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Why do reasonable people doubt science?

Except that all I did was post the movie quote as a joke and didn't say anything else. Regardless, enjoy your day.
 
RevDeac06 said:
It's Barth, which, by definition, makes it incomprehensible ;)

But you realize that Barth isn't going to change the mind of the atheists/agnostics on this thread, right? Barth (I'm a huge fan) is all about Jesus. In fact, he was once asked "can you sum up all of your work?" and he said "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." The people on this thread aren't going to buy that foundation, so they're certainly not going to climb up to the roof. That being said, Barth isn't anti-ethics, he's a big proponent of revelation- and the revelation of God in Christ is that we are to love one another. That isn't sin. Sin is defining who is loveable, who is eligible for marriage and who isn't.
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I've read in more than one place that Barth was a bit of a womanizer. Is there any substance to that rumor? I think I even read somewhere that he had a woman living with him who wasn't his wife.
 
Junebug said:
I have to say, you have no idea what you are talking about. I'm talking about the actions of going to church, reflecting, and loving one's neighbor, and the existential realization that good works result in a lack of freedom.

Dogma refers to things like the virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, the resurrection of the body, etc.

Look it up on Wikipedia if you are stil unclear.
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Ha. Asinine assertion, junebug.

Interestingly, the modern dogma comes from middle Greek dokein (meaning to seem or to appear) which also spurred Doketai, the etymological basis of Docetism (which I'll let you look into yourself if you're unfamiliar) and of the suffix -doxy or part -doxa- (both of which refer only to opinion), and related in contemporary English to "decent" in principle.

The earliest contemporary Greek appearances of dogmatos translate most closely in English to "that which one thinks is true."

Fascinatingly, the prescriptive English definition from its crossover to English standard usage now claims "a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true." And where that change happened in oral history has almost entirely to do with orthodoxy of religion, how the opinions of the clergy have changed over time with exegesis and heuristic interpretations of Scripture to come about today's "dogma." Dogma as a general term is not, however, etymologically or otherwise, linked by necessity or even in common usage to only refer to a few sections of Biblical text. It's completely myopic to even suggest otherwise.

For you to be dogmatic about a one true path towards Christianity, the specifics don't really matter. That you're suggesting a positivist, realist path to being a Christian is by its very definition and assertion "dogmatic."
 
Junebug said:
In the post immediately above, you do not use the term "dogma" in the way that you do in your longer post. You use it, following my lead, in the sense of "precepts that you must 'assent' to." There is nothing myopic about that; in fact, it's the most common usage. If, after looking it up on a few websites, you want to change the meaning for purposes of this conversation, that's your prerogative, but understand that your confusion is caused by your own shifting usages.

To respond to your accusation on your new usage of the term, I nowhere said that anyone had to follow any program to become a Christian. I was merely setting forth one way of doing so in response to TW's question of how to live a religious life. There are certainly other ways to become a Christian; in fact, my own path is quite different from the one I've set forth.
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Edit, I will actually respond:

You told me to look up dogma on Wikipedia. Instead, I looked in my desk reference etymology books (not some websites, sorry). Dictionaries today are far too descriptive and not nearly prescriptive enough. If you want to simply refer to a common usage, don't tell somebody else to look up what a word means on Wikipedia. I don't pretend to lecture Rev about Scripture, and I'd just as soon not be lectured to about linguistics or language. It's ok if you want to be imprecise with language, but don't then change your tune when somebody calls you about word usage.

As for your second paragraph, had you simply stated that there is no one true way to become a Christian, how could I have ever assumed you were being dogmatic? I would have assumed quite the opposite. Instead, he asked for advice, you gave it and said "it's about X." That's self-limiting language.
 
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Junebug said:
Seriously, then, look it up on Wikipedia.
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Wow that page is full of malapropisms. No wonder there are so many [citations needed].

Regardless, you countering etymology and prescriptivism with common use doesn't change the discussion whatsoever.
 
The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions is illuminating on this subject, but I don't feel like typing it all out and don't have online access to copy and paste.
 
Dogma.

It does seem that sometime in the 20th century, the term has been co-opted towards a more descriptive usage as Junebug is insisting. It ignores 20+ centuries of actual usage to suggest otherwise, but it now seems to simply refer to the precepts of orthodoxy now instead of personal determination.

Either way, I was using a prescriptive definition and he was using a descriptive definition, and if TW wanted to become a Christian, it seems like most parties agree here that there is no one true path to get there.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
A healthy dose of skepticism is fine. Ignoring an entire body of work on a topic which is the result of years and years of research, testing, and experimentation from the foremost experts in the world on a certain topic because it either conflicts with some anecdote you have from one time in your life or because your parents took you to church from the day you were born is not good practice at least in my opinion.
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But in many cases, that hasn't really happened like you (and apparently this author) thinks. Just because there is a body of work, doesn't mean it's been executed using the strict methods alluded to by the author. In many of these areas that get debated, that's impossible. There are just too many variables and too much variation of the ones being used to really make a conclusion with any certainty at all, it's all just guessing.

It really comes down to hard vs soft sciences. Chemistry, physics, biology are all hard lab sciences. It's highly reproducible and/or the theoretical models are highly accurate. Medical, health, climate, etc are all soft science that rely on huge data sets and lots and lots of assumption. It's often not reproducible and the theoretical models are highly inaccurate because of all the unaccounted for variables and high degree of variation of the metrics being measured. What reasonable people often doubt are absolute conclusions claimed based on soft science. It would be a huge mistake to believe that soft science should be believed as strongly as hard science.

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TownieDeac said:
Dogma.

It does seem that sometime in the 20th century, the term has been co-opted towards a more descriptive usage as Junebug is insisting. It ignores 20+ centuries of actual usage to suggest otherwise, but it now seems to simply refer to the precepts of orthodoxy now instead of personal determination.

Either way, I was using a prescriptive definition and he was using a descriptive definition, and if TW wanted to become a Christian, it seems like most parties agree here that there is no one true path to get there.
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Yea, dogma is a word that has a broad definition, but is also jargon specific to theology. Regarding "being Christian" the very fact that there can be sincere debate about it shows that there isn't consensus on what that exactly means. I mean, in the simplest form, it obviously means to be a follow of Jesus, but there are plenty of examples from theologians and the Bible that seem to suggest that being a follower of Jesus is about doing what Jesus did and not making claims about him. In fact, the earliest followers of Jesus were not calling Christians (a term that seems to do more with thoughts about the Christ) but rather "followers of the Way" (which suggests action).

But here's a larger point- on both the liberal and conservative side, Christians would say that every person is a child of God and made in God's image. To me, it seems that should count for more than what set of doctrines you hold to be true. And I think both sides would agree that at some point the end (telos, not chronological) of Creation is reconciliation with our Creator. So if we all come from God, and eventually are all going back to God, then our focus shouldn't be so much on deciding who is an and who is about, because we're all in. The question should be how do we live the most for God now- and that is primarily done through justice and mercy (the things God seems to care most about in the Bible). And Scripture seems to suggest that in doing justice and loving, we come to know God. Intellectual statements about God (Trinity, Sacraments, etc.) are certainly important, but they must come lower on the list, otherwise they become idols and the focus of our faith instead of focusing on knowing and sharing the love of God.
 
pourdeac said:
But in many cases, that hasn't really happened like you (and apparently this author) thinks. Just because there is a body of work, doesn't mean it's been executed using the strict methods alluded to by the author. In many of these areas that get debated, that's impossible. There are just too many variables and too much variation of the ones being used to really make a conclusion with any certainty at all, it's all just guessing.

It really comes down to hard vs soft sciences. Chemistry, physics, biology are all hard lab sciences. It's highly reproducible and/or the theoretical models are highly accurate. Medical, health, climate, etc are all soft science that rely on huge data sets and lots and lots of assumption. It's often not reproducible and the theoretical models are highly inaccurate because of all the unaccounted for variables and high degree of variation of the metrics being measured. What reasonable people often doubt are absolute conclusions claimed based on soft science. It would be a huge mistake to believe that soft science should be believed as strongly as hard science.
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Methods, ethics, and reproducibility problems aside, even the "soft sciences" you reference have basic chemical, physical, and biological principles underlying them that make up the foundation of their basic bench research.
 
Junebug said:
Is that what this is?
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As a preacher, I get very few chances to have an engaged audience such as this (those outside the church)- so yes, threads such as this are extremely important to me, as it's a frontier for evangelism. If a Christian can't make a compelling, civil, and informed case for faith on a message board, then what chance do they have for doing so in their lives?
 
TWDeac said:
ITT: pourdeac pulls out one of his many PhDs. Tell me, pour, why do exogeologists believe that Europa has a subsurface ocean and why are they wrong?
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What the fuck? That's just stupid dude. There have been many physical measurements that show the surface is ice. The surface also has features that appear in structure similar to ocean ice suggesting liquid underneath..where the surface fractured and other material filled in. They are all physical measurements and comparisons to known, experimentally replicated/validated behaviors of the material. It suggests Europa was ONCE warm underneath the surface. We don't know if it still is. Can we say with any certainty that Europa absolutely currently has a subsurface ocean? No (and your exogeologists would agree) but all the elements of one are there, and those elements don't resemble anything else known....so for many reasons it would be worthwhile proving it.

Do you have some other point?
 
pourdeac said:
What the fuck? That's just stupid dude. There have been many physical measurements that show the surface is ice. The surface also has features that appear in structure similar to ocean ice suggesting liquid underneath..where the surface fractured and other material filled in. They are all physical measurements and comparisons to known, experimentally replicated/validated behaviors of the material. It suggests Europa was ONCE warm underneath the surface. We don't know if it still is. Can we say with any certainty that Europa absolutely currently has a subsurface ocean? No (and your exogeologists would agree) but all the elements of one are there, and those elements don't resemble anything else known....so for many reasons it would be worthwhile proving it.

Do you have some other point?
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Holy shit you took the bait. I was banking on your penchant for disagreeing with generally accepted science.

I am really excited for a future Europa probe. Particularly the one that would melt through the miles thick ice on its way to the subsurface ocean.

It is almost certain that it is kept warm by Jupiter's fantastic tidal forces. Who knows what could be down there!
 
Also, sailordeac, I finally finished that New York Review of Books article on Machiavelli this morning. I enjoyed it. Thanks for posting.
 
RevDeac06 said:
Didn't say that we haven't jumped the shark in the process. But that argument is no different than saying that the "scientist" who originally said that vaccines lead to autism discredits the whole of medical research.

You can do better than that logic. That's actually the problem with so many atheists (not sure that you'd classify yourself as that or not, so this isn't directed at you, but in general), they're boring and present some rather dull arguments. Atheism used to be a good intellectual sparring partner for Christianity, not so much anymore.
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Really? Theology is the "study" of something that has no basis in fact. There is no way to evidence that it isn't entirely a false construct.
 
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