And quite often the least faithful are the most religious.
Okay, this is not going to be popular, BUT – I genuinely don’t understand how people can maintain religious faith through higher education, emerging with a PhD and intact religious belief. How isn’t the belief utterly shattered?
— Doc nano, PhD (@SRevelare) March 29, 2022
Go and read the replies.
There are few religious devotees more outspoken than the sanctimonious atheist.
There is no article of faith they love more than to insult and berate the faithful as being stupid dupes with deficiency in critical thinking and pudding for brains.
How smug in their self assurance they are that they earned a piece of paper that says they know just a tiny bit more than the layman on a very tiny topic of technical minutiae and that means thru understand the totality of the nature of reality and the human condition.
I myself have a PhD in engineering.
I, however, do not have such hubris as they do.
I know that what I know about materials science does not answer the metaphysical questions of the universe or soothes the soul.
When my father passed I did not turn to the AISI heat treater’s guide for answers.
Knowing a little bit more than the average person about how a blast furnace works does not give me the same sense of connection and continuity of being as being part of an unbroken tradition that goes back more than 6,000 years to Abraham and the patriarchs.
The saddest and most revealing thing about this Tweet and the replies is just how much it shows that these people have no capacity for introspection as they engage in a rhetorical atheistic Jihad against those who believe in God.
Psalm 2 pretty much explains them.
They want man to be the supreme power in creation so they can believe there is no G-D and thus no judgement or price to be paid for their SIN.
I think that belief in God requires an imagination. It’s one thing to observe reality and it’s inner workings, but making that metaphysical jump requires some mental flexibility that I just don’t think many people have.
*How* does it work is easy. *Why* does it work isn’t.
Two thoughts:
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1. God is a scientist, not a magician. His creation has rational rules and properties. In fact, those rules and properties are what make science possible and allow humans to cope with living here.
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2. The universe and the Earth were created a bit over 6,000 years ago. That does not jive with astronomers’ and paleontologists’ observations. However, given that God is an omnipotent being, who are we to limit Him to creating only shiny new things? I believe that when He spoke the universe into existence, it was already old, and I believe He did that on purpose (omnipotent, remember?).
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Just like when Tolkein imagined Middle-Earth into fictional existence, it had thousands of years of elven, dwarvish, and human history that we don’t have to read through to get to the One Ring. The only difference is that when God imagines something into existence, it really does exist!
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But haters gonna hate — atheist haters more than most — either because they don’t understand … or because deep down, they do.
“The universe and the Earth were created a bit over 6,000 years ago.”
Um.
It’s my understanding that Bishop Ussher established that as the minimum age of the Earth, in order to accommodate all the events described in the Bible. Not the actual age, just the minimum necessary.
The science of his day, knowing nothing of nuclear physics, had no explanation for how the Sun could give nearly-constant output for any extended period; ergo, it was not considered possible for life to have been around for even a few thousand years and for the planet to have been solid for much longer than that. (Paleontology – or even recorded history – could get a mite challenging, and geology inclined toward catastrophism, but under this model the Flintstones would almost have made sense.)
Given a modern understanding of physics, there’s no reason the Earth couldn’t have been around and supporting life for a very long time before the ancient Hebrews started writing down the history of their tribe.
Meanwhile, we have schools teaching that (contrary to your point #1) the world has no rational rules and properties, everything is magical, objective reality does not exist, and imagining something literally makes it so (see, e.g., current teachings on the subject of biological sex). Which isn’t even science-linked atheism; it’s more like (to borrow a phrase from a college classmate) collective solipsism. And those who proclaim most loudly their Belief in Science seem most inclined to reject the fundamental underpinnings of actual science.
… Huh. Seems that “collective solipsism” is a somewhat recognized thing, going back at least to 1984. Study is called for. I wonder if Ken Thompson’s Church of Collective Solipsism somehow reached critical mass.
SF writer Terry Prachett wrote a lovely novel “Strata” along these lines.
Meanwhile, on the bit about atheists: if you use the definition that “religion” means “a system of belief held without proof” then atheism is clearly a religion. It holds, without proof, that God does not exist, just as “conventional” religions hold that God (or Gods, in some cases) exists. If you want to argue that proof is needed, the position to take would be agnosticism, i.e., “I don’t know if God exists”.
As for scientists with strong religious beliefs, one of the best known example is one of the most famous of them all, Albert Einstein.
– Meanwhile, on the bit about atheists: if you use the definition that “religion” means “a system of belief held without proof” then atheism is clearly a religion. It holds, without proof, that God does not exist,-
I disagree with your definition, as an atheist. Atheism is quite simply rejecting the claim of the god. Nothing more nothing less. It is literally saying “I am not convinced.”
And agnosticism,??
Gnosticism is related to knowledge- Not belief. You can have a Gnostic atheist, an Agnostic atheist, A Gnostic Theist, an Agnostic theist.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but it’s not how I understand the meaning of the two terms. And all the atheists I have ever heard state their position as “god does not exist” — which clearly is a statement of faith.
Yes, we say god does not exist, for the same reason we say the Greek gods don’t exist. We do not believe the stories. What that means in short, is the claim of a god, has not met it’s burden of proof. in this case I assume we’re talking about the Bible. Correct me if I’m wrong of course – which god are you talking about?
The thing is I’ve read the bible. I grew up in a Christian household. I was about 12 when I asked for my own copy, and I read it. Not long after, I decided I could no longer “have faith” in these stories. So yes, I say god does not exist – because none of the claims of any supposed god(s) are worth spit.
Its even true here…. I will keep my own religious beliefs to my self. I do know that lots of “church goers” around here are some of the nastiest people you will ever meet. Gods miracles are everywhere if you open thine eyes. Humans have been programmed to see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear..
–see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear..–
You don’t have a little cognitive dissonance from this statement of yours?