think this is why many people work really hard to explain so many things away… because to agree or to acknowledge any validity to faith would be giving credibility to some system that is trying to point out what you do wrong.
That’s not the point! God doesn’t want you to be controlled or restrained. Trying to live up to the 10 is a small way to live. It’s too confining. It gives people the power to define who’s in and who’s out. God invites all and all enter the relationship the same exact way… a choice of the heart.
God wants humanity to be free.
Huge misconception among atheists!
Religion and religious people may condemn and attempt to control but that is not God.
Be free! 60 days… money back guarantee!
Thanks for the space to post.

D

It cannot be done. Oh sure, you can analyze the paper, predict perhaps a monkey could type a few lines of it within a few million years or assess what compounds are found within the original ink, but you will never get to the contextual meaning of the arrangement of the words and what the author intended.

I’m not at all disturbed by the claims of empiricism or science in determining truth.

No one can “prove” empiricism by the same standards it demands of Scripture, for example.

Science provides a context for understanding the material aspects of the physical world. It is silent on the matter of it’s meaning. It should be.

It is not the vehicle by which prayer will ever be truly understood.

The atomic bomb “worked”.

Works depends on what sort of outcome you’re pursuing. As you say, it’s not necessarily “right” that something “works”.

As far as looking at prayer pragmatically, that’s akin to trying to look at a Longfellow poem under a microscope or in a test tube. You’re simply not going to derive any sort of meaning from it that way, at least not the sort Longfellow intended; save perhaps the fibers of the paper, the composition of the ink and any other physical attributes it might have. In doing so however, you miss what the man is attempting to say in such works as “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” or “The Children’s Hour”. You’re not looking at it in the proper context whatsoever and miss the entire point. Science is not the final arbiter of prayer. It is not the paradigm which will give you the least bit of insight into the nature and doctrines of prayer. Pragmatism is not the the worldview in which prayer came to be and prayer is not ever going to be rightly understood if one comes at it from the angle of a scientist.

I do not care whether or not science thinks it “works”. It is not necessary that I justify faith, God and Scripture as well as everything else which attends to the Christian life through the cosmology of a scientific viewpoint or whether or not it “works”. If people reject Christianity because it doesn’t make sense scientifically or that it’s not empirically verifiable or that it doesn’t “work” the way “they” think it should, that’s fine. But again it’s like attempting to understand Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with beakers, tweezers and microscopes. You’re going to miss the entire point of the poetry. This is not to dismiss the benefits that science yields, its just to say that such an approach is wholly inadequate in ascertaining the meaning in a soul connecting to its creator.

I wish science were as “equally critical of itself” as you suggest it is.

Anyhow, that’s my head shot. I don’t photo well.

Ok. I fully understand what you mean by human constructs. I do. At least I think so. We wouldn’t be communicating if “we” weren’t here.

BUT…you do say, “I mean these things don’t exist independent of a species of our intellectual capacities or similar/greater.”

If you don’t know whether or not these things exist (or claim they don’t) it’s not even theoretically possible to make such a conjecture about what they could or could not do, for you speak of non-existent beings. For if there actually was a species (or being) with greater intellectual capacities than we possess they could conceptually be capable of doing things we simply could not comprehend, let alone rule out.

You also mention this:

“Science is the way to avail ourselves of these things”.

Now this begs a few questions.

How does one know of what we need to avail ourselves?

And how does one know science is the thing to do the availing?

You say, “It is so much more significant to do these things for other people and yourself, and not in any way because of a supernatural belief system.”

I’d suggest this, though. What’s wrong with the idea that I enjoy doing things for others because of a supernatural belief system? What is meant by significant?

I think that if Jesus really was who He said He was and it really was the God of the Universe on the cross, accepting or rejecting that IMO is going to have significant consequences for humanity.

I’m being summoned by family to play “Monopoly Here and Now”. So I’ll be off.

My full name is Dan Ray, by the way. Have a great evening.

DR

No. I said ‘in terms of human concerns.’ The universe exists without us. I’m talking about human constructs like morality, meaning, love, hate, etc. There may be other species out there that have these things, or something similar to them. I mean these things don’t exist independent of a species of our intellectual capacities or similar/greater.

I don’t see how it is more cruel without a higher power. And even so, this is wishful thinking in my view, not any reason or evidence for a higher power. And I find more reason to be a good, moral person without a god. It is so much more significant to do these things for other people and yourself, and not in any way because of a supernatural belief system.

For the last, please do not mistake me to be saying we know or have seen everything. Far from it. Science it the way to avail ourselves of these things, and we have done a lot of that in the last few centuries. Part of this journey involves shedding the false claims and beliefs in order to move forward. It is true that nearly all civilizations have had some belief in a supernatural power. This “everyone is doing it” argument holds absolutely no weight for me however. There are too many examples of nearly everyone being wrong. Go back 500 years in a thought experiment and you’ll see what I mean.

“Nothing objective exists in terms of human concerns to the extent of our human knowledge outside of our own human context. I am not alluding to any law outside of ourselves or claiming knowledge outside of the human condition.”

If I may attempt a summary of this, you’re saying there is nothing objective or perhaps objectively “real” outside of human experience?

But if we are unable to transcend our human experience, there is no way of verifying whether or not this statement is true.

If we go no higher than man, we are essentially caught in a rather cruel and impersonal vortex of the subjectivity of transitory human emotion and experience.

In short, even what I claim to know has come from sources outside myself. Yes, such information has been transmitted by man, but a great portion of the foundations of Western Civilization rest upon the notion that there is something beyond our own limited perceptions, something which transcends what we simply see with our eyes.

You know this, of course.

You conclude, as Laplace did, that you have no need of such a hypothesis.

You hope you’re right!

Anyhow. Thanks again, sir.

Dan

Everyone can be thankful, including atheists.

Thanks again for the chat!

Sorry about your grandmother. I empathize.

Hope you had and are intending to have a restful remainder of this icon our culture deems a “holiday”.

I’d say “Happy Thanksgiving” but I know the very term is suggestive of “thankfulness” which thus implies being thankful to someone, something outside of ourselves, etc. etc. You know.

Anyhow, hope you found meaning, solace and a plethora of edible pleasures during this time of year.

Thanks for your good-sportedness.
Dan